Sunday, September 14, 2008

What They Say And What They Do ... Sharia Arrives

Liam Byrne lies through his teeth :

We’re fine with diversity. We like it. We think it makes life more interesting. But we do want people to sign up to basic rules of the road.

That’s why we’re going to change the law so that newcomers have to show they have signed up to some basic things – speaking English, paying tax, obeying the law and making an effort to integrate – before they can access the privileges of citizenship, including benefits.

To quote Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman, pretty much every word in Byrne's article is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'.

Here's something else from the same paper.

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, said he had taken advantage of a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996.

Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.