Why Sharia Law Isn't Simply 'Kosher' for the West

"Britain is Being Islamised by Stealth," claims Melanie Phillips, being interviewed by CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck. British political commentator, Melanie Phillips, condemned the Archbishop of Canterbury's endorsement of authorizing enforcement of non-standardized, decentralized Sharia in Britain. Watch her video:



Christopher Hitchens used Archbishop Rowan Williams sanctioning of Sharia as justifying his ouster. From Slate:

"In the midst of this dismal verbiage and euphemism, the plain statement—"There's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said"—still stands out like a diamond in a dunghill. It stands out precisely because it is said simply, and because its essential grandeur is intelligible to everybody. Its principles ought to be just as intelligible and accessible to those who don't yet speak English, in just the same way as the great Lord Mansfield once ruled that, wherever someone might have been born, and whatever he had been through, he could not be subject to slavery once he had set foot on English soil. Simple enough?"

Sharia Law is not equivalent to Jewish or Hindu law in the West
Hugh Fitzgerald elucidates in Jihad Watch:

The difference between the imposition of any part of the Shari'a and whatever a very limited role is allotted to Jewish (or possibly Hindu) family law, is that there is no real challenge, by the latter, to the supremacy of English law. There is no long-term program to use whatever small place has been allowed for there to be some kind of use of Jewish (or Hindu?) family law, in very limited ways, and ONLY when those ways do not contradict English law, to undercut the supremacy of the law of the English state. There is no program to undo the legal and political institutions of the English state.

The situation is quite different from Islam. The pretense, that the uninformed and terminally naive Archbishop of Canterbury has fallen for, that Muslims "only" want this little concession, should be seen in light of the steady and inevitable Muslim desire to remove everything that stands in the way of the spread of Islam. Shari'a imposed on Muslims -- many of whom do not want it (see the example of Canada, where female Muslims led the fight against it) because their legal position under the Shari'a-supplied family law is far inferior to what it would be under the laws of any Infidel land -- in the supposedly limited area of family law may, and indeed does, contradict the law of the land in Great Britain. That is quite another matter. And so too is the fact that this is not a final demand, but merely an opening one. If granted, it will lead to more and more such demands -- demands that swell with each new victory, as a sense of triumphalism is at the heart of the matter. That sense must never be encouraged. It must always be discouraged and disappointed.

Christopher Hitchens elaborates on the importance of resisting Islamist imperialism in this essay published six months ago, "God-Fearing People: Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?"

... Not content with igniting copies of The Satanic Verses, Islamist lynch parties demanded the burning of its author as well. Many distinguished authors, Muslim and non-Muslim, are dead or in hiding because of the words they have put on pages concerning the unbelievable claims of Islam. And it is to appease such a spirit of persecution and intolerance that a student in New York City has been arrested for an expression, however vulgar, of an opinion.

This has to stop, and it has to stop right now. There can be no concession to sharia in the United States. When will we see someone detained, or even cautioned, for advocating the burning of books in the name of God? If the police are honestly interested in this sort of "hate crime," I can help them identify those who spent much of last year uttering physical threats against the republication in this country of some Danish cartoons. In default of impartial prosecution, we have to insist that Muslims take their chance of being upset, just as we who do not subscribe to their arrogant certainties are revolted every day by the hideous behavior of the parties of God.

It is often said that resistance to jihadism only increases the recruitment to it. For all I know, this commonplace observation could be true. But, if so, it must cut both ways. How about reminding the Islamists that, by their mad policy in Kashmir and elsewhere, they have made deadly enemies of a billion Indian Hindus? Is there no danger that the massacre of Iraqi and Lebanese Christians, or the threatened murder of all Jews, will cause an equal and opposite response? Most important of all, what will be said and done by those of us who take no side in filthy religious wars? The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their own suicide. And the advocates and apologists of bigotry and censorship and suicide-assassination cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy.