'Shari'a Law Has No Place Here' -- GOPUSA

'Shari'a Law Has No Place Here'
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
February 24, 2006

(CNSNews.com) -- An Australian politician's comments about Muslims wanting to live under Islamic law (shari'a) has focused attention on the push by Muslim minorities in some Western countries to establish enclaves where Islamic norms and laws hold sway.

In a controversial speech Thursday, Australia's federal Treasurer Peter Costello said Muslim immigrants not willing to embrace Australian values should leave, and that anyone wanting to live under shari'a might feel more comfortable living in countries where it is applied, such as Saudi Arabia or Iran, "not in Australia."

Keysar Trad, president of the Sydney-based Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, accused Costello of "whipping up this Islamophobia again," and criticized his comments about Islamic law.

"I don't see anyone in Australia calling for shari'a law," Trad told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Last year, however, Abdul Nacer Ben Brika, a radical cleric in Australia's second-largest city, Melbourne, was asked in an interview whether he thought Australian Muslims had a responsibility to adhere to Australian law.

He replied: "This is a big problem. There are two laws -- there is an Australian law and there is an Islamic law."

Costello cited the comments in his speech.

It's not just extremists like the Algerian-born Ben Brika -- an open admirer of Osama bin Laden -- who would like to see aspects of Islamic law introduced in Australia.

In a meeting last April with the then minister of citizenship and multicultural affairs, Peter McGauran, mainstream Muslim leaders called for the establishment of a separate Islamic court, specifically to deal with Muslim divorces.

McGauran declined, saying: "The law in this country is secular. There's a clear separation between religion and the law and Australia's laws apply equally to all citizens, regardless of their religion."

One of the Muslim leaders arguing at the time for a shari'a court, Abdul Jalil Ahmad of the Islamic Council of Western Australia, stressed that Islamic law would not replace Australian law, because Muslims were in a minority.

"Only in areas where we are legally allowed to implement our Islamic teaching we do," he said.

However, Muslims elsewhere do not necessarily see minority status in a country as an impediment.

A book published by the Islamic Council of Europe in 1980, "Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States," instructed Muslim minorities how to work towards achieving domination of European countries through a policy of concentration in geographical areas.

Muslims were told to avoid assimilation by the majority, get together and build mosques, Islamic schools and community centers, and establish communities based on Islamic principles.

According to Patrick Sookhdeo of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, the instructions appear to have been followed, in some countries at least.

"The Muslim community in France is well on the way to becoming...a state within a state," he wrote in a recent article. "The only substantive goal still outstanding is the implementation of Islamic law instead of French law.

"Muslims in France have by and large rejected the concept of the integration of individuals and are working instead for the integration of communities," Sookhdeo said. "The same is happening in the U.K."

In several years' time, a number of British cities will have Muslim majorities.

"Islamic enclaves would be defined by Islamic values, education, politics, religious practice and above all law."

In parts of Britain, "Islamic law is already semi-established, in that a multitude of shari'a

councils and shari'a courts exist which deal with family issues, effectively creating an unofficial parallel legal system within the U.K," Sookhdeo said.

Omar Bakri Mohammed, a Syrian-born extremist cleric who left Britain last year amid growing calls for his expulsion, several years earlier set up a body he called the "U.K. Shari'a Court" and served as its senior judge.

Some British banking institutions are offering "shari'a-compliant" home loans and finance packages. (Shari'a forbids usury -- the collection and payment of interest -- and also prohibits risk trading.)

In an ICM poll of British Muslims, released early this week, 40 percent of respondents supported having shari'a introduced in predominantly Muslim areas of Britain, while 41 percent were opposed to the idea.

Shari'a is applied to varying degrees in countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Its most controversial elements include death sentences for apostasy, amputation of limbs for theft and stoning for adultery.

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