Sharia, and You

There has been a conference in Abu Dhabi over the past few days discussing Sharia Law as a legal system. The conclusion of the conference that included 32 nations including the US, Australia and France, is that Sharia is equivalent to other legal systems.

Coincidentally, there is an article at the Middle East Media Research Institute web site that discusses Sharia law as it could be applied in Europe. It raised these differences to the law should Sharia be applied in Europe:

1) Permit polygamy for European Muslim citizens, and not punish them for it - [even though] this is considered criminal under European law;

2) Permit European Muslim citizens to beat their wives to discipline them, as the Koran urges;

3) Allow men to unilaterally decide to divorce without requiring any court proceedings, as this is a right guaranteed [to men] by shari'a;

4) Give daughters [only] half the inheritance rights that sons have, while widows receive only an eighth of the inheritance;

5) [Not] consider women's testimony the equal of men's in shari'a courts;

6) Deprive a divorced woman of custody of her children if she remarries;

7) Allow European Muslim citizens to marry in traditional marriages without the need to officially register these marriages;

8) Eliminate adoption, since it is contrary to shari'a;

9) Force a woman whose Muslim husband converts to another religion to divorce him, because he is an apostate;

10) Prevent European Muslim women from marrying non-Muslims

The article also listed the following three concerns regarding the effect of Sharia Law on human rights:

1) The concept of citizenship in Europe will change. There will be [different] classes of citizenship and of citizens, with some citizens being exempt from having the general law applied to them because they belong to a particular religion or belief. There will be a Muslim [class of] citizen, a Christian [class of] citizen, a Buddhist [class of] citizen, a Confucian [class of] citizen, and so on. Each will apply his own laws... Thus, faith will not be an individual freedom or belief; it will [come to] have extremely serious public ramifications.

2) If some or all of these laws were implemented and recognized by European legislative bodies, it would not only seriously damage human rights legislation - it would spell the end [of this legislation]. This is because everything I mentioned above is a negation of human rights principles.

3) Recognizing all, or [even] some, of these laws would take European societies back to the age before the Enlightenment and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a result, the West would revert to barbarism.