By Ben Rogers
Martin Parsons, and Rashad Ali and Haras Rafiq, have done us a great service in their articles on sharia and Islamism last week. These have been issues which I have written about regularly on this site, and I found myself in broad agreement with Martin Parsons, Rashad Ali and Haras Rafiq.
This week, I read a shocking new report, on the impact of legislative sharia on human rights and women's rights in Aceh, Indonesia. The report, Policing Morality: Abuses in the Application of Sharia in Aceh, Indonesia, is published by Human Rights Watch, and offers a wake-up call to the effects of full legislative Sharia.
In the first of his three articles on this site, Martin Parsons observes that: "Non-violent Islamist groups have the same ultimate long term aims as violent Islamists - the imposition of sharia in Britain and elsewhere." I agree completely. He adds: "In broad terms it is not their strategic aims that differ, but merely their tactics. Non-violent Islamists have long recognised that Britain is unlikely to become an Islamic state overnight, so they have concentrated on pursuing a gradual Islamisation process." In that process, key figures such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chief Justice and the heads of major banks have slept-walked into becoming the Islamists' allies.
Rashad Ali and Haras Rafiq, however, provide a vital amendment to Parsons' analysis, by reminding us that there are several different interpretations of sharia. Broadly speaking, we can differentiate between two categories of sharia: personal, private, devotional, religious sharia, and legislative, judicial, punitive and polical sharia.
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