Sharia Law comes to the UK

Delhi born Dr/Shaikh Suhaib Hasan has set himself up in his own little Sharia court in a converted corner shop in Leyton, North East London.

At the moment this has all the legality of a TV show ‘court’ where participants are technically only bound in as far as they agree to be bound. Though it is perhaps much more than just that to a Moslem, embedded in largely exclusively Moslem community, who has no English.

Dr Hassan is the General Secretary of the Islamic Sharia Council and bills himself as a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain.

He is keen to share the benefits of Sharia Law, on an official and legal basis, with the rest of us. He is convinced it can turn the HK into a “haven of peace”.

In fact he, in a documentary, currently scheduled to be screened on Channel 4 next month, entitled ‘Divorce: Sharia Style’, Dr Hasan reveals ‘just where he is coming from’, as they say. He revealingly comments:

"Once, just only once, if an adulterer is stoned nobody is going to commit this crime at all.”

"We want to offer it [Sharia Law] to the British society. If they accept it, it is for their good and if they don't accept it they'll need more and more prisons."

I think the good Dr’s Freudian slip is showing here - As far as I am aware adultery is not a crime in the UK, there is certainly no penalty, apart from the possibility of divorce, for it.

I am sure he is correct in that the realistic prospect of being stoned to death would discourage it, against the law or not, that’ll do it for you most every time.

One wonders what else that the good Dr disproves of, that is not against the law we can consider stoning people to death for?

How the man can seriously suggest such a thing without realising it brands him as a fascist is beyond me.

The Muslim Council of Britain is usually held up by the ‘great and the good’, as an exemplar of ‘moderate’ Islamic opinion. This man is their Sharia spokesman.

If this is moderate it can only be so by comparison to something incomparably worse. If this is moderate maybe we need to redefine the meaning of ‘moderate’.

Oh! - Looks like we did already…

Bishop says UK floods are the wrath of God

Apparently Senior Church of England Bishops are claiming recent flooding in the UK as evidence of the wrath of God. The Bishop of Carlisle suggested new legislation in favour of homosexuals may have provoked God.

He said that whilst this actually affected innocent victims the flooding was a result of Western civilisations decision to ignore biblical teachings. The Bishop of Liverpool and the Right Reverend Dow, also seem to feel we are reaping what we are sowing.

One wonders why they have such a low opinion of God that he could not manage to flood the Palace of Westminster, it being on fairly low ground, right by the Thames, or strike it with lightening maybe. Parliament would, after all, be the logical target - and the better clearer ‘message’, if it really were an act of God, rather than the overwrought imagination of the Bishop.

If I were actually inclined to believe God was small minded I would be more likely to believe it was a judgement on voting for Tony Blair, the man, who with such a cavalier attitude to the democratic process, signed the EU constitutional Treaty as his last act as PM.

Maybe, like the terrorists, the Bishop feels God prefers a ‘softer’ target like Sheffield.

Or do they perhaps feel God, like some maiden aunt at a church fete coconut shy, is not quite up to it - and accidentally gets the stall holder instead? Some may recall immediately after the installation of the rather ‘controversial’ clergyman the Rt Rev David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham in 1984, York Minster was severely damaged by lightening strikes around midnight. This hints at a fairly good aim.

Have they been paying too much attention to some of the pronouncements of the more obviously ‘reasonableness challenged’ Imams?

Then one wonders, what about the people of New Orleans? I have no doubt many of those affected were devout Christians, would the Bishops suggest that it was another ‘soft target’ chosen because of the Administration in Washington DC. Again, given that Washington was effectively built on a swamp, one would have felt he could have managed something a little more direct, more obvious.

Or the people of the sate of Victoria in Australia. Droughts and now floods, what have they done?

All a bit too ‘Western’ maybe?

Then, as a random example, what had the Bangladeshis done to irritate, when 30 million of them were flooded out in July 2004’s monsoon? Wilfully being largely non-Christian perhaps?

No I don’t think that God uses the earth as his personal coconut shy. One suspects the explanation is more prosaic. Simply put - Shit happens.