Originally published under the title “Guardian’s ‘Useful Infidels’ Rush to Defend Shariah, Ridicule Elderly Lord Tebbit.”
The Guardian denounced Lord Tebitt, 85, for warning that “Sharia law and courts” are incompatible with British values. |
The Guardian newspaper has rushed to mock Lord Tebbit — one of Britain’s last remaining actual conservatives — for daring to question the prominence of Shariah law in the United Kingdom.
In an anonymous article in its UK Politics section, the paper describes the peer, who is sadly of declining health, as “85 and loving it” before lampooning a recent Telegraph article in which Lord Tebbit states:
Until very recently in our society, child marriage, bigamy, divorce at the will of the male partner, the imprisonment of wives at the will of their husband, female genital mutilation and abortion on the grounds of the sex of the unborn child were unacceptable and indeed criminal offences.
Nor did we have any challenge to supremacy of statute and common law from a rival legal system with its own courts such as that now represented by the network of Sharia law and courts.
These thoughts are not an attack on Islam and its values. They are simply a warning that a population in which different groups observe different laws is inherently unstable.
Despite Lord Tebbit going to unnecessary lengths to state his concerns were “not an attack on Islam and its values,” the Guardian flippantly describes his concerns over the use of Shariah law in Britain as: “It’s the Muslims.”
And reflecting on Lord Tebbit’s claims that “a rival legal system with its own courts” is challenging Britain’s legal system, the Guardian replies (to its own question over the validity of this claim): “Nope.”
This denialism is tantamount to the author covering their eyes and ears while a bear gleefully defecates in amongst the trees while screaming that the Pope is secretly a Hindu.
Countless reports, investigations, and witness testimonies have underscored the claims that parallel legal systems exist in the United Kingdom which seek to circumvent the British courts.
The claim that Shariah councils have no legal force in Britain is false.
The Guardian is attempting to sidestep the issue by claiming these councils have no legal force. This is a lie.
Shariah councils work under the authority granted to them under the Arbitration Act 1996, and the councils’ relationships with UK courts are convoluted, to claim they have no legal force is a complete falsehood. “Fake news” if you will. Though the Guardian has become somewhat accustomed to that in recent weeks.
The Guardian adds: “Some Muslims might decide to follow their rulings, just like a Christian couple might ask their priest what to do, or anyone might toss a coin. None of it is binding unless you also sign a contract to bind yourself under British law.”
But seemingly, the paper has chosen to make light of the plight of real women who are fleeing marital rape, domestic violence, or just don’t want to be married to their husbands any more.
I don’t know why the Guardian hates women, especially Muslim women, but it is worth reading what the Leiden Law website has to say about how women are often forced into “marital captivity,” how Shariah councils are prejudiced in favour of Muslim husbands, and how Imams reject the supremacy of UK law when it comes to matters of divorce.
The academic who wrote the articles following unprecedented access to Britain’s Shariah councils, Machteld Zee, noted earlier this year: “I object to [Shariah law] because these practices are contrary to the rights of women.”
She even noted, in a prescient nod to the Guardian:
Authors that I studied for my investigation were generally benevolent towards sharia courts. But guess what? None of them had ever attended a session of such a court. They don’t know what is happening there.
Now they ask me to tell them all about it. Judges in these courts tell women to accept polygamy and to not to report domestic violence to the police. Violent fathers are given custody of their children. I get the impression that as these facts become known, the tide of the public debate is turning. I hardly hear anyone pleading in favour of sharia courts now.
Raheem Kassam is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and editor-in-chief of Breitbart London.
