Last week the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Shari’a to be adopted in England. Martin Fletcher added his two cents:
As one who has been hauled in front of a Sharia court I would like to risk having my hand — or head — chopped off a second time by suggesting that the Archbishop of Canterbury just might have a point.
Fletcher thinks he’s being funny. He is actually saying that he considers those who disagree with him as extremists. But the main part of the story really is infuriating:
We waited in the yard of an old police station. An alleged drug dealer lay on the ground on his stomach, his hands and legs bound together behind his back. Several wretched faces stared out from the dark interiors of cells with barred windows. A bunch of women engaged in some sort of domestic dispute arrived and waited patiently behind us.Finally the drivers, still arguing furiously, were each told to make their case to a couple of religious elders. They had barely begun before the court adjourned to a nearby carpet for sunset prayers.
When it resumed, and both drivers had had their say, the court pronounced. The two men were ordered to apologise to each other and we were all dismissed.
The court performed its duty with admirable dispatch and minimal fuss and everyone went away happy. It was quicker, cheaper and just as effective as a British magistrates’ court.
After describing the “wretched faces,” he tells how his own encounter ended and “everyone went away happy.” Well not everyone. Not the “wretched faces” he saw when he arrived.
LGF was absolutely correct to highlight those lines. Fletcher’s self-centeredness is very much on display. What if the court had decided differently, would he still be so smug? Is he so certain that the episode couldn’t have ended worse for him and his entourage? Or even the other party?
The Belmont Club notes that Sharia law doesn’t always produce good (or consistent) outcomes in a post delightfully entitled “My sentence was reduced to beheading.” It’s the story of Sandy Mitchell, who was working in the desert kingdom.
He was held in prison for three years and tortured until he eventually signed a confession, which he later had to read out on Saudi television. A sharia court sentenced him to having his head partially severed, followed by public crucifixion.The sentence was later reduced to beheading, before the Saudi authorities finally conceded that al-Qa’eda terrorists had planted the bomb and let Mr Mitchell return home to Halifax, West Yorks. …
His torturers told him his wife and son were “involved” in the plot, even though his son was only a year old, and Mr Mitchell finally cracked when the jailers told him: “We will torture them. When you hear their screams, you will know they are suffering because you haven’t told us the truth.”
Judeopundit saw an article that casts even more doubts on the wisdom of Sharia courts
Commander Steve Allen, head of ACPO’s honour-based violence unit, says the true toll of people falling victim to brutal ancient customs is “massively unreported” and far worse than is traditionally accepted. “We work on a figure which suggests it is about 500 cases shared between us and the Forced Marriage Unit per year,” he said: “If the generally accepted statistic is that a victim will suffer 35 experiences of domestic violence before they report, then I suspect if you multiplied our reporting by 35 times you may be somewhere near where people’s experience is at.” His disturbing assessment, made to a committee of MPs last week, comes amid a series of gruesome murders and attacks on British women at the hands of their relatives. […]
Think about that for a moment. If these practices are so prevalent now, what would happen if Sharia would become official? Couldn’t you expect that these practices would be perpetrated with even greater frequency once Sharia became official?
(via memeorandum)
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
