December 3, 2008 (LPAC)--One of the "terrorist loopholes" which exist within British law, involves the incorporation of Islamic "sharia" law within the code of British common law. Whatever the character this legal code takes in Arab countries, its incorporation into the British system is a convenient loophole for terrorist networks, in that British sharia law, which allows for polygamy, and family-arranged marriages, is a means by which British citizenship is bestowed on the spouse--though he/she had never been in Britain--through the official ceremony. Beyond marriages, however, sharia law had no official recognition in the British legal system--until now.
The "debate" was touched off in February, this year, by none other than Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who first raised the issue in a lecture before the London's Royal Courts of Justice in February, saying that it was "inevitable" that aspects of sharia law would be brought into British common law, and that Britons should just "face up to the fact." While Williams' call touched off a furor, and he is currently fighting for his career before the church hierarchy, the issue of sharia courts proceeded in Britain. By July, Lord chief justice Phillips himself told the Times that he thought sharia law could be used to settle marital and financial disputes.
In October, however, MP Sadiq Khan, Minister for Communities and Local Government, and himself a Muslim, sounded a note of caution. "I would be very concerned about sharia law applying in the UK," he told the Times, saying it lacked a level of "sophisticaiton." Jewish "beth-din" law (which is often held up for contrast), he said, has a 500-year history, while mass migration of Muslims only started 30 years ago. By then, however, it was too late. In September, the Times had revealed that the government had "quietly sanctioned" the establishment of official Islamic sharia courts in five jurisdictions, including London, and their rulings had the "full force of the judicial system" behind them.
One of the mosques surely to take advantage of this is the Finsbury Park mosque, run by "radical cleric" Abu Hamza al-Masri. Masri's mosque has been implicated in numerous terrorist incidents, from the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Africa, to the London subway bombings in 2005. In 1994, al-Mazri started an umbrella group for terrorists, worldwide, calling it the Supporters of Sharia. For more on al-Mazri's background, see EIR's memorandum, "Put Britain on the list of states sponsoring terrorism," submitted to the State Department in January 2000.
