Sharia law for Libya?

Mustafa Abdel Ja­lil, Libya’s interim leader, declared Sunday that post-Gaddafi Libya will be run as an Islamic state with legislation based on sharia law.

According to The Washington Post reporter Mary Beth Sheridan, Jalil declared to a crowd in Benghazi, “’We are an Islamic state,’ and pledged to get rid of regulations that didn’t conform to Islamic law.”

Among the Islamic changes Jalil mentioned in his speech

— ”Libya’s new constitution “will not disallow polygamy’” (FP.com)

— “The interest [on loans] will be ruled out,” in accordance with Islamic prohibition on charging interest.

Sharia law, as Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein wrote in 2010, in recent months has become “shorthand for extremism” among critics of Islam in the United States. For Muslims, it is a code of conduct for daily life, similar to Jewish law, but concern over its role in politics have shadowed the Arab Spring.

Read the rest here.

130 Copts abandon Orthodox Church over divorce rights

CAIRO: The Coptic Orthodox Church was served with court papers relaying the decision by 130 Copts to abandon the Church, leaving them without belonging to a recognized sect.

The decision reflects growing tension between members of the Coptic community and the church over divorce and second marriages permits, a papal source told Daily News Egypt Monday.

The withdrawing Copts can join another church to secure permissions to get divorced and remarry.

They demanded the reactivation of an internal church rule (Law 38) that lists 10 justifications for divorce including maltreatment and madness.

Pope Shenouda deactivated this law in 2008, naming only adultery and conversion to a different sect as the only accepted reasons to obtain a divorce permit.

According to the Egyptian personal status law, Christians who do not belong to a specific sect are subject to sharia, which allows them to seek divorce in court.

Around 2,000 Copts seeking remarriage have held several protests, the last of which was in front of the Ministry of Justice, demanding the reactivation of Law 38 and a moratorium on the current divorce law.

Member of the Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod Bishop Salib Matta Sawiris told Daily News Egypt that the church cannot contradict the Bible to solve the problems of those seeking divorce.

"The Bible listed two reasons for divorce and this cannot be changed," Sawiris said.

Source

Eurabia Has A Capital: Rotterdam

This is must reading.

"...Holland is an extraordinary test case. It is the country in which individual license is the most extensive – to the point of permitting euthanasia on children – in which the Christian identity is most faded, in which the Moslem presence is growing most boldly.

Here, multiculturalism is the rule. But the exceptions are dramatic: from the killing of the anti-Islamist political leader Pim Fortuyn to the persecution of the Somali dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali to the murder of the director Theo Van Gogh, condemned to death for his film "Submission," a denunciation of the crimes of Muslim theocracy. Fortuyn's successor, Geert Wilders, has lived under 24-hour police protection for six years.

There is one city in Holland where this new reality can be seen with the naked eye, more than anywhere else. Here, entire neighborhoods look as if they have been lifted from the Middle East, here stand the largest mosques in Europe, here parts of sharia law are applied in the courts and theaters, here many of the women go around veiled, here the mayor is a Muslim, the son of an imam.

This city is Rotterdam, Holland's second largest city by population, and the largest port in Europe by cargo volume..."

Read the rest here.

Hat tip Rorate Caeli

Islamic Law in Britain

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Read the rest at the Times of London.

Quote of the day...

"[it] is contrary to the teachings of the fundamental text of Islamic law, the Quran ... [and] amounts to the expropriation from muslims of their goods; goods that were acquired legally. The state, if it is Islamic, does not have the right to seize my house, my wife or my slave."

-Imam El Hassan Ould Benyamin of Tayarat speaking in response to proposals to criminalize slavery in Mauritania.

In 2007 slavery was formally outlawed there after several previous attempts to outlaw slavery had failed. However various international human rights groups report that about 600,000 people (about 20% of the population & mostly black) are nonetheless held as slaves in Mauritania. Enforcement of anti-slavery laws there and in many other parts of Africa, especially predominantly Muslim countries, remains poor to non-existent. Although technically illegal in virtually every country in the world it is more or less openly practiced in many.

The "technically illegal" part is increasingly under direct attack by Islamic fundamentalists who regard slavery as a perfectly legitimate institution sanctioned and even mandated by the Quran and Sharia (Islamic Law).