Product Description

Sharia law is a distillation of rulings that purport to represent the divine diktat in all worldly affairs. It provides injunctions for the conduct of criminal, public and even international law. Marriage and divorce, the custody of children, alimony, sexual impropriety and much else come within its remit. Sharia courts are operating in Britain, handing down rulings that may be inappropriate to this country, being linked to elements in Islamic law that are seriously out of step with trends in Western legislation that derive from the values of the Enlightenment and are inherent in modern codes of human rights. Sharia rulings contain great potential for controversy and may involve acts contrary to UK legal norms and human rights legislation. Denis MacEoin argues against the wider use of sharia law. As David Green says in his introduction, equality under the law, regardless of race, gender or religion, is the bedrock of Western civilisation: take it away and you disrupt the whole edifice. Women are not equal in sharia law and, for many Muslims, sharia courts are in practice part of an institutionalised atmosphere of intimidation, backed up by the ultimate sanction of a death threat: 'Nothing less will suffice than the exclusion of sharia courts from recognition under Britain's Arbitration Act of 1996.'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #276517 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-29
• Released on: 2009-06-29
• Binding: Paperback
• 143 pages

About the Author
Dr Denis MacEoin holds degrees from Trinity College, Dublin, Edinburgh University and Cambridge (King's College). From 1979 80, he taught at Mohammed V University in Fez, Morocco, before taking up a post as lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle. In 1986, he was made Honorary Fellow in the Centre for Islamic and Middle East Studies at Durham University. He has published extensively on Islamic topics, contributing to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Islam in the Modern World, the Encyclopaedia Iranica, the Penguin Handbook of Living Religions, journals, festschrifts and books, and has himself written a number of books including The Sources for Babi History and Doctrine, Rituals in Babism and Baha'ism, and The Messiah of Shiraz: Studies in Early and Middle Babism; he has also edited Islam in the Modern World with Ahmad al Shahi. In 2007 he published The Hijacking of British Islam, a study of hate literature found in UK mosques, and his report Music, Chess and Other Sins was published online by Civitas in 2009. In 1992 HarperCollins published a volume of his journalism under the title New Jerusalems: Islam, Religious Fundamentalism, and the Rushdie Affair. He has written 25 novels and is translated into some 15 languages. Neil Addison is a practising barrister and the author of Religious Discrimination and Hatred Law, Taylor Francis Publishers, 2006. He runs the website www.ReligionLaw.co.uk, and the Blog http://religionlaw.blogspot.com David G. Green is the Director of Civitas. His books include The New Right: The Counter Revolution in Political, Economic and Social Thought, Wheatsheaf, 1987; Reinventing Civil Society, IEA, 1993; Community Without Politics: A Market Approach to Welfare Reform, IEA, 1996; We're (Nearly) All Victims Now, Civitas, 2006 and Individualists Who Co operate, Civitas, 2009. He writes occasionally for newspapers, including in recent years pieces in The Times, The Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph.

Customer Reviews

Sharia Law or 'One Law for All'
I was not completely sure what to expect from this book - in one sense the organisation publishing it is going to be giving a particular thrust to its own stance. In this case, the stance is one of 'Britain under attack' and therefore the 'one law for all' part tells the story of this short book - 50 or so of the not-quite 130 pages are samples of Sharia Law taken from websites giving advice on the application of that law to apparently real situations.
As a law teacher I wanted the book to get the view from that side so it was no surprise - especially since the newspapers have printed stories of the use of Sharia Law in use in the country. Whilst that is what I got, what I ALSO gained from it was an increasing unease about the use of Sharia Law in a country with its own jurisdiction and law which is debated and amended, and which is generally accepted, can be criticised and is 'open'. I am not sure we need a 'twin-track'.
If what you want is a book about Sharia Law don't get this - it IS 'about' and not 'on' Sharia Law in the UK.

doesnt worth
roughly written simply reviewing on line fatwas issued by different councils
more fundamentalist views expressed that the ones criticized in the book
does not add anything to the debate
too short to pay 7 or more
ps: had it been possible i would have put no rate stars