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Rule of Law

My Lords, I warmly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Park, for introducing this subject and providing us with the opportunity to consider one of the most challenging issues confronting our country today. I will focus on an important issue already highlighted by the noble Baroness: the creeping implementation of Sharia law in this county and the associated constellation of beliefs and values held by significant numbers of citizens. I have no wish whatsoever to impute anything undesirable about the vast majority of Muslims, who are peaceable, hospitable and law-abiding citizens, or to generate any ill feeling towards them. However, this is an important subject because Sharia law is in many ways infringing the rights of UK citizens to protection under the law in the fields of marriage, freedom of religion and freedom of speech. In the previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, referred to a report that said that a third of Muslims living in this country would like to live according to Sharia law. There are inherent problems with this, because aspects of Sharia law are fundamentally incompatible with the principles of our legal system, particularly those aspects which deny and run contrary to the fundamental values codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—particularly equality before the law for each citizen and freedom to choose and change religion. In Sharia, equality before the law is denied, as between men and women and between Muslims and non-Muslims. Freedom to choose and change religion is forbidden or severely constrained. The first inequality is especially serious for women, and the second for Muslims who wish to leave Islam. They become apostates, for whom the penalty in many Islamic countries may be death. There are many cases in Britain today where citizens have suffered as a result of these provisions and are not receiving adequate protection from the police or other authorities. Before giving examples, I should make one point clear. It is often argued that other religious minorities, especially the Jewish community, have been allowed to have distinctive legal provisions, particularly with regard to family law, in parallel with the law of this land. It has therefore been argued that the Muslim community should have the same rights to their own distinctive legal provisions, especially in family matters. However, there is a fundamental difference: in every country where the Jewish community has its special provisions, the Jewish authorities explicitly affirm that they respect the sovereignty of the secular law of the land. Disturbingly, however, there are many cases where those adhering to Sharia give precedence to its norms, even when they are in direct conflict with UK law. In family law, some Sharia family councils are helpful in settling some cases of domestic disputes. However, the excellent report Crimes of the Community: Honour-based Violence in the UK by the Centre for Social Cohesion documents disturbing statistics of growing trends in domestic violence, including murder, in the name of so-called honour, and in forced marriages. These violations of human rights are mainly associated with Islamic beliefs, although they are also found to a lesser extent in some other communities. Moreover, women in Islamic communities may face a particular problem, as Sharia provisions allow imams to carry out marriages, in mosques, which are recognised by their community but do not bring the legal protection of a UK-recognised civil marriage. Women who subsequently wish to have a divorce, perhaps because of domestic violence, are thus not able to access the legal protection of British family law. There are also disturbing cases of community complicity in preventing access by women suffering from domestic violence to protection from the authorities to which they turn. For example, Crimes of the Community cites many cases of women who escape to the local police station and are put in the care of a culturally appropriate police officer who sends them back to their family or community, probably to punishment or retribution; or of a taxi driver who takes them home instead of to a safe place; or of women being given interpreters who deliberately distort the woman’s pleas for help. For example, Zalkha Ahmed, director of Apna Haq, a women's support group in the north of England, says on page 105 of the report that some translators working for social services have deliberately blocked government attempts to help south Asian women who are fleeing violence and abuse: "““We have also had translators who would lie to the social services when women go to seek help. The translators would not reveal the extent of the story, and try to play down the extent that honour had to play in the problem to try and portray a positive image of the community””." Moreover, several women's groups, particularly in the Midlands and northern England, say that they are often reluctant to go to the police with women who have run away to escape violence, because they cannot trust Asian police officers: "““According to some women’s groups such problems appear to be … common in the West Midlands police force””." Also relevant in this context is the growing number of Muslim polygamous marriages in Britain, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Park. While such marriages are perfectly in line with the provisions of Sharia, they run counter to the very spirit of equality which underlies British law. As long ago as 1996, polygamous marriages in Britain were given media coverage on the TV programme ““East””, which caused a brief ripple among those who saw it as significant for Britain's Muslim women citizens, but it quickly disappeared from view. Since then, the number of Muslim polygamous marriages has increased steadily, even to the point where the Government have felt the need to grapple with the question of family support payments being made for second, third and fourth wives, as reported in the media earlier this year. This development does no credit to Britain's long tradition of affirming equality in marriage. I hope that the Minister will say something about the Government’s latest position on payments for wives of polygamous marriages. Last year I raised the question of the introduction of Sharia in Written Questions. The Government's reply affirmed the introduction of Sharia in the United Kingdom but gave an assurance that every citizen always has access to the protection of the law of the land. Clearly, this has not been the case for many Muslim women who have suffered domestic violence and/or been trapped in unhappy marriages. Such protection has also not been available for Muslims who have wanted to change their religion. While there is always a welcome in the Muslim community for anyone to become a Muslim, the fate of Muslims who convert to another faith is very different. This is apostasy, which in traditional Islamic communities is punishable by death, in line with the provisions of the Islamic legal schools. There are many reports of citizens in this country who have wished to convert from Islam to another faith who have been threatened, whose families have been attacked and subject to severe intimidation, and who have not received sufficient protection from the police, so they have had to live in hiding. I give one example from a report, No Place to Call Home: Experiences of Apostates from Islam, recently published by Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which states: "““A British citizen who converted to Christianity from Islam and then complained to police when locals threatened to burn his house down, was told by officers to ‘stop being a crusader and move to another place’. A few days later, the unoccupied house next door was set on fire””." In regard to the fundamental issue of freedom of speech, your Lordships will remember the amendments to the proposed legislation concerning incitement to religious hatred which were achieved in your Lordships’ House. Without those amendments it could have been a criminal offence, punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment, to speak critically of a religion, to promote another religion or to joke about a religion. Those fundamental freedoms were given legal protection by those amendments, despite the determination in another place to remove them. But despite this legal protection, there are still cases where police have interfered in highly intimidating ways to prevent people exercising those fundamental freedoms. A recent example, reported in the Sunday Telegraph on 8 June, describes how two Christians were stopped from exercising their right to distribute information about Christianity. They were told by police that they, "““were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread the Christian message””." They were accused of committing a hate crime and were told that they would be taken to the police station. They were advised not to return to the area with the words: "““You have been warned. If you come back here and get beaten up—well, you have been warned””." We now have in some of our communities in Britain twin-track systems of values and legal systems, which have certain fundamental, inherent incompatibilities. Her Majesty’s Government have given an assurance that every citizen ultimately has the right of recourse to the UK legal system and the protection it should provide. But, clearly, some citizens and communities are under the influence of the alternative, Sharia legal system, which does not recognise the fundamental freedoms which should be available to every citizen of this land. Some of these citizens are suffering infringements of fundamental human rights without the effective protection due to them. What steps are Her Majesty’s Government taking to ensure protection for all citizens from violations of the fundamental freedoms to which they are entitled under the law of this land? Sharia law came into this country without parliamentary debate or public discussion. There can be no justification for the implementation of laws and policies which deny citizens of this land the protection which is their right. I am therefore very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Park, for this opportunity to put some of these concerns on the record and, I hope, to open the way for full, constructive, appropriate parliamentary and public discussion of matters which are important to every citizen of this land and to the future of our nation.