Look, people (and by “people”, I mean the media and everyone else who’s going “ZOMG SHARIA LAW IS TEH EVIL AND OPPRESSIVE”), if you’re going to take issue with something somebody has said, try actually taking issue with what they really said rather than what you’ve decided they’ve said. What Rowan said was nothing to do with him wanting everyone to live under Sharia law or to have it enshrined in Britain’s legal code, and everything to do with people’s right to self-determination and the way in which a broad, overarching legal code imposed by a central authority cannot – and should not – be relevant or desirable to a society composed of a disparate variety of social, religious and cultural groups. The hatefulness or otherwise of Sharia law doesn’t enter into it – what Rowan was arguing for was the right for muslims who wish to resolve their own disputes according to Sharia law to do just that; ditto for Jews who wish to resolve disputes according to Jewish law, and secularists to resolve disputes according to secular law.
Now, if you want to attack that then you can take the “if you want to live in Britain you have to live by our laws and customs and cultures” line, at which point I’ll point out that Britain is historically a nation of immigrants anyway, ask you whose laws and customs and cultures do we mean anyway, and you can go back to reading your Daily Mail and frothing at the mouth about the Polish coming over here and doing our plumbing.
