UK Atheists Go All Anti-Sharia
I walked into a beehive of UK atheists looking for support of an anti-Sharia petition. I have no problem signing a petition if it is realistic and focused on a real problem, so I took a look at it. What I found was that much of the petition makes sense when it speaks to limiting the influence of external laws in the UK law system, but the focus of the petition is based on a paranoid fear of conditions simply not likely to happen.
To:
David Cameron
I demand that you take action to stop the ingress of Sharia Law into the UK. If Sharia Law and Sharia courts are allowed to spread throughout our country, the whole system will become undermined. The United Kingdom is an amazing, multicultural society and we must all strive to keep it this way. We should welcome people from all cultures. However in order to maintain a fair and equal society we MUST have one set of laws applied to every single resident of the country, regardless of race, religion or anything else.
I demand action, steps must be taken to ensure a level and fair legal system. Religious beliefs have no place in a country’s legal system, except for providing protection to innocent people from being abused or attacked because of those beliefs. If you really are a “man of the people”, you will ensure that all people have the same rights and protection from ONE system of Justice. This must be stopped now before it is too late. Legislation must be put in place NOW to prevent contradictory systems of law from being implemented within the UK. Put an end to Sharia Law in the UK now.Sincerely,
[Your name]
Only the first two and last two sentences really focus on the purpose of the petition, the rest is an attempt to separate the petition from any implied bigotry. Even the opening paragraph of the website hosting the petition, presented in highly visible bold text, attempts to sidestep the implication of undue bias.
This petition is aimed at preventing Sharia Law from becoming an accepted part of the legal system in the UK. We want to be very clear that neither this petition, nor Sharia Law has anything to do with race. This petition is in regard to a set of laws based around the beliefs of a religion. This country already has its own system of laws. They are designed to provide protection to all citizens of this country in a fair and equal way. This must include taking each person’s cultural differences into account, but also must include all people under the exact same set of laws.
When I saw the first tweet my thought was some Sharia law was being incorporated into the current UK legal system so I asked for clarification.
You can see that Twitter limitations lead to my belief this was about Sharia laws being incorporated into the fabric of UK civil law. This felt wrong so I started asking questions based on my understanding of the goals of the petition. After a couple of answers it became clear that the fear wasn’t of Sharia law being part of UK law but the UK lawmakers and the police ignoring UK Muslims being forced to follow Sharia law by vigilante enforcers. Or so I thought.
Some information I was directed to watch/read.
This was beginning to sound a lot like Heinlein’s abandoned areas in “I Will Fear No Evil”. I have to admit my skepticism was triggered pretty sharply. I was curious as to why the law enforcement agencies weren’t dealing with law infractions in the Muslim area of the UK like they do in other areas. If it was because of government reticence, then the petition could be refocused to address that issue, if it was because no UK laws were being broken, then the petition could be adjusted to encourage laws against assault and harassment be used to cover more.
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