Incorporation of Shari`ah Into British Law

Shari`ah is unequivocally clear that Muslims who live as minorities in non-Muslim majority communities are required to abide by the law of the land. That does not prevent British Muslims from practicing aspects of Shari`ah that do not conflict with British law, nor does it deny them the right of seeking changes in British law. The Archbishop's assertion was forward-thinking, recognizing that an increasingly diverse Britain will be better off, not worse, with coordinated legal frameworks that guarantee more adherents to its legal system. There are three reasons to support this argument.

Second, the integration of Shari`ah would provide some equilibrium among Jewish, Christian, and Islamic laws. British law, as the Archbishop well knows, is derived from a Judeo-Christian ethic and provides the Church of England with special status. Ushering in aspects of Shari`ah would acknowledge Britain's new inhabitants, of increasingly Muslim variety, and assemble an aggregated legal framework that represents all three Abrahamic traditions, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. By doing so, Britain would ensure that Muslims stay engaged, not isolated or estranged, and assume active ownership in civic participatory duties and responsibilities.

Third, Shari`ah principles are already providing benefits to British society. For example, in the economic sector interest-based loans are prohibited in Islamic law. So, many major banks (including Citibank, HSBC, and others) have developed Shari`ah-friendly policies. The result is better business for Western banks and more investment by resource-rich emirates from Gulf States. The same, in theory, could apply to the socio-political sector. The set of laws sought by some British Muslims would only improve upon existing practice by requiring Muslim fathers to provide child support for children in cases of divorce, for example, and by ensuring that spouses and children are not disinherited from estates.

These are just some of the reasons that Archbishop Williams' remarks make sense. But in case some of the skepticism that has greeted the remarks is due to a lack of familiarity with Shari`ah itself (and perhaps the incorrect belief that it threatens civil and human rights, particularly women's rights), I will close with a brief tutorial.

Shari`ah shares the Judeo-Christian ethic, namely the top two commandments of loving God and loving your neighbor, upon which, says Jesus, hangs all the law and the prophets. Ibn Al-Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah (691-751 AH), a preeminent Muslim legal scholar, is very clear about the parameters of Shari`ah: "Every rule that transcends justice to tyranny, mercy to its opposite, the good to the evil, and wisdom to triviality does not belong to the Shari`ah." Thus, any aberration of this is false implementation. As any legal practitioner knows, misapplication of the law, even when well-intentioned, can happen in a myriad of ways. And when we misapply the law, we breed injustice.

Just as Western laws are now being stretched thin and distorted to justify torture in the War on Terrorism, so too can Shari`ah be stretched and distorted to justify tyranny and injustice. Better then to bring in the believers so that one can monitor and help manage their systems of jurisprudence than ignore and isolate their guiding principles. That is what Archbishop Williams was suggesting. And wisely so; Britain is no longer simply guided by a Western law born of Judeo-Christian ethics. Its makeup is now much more diverse, and so must be its moral measurements.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is the chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, an international multi-faith organization, and author of What's Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West.