Author: Lorenzo Vidino & Erick
Stakelbeck
Publication: www.nationalreview.com
Date: December 3, 2003
URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/vidino-stakelbeck200312030840.asp
Sharia on the Old Continent.
Young women killed for dating. Limbs
amputated for petty theft. Makeshift courts deciding the fates of members
of local Muslim communities. The Western world has grown accustomed to
hearing about the brutalities of Islamic law. However, these primitive
practices are no longer limited to the remote tribal areas of Pakistan,
the backward kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or oppressive, mullah-dominated Iran.
Today, thanks in large part to a massive flow of immigration from Muslim
countries, sharia law and medieval customs are becoming increasingly common
in the heart of Christian Europe.
One of the most shocking examples
of this new reality occurred in Sweden last year, when a Kurdish woman
was killed by her father for having a romantic relationship with a Swedish
man. Fadime Sahindal, 26, had taken her father and brother to sharia court
in 1998, alleging that they had threatened to kill her for refusing to
marry a Kurdish man the family had chosen for her. The two received only
light sentences, however, and continued to abuse Fadime until, in 2002,
her father shot and killed her. Disturbingly, the young woman was well
aware of the fate that awaited her, as she said during the 1998 trial:
"The only way for the family to regain its honor now that I have spread
dishonor over it is to kill me."
Cases similar to Fadime's have been
reported in France and Denmark. In England last September, a Kurdish father
slit his daughter's throat because he disapproved of her Christian boyfriend
and Westernized way of life. And, recently, in the port town of Taranto
in southern Italy, a Muslim man who suspected that his wife had committed
adultery decided - after consulting with members of his local Muslim community
- that she should be stoned to death. The tragedy was only averted thanks
to the intervention of local police.
Honor killings are not limited to
Muslim countries and are, in fact, a common practice in several third-world
cultures. Not all Muslims approve of them, and, according to some Muslim
scholars, they do not reflect "real Islam." Nevertheless, the Koran itself
permits men to beat their wives (Chapter 4, Verse 34), and the sharia-inspired
penal codes of most Muslim countries give the benefit of the doubt to a
man who kills his wife, daughter, or sister for engaging in adulterous
or immoral behavior. This barbaric practice, which has not been seen in
European countries in well over a century, is making an unsavory return
within the Old Continent's Muslim communities.
The effects of the application of
sharia in Europe are not limited to Muslim women. Last year, in the small
Italian town of Eboli, hospital workers treated a young Algerian man whose
fingers on his right hand had been chopped off. Under questioning, the
man refused to reveal how he had sustained his injuries, but investigators
have no doubt that he was the victim of punishment carried out according
to Islamic law. Authorities in southern Italy, where many migrants from
North Africa flock to work in agriculture, are becoming accustomed to such
incidents. A Sicilian doctor revealed to the Italian magazine Panorama
that victims of violent sharia justice go to the hospital only as a last
resort, "when the bleeding is serious." He added that he had become knowledgeable
about how amputations must be made according to Islamic tradition (the
hand has to be chopped off piece by piece, without breaking any bones).
While these incidents may seem isolated,
in actuality, several Muslim groups in Europe openly advocate the introduction
of sharia in the West. Uneducated immigrants might use sharia simply because
it is a system they are more familiar with, but militant Islamic organizations
push for the introduction of Islamic law because they believe it is a superior
system, the law revealed by God, and therefore the only acceptable law.
In Germany, Milli Gorus, a militant
Turkish Islamic organization with more than 200,000 members, is accused
by German intelligence of promoting Islamic law among Turkish immigrants
in Europe. The August 2001 issue of Milli Gorus's official publication,
Milli Gazete, featured an article stating that "A religious Muslim is also
at the same time an advocate for sharia. The state, the media, and the
courts have no rights to interfere. The allegiance of a Muslim to sharia
cannot be condemned or questioned."
In Britain, the rapid spread of
radical Islam in urban areas has led to major social exclusion and the
development of sharia among England's Muslims. Al-Muhajiroun, a London-based
fundamentalist group with sympathizers throughout Britain's burgeoning
Muslim communities, has made the struggle against "man-made law" one of
the key points of its agenda, declaring that its members do not recognize
English law, but only Islamic law. (Nevertheless, al-Muhajiroun's leaders
do not disdain collecting unemployment benefits generously granted by English
"man-made law.")
In Italy, mainstream Muslim groups
have asked for the introduction of Islamic marriages with no legal effects
under Italian law, a de facto subtraction of the wedlock from the control
of authorities. This request is aimed at creating a situation where two
different legal systems regulate the lives of two different groups of citizens
within the same state. In European legal history, it would represent a
jump back to the Middle Ages, when different laws applied to different
ethnicities. In practical terms, it would mean that Italian citizens of
Muslim faith would be subtracted from the guarantees that the Italian legal
system provides to its citizens. Therefore, while Christian Italian women
would have the same rights as Italian men, Muslim Italian women would have
very few rights. While a Christian woman would have the right to obtain
a divorce simply by filing papers, a Muslim woman would have to go to great
lengths to prove ill treatment at the hands of her husband.
Multiculturalists and leftist defenders
of uncontrolled immigration, uneasy when confronted with episodes of the
brutal application of sharia in Europe's Muslim ghettoes, are quick to
predict that these incidents will disappear once Muslims are wealthier
and better integrated into Western society through marriage to native Europeans.
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that these predictions will come true
in the foreseeable future. Muslims in Europe account for the vast majority
of those living under the poverty line, and Muslim neighborhoods are the
poorest areas in nearly every European city. Furthermore, statistics show
that the majority of European Muslims are not marrying indigenous Europeans
but other Muslims, either from their country of origin or from within local
Muslim communities.
Politically correct European politicians,
ever mindful not to offend their newly arrived Muslim brethren, have done
little to aid in the assimilation process. As a result, immigrants who
settle in Europe's Muslim communities are often greeted with the same sharia-inspired
mayhem that they left behind in their countries of origin. From England
to Holland to Greece, many European Muslims have managed to segregate themselves
from society at large and maintain harsh traditions ill-suited to the West.
As the number of unassimilated Muslims grows and Europe's elites continue
to remain silent, the ultimate victim may turn out to be Western civilization
itself.
- Erick Stakelbeck is head writer
and Lorenzo Vidino is an attorney and terrorism analyst at the Investigative
Project, a Washington, D.C.-based counterterrorism think tank.
