m alike. However, it is now being primarily driven forward by Islamist ideology. For the last thousand or more years churches in the Middle East have been subject to dhimmi status, a type of second class citizenship accorded Christians and Jews who are termed ‘people of the book’ (Ahl-i-Kitab) in the Qur’an. They have lesser legal rights than Muslims, they are excluded from holding political and judicial office though they may be civil servants, and are required to pay an additional form of taxation for non Muslims termed jizya. They are forbidden from building new churches and any adult male Muslim who embraces another faith faces the death penalty. The most serious offence in sharia is to denigrate the prophet Muhammad – which could of course include denying that one believes he is a prophet – this carries a compulsory death penalty. The testimony in court of a Muslim is given twice the weight of a non Muslim, similarly a woman’s testimony is only equal to half that of a man’s. These lead to appalling instances of injustice where sharia is enforced. For example, accusations of blasphemy are used to settle scores against both Muslims and Christians in countries such as Pakistan, although Christians are particularly vulnerable as the testimony of any Muslim accusing them is given greater weight than their word simply because they are non Muslims. Women who are victims of rape are particularly vulnerable as sharia requires them to produce 4 witnesses and if they cannot do so they risk being imprisoned for making a ‘false accusation’ – even if they are pregnant.
The idea that Muslims should govern non Muslims, which is central to both sharia and its concept of dhimmitude is something that is taught in Classical Islam – the interpretations of the Qur’an taught in madrassas that were fixed in medieval times. That is why, for example, dhimmitude – including the jizya tax was part and parcel of the life of Christians in Turkey in the nineteenth century Ottoman empire.
This is certainly not the view of many ordinary Muslims, particularly in Britain. Whilst some do have rather romantic notions about sharia, relatively few appear to have any real understanding of what it actually involves in practice and would probably be shocked to read some of the details in this article. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the enforcement of sharia and Islamic government around the world is the primary aim of all forms of Islamism. I write the above having personally witnessed what it means to live under a radical Islamist government where sharia is enforced on the entire population.
In February 2011 just as the Arab Spring was getting going I observed that the trend over the last 30 years in Islamic countries was for greater Islamisation, rather than for greater liberalisation. Regrettably that now appears to be the case with the Arab Spring as well. The recommendations I made then for British foreign policy in the Islamic world I believe are now more important than ever:
- 1. Prioritises long term aims over short term gains such as developing trade deals with North Sudan.
- 2. Focused on developing a functioning civil society so as to allow alternatives to Islamism to develop. This is a point that must be forcibly made to western leaning autocratic governments that are rightly afraid of growing Islamist movements in their own countries.
- 3. Focused on the promotion of basic human rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion etc.
- 4. Prioritises the promotion of these basic human rights over the promotion of ‘democracy’, which many Islamists see simply as a route to achieve their own ends.
- 5. Recognises that the medium term trend in most Islamic countries is towards greater Islamisation, rather than towards greater liberalisation. As such it must be realistic about the strategies being adopted by Islamist groups.
Crucial to achieving these will be combatting the spread of sharia enforcement across the world. It is in Britain’s national interest that this becomes a central feature of British foreign policy:
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