hat we are talking about sharia in the sense of a legal code that is enforced, rather than in the secondary sense of a codification of Islamic principles of daily life that individual Muslims may choose to live by – as Islamist apologists have sometimes disingenuously tried to claim. If individual Muslims choose to live a certain way they should, within the limits of British values, be free to do so.However, the enforcement of sharia rules on those who do not chose to follow them, including Christian minorities in the Islamic world is another issue altogether.
Whilst there are four schools of Islamic law in Sunni Islam which predominate in different geographical regions and a separate Shi’a form of sharia, the variations between them are largely a matter of detail in relation to the issues that I will discuss below.
Let us just for a moment look at what has been happening in terms of moves towards the spread of sharia enforcement in the last year, including the gaining of power by Islamist parties aiming at the eventual enforcement of sharia:
The advance of sharia enforcement in 2011
In Tunisia where the ‘Arab Spring’ began the Islamist Party Ennhada, which aims to create an Islamic state governed by sharia was legalised in March. Ennhada subsequently gained 40% of the seats in the National Constituent Assembly, making it the largest overall party. The new sense of empowerment felt by Islamists was clearly evident when on 16th September a group entered a Christian church in the town of Kef and attempted to turn it into a mosque.
In Libya the head of the Transitional National Council, Abdel Jalilil stated on 22nd October that laws of the new constitution will be based on Islam i.e. sharia, and any laws opposed to sharia would be abolished. He also called for the banking system to be Islamicised i.e. become regulated by sharia.
In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood (al Ikhwan al Muslimun) and the radical Salafist Jama’a al-Islamiyya formed a political alliance to fight October’s parliamentary elections. Islamist parties are currently estimated to have gained 70% after the second round of elections – a proportion that is not expected to change significantly in the third round due to take place on the 3rd/4th January. They will therefore dominate the 498 seats of Lower House which is charged with setting up a 100 member committee to draft a new constitution. Both the Muslim Brotherhood and Jama’a al-Islamiyya have stated that sharia should be enforced in Egypt. However, the Muslim Botherhood’s spokesman Dr Kamal el-Helbawy went even further and in an apparent allusion to recreating the early Islamic caliphate called for the borders between Arab states to be dismantled.
The Muslim Brotherhood has long been known to have infiltrated the Egyptian army, which since the fall of Mubarak has essentially run the country. It is therefore particularly disturbing that hundreds of Christian protesters were brutally attacked by the army on Sunday 9th October while they were protesting about the earlier torching of St George’s church in Aswan on 30th September. In the Army’s response to this peaceful protest 25 Christians were killed and hundreds injured as armoured vehicles drove straight at protesters, while generals from the ruling supreme council of the armed forces subsequently blamed Egyptian Christians for the violence. This was by no means the first such attack this year on Egypt’s Christian minority of 10 million who make up around 13% of the population. Attacks on Egypt’s Christian minority have in fact significantly increased since the fall of Mubarak. For example, on 25th June 200 extremists burned 8 houses belonging to Christians in the upper Egypt village of Awlad Khalaf – after rumours spread that a house one resident was building would be used as a church – new church buildings being forbidden by sharia. While on 30th June thousands of extremists looted and torched Christian homes and businesses in Kolosna in Minya province. Despite calls for help, the army and military police took three hours to arrive and even then took no act