prior to the separation that he intends North Sudan to be 100% Muslim (it is currently 98% Muslim). There are reports of daily air strikes, arbitrary arrests and executions aimed at non Muslims living in the border region of North Sudan, with Christian leaders being particularly singled out and tortured.
In Iran the enforcement of sharia has continued to become even stricter. In 2011 supreme court upheld the death penalty imposed on Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani because he had converted to Christianity from Islam. Although in recent years there have been a number of informal executions of converts from Islam, some of which appear to have been orchestrated by the government, apostasy from Islam is not against Iran’s penal code. However, the supreme court’s decision reflects the fact that judges are allowed to draw on fatwas (legal opinions of sharia judges) and Islamic sources where national law is silent and have done so in this case to formalise the death penalty for apostasy from Islam (i.e. leaving Islam for another faith).
In Pakistan 2011 saw the assassination of two liberal politicians who had voiced support for reform of the Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws under which, amongst others, Christian wife and mother of 5 Aasia Bibi who has been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Muhammud. The assassinations of Salman Taseer, a liberal Muslim who was governor of Punjab Province and Shabaz Bhatti a Pakistani Christian who was minister for religious minorities were welcomed by leading Islamic scholars in Pakistan who viewed them as having committed the sharia offence of blasphemy and therefore deserving of the death penalty because they had advocated the abolition of part of sharia I.e. the blasphemy law.
In the Maldives a revision of the constitution in 2008 just before the dictator Abdul Gayoom departed had already left non Muslim Maldivians in a potentially stateless limbo by restricting the acquisition of citizenship to Muslims. However, Islamists have seen the new democratic process as a road to even stricter enforcement of sharia. In 2009, not long after the first democratic elections in 30 years, the Maldivian parliament almost unanimously passed a bill making the construction of non Muslim buildings illegal and criminalising the public practice of non Muslim worship, something that would put it in the same league of repressive sharia enforcement as Saudi Arabia. Throughout 2011 those concerned for human rights in the Maldives have been waiting to see if this bill will be formally passed into law by the President. It has been reported that the President, Mohamed Nasheed was elected to office in 2008 in the newly democratic country with help from the UK Conservative Party. That is an influence that one may hope foreign office ministers have been seeking to capitalise on to prevent the further encroachment of human rights that this bill represents.
In Uganda which is 85% Christian and only 12% Muslim a similar attempt is being made to introduce sharia. A Muslim Personal Law bill would empower Islamic sharia courts to act on matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance. This is not a benign cultural accommodation. It is precisely in these areas of family law that both women and non Muslims in a family with a Muslim father are significantly discriminated against by sharia. For example, in divorce a mother is automatically denied child custody of any child over 7 years old and of any younger child when they reach 7 years old. Sharia inheritance rules also discriminate against women, with daughters only being allowed to inherit half the share of an estate that sons do. The situation in Uganda is particularly pertinent for the UK as in 2006 an Islamic group regarded as ‘moderate’ by the then government made a similar request for the family law aspects of sharia to become part of UK law.
In Nigeria Christmas day 2011 saw a series of attacks by the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram including two targeting churches where at least 30 people were killed. These attacks were directly linked to the enforcement o