‘Time to outlaw Shari’ah’ says dimwit Lesley-Ann Jones

Lesley-Ann Jones, in the Sunday Express last week, penned a short column entitled, ‘Time to outlaw Shari’ah’. She quotes Mrs Justice Rafferty, who on sentencing Ali Beheshti for firebombing a publisher’s home last week, said, ‘If you choose to live in this country, you live by its rules’. Rules, which for Jones, ought to include the outlawing of Shari’ah tribunals.

‘These mosque based “tribunals” settle family and financial disputes using religious principles. Rulings often contradict law and human rights: since when did we allow polygamous marriage or force wives to have sex against their will?’, she asks.

Repeating the analogy first used by Lord Tebbit, Jones writes, ‘Thumbing the nose at our legal system is sometimes called organised crime. Didn’t Ronnie and Reggie Kray go down for that after a glamorised gangland reign?’

‘…Isn’t it time, therefore, that we outlawed sharia courts and deported firebomb fanatics instead of banging them up for a few minutes at our expense?’

Perhaps Ms Jones didn’t read through the Justice Minister’s elaboration of the relationship between religious tribunals and the law of the land. For her benefit, we reiterate his remarks:

‘English law will always remain supreme and religious councils subservient to it.’

There is no scope under current legislation governing the tribunals for them to ‘contradict law and human rights’, contrary to what Jones may think.

As for considering the work of Shari’ah tribunals as ‘thumbing the nose at our legal system’, Jones ought to be reminded, that given that the tribunals are governed by the Arbitration Act, they are very much a part of our legal system.

As for likening them to ‘organised crime’, the charge is plainly offensive. Would Jones level the same accusation at orthodox Jewish Beth Din courts? Somehow, we think not.

And as for her enthusiasm for ‘deporting firebomb fanatics’, isn’t the underlying assumption that such fanatics are brown skinned or Muslims facetious in light of recent arrests and trials concerning far right extremists? Isn’t the whole ‘deport them’ concept simply racist?

Beheshti, the ‘firebomb fanatic’, is no different except in skin colour and religion to Robert Cottage, Martyn Gilleard, Nathan Worrell and Neil MacGregor. Where exactly is it Jones would deport them, all of them?