20 October 2012

Sharia courts ‘as consensual as rape’, House of Lords told

MUSLIM women in Britain are being forced to “live in fear” because of the spread of unofficial and unregulated sharia courts enforcing Islamic rules, the House of Lords was told.

Rulings by informal religious “councils” and tribunals are sometimes no more “consensual” than rape, peers were told.

The warnings came in the first ever full Parliamentary debate on the subject in the UK.

Baroness Cox, the independent peer and Third World campaigner, last year tabled a private member’s bill in the Lords setting out plans to rein in a network of unofficial self-styled “courts” which apply Islamic principles. [telegraph.co.uk] Read more