Islamists advancing their agenda through Sharia

By Olivier Guitta

I just wrote an article for the Middle East Times on the expansion of sharia around the world.

You can read the full article here.

Here is an excerpt:
Pakistan recently gave in to the pressure of Islamist militants. Indeed to buy off peace, Pakistani authorities allowed the imposition of Sharia (Islamic law) in the Swat valley.

How long the cease-fire will last is anyone's guess. But in any case, Pakistan has allowed a precedent that could extend to other provinces; in fact the Swat valley is only about 100 miles away from Islamabad, the capital. But Sharia is not just making inroads in Pakistan but actually creeping in the West and in particular in Europe.

One area particularly touched by this phenomenon is the judicial system in Europe. Two recent cases in Italy and France are particularly troublesome. First, in Italy, three members of a Brescia-based Maghrebi family (father, mother and eldest son) were accused of beating up and sequestering their daughter/sister Fatima because she wanted to live a "Western" life.

In the first trial, the three were sentenced for sequestration and bad treatment. The court acknowledged that the teenager was "brutally beaten up" for having "dated" a non-Muslim and in general for "living a life not conforming with the culture" of her family. But on appeal, the family was acquitted because the court deemed that the young woman was beaten up for "her own good." The Bologna public prosecutor's office then disputed the acquittal of the three accused parties, but the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation dismissed it and ruled in favor of the charged parties.

Interestingly two Italian political leaders on the opposite side of the political spectrum, Isabella Bertolini, vice president of the MPs of the right-wing party Forza Italia, and Barbara Pollastrini, a post-communist former minister agreed to condemn the Supreme Court decision: "This verdict writes one of the darkest pages of history of the law in our country."

Isabella Bertolini was upset that the court "allied itself with radical Islam" and Barbara Pollastrini is pushing for parliament to pass as soon as possible a law condemning violence against women: "Now more than ever, it is urgent to defend the rights of a large number of immigrant women victims of an intolerable patriarchal culture."