UK to adopt Sharia Law?

[Mister Joy]

filip3rd... I find your attitude to be somewhat disturbing, to say the least. What are you proposing, exactly? That Muslims should have no influence in UK politics at all despite having a large population here? Should we take away their right to vote? You criticise them for treating others as 'lesser citizens' in Islamic states yet from what I can infer from your poorly expressed, vague, self-contradicting and difficult to diffuse points, you would have us treat them as lesser citizens.

I'm not showing you 'a few good apples', you are showing me 'a few bad ones'. Relevant to this topic at least. The vast majority of Muslims in the UK are not extremists and even if they do hold their faith above their citizenship so what? Most Christians would say the same. Should we outlaw them too? I hold a lot of things above my British citizenship: my own life, beliefs and family are all included in that. I've really no idea what you're trying to demonstrate here, or elsewhere. I'm not even sure what you're really disagreeing with (though I hope that my impressions are false).

[filip3rd]

Muslims should obey the law of UK, no more not less. Polygamy should not be accepted in the Muslims community in UK and any none Islamic country. It is widely known that the wife’s of Polygamist Muslims in UK receive government help.

Islam is just like Gun in the right hand pretty save but in the wrong hand dangerous. While Christians have proven to be no less violent in the past, they have grown out of their crusading mentality, Muslims haven't. Give them the same right and judge as equal as an English man and not according to their Allah.

They call it separation of Church and state when you do not obey this simple law you are setting yourself up for failure.

[Mister Joy]

Muslims should obey the law of UK, no more not less. Polygamy should not be accepted in the Muslims community in UK and any none Islamic country. It is widely known that the wife's of Polygamist Muslims in UK receive government help.

I agree that Muslims should obey the law here or leave, however I also have to accept that they do and should have a political voice here as well. I don't question their morality or motives. If I have any queries with anything, my focus is entirely on my own government & representatives - on their incompetence when it comes to handling issues like these - not the Muslim population. Also, what Archbishop Williams is proposing will in no way lead to the end of the Western World, as you predicted earlier. Your branding it with more significance than it's worth. Way more.

The polygamy issue doesn't mar me that much (it is still technically illegal here and it can't really be taken further than it already has done) and only gets under my skin because of the welfare benefits issue (which I believe you mentioned), and that's nothing to do with this topic. I'm not hugely irritated by it, though, because the number of polygamist Muslims in the UK is miniscule & since most of them have jobs, an even smaller number get dole money - if it got to a point where it was costing the government any serious cash you can bet things would change. For the time being though, there are bigger fish to fry.

While Christians have proven to be no less violent in the past, they have grown out of their crusading mentality, Muslims haven't.

Again, you're speaking in a very generalised way and, for the topic at least, it isn't even a generalisation that speaks for the majority. Nowhere near. Plus, there are a whole lot of Christians out there who would happily blow themselves up in a school building if they thought that's what God wanted them to. Give them enough political & financial motivation and they'd find a way to convince themselves that this was God's will.

They call it separation of Church and state when you do not obey this simple law you are setting yourself up for failure.

We need to be absolutely clear on what separation of church and state means, though. It shouldn't be dominated by religious agendas, certainly, but it also shouldn't (and can't, in fact) be separate from the reality that many of its subjects are religious and the state (a morally grounded one, at least) exists to cater to it's subjects. The governing forces themselves should be without religious bias but they still need to represent the religious sub-cultures. Allowing minor alternative legal systems to run along side ours (that are different only in minuscule ways) to account for a religious landscape sits fine with me so long as it isn't at my expense & doesn't effect anyone else outside of those boundaries. Now whether it will or not is questionable to me, as I said before, but even if it does it'll only be trivial issues & won't (can't help feeling a little strange as I say this) mean the end of western civilisation. Though it wont be looking good for Gordon Brown come the next election.

[Smarmy Of One]

Again, you're speaking in a very generalised way and, for the topic at least, it isn't even a generalisation that speaks for the majority. Nowhere near. Plus, there are a whole lot of Christians out there who would happily blow themselves up in a school building if they thought that's what God wanted them to. Give them enough political & financial motivation and they'd find a way to convince themselves that this was God's will.

You make an excellent point. The thing that makes christian/western culture different from many muslim societies is poverty. What makes western culture so much more 'stable' is a strong middle class.  

In muslim theocracies, impoverished and under educated masses are trying to take control of their world in the only way they are able. There are plenty of power hungry people willing to take advantage of this and gain leadership over the angry and powerless.

[Mister Joy]

Egg-bloomin'-zactly.

Also, it ties into the idea of having 'faith above citizenship', which fillip3rd raised earlier. I think everyone holds their moral and philosophical beliefs above their citizenships to whatever nation state they're in, even atheists. If, in order to remain a British citizen, I had to detonate a bomb in a mall (or something) I'd tell the authorities to get stuffed, go warn everyone at said mall and then bugger off to Alaska. It doesn't matter unless citizenship and personal belief (political, moral, religious or otherwise) are in direct conflict; if it becomes an ultimatum then, of course, people are going to go for the latter. With non-extremist Muslims living in the UK their citizenship sits comfortably with Islam in the same way that it does with Christianity, Judaism & atheism. They're no different.