t inclined to give up their access to these in the name of alleged Islamic purity. Indeed, traditional sharia calls on Muslims immigrating to non-Muslim countries to accept the laws and customs in place in their new homes. After the Williams outburst, several local Muslim leaders in Britain noted to me that the demand for sharia tends to be an ideological slogan to mobilize young Muslims. Often, the targeted audience has no idea what sharia is. In a visit to a mosque in Bolton, England, I was surprised when a discussion of Williams elicited a simple question from a young man who had just finished his prayer: &quot;What is sharia?&quot; The young Muslim's bafflement was unfeigned. <br />
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The fixation on sharia is more common, in my observation, among members of the British Muslim elite than among ordinary worshippers. Sharia agitation has become a prominent topic among Muslim medical students in Britain, some of who now refuse to attend classes on alcoholism, sexually transmitted diseases, and other problems produced by practices banned in Islam. Some even refuse to wash up with alcohol--the use of which for cleaning purposes was never prohibited by sharia. <br />
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Jurists like Lord Phillips, no less than his clerical counterpart, Archbishop Williams, should heed the voices of the many British Muslims who reject sharia and other Islamist penetration into their community life. In the name of sensitivity, non-Muslim advocates for sharia are only making things worse for both Muslims and non-Muslims on this island. <br />
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Meanwhile, German authorities are going down the same misguided path. They have announced that a new marriage law, to take effect at the beginning of next year, will permit religious weddings to be solemnized without civil registration. But marriages in churches and mosques, if not registered civilly, will exclude the parties from recourse to the courts for divorce, rights of inheritance, and other civil remedies. A young German Muslim of Moroccan background, interviewed at the Islamic Center of Aachen, once considered a vanguard of the Muslim Brotherhood but now apparently a fortress of moderation, warned that such changes in marriage law, and encouragement of mosque-only weddings, would obviously open up Germany to the same iniquities seen in Britain today. German Muslim women married only in religious ceremonies who seek divorce would be forced into sharia courts, for divorces subject to the whims and financial shakedowns of clerics. <br />
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Worst of all, the young man said, &quot;Nobody asked the Muslims if we wanted this change in the law. Nobody consulted with us. They simply did it, and now we are trying to figure out how to respond. We don't want such problems in our community.&quot; The treatment of European Muslims as subjects who should be pleased to be handed sharia measures for which they never asked is emerging as an abusive pattern across the continent. <br />
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Stephen Schwartz's latest book, The Other Islam, on Sufism, will be published in September by Doubleday. <br />
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&copy; Copyright 2008, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved. <br />
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