The research file

A sourced briefing on what Sharia law is, what its classical rules require, where it is applied as state law today, whether it is compatible with a modern democracy, and how it operates in Britain as a case study. Research current to 30 September 2026. Every factual claim carries a numbered source.

1. The findings in brief #

1. Sharia is a complete legal system, not only private devotion. In its classical form it governs worship, marriage, divorce, inheritance, commerce, crime, war and the treatment of non-Muslims. The rules that clash with Western law are found in the standard legal manuals of all four Sunni schools and the main Shia school (sections 2 and 3).
2. The classical rules are unequal by design. A woman's testimony counts for half a man's in financial matters (Quran 2:282); a daughter inherits half a son's share (Quran 4:11); a husband may divorce at will while a wife generally may not; non-Muslims under Muslim rule paid a special tax and held a subordinate legal status (Quran 9:29); and leaving Islam was a capital offence in all the classical schools (section 3).
3. Where Sharia is state law, the results are measurable and severe. Iran and Saudi Arabia, both Sharia-based states, carried out about 93% of the world's recorded executions in 2025.¹ Twelve countries provide for death for blasphemy or apostasy.² The Taliban publicly flogged at least 1,110 people in 2025.³
4. Support for classical Sharia is a majority view in several large Muslim-majority countries. In Pew's 39-country survey, 84% of Pakistani Muslims favoured Sharia as official law, and 76% of those favoured death for leaving Islam.⁴ In Turkey, the Balkans and Central Asia most Muslims reject it (section 4.7).
5. Europe's human-rights court has twice ruled against Sharia as law. In Refah Partisi v Turkey (2003) it said a regime based on Sharia "clearly diverges from Convention values"; in Molla Sali v Greece (2018) it found that Greece's application of Sharia to a Muslim widow was discrimination (section 6).
6. Britain is a case study of Sharia harming people without legal jurisdiction. No Sharia body has legal power, but Sharia operates informally through councils, arbitration and unregistered religious marriages. The government's own review found that "no one disputed that sharia councils engage in practices which are discriminatory to women."⁵ The government does not know how many councils exist and has no plan to find out.⁶
7. In Britain, support for Sharia is a large minority position. Polls from 2006 to 2024 find between 23% and 43% of British Muslims supporting some form of Sharia in Britain; in the most recent, 32% called it desirable within 20 years (section 7.7).
8. Sharia norms have been enforced in British public space. "Sharia controlled zone" campaigns and street patrols were prosecuted; a teacher accused of blasphemy has lived in hiding since 2021; the chief inspector of police has described communities that deal with crime without the police. No area has been shown to be legally under Sharia or closed to police, but a partial, informal Sharia has real force in some places (section 7.6).
9. The remedy is one law for everyone, enforced. Compulsory civil registration of every marriage, equality law applied to every tribunal, a count of councils, and absolute protection for free expression (section 9).

Method. This file distinguishes three things. Islam is a religion practised by about two billion people in very different ways. Islamism is the political project of making Sharia the law of the state. Muslims are people, most of whom in the West live under Western law. The file criticises a legal system, its doctrines and the institutions that apply it, which is legitimate and necessary. It reports opinion polls with their methods and limitations. Where evidence is missing or contested, it says so.

2. What Sharia is #

2.1 The word #

Sharia (Arabic sharī'a) literally means "the path to the watering place". In Islamic theology it means the path Allah has laid down for every part of human life. Muslim scholars distinguish Sharia, Allah's law as it exists in the divine will, from fiqh, the human effort to understand it: the jurisprudence produced by scholars over fourteen centuries. When people say "Sharia law" they almost always mean fiqh, the rules written in the legal manuals.⁷

2.2 The four sources #

Sunni jurisprudence rests on four sources, in order of authority:⁷

1. The Quran, believed by Muslims to be the literal word of Allah revealed to Muhammad between about 610 and 632. A few hundred of its roughly 6,236 verses have direct legal content.
2. The Sunnah, the example of Muhammad, recorded in hadith. The most authoritative Sunni collections are those of al-Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim (d. 875). Much of the detailed criminal law, including stoning for adultery and death for apostasy, comes from hadith rather than the Quran.
3. Ijma', the consensus of qualified scholars. A ruling with consensus is treated as binding and very hard to reopen.
4. Qiyas, reasoning by analogy from an established ruling to a new case.

From around the tenth century many Sunni jurists held that the "gate of ijtihad" (independent legal reasoning) had effectively closed, so later scholars should follow the established rulings of their school. The historian Wael Hallaq has argued that independent reasoning in fact continued, but the doctrine helps explain why classical rulings have been so resistant to change.⁸

2.3 The schools #

The schools differ on many details. On the points that most concern Western law (apostasy, the status of women in testimony, inheritance and divorce, the status of non-Muslims, and the fixed punishments) they broadly agree.⁷

2.4 The branches of law #

Fiqh sorts every act into five categories: obligatory, recommended, permitted, disliked and forbidden. It makes no principled distinction between a rule about prayer and a rule about contracts, crime or government. Its main branches are:

• 'Ibadat (worship): prayer, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage, ritual purity.
• Mu'amalat (dealings between people): contracts, trade, the ban on interest, property, marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance.
• 'Uqubat (punishments): the fixed hudud penalties, qisas (retaliation) and diya (blood-money) for killing and injury, and ta'zir (discretionary punishment) for everything else.
• Siyar: the law of war, peace and relations with non-Muslim states.
• Siyasa shar'iyya: the duties of rulers and the legitimacy of government.

A fatwa is a legal opinion given by a scholar (mufti) and binds only those who choose to follow it. A qadi is a judge whose rulings bind the parties.

3. What classical Sharia requires #

This section sets out the classical rules that conflict most directly with modern Western law, as they appear in the primary texts and in standard legal manuals. One widely used manual available in English, Reliance of the Traveller ('Umdat al-Salik, by the 14th-century Shafi'i jurist Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri), is cited by section number. Its English translation carries a 1991 certificate of approval from al-Azhar University's Islamic Research Academy.⁹ Section 5 covers how modern Muslim scholars have responded to these rules.

3.1 Apostasy #

• Hadith: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" (Sahih al-Bukhari 6922, in the sunnah.com translation).¹⁰ Another hadith lists three cases in which a Muslim's life may lawfully be taken: "the married adulterer, a life for life, and the deserter of his Din (Islam), abandoning the community" (Sahih Muslim 1676; also Sahih al-Bukhari 6878).¹¹
• Classical rule: all four Sunni schools and the Ja'fari school held that a sane adult male apostate should be killed. Most schools required that he first be invited to repent. Reliance of the Traveller states: "When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed" (o8.1).⁹ In Hanafi and Ja'fari law a female apostate is imprisoned rather than executed, and in Ja'fari law a man born Muslim who apostatises is not given the chance to repent.¹²
• Consequences: an apostate's marriage is dissolved and he loses the right to inherit from Muslims.

3.2 Blasphemy #

Insulting the Prophet (sabb al-rasul) was treated in most schools as a capital offence. The Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) wrote a whole treatise, al-Sarim al-Maslul ("The Drawn Sword"), arguing that anyone who insults the Prophet must be killed, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, and that repentance does not remove the penalty.¹³ These two rules, on apostasy and blasphemy, are the sharpest conflict with Western democracy, because freedom to change religion and freedom to criticise religion are protected by Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

3.3 The fixed punishments (hudud) #

Proof. Zina requires four adult male eyewitnesses to the act (Quran 24:4, 24:13) or a confession. Hanafi and Hanbali jurists required the confession to be made four times; Maliki and Shafi'i jurists accepted a single confession. The Maliki school also treats pregnancy in an unmarried woman as proof, which is the basis of several northern Nigerian stoning sentences against women.¹² The strict standard of witness evidence meant convictions were historically rare. It does not change the principle: consensual sex outside marriage is a crime punishable by flogging or death. In modern practice the safeguards have often failed women. Under Pakistan's 1979 Hudood Ordinances, a woman who reported rape but could not produce four male witnesses risked prosecution for zina, until the law was changed in 2006.¹⁵

3.4 Women #

• Testimony. Quran 2:282, on recording debts: "And bring to witness two witnesses from among your men. And if there are not two men, then a man and two women… so that if one of the women errs, then the other can remind her."¹⁶ Classical jurists extended the principle, and in hudud cases women's testimony was generally not accepted at all.
• Inheritance. Quran 4:11: "for the male, what is equal to the share of two females."¹⁶ Defenders argue that men carry a legal duty to support the family.
• Guardianship in marriage. Hadith: "There is no marriage without a guardian (wali)" (Sunan Abi Dawud 2085; Jami' at-Tirmidhi 1101).¹⁷ The Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools make a woman's marriage invalid without her male guardian's consent. The Hanafi school allows an adult woman to contract her own marriage.
• Polygyny. Quran 4:3 permits a man up to four wives provided he treats them justly. A woman may have one husband.
• Interfaith marriage. A Muslim man may marry a Christian or Jewish woman (Quran 5:5); a Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man (Quran 2:221, 60:10).
• Headship and discipline. Quran 4:34 describes men as qawwamun ("in charge of", or "protectors and maintainers of") women and, in its most common reading, permits a husband to "strike" a disobedient wife after admonishing her and leaving her bed. Some modern translators render the verb daraba as "separate from" instead. Classical jurists generally read it literally while limiting it: no marks, no striking the face.¹⁶
• Divorce. A husband may divorce by pronouncing talaq, without going to court (Quran 2:229–230). A wife who wants a divorce must usually either obtain her husband's agreement to khul', typically returning her dowry, as in the hadith of the wife of Thabit ibn Qays (Sahih al-Bukhari 5273), or ask a judge to dissolve the marriage on limited grounds such as cruelty or desertion.¹⁸ This asymmetry is why British Sharia councils exist (section 7.2).
• Custody. The mother usually has physical custody of young children until a set age, after which it passes to the father, who is always the legal guardian. A mother who remarries typically loses custody.

3.5 Non-Muslims #

• Jizya. Quran 9:29 commands fighting the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) "until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled."¹⁶ In classical law, Jews, Christians and later other groups could live under Muslim rule as dhimmis ("protected people"): their lives, property and worship were protected in exchange for accepting Muslim rule and paying the jizya poll tax. Reliance of the Traveller (o11) sets out the conditions.⁹
• The Pact of Umar. A set of conditions attributed to the second caliph, Umar (634–644), though historians date its text to later centuries. It required dhimmis not to build new churches or repair ruined ones, not to display crosses in public, not to mount on saddles, to wear distinguishing dress, and to rise from their seats when Muslims wished to sit.¹⁹
• Legal inequality. In most schools the testimony of a non-Muslim was not accepted against a Muslim, and blood-money for a non-Muslim was lower than for a Muslim: Reliance of the Traveller sets it at one-third of a Muslim's for a Jew or Christian and one-fifteenth for a Zoroastrian (o4.9). The Hanafi school was the main exception on blood-money.¹²⁹
• The dhimma system was more tolerant than much of medieval Christian Europe; Jews in particular often fared better under Muslim rulers. It was still a legally subordinate status, not equal citizenship.

3.6 Jihad and the division of the world #

Classical jurists, writing in the eighth and ninth centuries, divided the world into dar al-Islam (the abode of Islam, under Muslim rule) and dar al-harb (the abode of war, everywhere else), with some adding a category for lands at truce. These terms are not in the Quran or hadith; they were developed by jurists about a century after Muhammad.²⁰

In this framework, jihad to extend Muslim rule was a collective obligation (fard kifaya) on the Muslim community. The procedure comes from a hadith reported by Buraydah in Sahih Muslim (1731). Muhammad instructed his commanders: "When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action": accept Islam; if they refuse, "demand from them the Jizya"; and "if they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them."²¹ Later jurists differed on which non-Muslims the jizya option applied to; the Hanafi and Maliki schools extended it widely, the Shafi'i and Hanbali schools mainly to Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. Reliance of the Traveller restates this rule (o9.8).⁹

This is the basis of the summary "convert, pay or fight". As a description of classical jurisprudence it is accurate. Historians and Muslim scholars disagree about what it meant in practice and whether it still applies. The historian Rudolph Peters describes the classical doctrine of jihad as essentially expansionist; the scholar Asma Afsaruddin argues that the armed-conquest reading was a later juristic development.²² The Arab conquests of 632 to 750 established Muslim rule from Spain to Central Asia within about a century. Conversion was slower: the historian Richard Bulliet estimated that Muslims became a majority in Iran around the mid-ninth century and reached about 80% by around 950.²³

3.7 Homosexuality #

A hadith reads: "Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Lot, kill the one who does it and the one to whom it is done" (Sunan Abi Dawud 4462; Jami' at-Tirmidhi 1456).²⁴ All the classical schools prohibit sex between men. Penalties ranged from death in all cases (Hanbali and Maliki views), to the penalty for zina (Shafi'i), to discretionary punishment (Hanafi). Six Sharia-based jurisdictions prescribe death for consensual same-sex acts today (section 4.6).

3.8 Interest and finance #

Quran 2:275–279 forbids riba (usury or interest) and threatens those who persist with "war from Allah and His Messenger."¹⁶ Islamic finance products (cost-plus sale, leasing, partnership and sukuk bonds) are designed to avoid interest. Critics note that many replicate interest in economic substance. This is the least controversial branch of Sharia in the West, because it works through ordinary contract law.

4. Sharia as state law today #

No two Muslim-majority states apply Sharia in the same way. They fall into four broad groups. This section describes the states where Sharia has the most force, using the most recent evidence available (to September 2026).

4.1 The scale of the punishment #

The clearest single measure is the death penalty. Amnesty International recorded at least 2,707 executions worldwide in 2025, up 78% from 1,518 in 2024 and the highest total since 1981 (China, Vietnam and North Korea are excluded because their figures are secret).²⁵ Two states whose legal systems are based on Sharia, Iran (2,159) and Saudi Arabia (356), account for about 93% of that total.²⁵

4.2 Group one: Sharia as the whole legal system #

Afghanistan. Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban have governed by their reading of Hanafi fiqh.

• On 21 August 2024 they published a 35-article "Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice". It requires women to cover their whole bodies, including the face, in public, and treats a woman's voice as 'awrah (something to be concealed), so women may not sing or read aloud in public.²⁶
• Girls have been banned from secondary school since March 2022. UNICEF counted 2.2 million girls out of school in March 2025.²⁷
• UN experts report that the Taliban publicly flogged at least 1,110 people in 2025 (about 170 of them women), up from at least 567 in 2024.²⁸
• At least 11 people have been publicly executed under qisas (retaliation) since August 2021, four of them on a single day, 11 April 2025.²⁹
• On 8 July 2025 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the Taliban's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for the crime against humanity of gender persecution.³⁰

Iran. The Islamic Republic applies Ja'fari (Shia) fiqh through a codified Islamic Penal Code.

• Executions rose from at least 972 in 2024 to 2,159 in 2025 by Amnesty's count. Iran Human Rights recorded at least 1,639 in 2025, the highest since 1989.²⁵³¹
• Article 225 of the 2013 Penal Code retains stoning as the fixed penalty for adultery by a married person.³²
• In May 2023 Iran hanged two men, Yousef Mehrdad and Sadrollah Fazeli Zare, for blasphemy after they ran a Telegram channel critical of religion.³³
• The death in morality-police custody of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, after arrest for allegedly breaching hijab rules, set off nationwide protests. At least 11 protesters had been executed by June 2025.³⁴

Saudi Arabia. Saudi courts apply largely uncodified Hanbali fiqh.

• Executions reached 338 in 2024 and a record 356 in 2025. Of the 2025 total, 240 were for drug offences, five were women (including for "witchcraft and sorcery"), and 188 were foreign nationals.³⁵
• The first codified Personal Status Law (2022) set a minimum marriage age of 18 but, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, wrote male guardianship into law and kept discrimination against women in divorce, custody and inheritance.³⁶
• Salma al-Shehab, a PhD student, was sentenced in 2022 to 34 years in prison for tweets supporting women's rights. Her sentence was cut to four years and she was released in February 2025.³⁷

Brunei. The Syariah Penal Code, fully in force since April 2019, provides for stoning to death for adultery and sodomy and amputation for theft. After international protest, the Sultan extended an existing moratorium on executions to cover it in May 2019, but the code has not been repealed.³⁸

4.3 Group two: Sharia criminal law in part of a country #

Northern Nigeria. Twelve northern states adopted Sharia criminal law from 1999 to 2001, beginning with Zamfara.³⁹

• In August 2020 a Kano Sharia court sentenced the musician Yahaya Sharif-Aminu to death for blasphemy over song lyrics shared on WhatsApp. The case is still before the Supreme Court, and he has been in custody for more than six years.⁴⁰
• In May 2022 Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a Christian student in Sokoto, was stoned and burned to death by fellow students after being accused of blasphemy. No one has been convicted of her killing.⁴¹
• Kano's state religious police, the Hisbah, arrest people for not fasting in Ramadan and for "indecent" haircuts, and in October 2025 arrested 25 people over an alleged gay wedding.⁴²

Aceh, Indonesia. Aceh applies a Sharia criminal code (the Qanun Jinayat) with public caning. In February 2025 two university students were caned 77 and 82 times for consensual same-sex relations. In August 2025 two more men were caned 76 times each for hugging and kissing.⁴³

4.4 Group three: Sharia for family law, with severe religious offences #

This is the most common model. Marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance for Muslims follow Sharia rules, often in reformed form, and in several states blasphemy and apostasy are serious crimes.

Pakistan. Section 295-C of the Penal Code makes defiling the name of the Prophet punishable by death. The Centre for Social Justice counts at least 2,793 people accused of blasphemy between 1987 and 2024, and 362 in 2025 alone, and at least 104 people killed extrajudicially after blasphemy accusations between 1994 and 2024.⁴⁴ In June 2024 a mob in Swat seized a tourist accused of desecrating the Quran from a police station, then lynched and burned him.⁴⁵ Pakistan's 1979 Hudood Ordinances once required a rape victim to produce four male witnesses; when she could not, she risked prosecution for zina (unlawful sex). The Women's Protection Act 2006 moved rape back into the ordinary penal code.⁴⁶ In 2022 the Federal Shariat Court ordered interest (riba) abolished across the economy by the end of 2027.⁴⁷

Iraq. In January 2025 Iraq's parliament amended its 1959 personal status law to let couples choose a sect-based religious code instead. The Ja'fari (Shia) code approved in August 2025 is, in Human Rights Watch's words, one that makes women "second class"; HRW warns that Ja'fari jurisprudence permits marriage of girls from age nine and that legalising unregistered marriages opens loopholes for child marriage.⁴⁸

Malaysia. Malaysia runs Sharia courts for Muslims in family and religious matters alongside civil courts. In February 2024 the Federal Court struck down 16 Sharia criminal provisions in the state of Kelantan because they intruded on federal criminal law, showing that even in a Muslim-majority democracy the constitution can limit Sharia.⁴⁹

Mauritania. In 2018 Mauritania made the death penalty mandatory for blasphemy, removing the option of reduction on repentance.⁵⁰

Egypt. Article 2 of Egypt's constitution states that "the principles of Islamic Sharia are the principal source of legislation." Family law is Sharia-based, and "contempt of religion" is a crime.⁵¹

4.5 Group four: secular legal systems #

Turkey replaced Sharia-based family law with a version of the Swiss Civil Code in 1926, and its constitution declares a secular republic. Tunisia abolished polygamy in 1956 and in 2017 lifted the ban on Muslim women marrying non-Muslims. Albania, Kosovo, Azerbaijan and most of the Muslim-majority former Soviet states have secular law.⁵² Reform is also possible within Sharia states. In July 2020 Sudan abolished the death penalty for apostasy and ended public flogging.⁵³ The UAE in 2020 decriminalised cohabitation by unmarried couples and ended lenient sentences for "honour" crimes.⁵⁴

4.6 The global legal map of apostasy, blasphemy and homosexuality #

• Blasphemy and apostasy. Humanists International's Freedom of Thought Report 2024 found blasphemy laws in 91 countries, covering 57% of the world's population, and 12 countries where blasphemy or apostasy can carry the death penalty.⁵⁵ Pew counted 22 countries with apostasy laws in 2019.⁵⁶
• Homosexuality. ILGA World (May 2025) found 64 UN member states criminalise consensual same-sex acts. In seven the death penalty is the prescribed punishment: Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, northern Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Uganda. Uganda's law is not Sharia-based; the other six are. In five more (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia and the UAE) the death penalty may apply but is not legally certain.⁵⁷

4.7 What Muslims around the world say #

The largest survey is Pew's The World's Muslims (2013), based on more than 38,000 face-to-face interviews in 39 countries. Pew did not survey Saudi Arabia, Iran or the Gulf states, where Sharia is most fully applied.⁵⁸

Support for making Sharia "the official law of the land":

Source: Pew Research Center (2013).⁵⁸

Among Muslims who favour Sharia as official law, the share who support specific punishments:

Source: Pew Research Center (2013).⁵⁸

Because these figures are shares of Sharia supporters, the share of all Muslims is lower but still large. In Pakistan, 84% favour Sharia and 76% of those back death for apostasy, which means roughly 64% of all Pakistani Muslims do.

Pew's 2024 survey, with slightly different wording ("official law for Muslims"), found support of 93% in Malaysia, about nine in ten in Indonesia and Bangladesh, and 32% in Turkey, up from 12% in 2013.⁵⁹ Arab Barometer's 2021–22 wave found majorities agreeing that religious leaders should influence government decisions in Mauritania (77%), Sudan (62%), Libya (57%) and Iraq (54%), where no country had a majority in 2012–14.⁶⁰

Two conclusions follow. Support for classical Sharia, including its harshest punishments, is a majority view in several large Muslim-majority societies, not a fringe one. It is also not universal: in the Balkans, Turkey and Central Asia, most Muslims reject it. History, politics and education shape the answer, not religion alone.

5. The Muslim debate about Sharia #

There is a serious debate within Islam about Sharia, and it matters for the West, because the direction Western Muslims take depends partly on which side their religious leaders stand.

Traditionalists hold that the classical rulings rest on revelation and the consensus of the early scholars (ijma') and cannot be abolished. Many add that the criminal provisions apply only in a Muslim state with a legitimate ruler, and that Muslims living as a minority should obey local law while keeping Sharia in family and private life. That is the dominant position in the Deobandi and Barelvi seminaries that train most imams in Britain.

Islamists treat restoring Sharia as state law as a religious duty. The Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qutb (executed 1966), in Milestones (1964), declared modern societies, including nominally Muslim ones, to be in a state of pre-Islamic ignorance and attacked scholars who called jihad only defensive. His ideas shaped the radical wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda and Islamic State.⁶¹

Reformers argue that much of fiqh reflects its historical setting. The Amman Message (2004–05, endorsed by about 200 scholars from over 50 countries) restricted declaring other Muslims unbelievers.⁶² The New Mardin Declaration (2010) stated that the classical division of the world into the "abode of Islam" and the "abode of war" no longer applies.⁶³ The Marrakesh Declaration (2016) called for full citizenship rights for religious minorities in Muslim-majority states.⁶⁴ Scholars such as Khaled Abou El Fadl and Abdullahi an-Na'im argue that the death penalty for apostasy and the conquest reading of jihad are human juristic constructions, not fixed revelation.

Assessment. Critics are right that the classical texts endorse the rules described in section 3, that those rules were the consensus of the schools for more than a thousand years, and that reformist declarations have not stopped Islamist movements from using the classical texts. The polling in section 4.7 shows how widely those rules are still supported. Reformers are right that mainstream bodies have formally revised parts of the framework. For a democracy the practical test is narrower: no one living within its borders should be subject to any rule, religious or otherwise, that contradicts equal citizenship.

6. Sharia and liberal democracy: where they collide #

6.1 What Europe's human-rights court has said #

In Refah Partisi (the Welfare Party) and Others v Turkey (Grand Chamber, 13 February 2003), the European Court of Human Rights upheld Turkey's dissolution of an Islamist party that had proposed, among other things, a plural legal system with Sharia for Muslims. In paragraph 123 the Court endorsed the lower chamber's view:

"It is difficult to declare one's respect for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting a regime based on sharia, which clearly diverges from Convention values, particularly with regard to its criminal law and criminal procedure, its rules on the legal status of women and the way it intervenes in all spheres of private and public life in accordance with religious precepts."⁶⁵

The Court also rejected a plural system in which each religious community has its own law, because it would force individuals to obey rules set by their religion rather than protect them as equal citizens.⁶⁵ The statement was made while assessing whether banning one party was proportionate, and some legal scholars have criticised it for treating Sharia as a single fixed system.⁶⁶ It remains the most authoritative judicial view in Europe.

In Molla Sali v Greece (Grand Chamber, 19 December 2018), the same Court confronted a real case of Sharia applied by a European state. Greece let muftis in western Thrace apply Sharia to its Muslim minority. A Muslim widow whose husband had left her his whole estate by will lost three-quarters of it when his sisters argued that Sharia, not Greek civil law, applied. The Court unanimously found discrimination on grounds of religion and held that no one can be made subject to religious law against their will because of the community they belong to.⁶⁷ Greece had already made recourse to the mufti optional in January 2018.

6.2 Six points of conflict #

Setting classical Sharia beside the principles of a democracy shows six direct conflicts:

1. Sovereignty. In a democracy, law is made by an elected legislature and can be changed by it. In classical Sharia, the core law is made by Allah and cannot be changed.
2. Equality before the law. Western law treats men and women, believers and unbelievers, as equal legal persons. Classical Sharia assigns different rights by sex and religion in testimony, inheritance, marriage, divorce, custody and blood-money.
3. Freedom of religion. Article 9 of the European Convention protects the right to change religion. Classical Sharia punishes leaving Islam with death.
4. Freedom of expression. Article 10 protects the right to criticise and ridicule religion. Classical Sharia punishes blasphemy severely.
5. Punishment. Article 3 bans inhuman or degrading punishment. Flogging, amputation and stoning fall within that ban.
6. Private life. Democracies leave consensual adult relationships to the individual. Classical Sharia criminalises sex outside marriage and same-sex relations.

These conflicts come from the mainstream classical form of Sharia, not from an extreme reading. Individual Muslims can hold their faith, including its rules on prayer, diet and charity, in complete harmony with democracy. A state, or any body acting like a state, cannot apply classical Sharia as law and also protect equal rights.

6.3 Why "only for family law" does not solve the problem #

Advocates of accommodation often say Western Muslims want Sharia only for marriage and divorce. But family law is exactly where the classical inequalities are concentrated: unilateral male divorce, a wife's need for consent or a judge to leave, guardianship, polygyny, custody passing to the father, and unequal inheritance. A family-law-only Sharia system is a system in which a woman's rights depend on her religion. That is what Refah and Molla Sali rejected.

6.4 How other democracies have answered #

Ontario, Canada. In 2003 a group announced plans for Sharia-based family arbitration under Ontario's Arbitration Act. A government review by Marion Boyd (2004) recommended allowing religious arbitration with safeguards. Opposition, led largely by Muslim women's groups and Iranian-Canadian exiles, was fierce. In September 2005 Premier Dalton McGuinty announced "one law for all Ontarians", and the Family Statute Law Amendment Act 2006 ended religious family arbitration for every faith.⁶⁸

France recognises only civil marriage, and a minister of religion who habitually conducts religious marriages before the civil ceremony commits an offence (Article 433-21 of the Penal Code).⁶⁹ Germany recognises only civil marriage and applies foreign Sharia-based family law only in limited cross-border cases, refusing rules such as unilateral talaq under its public-policy exception.

The pattern is consistent. Democracies that have looked hard at the question have concluded that religious law cannot have legal force in family matters without discriminating against women, and have chosen a single civil law. Britain, where informal councils operate in a legal grey zone and many religious marriages sit outside the civil system, is the least clear-cut of these cases. That is why it is the case study for the rest of this file.

6.5 How European states are responding to Islamism #

France. After President Macron's speech against "Islamist separatism" at Les Mureaux on 2 October 2020, and the murder of the teacher Samuel Paty two weeks later, France passed Law 2021-1109 of 24 August 2021 "reinforcing respect for the principles of the Republic". The Constitutional Council upheld most of it, striking down two provisions.¹³⁶ By January 2025 a parliamentary evaluation counted 23 associations dissolved under it and 730,000 public servants trained in secularism.¹³⁷ In September 2023 the Conseil d'État, ruling urgently, refused to suspend a ban on the abaya in schools.¹³⁸ A government report of May 2025 described Muslim Brotherhood "entryism" as a threat to national cohesion.¹⁴¹

Denmark. A 2018 law set out to end "parallel societies" by 2030. Housing estates designated "transformation areas", which meet deprivation criteria and where more than half the residents are of non-Western origin, must cut public family housing to 40% of homes through demolition, sale or conversion.¹³⁹ The number of listed areas fell from 15 in 2020 to 5 in December 2025.¹¹⁶¹⁴² In December 2025 the Court of Justice of the European Union held that the "non-Western" criterion may amount to discrimination on grounds of ethnic origin, and returned the case to the Danish courts.¹⁴⁰ The policy remains contested in Denmark and in European law.

7. Britain: the case study #

7.1 The legal position #

English law applies to everyone in England and Wales, and no Sharia body has state authority. The Home Office stated on 1 February 2018 that "Sharia law has no jurisdiction in the UK and we would not facilitate or endorse regulation, which could present councils as an alternative to UK laws."⁷⁰ Ministers repeated in 2026 that "Sharia law has no jurisdiction in England and Wales."⁷¹

The 2021 Census recorded 3.9 million Muslims in England and Wales, 6.5% of the population, up from 2.7 million (4.9%) in 2011.⁷² They are concentrated in particular places: Tower Hamlets is 39.9% Muslim, Blackburn with Darwen 35.0%, Bradford 30.5% and Birmingham 29.9%. Individual wards such as Bordesley Green in Birmingham (80.2%) and Toller in Bradford (80.1%) are overwhelmingly Muslim.⁷³ Most British Muslims are of South Asian heritage and follow the Hanafi school.

"No jurisdiction" is a statement about legal authority. It is not the whole story. Sharia operates in Britain informally but at scale, through five channels.

7.2 Channel one: Sharia councils #

What they are. Sharia councils are private religious bodies that issue religious rulings, mostly Islamic divorces for women. The best known is the Islamic Sharia Council in Leyton, east London, founded in 1982.

How many there are. Nobody knows, and the government does not try to find out. The Ministry of Justice has repeatedly told Parliament, most recently on 24 March 2026, that it "does not hold data on the number of sharia councils in operation, and there is no plan to produce such data."⁷⁴ The published estimates are:

Three things follow. First, the widely quoted "85" is not a count of formal councils; about two-thirds of it is an estimate of informal mosque and online services. Second, every later "85", in the press and in Parliament, traces back to that single 2009 report; no one has done a fresh count since.⁷⁹ Third, the true number is very probably higher than the 30 to 35 formal councils that can be identified, if every imam who issues divorce certificates and every online service is included. The Siddiqui review cited "anecdotal evidence" that numbers rose after legal aid for family cases was cut in 2012, and Muslim Women's Network UK told Parliament that many bodies issuing divorces do not call themselves councils.⁷⁸⁸⁰ That is a real gap in knowledge. Claims of a specific higher figure, such as "over 100", have no published evidence behind them.⁸¹

How much they are used. Caseload is better evidenced than the number of councils. The Leyton council alone handled 200 to 300 cases a month as of 2012, roughly 2,400 to 3,600 a year, and reported more than 7,000 divorce cases between 1982 and about 2009.⁸² No national total exists.

What the evidence shows about harm. The Siddiqui review, commissioned by Theresa May as Home Secretary, found that more than 90% of users are women seeking divorce and that:

"no one disputed that sharia councils engage in practices which are discriminatory to women."⁷⁸

It recorded specific bad practice: a forced-marriage victim asked to attend the council at the same time as her family; women pressed to make financial concessions to their husbands to secure a divorce ("men are never asked" to do the same); insistence on mediation, including in abuse cases; no safeguarding policies; very few women on panels; and cases reopened even after a civil divorce.⁷⁸

The Casey Review (2016) reported evidence that councils had been "condoning wife-beating, ignoring marital rape and allowing forced marriage", that women were charged "up to four times as much" as men, and that women were "pressurised to return to abusive partners or attend reconciliation sessions… despite legal injunctions."⁷⁷

An undercover BBC Panorama investigation (April 2013) filmed a scholar at the Leyton council telling a woman who said her husband hit her that going to the police was a "last resort", and filmed the council deciding that children should go to an allegedly violent father despite a civil custody order. The BBC rejected the council's complaint.⁸³ Nazir Afzal, then chief prosecutor for north-west England, said that "there are some who are putting women at risk."⁸³

Muslim Women's Network UK's evidence to Parliament in 2016 listed further practices: marital rape not recognised as rape, greater weight given to husbands' accounts, demands that women prove abuse, and higher fees for women.⁸⁰

Several leading women's rights organisations (Southall Black Sisters, IKWRO, One Law for All) boycotted the Siddiqui review, arguing it was too soft, and called for the councils to be abolished.⁸⁴ The review's panel noted that the boycott made it "difficult to find" women with negative experiences willing to give evidence, so its findings may understate the problem.⁷⁸

What government has done. The Siddiqui panel recommended, by a majority, a state-backed regulatory body. The government rejected regulation because it would lend councils legitimacy, and it has no plans to ban them "where all parties consent."⁷⁰⁸⁵ Baroness Cox's Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill, which would have applied equality law to religious tribunals and criminalised false claims of legal jurisdiction, was introduced in six sessions between 2011 and 2017. It received second readings in the Lords in 2012 and 2017 but never went further.⁸⁶ So nearly a decade after the government's own review found discrimination, councils remain unregulated, uncounted and unbanned.

7.3 Channel two: arbitration #

The Arbitration Act 1996 lets two parties choose an arbitrator and a set of rules for a civil dispute, and courts will generally enforce the award. The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, founded in 2007 in Nuneaton, uses it to decide commercial and inheritance disputes by Sharia; about 10% of its work is family matters, mostly Islamic divorces.⁷⁸⁸⁷ Criminal matters and children's welfare cannot be arbitrated, and an award contrary to public policy can be set aside. In practice, the protection depends on the weaker party knowing her rights and daring to use them. The Casey Review reported claims that the tribunal had exceeded its mandate on child custody and domestic violence.⁷⁷

7.4 Channel three: unregistered religious marriages #

This is the mechanism that does the most damage. A nikah (Islamic marriage ceremony) not conducted in a registered building with an authorised person, and not accompanied by a civil ceremony, is not a legal marriage in England and Wales.

A 2017 Channel 4 survey of 923 Muslim women found that 61% of those in religious marriages had only a nikah, and that 28% of those did not know they lacked legal protection.⁸⁸ The Casey Review cited reports of up to 100,000 Sharia-only marriages.⁷⁷

A woman in an unregistered marriage has none of the financial remedies of a wife under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973: no claim to a share of her husband's property or pension through divorce proceedings, and no automatic inheritance. She may have narrower claims through trust law, for her children, or under inheritance legislation, but these are harder and weaker.⁸⁹ Her only religious way out of the marriage is usually a Sharia council. This is where informal Sharia and the gaps in English law combine to leave Muslim women with fewer rights than other British women.

In Attorney General v Akhter and Khan [2020] EWCA Civ 122, Nasreen Akhter, married by nikah in a London restaurant in 1998, sought a financial settlement after 18 years and four children. The High Court (2018) had treated the marriage as void, which gave her access to financial remedies. The Court of Appeal reversed that, holding the ceremony a "non-qualifying ceremony" that created no marriage at all.⁹⁰ A 2025 case, MA v WK, held that registering an English nikah in Pakistan afterwards cannot make it valid in England.⁹¹

ITV's Exposure (October 2013) found that 18 of 56 mosques contacted agreed to arrange the religious marriage of a 14-year-old girl.⁹² Since February 2023 it has been a crime to arrange the marriage of anyone under 18, including in a religious ceremony that is not legally binding.⁹³

The government's July 2026 "Tying the Knot" consultation would let authorised officiants, including imams, conduct legally valid marriages anywhere, and would recognise the Islamic exchange of offer and acceptance as consent. It does not propose the offence of conducting an unregistered nikah that the Siddiqui review recommended.⁹⁴

7.5 Channels four and five: finance and wills #

Islamic finance operates entirely within English contract law and financial regulation. The UK issued the first sovereign sukuk (Islamic bond) outside the Muslim world, £200 million in 2014, and a second of £500 million in 2021.⁹⁵ It raises few rights issues.

English law lets testators leave property as they choose, so a Muslim may write a will using Sharia shares, with sons receiving double daughters' shares. In March 2014 the Law Society issued a practice note to help solicitors draft such wills; after protests from lawyers and women's groups it withdrew the note in November 2014, its president saying: "We have withdrawn the note and we are sorry."⁹⁶

7.6 "No-go zones": Sharia norms in public space #

Many Britons believe that parts of the country have become "no-go zones" where Sharia norms rule. A King's College London and YouGov study published in September 2026 found that 34% of UK adults believe London has areas where Sharia dominates and non-Muslims cannot enter; 36% disagree.¹⁰⁰ Many people hold that belief because of things that have happened. This section sets out that record first, then tests the strongest versions of the claim against the evidence.

What is documented: attempts to impose Sharia on public space. In July 2011 stickers reading "You are entering a Shariah controlled zone. Islamic rules enforced" were put up across Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Newham, banning alcohol, smoking, music and gambling. The preacher Anjem Choudary claimed responsibility, said he had "hundreds if not thousands" of people willing to patrol, and said the aim was to "put the seeds down for an Islamic Emirate in the long term."¹⁰⁷ In January 2013 a self-styled "Muslim Patrol" filmed itself in Whitechapel, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green confronting people drinking, a couple holding hands, a woman over her clothing, and people it took to be gay, telling them they were in a Muslim area. Three members were jailed in December 2013 and given orders banning further patrols.¹⁰⁸ Choudary was jailed in 2016 for supporting Islamic State and in July 2024 was sentenced to life, with a minimum of 28 years, for directing the terrorist group al-Muhajiroun.¹⁰⁹ Germany saw the same thing in Wuppertal in 2014, where men in vests marked "Sharia Police" patrolled the streets; they were eventually convicted.¹¹⁷

What is documented: communities that keep the police out. In January 2014 the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Tom Winsor, said there are cities in the Midlands "where the police never go because they are never called", and that some "communities born under other skies… will not involve the police at all" because "the community deals with that on its own."¹⁰⁵ That is the country's senior police inspector describing areas where crime is handled by informal community authority rather than the law. Sharia councils, which the government does not count or regulate, are part of that informal authority (section 7.2).

What is documented: religious pressure on schools, elections and speech.

• The Trojan Horse inquiry (Peter Clarke, July 2014) found "co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained action, carried out by a number of associated individuals, to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamist ethos into a few schools in Birmingham."¹¹¹ The anonymous letter that started the affair was probably a hoax, and misconduct cases against senior teachers collapsed in 2017 over procedural failures by the regulator, but the inquiry's findings on the schools were not withdrawn.¹¹¹
• An election court in 2015 voided the election of Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman for corrupt and illegal practices, including "undue spiritual influence" after 101 imams signed a letter telling Muslims it was their religious duty to vote for him. He was re-elected mayor in 2022.¹¹²
• In 2021 a Batley Grammar School teacher who showed a caricature of Muhammad in a lesson on blasphemy was suspended after protests outside the school and went into hiding with his family. The government's Khan Review (March 2024) found he had been "totally and utterly failed" by his school, the council and the police, and identified a wider pattern of "freedom-restricting harassment": intimidation designed to make people censor themselves.¹¹³
• In Wakefield in 2023, after an autistic pupil slightly damaged a Quran at school, four pupils were suspended, police recorded a "non-crime hate incident", the boy's mother apologised at a mosque meeting, and the boy received death threats.¹¹⁴

In these cases Sharia's blasphemy norm was enforced in practice, through fear, in places where English law says no such norm exists.

What is documented: deep residential segregation. The Casey Review (2016) found wards in Blackburn, Birmingham, Burnley and Bradford that were 70% to 85% Muslim and warned that segregation was growing.¹¹⁰ In the 2021 Census, Bordesley Green in Birmingham was 80.2% Muslim and Toller in Bradford 80.1%.⁷³

What is documented: the state avoiding confrontation. In October 2025 the Metropolitan Police barred a protest to "reclaim Whitechapel from the Islamists" from the whole of Tower Hamlets, citing the borough's large Muslim population and a "realistic prospect of serious disorder."¹⁰⁶ Critics argued that this made an entire borough off-limits to one kind of political protest. The Casey audit of grooming gangs (2025) and the Khan Review both found that authorities had been slow to act where they feared accusations of racism or religious offence.¹¹³¹¹⁹

Testing the strongest claims. Two stronger claims are often made, and the evidence for them is weaker.

• That Sharia is the law in force in parts of Britain. No area is under Sharia law in the legal sense: Sharia councils have no legal jurisdiction, and no court or police force recognises one.⁷⁰ Specific named claims have not held up. In 2015 a Fox News guest, Steve Emerson, said non-Muslims "just simply don't go" into Birmingham; he apologised, and the regulator Ofcom ruled the broadcast "materially misleading."¹⁰¹ In 2024 a former minister, Paul Scully, apologised for calling Tower Hamlets and Sparkhill "no-go areas."¹⁰² After President Trump told the UN in September 2025 that London wanted "to go to Sharia law", Full Fact found no evidence for it.¹⁰³
• That police cannot enter these areas. The government's position is that "there are no areas in the UK in which the laws of the UK cannot be enforced" (Foreign Office, 2016).¹⁰⁴ No police force has said otherwise, and Winsor's comment was about police not being called, not about police being unable to enter. That is the government's own account, and nobody independent measures it.

Verdict. On the evidence, the literal claim, that there are areas of Britain where Sharia has replaced English law or where police cannot go, is not proven, and the named examples have been withdrawn. What is proven is serious in its own right. Islamists have tried to declare Sharia zones and patrol them. Some communities handle disputes and even crimes internally rather than through the police, and do so under a religious authority the state has chosen not to count or regulate. Blasphemy norms have been enforced by intimidation, and the authorities have repeatedly failed the people targeted. A partial, informal version of Sharia operates in some areas without legal power but with real social force. Many people call that a no-go zone, and they are describing something real.

Sweden shows how far this can go. Its police publish a list of "vulnerable areas", 65 in 2025, 19 of them "particularly vulnerable". Police define these as areas with "parallel societal structures" (a local social order with its own economy and system of justice), violent religious extremism, and residents afraid to testify. Swedish police reject the label "no-go zone", but that is their own description of those areas.¹¹⁵ Denmark legally designates "parallel societies" using deprivation measures and the share of non-Western residents; the number fell from 15 in 2020 to five in 2025 after a deliberate policy of demolition and rehousing.¹¹⁶¹⁴² In February 2018 Germany's then chancellor, Angela Merkel, said that areas "where nobody dares to go" exist and "one must call them by their name and do something about them."¹¹⁸

7.7 What British Muslims say about Sharia #

Every poll below has limitations. "Sharia" is rarely defined, so some respondents may mean personal religious practice rather than a legal code, and several polls sampled only areas where Muslims are at least 20% of the population, which skews towards more deprived and more conservative communities. With that caveat, the results are consistent: support for some form of Sharia in Britain is a minority position in every poll, but a large minority.

The same 2024 poll found that 52% of British Muslims would find it desirable to make showing pictures of the Prophet illegal, and 32% would like Islam declared the national religion.¹²⁵ Critics said its question order primed respondents, and the Henry Jackson Society is an advocacy think tank.¹²⁶ The 2015 Channel 4 poll also found 86% of respondents felt a strong sense of belonging to Britain.¹²³

Similar or higher figures appear in continental Europe. In a six-country study of Turkish- and Moroccan-origin Muslims (fieldwork 2008), 65% said religious rules are more important than the laws of the country they live in, against 13% of native Christians.¹²⁷ Ifop's 2025 survey of French Muslims found 46% want Islamic law applied in the country where they live (15% fully, 31% partly).¹²⁸ A Vienna youth study (2024) found 41% of young Muslims place religious rules above Austrian law.¹²⁹

The general British public's view is clear. In a 2025 YouGov poll, 53% said Islam is not compatible with British values and 25% said it is.¹³⁰ In another, 59% said Sharia courts should be banned and 16% that they should be allowed.¹³¹

7.8 The Islamist movement in Britain #

Most British Muslims are not Islamists, but organised Islamism is a documented presence:

• The government's Muslim Brotherhood Review (2015) found that Brotherhood associates had at times had influence on national Muslim representative bodies, student organisations, charities and some mosques "disproportionate to their size", and that aspects of its ideology and tactics were "contrary to our values."¹³²
• Hizb ut-Tahrir, which campaigns openly for a global caliphate governed by Sharia and operated legally in Britain for decades, was proscribed as a terrorist organisation on 19 January 2024.¹³³
• MI5 said in October 2024 that about 75% of its counter-terrorism caseload concerns Islamist extremism and 25% the extreme right.¹³⁴
• The Independent Review of Prevent (William Shawcross, 2023) found that "Prevent is not doing enough to counter non-violent Islamist extremism" and had "a double standard" between the extreme right and Islamism.¹³⁵

7.9 Eight British cases #

1. Panorama, 2013. A Sharia council scholar told an apparent abuse victim that the police were a "last resort"; the council ruled that children should go to a father accused of violence despite a court order.⁸³
2. The Siddiqui review, 2018. The government's own review found that "no one disputed" that councils discriminate against women.⁷⁸
3. Attorney General v Akhter, 2020. An 18-year nikah marriage with four children was held to be no marriage at all.⁹⁰
4. ITV, 2013. Eighteen of 56 mosques agreed to arrange the marriage of a 14-year-old.⁹²
5. The Law Society, 2014. A professional body published guidance on Sharia wills, including rules that "non-Muslims may not inherit", then withdrew it and apologised.⁹⁶
6. Trojan Horse, 2014. The official inquiry found action to introduce "an intolerant and aggressive Islamist ethos" into Birmingham schools.¹¹¹
7. Tower Hamlets, 2015. An election was voided partly for "undue spiritual influence".¹¹²
8. Batley, 2021 onwards. A teacher went into hiding after a blasphemy accusation and, according to a government review, was "totally and utterly failed" by the authorities.¹¹³

Two English cases show the courts holding the line of one law. In Sulaiman v Juffali (2002) the High Court refused to recognise a talaq pronounced in England.⁹⁷ In Uddin v Choudhury (2009) a wife's claim to her unpaid dowry (mahr) was enforced as an ordinary contract, and the Court of Appeal refused her father-in-law permission to appeal.⁹⁸

7.10 What the grooming-gangs scandal is and is not #

The grooming-gangs scandal is often linked to Sharia. The failures in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oldham and elsewhere were real and grave, and the 2025 Casey national audit found that authorities had "shied away" from the ethnicity of perpetrators and that ethnicity was not recorded for about two-thirds of them.¹¹⁹ But the perpetrators were not applying Sharia law, which condemns their crimes. The scandal is evidence of institutional failure to protect children, in part from fear of being called racist. It is now the subject of a national statutory inquiry.

8. Arguments for and against accommodation #

8.1 Arguments made for accommodating Sharia #

1. Religious freedom. Muslims have a right under Article 9 to live by their faith. For many women, a religious divorce is a religious necessity that only a religious body can give.
2. Voluntariness. Councils and tribunals have no coercive power, and adults choose to use them.
3. Equal treatment. Jewish Batei Din and Catholic tribunals operate in the same way.
4. Practical help. Councils release women from marriages whose husbands refuse to divorce them.
5. Better in the open. A ban would push councils underground; the Siddiqui review and Muslim Women's Network UK both made this argument.⁷⁸⁸⁰
6. Economic benefit. Islamic finance brings investment.

8.2 Arguments made against #

1. The rules are unequal by design. A divorce system in which men leave at will and women must seek permission discriminates in its structure, not only in bad practice.
2. "Voluntary" is often not free. Family and community pressure, and ignorance of legal rights, mean many women do not choose freely.
3. Unregistered marriages strip women of legal protection, as Akhter showed.
4. No regulation, no due process. There are no training, record-keeping, appeal or safeguarding requirements. The government does not even know how many councils exist.
5. The comparison with other faiths is weaker than it looks. Parliament addressed the Jewish divorce problem in the Divorce (Religious Marriages) Act 2002, which lets courts withhold a civil divorce until a religious one is granted. It has never been extended to Islamic marriages, although it can be by statutory instrument.⁹⁹ Jewish and Quaker weddings also have their own legal registration arrangements that mosques do not.
6. It normalises a rival authority. Each accommodation signals that there is another legitimate source of law, and the polling in section 7.7 shows a large minority already favour one.
7. One law. A citizen's rights should not depend on the religious community into which they were born.

8.3 Assessment #

Classical Sharia is not suitable as law in a modern democratic society. Its core rules on apostasy, blasphemy, women, non-Muslims and punishment conflict with equal citizenship. Europe's human-rights court has said so twice. The states that apply it most fully lead the world in executions and in flogging.

Sharia damages women's rights in Britain today, even without legal jurisdiction. Unregistered marriages, unregulated and uncounted councils, and community pressure together leave many Muslim women with fewer rights than other British women. The government's own review found discrimination in 2018, and little has changed.

Support for Sharia among British Muslims is a large minority, not a fringe. In the most recent national polling, about a third say Sharia in the UK would be desirable. That makes the question of which law governs British life a live one, not a theoretical one.

Sharia already has informal force in parts of Britain. Attempted Sharia patrols, community justice outside the police, unregulated councils and intimidation over blasphemy are documented by official sources. The literal claim that English law has been displaced in named areas is not proven, and the case is strongest when it rests on what is documented.

The remedy is one law, enforced for everyone. Private belief should stay free; religious bodies should have no power, formal or informal, to override the law's protection of individuals.

9. What would fix it #

These measures are drawn from the Siddiqui review, the Casey Review, Baroness Cox's bill and women's rights groups, ordered by likely impact.

1. Compulsory civil registration of every marriage, with a criminal offence for anyone who conducts a nikah without ensuring it is registered, as the Siddiqui review recommended.⁷⁸
2. Extend the Divorce (Religious Marriages) Act 2002 to Islamic marriages by statutory instrument, as Siddiqui recommended, so civil courts can pressure husbands who refuse religious divorce.⁷⁸
3. Apply equality law to all arbitration, and make it an offence to claim legal jurisdiction a body does not have, as the Cox bill proposed.⁸⁶
4. Count and publish. The government should record the number of councils and the volume of religious divorces. It cannot manage what it refuses to measure.
5. Absolute safeguarding duties for any religious body that learns of abuse or of risk to a child.
6. Tell women their rights, through GPs, registrars, schools and community groups.
7. Protect free expression without exception, prosecuting threats against people accused of blasphemy and making sure no public body treats offence to religion as grounds for discipline.

10. Claims and evidence #

11. Sources #

The footnotes below give the source for each claim in sections 4 to 10. Sources for sections 1 to 3 appear in their own footnotes.

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