Sharia Remains Powerful Force In Muslim World

Indications are that virtually everywhere, Sharia adherents are growing in number.  In addition, most expect their secular or Christian host nations not only to show deference to their stricter version of Islam but to comply with it in the suburbs that they dominate.

That may sound preposterous but it's happening -- even with governmental support in certain secular or supposedly Christian nations that are bending over backward not to appear Islamophobic. Never mind that respect for non-Islamic faiths is non-existent anywhere that Sharia law is enforced.

As Clare Byrne for afp.com recently wrote, around one in four French Muslims (mostly young people) supports an ultra-conservative form of Islam, including the wearing of the full-face veil, but the vast majority accepts France's strict secular laws.

This is according to a recent study in France, which has Western Europe's biggest Muslim population. The Ifop survey, carried out for a major study of French Muslims by Institut Montaigne, a liberal think-tank, showed that the vast majority of people who identify as Muslim accept curbs on religion in public.

Nevertheless, according to a survey published in Le Journal du Dimanche weekly, 60 percent considered girls should be allowed to wear the headscarf in school, 12 years after it and other religious symbols were banished from the classroom. 

Additionally, around one in four (24 percent) supported the wearing of the burqa and niqab, the full-face veils that were banned in public places in 2010.

The survey of 1,029 people aims to inform the government's plans to overhaul French Muslim bodies in the wake of several jihadist attacks, most of them the work of French extremists.

Institut Montaigne's report grouped French Muslims into three categories: "completely secular", "devout" but accepting restrictions on religion in the public domain, and a more reactionary group that uses Islam for the purposes of "revolt".

Those in the secular category, which made up 46 percent of the total, did not reject Islam but demonstrated their religious feeling mainly by eating halal meat. The second group (25 percent) was "proudly Muslim" and wanted a greater role for religion in the workplace but opposed the burqa and polygamy.

Most "problematic", according to the report, was the third group which was composed of "mostly young, low-skilled people with low levels of participation in the labor market" living on the outskirts of cities.

"Islam is for them a way of asserting themselves on the margins of French society," the report found, noting that most people in that group approved of the burqa and of polygamy, which is permitted by Islam.

Around half of the under-25s fell into this category, compared to around 20 percent of over-40s, revealing a generational gap between moderates and younger hardliners, the report found.

Two issues -- the right to wear the headscarf and access to halal food -- emerged as enjoying popular support among Muslims, whether practicing or not.

These positions are fairly similar to those held by Muslims in other Western nations. As Alexander Robertson noted in a publication for the Mail Online, British Muslims disagree with the rest of the country on a range of key issues such as sexuality, freedom of speech and polygamy, according to new research there.

A poll carried out by ICM Research discovered that more than half of Muslims disagree with homosexuality being legal in Britain, while a quarter support Sharia law being introduced into parts of the country instead of British law.

The full findings were shortly expected to feature in a Channel 4 documentary presented by Trevor Phillips, former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Phillips stated that "the integration of Muslims will probably be the hardest task' the country has ever faced". 

He told The Sunday Times Magazine: "I thought Europe's Muslims would gradually blend into the landscape. I should have known better...but thanks to the most detailed and comprehensive survey of British Muslim opinion yet conducted, we know that just isn't how it is".

More than 80 percent of Muslims surveyed said they felt British and were happy living here, yet conceded they were more likely to stay within their own communities, especially when it came to relationships.

The ICM figures reported that more than half mix with non-Muslims each day, normally through work or education, but one in five never enters a non-Muslim household.  Nearly three million Muslims currently call Britain home, half of whom were born abroad, whereas it is projected that at least six million will live in Britain by 2050. 

It is also worthy of note that a majority of educated Muslims abroad still favor the imposition of sharia law. Sierra Ray for the americanthinker.com closely examined this aspect earlier this year.

Ray started with providing some background. The primary concern is sharia law, and the sources of the concern are the massive levels of Muslim immigration that have been taking place and continue to accelerate, throughout the West.  Large numbers of immigrants are entering from Islamic states.

When Syrian refugees started to flood in, questions were raised about where the risks came from.  Young, single, uneducated men - it was said - were the only real demographic holding Islamist tendencies.  The rest, particularly educated individuals, it was claimed, posed a near nonexistent threat of seeking to impose sharia law on their adopted countries.

Ray asserts that that view was so naive, based on Pew's data which showed that whereas a higher level of education does lower the percentage of Muslims in major source immigration countries (e.g. Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria), a majority of educated Muslims in these nations still favors the imposition of Quran-based (aka sharia) law.

For example, in Turkey, only 45% of educated Muslims said "laws in our country should not be influenced by the teachings of the Quran," meaning that the remaining 55% favor the imposition of sharia in at least some form.

In Nigeria, the percentage of educated Muslims who are not willing to reject the imposition of sharia is 52%.  In Indonesia, it is 77%, and in Lebanon, it is 54%.  Over in Senegal, the number is 78%.

Ray argues that with such high percentages of educated Muslims apparently favoring sharia law in their home countries, it is exceedingly unlikely that the West would be taking in (i.e., selecting exclusively) only those Muslims who oppose a Qur'anic legal system.  

And if these individuals favor sharia law in their home countries, there is no reason why they wouldn't favor sharia law in their adopted nation.  In fact, the spread of sharia on the road toward the global caliphate may be exactly why they are emigrating.

Ray stated that there is no way around this problem other than severe or even total immigration restrictions based on religion, much as presidential candidate Donald Trump and others have argued for.  

Ray recommends some further measures: "For those already inside the West's boundaries, any and all forms of support for the imposition of sharia law should be considered as treason. 

It has been a long time since treasonous activities - which supersede any rights to freedom of religion - were prosecuted, and in a number of countries, the interpretation of treason has been greatly weakened to the point of near irrelevance.  Perhaps it is time to dust off and firm up those laws".

Indications are that the pro-Sharia view is popular virtually everywhere else in the Muslim world and its sphere of influence, and is the overriding identity factor for most Muslims as further polls attest.

A Breitbart.com article by Virginia Hale in May reported findings of a telephone survey of North Africans that was conducted in December 2015. The survey revealed that they identify as Muslim first, citizens second, and that only 39 percent of Egyptians condemn religious extremism.

The poll was conducted in December last year for the Arab Observatory of Religions and Freedoms (OARL) and the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation, surveying people in the five countries of North Africa: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

Except for Tunisia, people in the other North African nations said they feel predominantly Muslim rather than citizens of their country. Jeune Afrique comments that it is "as if belonging to Islam has replaced over time the Arab identity advocated by strong states such as Egypt".

 79 percent of Libyans believe Sharia should be the sole source of legislation as do 63 percent of Algerians, 60 percent of Egyptians, 55 percent of Moroccans with, again, the only notable exception being Tunisia at 23 percent.

Religious extremism is condemned by only 39 percent of Egyptians but is condemned by 83 percent of people in Tunisia. Perhaps unsurprising given the country experienced a terrorist attack last year which left 27 dead and inflicted serious damage on its tourism industry, one of the country's main sources of revenue.

Hale opines that the findings perhaps do not bode well for freedom of speech in Western European countries which have large, and growing Muslim populations. The poll also suggests such countries are on track to adopt Sharia law in the future if they continue on their current demographic course.

In the U.S, there is clearly cause for concern in this context. The Center for Security Policy in June of 2015 cited the outcome of a nationwide online survey of 600 Muslims living in the United States.

It found that a significant minority embraces the supremacist notions that could pose a threat to America's security and its constitutional form of government.

Overall, the survey, which was conducted by The Polling Company for the Center for Security Policy (CSP), suggested that a substantial number of Muslims living in the United States see the country very differently than does the population overall.   

A majority of those surveyed (51%) agreed that "Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Sharia."  When that question was put to the broader U.S. population, the overwhelming majority held that Sharia should not displace the U.S. Constitution (86% to 2%).

More than half (51%) of U.S. Muslims polled also believe either that they should have the choice of American or Sharia courts, or that they should have their own tribunals to apply Sharia. Only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts.

These notions were powerfully rejected by the broader population according to the Center's earlier national survey.  It found by a margin of 92%-2% that Muslims should be subject to the same courts as other citizens, rather than have their own courts and tribunals here in the U.S.

Even more troubling, is the fact that nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, "It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed."

By contrast, the broader survey found that a 63% majority of those sampled said that "the freedom to engage in expression that offends Muslims or anybody else is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and cannot be restricted."

Nearly one-fifth of Muslim respondents said that the use of violence in the United States is justified in order to make Sharia the law of the land in America. Center for Security Policy President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. observed, in part:

"It is incumbent on the many American Muslims who want neither to live under the brutal repression of Sharia nor to impose it on anybody else to work with the rest of us who revere and uphold the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution in protecting our nation against the Islamic supremacists and their jihad".