The Wrong Candidate

 You can often identify an extremist simply by spotting how bad they are at affecting to be reasonable.

​This week I came across one of those diversionary, bad-at-being-reasonable posts which in essence claimed that Sharia courts in the UK are no different from Jewish and Catholic equivalents, the inference being that if you specifically take issue with Muslim community tribunals, you are basically a xenophobe or a racist.

This one of those false-analogy / hidden straw man arguments so beloved of contemporary 'progressives', grounded in a misrepresentation of both the underlying situation and any apparent concern being voiced about it.

To illustrate how this is really an anxiety about potential variations of culture and not about religious affiliation or indeed the nature of such institutions, I will relate a story from the Maldives in the fifteenth century.

These islands in the Indian Ocean were then governed under an Islamic political entity which could broadly be described as colourful. A vibrant society to be sure.

In 1460 they had an unexpected visit from the period's most famed scholar-traveller, Tangier-born Ibn Battuta.

To the Maldivians this appeared like an unmissable opportunity. How could they not want this man of almost unparalleled learning and knowledge of the world from the university of medieval life to be their most senior judge in Male?

They hoped to sweeten the offer with gold, assorted jewels, an official horse and litter, high-status wives, even a bevy of young slave girls.

The itinerant Mahgrebi reluctantly accepted...and then the whippings, amputations, dress-code impositions and all-round clamp down on the community's sexual mores commenced.

The problem, if indeed it’s a problem that one divines here, wasn't the court, it was the judge. (Or maybe the human embodiment of certain interpretational tendencies.)