Name: Lord Tebbit.
Age: 85 and loving it.
He was one of Margaret Thatcher’s favourite ministers, wasn’t he? That’s right. A tough and traditional rightwing Eurosceptic Tory.
They’re becoming fashionable again. So I hear. But Tebbit’s worried.
How so? We’re leaving the EU, and the Tories are a million points ahead in the polls. Yes but he has written in the Telegraph that he is worried about “the increasing proportion of our population who simply do not accept many basic assumptions about how [our] society should be organised”.
I agree. Recent attacks on the judges who ruled against the government on Brexit show a contempt for the rule of law which is the basis of British freedom. Ah, no. Those aren’t the people he was worried about.
Who then? It’s the Muslims.
Ah yes. “Until very recently in our society,” he says, “child marriage, bigamy, divorce at the will of the male partner, the imprisonment of wives at the will of their husband, female genital mutilation and abortion on the grounds of the sex of the unborn child were unacceptable and indeed criminal offences.”
Those things are all still unacceptable and are all still criminal offences. Perhaps Tebbit has got Britain confused with, ooh I don’t know, Sudan. I don’t think so. He says that British law is being challenged by “a rival legal system with its own courts such as that now represented by the network of sharia law”, and as a result “Islam challenges our way of life in our own country”. He also says political correctness stops “the establishment” from talking about it.
Is any of this true? Nope. There are some unofficial sharia “councils” around the UK, but they have no legal force. Some Muslims might decide to follow their rulings, just like a Christian couple might ask their priest what to do, or anyone might toss a coin. None of it is binding unless you also sign a contract to bind yourself under British law.
So the establishment isn’t talking about it, because it isn’t happening? Oh, the establishment is talking about it all right, because it’s such a popular myth. Theresa May launched a review into sharia law earlier this year.
Perhaps Lord Tebbit missed that? No doubt he did.
Do say: “That Judge Rinder, he’s a challenge to the supremacy of statute.”
Don’t say: “That Enoch Powell, he had the right idea.”
