[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]

In Europe, there has been a growing acceptance of Sharia, the holy law of Islam, which is being applied in European law courts when the parties are Muslim. More on this increasing imposition of Sharia can be found here: “Sharia has arrived in Europe: a new millet system,” by Giulio Meotti, Israel National News, August 24, 2025:

A Vienna court has ruled that a Sharia-based ruling is legally valid in Austria.

The case began when two Muslim men agreed that their dispute would be resolved by an Islamic arbitration panel. When a disagreement arose, the court ordered one of them to pay €320,000. The man refused, arguing that Sharia law is open to different interpretations and violates Austria’s fundamental values.

But the Vienna court rejected the appeal and ruled that Austrian law allows arbitration systems for private disputes, as long as the outcome does not violate Austria’s “fundamental legal values”. Essentially, parties can choose to be bound by 7th-century rules, as long as the final outcome does not violate Austrian law. (Note that historically, in countries where Jewish courts were and are allowed to hear litigation and pronounce verdicts, that was only if the verdicts did not contradict the country’s laws or they are wholly religious issues.)

Even though the Vienna ruling concerns economic cases, Muslims interpret it as yet another victory over the West, and rightly so.

The Vienna court insisted that the original agreement between the parties — two Muslim men — to be ruled by Sharia, could not be undone by one of the parties who was going to lose the case according to the Sharia, and suddenly insisted that applying the Sharia in this case would undermine the rule of Austrian law. Having initially agreed to the use of Sharia law, an Austrian court ruled that neither party could back out. It was an amazing spectacle: an Austrian court upholding the use of Sharia law in Austria.

And as the European Court of Human Rights has ruled, the attack on Islam falls outside the scope of free speech, convicting a Viennese woman who called Muhammad a pedophile because of his marriage to Aisha.

Verbal attacks on Islam, according to the European Court of Human Rights, are not protected as free speech. An Austrian woman, Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, who only stated a simple truth — that Aisha had been betrothed to Muhammad when she was six, and Muhammad “consummated” his marriage to her (that is, had sexual intercourse with her) when she was nine years old, and that in her view this constituted pedophilia, was for stating her opinion convicted of injuring the religious feelings of others, and given a fine of 480 euros. When she appealed the decision on the grounds that she was only exercising her right of free speech, the court rejected her argument, claiming that the right of free speech did not include the right to injure the religious feelings of others. Muslims had managed to impose on Europeans the laws against blasphemy that were enshrined in the Sharia.

The renowned English philosopher John Gray warns in the New Statesman that “in a generation or so, if current trends persist, Europe will have an Ottoman-style millet system in which different religious communities are governed by their own laws. A Europe with equal freedom for every religion, under a rule of law that applies to all, will soon be a distant memory.”

This is the profound significance of European courts endorsing Sharia law.

In England, dozens of “sharia councils” have existed for years, and even a Muslim Arbitration Tribunal officially recognized by the Arbitration Act of 1996, which allows civil disputes to be resolved based on Islamic law. The result has been the proliferation of a parallel Islamic justice system with one hundred courts.

Sharia law is used by German judges to rule on domestic conflicts….

But what happens when only one of the litigants is Muslim? Will the Sharia law then be applied in Germany to cases of family law in matters of divorce, inheritance, adoption? Setting up a parallel legal system — Sharia — to the Western legal framework will result in mass confusion as to which law will be applied, and when. Two legal systems are one too many.

Europe cannot tolerate a parallel legal system, the Sharia, to be applied when the litigants are Muslim. The Muslim migrants who now live in Europe, under a legal system very different from the Sharia, must be held to have agreed, as part of the unstated bargain that allows them to live in Europe, to be governed by that legal system instead of the Sharia. If this is something they cannot do, then they are free to leave — indeed, should be encouraged to leave, to return back to their Muslim countries of origin and the Sharia to which they are so attached.