.... And I'm absolutely sure that those councils are not all run by highly educated, moderate Muslims like him.
Most of them, according to Fiyaz Mughal, the Muslim director of an organisation called Faith Matters, are run by men over 60 who "don't have a clue what happens in life in this country" and "will give you an autocratic, dictatorial line".
Sharia, he told me, "was never meant to be an imposition on communities". Young Muslims, he said, need to be given the opportunity, "to revive the 500-year-old Muslim tradition of healthy debate".
God (or Allah, or whoever) only knows how we've got ourselves into this position, where a big chunk of our population waits for the edicts of men schooled in a medieval interpretation of a 1,500-year-old religion, with medieval views on freedom of expression, homosexuality and women's rights.
Some of it, clearly, is a result of a Labour government which thought it didn't matter what you believed as long as you were sincere, even if that sincere belief meant wanting you dead. [independent.co.uk] Read more
