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European Court of Human Rights on Shariah Law: Difference between revisions
European Court of Human Rights on Shariah Law (view source)
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The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. On 1 November 1998 a full-time Court was established, replacing the original two-tier system of a part-time Commission and Court.}} | The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. On 1 November 1998 a full-time Court was established, replacing the original two-tier system of a part-time Commission and Court.}} | ||
{{Quote||As I do every year, I will tonight outline some of the main messages which emerge from | |||
our case-law over the past year. This year I shall talk about four cases. | |||
The first concerned the dissolution, by the Turkish Constitutional Court, of a political | |||
party, the Welfare Party, on the grounds that it wanted to introduce sharia law and a | |||
theocratic regime. A Grand Chamber of the Court found unanimously that there had been | |||
no violation of Article 11 of the Convention, which protects freedom of association. This | |||
case gave the Court the opportunity to conduct an in-depth analysis of the relationship | |||
between the Convention and democracy, political parties, and religion. | |||
In its judgment1 | |||
, the Court first noted that freedom of thought, of religion, of expression | |||
and of association as guaranteed by the Convention could not deprive the authorities of a | |||
State in which an association, through its activities, jeopardised that State’s institutions, of | |||
the right to protect those institutions. It necessarily followed that a political party whose | |||
leaders incited to violence or put forward a policy which failed to respect democracy or | |||
which was aimed at the destruction of democracy and the flouting of the rights and | |||
freedoms recognised in a democracy, could not lay claim to the Convention’s protection | |||
against penalties imposed on those grounds. Such penalties could even, where there was a | |||
sufficiently established and imminent danger for democracy, take the form of preventive | |||
intervention. | |||
Noting that the Welfare Party had pledged to set up a regime based on sharia law, the | |||
Court found that sharia was incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy as | |||
set forth in the Convention. It considered that “sharia, which faithfully reflects the dogmas | |||
and divine rules laid down by religion, is stable and invariable. Principles such as pluralism | |||
in the political sphere or the constant evolution of public freedoms have no place in it”. | |||
According to the Court, it was difficult to declare one’s respect for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting a regime based on sharia, which clearly diverged | |||
from Convention values, particularly with regard to its criminal law and criminal | |||
procedure, its rules on the legal status of women and the way it intervened in all spheres of | |||
private and public life in accordance with religious precepts. | |||
There is no doubt that this judgment is one of the major judgments of the Court in which | |||
it endeavours to define the shape and the boundaries of democracy and the rule of law. }} | |||
==See Also== | |||
* [[Library]] ''- WikiIslam's online library of books'' | |||
{{Hub4|Human Rights|Human Rights}} | |||
==External Links== | |||
==References== | |||
{{reflist}} | |||
{{page_title|European Court of Human Rights on Shari'ah Law}} | {{page_title|European Court of Human Rights on Shari'ah Law}} | ||