English Responses to Shariah Tribunals:A Critical Assessment of Populist Attitudes towards Islamic Law

Abstract

Whilst the literature on populism spans almost every conceivable discipline, the study of its relationship with religion remains exceptionally sparse. This paper seeks to fill an important gap in the literature and significantly enrich the study of populism by directly addressing the way in which religion impacts upon and is connected with populist movements. It does so by addressing a particularly illuminating case-study of populist attitudes toward Islamic law in Europe, namely the English public's response toward the formation of Shariah tribunals. As this paper shall show, the populist depiction of Shariah tribunals forced the UK government to dramatically alter its stance toward such tribunals, by framing the formation of Shariah tribunals as a malign and subversive attempt by a religious fundamentalist lobby at annexing the jurisdiction of the state legal system and imposing religious law by stealth.