When I walked into Bromley Crown Court last year to prosecute a woman charged with assault, I thought it would be a straightforward case. I didn't expect it would crystallise for me just how far our justice system has drifted from its principles.
The defendant appeared in a full burka, her face, head, and body completely covered. As a Muslim myself, I know that in many Islamic countries, the burka isn't permitted in court, while British courts demand that even hats be removed. Yet here we were, unable to see the person in the dock.
I asked the judge to order her to uncover. The judge refused. She said it was the woman's 'religious right'.
That was the moment I realised something had gone badly wrong. The principle of open justice – that it must not only be done, but be seen to be done – was set aside. Instead, the system bent over backwards to avoid 'offence'.
On Tuesday, President Trump stood in front of the UN General Assembly in New York and issued a chilling warning: 'I look at London,' he declared, 'where you have a terrible mayor, and it's been changed, so changed. Now they want to go to Sharia law.'
The words might have caused consternation among the hundreds of international delegates as well as Mayor Sadiq Khan himself, but as a proud Londoner, I wasn't in the least bit surprised. The uncomfortable truth is that Trump is right: Britain has allowed a shadow system to exist alongside our own courts. Sharia councils – there are thought to be around 85 across the country – claim to be nothing more than 'mediation' services for Muslim family disputes.
But the evidence tells a darker story. The veteran cross–bench peer Baroness Cox, as long ago as 2017, warned that Sharia councils were evolving into 'a parallel quasi–legal system'.
A 2018 Home Office review found shocking examples of women being pressured back into abusive marriages, denied divorces and treated as second–class participants.
One woman, known as Ayesha, told the review how a Sharia council refused her a divorce, despite the fact that her husband had physically assaulted her while she was pregnant and tried to throw their child out of a window. The Conservatives commissioned that 2018 review. They had the evidence in their hands. And what did they do? They shelved it – too afraid of being called intolerant to stand up for women.
Labour are making it worse. Last week, Minister for Courts Sarah Sackman defended Sharia councils in the name of 'religious tolerance'. Labour's Barry Gardiner – the MP for Brent West in London – told me directly, in a debate on GB News, that he'd support Sharia law so long as it stayed 'within mosques and communities'.
But the moment you say one group can 'govern themselves', then, as a Crown Prosecutor let me tell you, you have abandoned the principle of one law for all.
Doing so tells Muslim communities they can all but opt out of the law of the land. It leaves vulnerable people, especially women and children, trapped in systems where their testimony is worth less and their protections vanish. No government that truly believes in fairness would accept two conflicting legal systems. But both Labour and the Conservatives have – one through endorsement, the other rank cowardice.
Critics will say that different systems of law already exist in the UK – canon law in the Church of England, and Beth Din in Jewish communities.
But both operate under the Arbitration Act 1996, meaning their rulings can be enforced by the courts only if both parties freely agree, and they must always comply with British law. Sharia councils routinely fall short of these standards. Let's stop pretending. These Islamic courts are not harmless cultural spaces. They deny women their rights under British law. And if saying this offends some people, so be it. Because the first duty of government is to treat all its citizens equally.
Worse still, Labour is now promising new 'Islamophobia laws' that risk criminalising anyone who dares to criticise that religion, as I am doing now. An article like this, which argues for equality under British law, could be branded a hate crime. That is not tolerance. That is censorship.
The consequences of this capitulation are already visible. Look at the ugly incident outside the Turkish embassy in London earlier this year when Hamit Coskun, who is half Kurdish and half Armenian, burned a Quran in protest against Islam. Moussa Kadri, emerged from a nearby building and slashed at him with a bread knife, shouting: 'I'm going to kill you.' He walked away with a suspended sentence. In any other case, the outcome would have been custody. But because the context was 'sensitive,' the courts looked away. His victim, meanwhile, is living in hiding after threats to his life.
This sends a clear, dangerous message: if you invoke the religion of Islam, you can pick up a knife, make threats, slash at another person and still avoid prison. Remember the religious studies teacher from Batley Grammar School who showed a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in a classroom in 2021? He was forced into hiding (where he still is) after a baying mob threatened his life. Meanwhile, the school apologised to those he had 'offended'.
Last year, an independent review found the teacher was 'let down' by the school, the council and police – but too late. A life ruined because Britain no longer defends the principle of free expression.
Or how about the Wakefield schoolboy accused of a 'hate incident' after scuffing a copy of the Quran in 2023? The 14–year–old, who is reportedly autistic, received death threats before police concluded no crime had been committed. This is how freedom is lost and a parallel legal system such as Sharia law begins: not all at once, but through a series of small surrenders, each dressed up as 'tolerance', each diminishing the neutrality of our institutions.
And who pays the price? Citizens who dare to speak up against injustice, only to be branded as 'racists'. Victims who see their attackers walk free because the courts are too timid to apply the law evenly. Vulnerable women pressured to stay in marriages they want to escape. I no longer believe the law is serving us all equally.
Too many politicians treat this as a problem to tiptoe around. Too many judges prefer not to offend. Too many in the media stay silent. But silence is complicity.
If we are serious about integration, then we must be serious about one law for all. Sharia councils have no place in a Britain that values women's rights, free speech and equal justice.
Will my children inherit a Britain where speaking the truth about rape gangs, religious intimidation, or parallel systems of 'justice' gets you branded a bigot or arrested? Or a Britain confident enough to say: we have one law, and it applies equally to every man and woman, regardless of faith?
Britain is and must remain the country of equal justice, free speech, and one law for all. Anything less is a betrayal.
Laila Cunningham is a criminal lawyer and Reform Westminster City Councillor
