Quote Originally Posted by Rhyfylwyr View Post
Yeah and the main point was that nobody was turning a blind eye to it. Muslims break the law, they are dealt with...
No, this instance the law got involved because it happened to a convert. That is, somebody who speaks the language, trusts the police, understands the system, is not socially vulnerable, does not feel socially obliged to a minority culture.



Sharia rocks the French and Italian legal system, two high profile cases:

France might not be the panacea either. Indeed in one very publicized case, last June, a French judge ruled in favor of a Muslim man who wanted the annulment of his marriage because his wife turned out not to be a virgin. What this decision amounted to was the endorsement of the repudiation concept. This decision triggered a huge outcry from politicians, and various organizations. In November, a French court of appeal overturned the decision. Interestingly, a large majority of French Muslims, about 80 percent are very secular and totally reject any kind of Sharia law being implemented in the homeland of human rights.
In Italy, three members of a Brescia-based Maghrebi family (father, mother and eldest son) were accused of beating up and sequestering their daughter/sister Fatima because she wanted to live a "Western" life.

In the first trial, the three were sentenced for sequestration and bad treatment. The court acknowledged that the teenager was "brutally beaten up" for having "dated" a non-Muslim and in general for "living a life not conforming with the culture" of her family. But on appeal, the family was acquitted because the court deemed that the young woman was beaten up for "her own good." The Bologna public prosecutor's office then disputed the acquittal of the three accused parties, but the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation dismissed it and ruled in favor of the charged parties.

Interestingly two Italian political leaders on the opposite side of the political spectrum, Isabella Bertolini, vice president of the MPs of the right-wing party Forza Italia, and Barbara Pollastrini, a post-communist former minister agreed to condemn the Supreme Court decision: "This verdict writes one of the darkest pages of history of the law in our country."
Isabella Bertolini was upset that the court "allied itself with radical Islam" and Barbara Pollastrini is pushing for parliament to pass as soon as possible a law condemning violence against women: "Now more than ever, it is urgent to defend the rights of a large number of immigrant women victims of an intolerable patriarchal culture."

Muslim women were quick to denounce the supreme court's decision. Among them, Souad Sbai, president of the Organization of Moroccan Women in Italy.