Sharia Law - Support

Support

A 2013 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that support for making sharia the official law of the land varies significantly among Muslims in different countries. In countries across South Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East-North Africa region, a majority favours making sharia their country’s official legal code. By contrast, only a minority of Muslims across Central Asia as well as Southern and Eastern Europe want sharia to be the official law of the land; among the surveyed countries outside of these regions, Lebanon, Chad, Guinea-Bissau and Tanzania also have a majority against the introduction of official sharia.

Since the 1970s, the Islamist movements have become prominent; their goals are the establishment of Islamic states and sharia not just within their own borders; their means are political in nature. The Islamist power base is the millions of poor, particularly urban poor moving into the cities from the countryside. They are not international in nature (one exception being the Muslim Brotherhood). Their rhetoric opposes western culture and western power. Political groups wishing to return to more traditional Islamic values are the source of threat to Turkey's secular government. These movements can be considered neo-Sharism.

Fundamentalists, wishing to return to basic religious values and law, have in some instances imposed harsh sharia punishments for crimes, curtailed civil rights, and violated human rights. These movements are most active in areas of the world where there was contact with Western colonial powers.

Extremists have used the Quran and their own particular version of sharia to justify acts of war and terror against Western individuals and governments, and also against other Muslims believed to have Western sympathies. Friction between the West and Islam, particularly with regard to the Palestinian question, continues to fuel this conflict.