To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice. - Magna Carta (1215)

Britain's Daily Mail reports that "...sharia law already operates in Britain." The report describes a case in which a Somali living in Woolwich responded to a coworker's verbal taunts and threats by cracking his skull with an iron bar. As any good law abiding citizens should, the local Somali elders convened their court and meted out an appropriate (in their estimation) punishment: an apology by the assailant's family and the payment of a "fine" of £10,000 (about $20,000). This was done in the victim's hospital room, where he was asked "if there was any way we could keep this out of the police's hands and he accepted."

According to the report, this is the established pattern of "justice" in the sharia court. "For no matter how grave the charge, the cases always end with an apology and financial compensation for the victim's injuries. The guilty are neither imprisoned nor punished in any other accepted way. There are no records of their crime and the only sanction is the shame they bring upon themselves and their family." Shame on the British if they allow this parallel "justice" system to stand!

Immigration without assimilation equals invasion. In a civilized nation, no one is above the law of the land. If people want to order their lives by the law of their faith, well and good, but the must still function within the judicial system common to all citizens. If people are allowed to skirt due process by doling out humble apologies and handsome sums of hush money, a wedge is being driven into the nation that threatens to split that mighty oak at the root.

In the past month, a citizen of the UK related to me how there were neighborhoods in many of their metropolitan cities in which British folk were clearly unwelcome. This was a first-hand report of the division that is already taking place in that venerable nation. We in America uphold "liberty and justice for all" because we learned it from our former homeland:

All these customs and liberties that we have granted shall be observed in our kingdom in so far as concerns our own relations with our subjects. Let all men of our kingdom, whether clergy or laymen, observe them similarly in their relations with their own men. - Magna Carta (1215)

After almost eight centuries, sound judgment still.

Pressly