This Saturday (7th March), the One Law For All Campaign will be holding a demonstration in Trafalgar Square against the practicing of sharia law in the UK, followed by a march and a public meeting. Recently I met with Maryam Namazie, human rights activist and spokesperson for One Law For All, to find out more about the campaign and what it wants to achieve.

An edited transcript of the full interview is included below, but for those of you short of time and attention the key points that emerge from the discussion are as follows:

• Sharia law is already here. Quite apart from the 2007 creation of Muslim Arbitration Tribunals, unofficial sharia councils have been in operation since 1985 and claim to have decided several thousand family and matrimonial cases.
• Although supporters of sharia claim that it only operates where both parties freely agree to its jurisdiction, the One Law For All campaign disputes this. It contends that many muslim women are dissatisfied with the decisions made but are prevented from seeking redress in UK courts by ignorance, social pressure, or fear of condemnation and retribution.
• One Law For All says that the push to introduce sharia in the UK is a political and not a religious phenomenon; furthermore it is essential for the media and the public to make the distinction between Islamists and muslims.
• The campaign challenges supporters of citizenship rights, equality for women and the rights of minorities to get over the misconception that opposing sharia is racist or culturally insensitive. Rather, to accept sharia is to accept that muslim women and children should not receive, or should jump through hoops to receive, the same legal protections enjoyed by other UK citizens.

However, that's a pretty simple summary so I really recommend reading the interview in full.

Interview with Maryam Namazie of the One Law For All campaign, 20th February 2009.

Britcit: How is it that sharia is coming to the UK?

Maryam Namazie: I think actually sharia is here; it's not something that's coming or that's a (future) inevitability. In a sense, when the Archbishop of Canterbury said [that sharia law in Britian was inevitable] it was because it is actually here and has been here for many, many years. For example, the Sharia Councils have already tried, I think they say, about 7,000 cases and they have been going since the eighties, so it is a very different scenario to Canada, where it was something they were planning to do and it was stopped before it was implemented. Here it's actually being implemented.

Britcit: So the recent use of the Arbitration Act is not the start of sharia in the UK?

Maryam Namazie: Well no, I don't think so, there's disagreement on this. The thing about the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal is that they say they are using the Arbitration Act to get legal backing for what they're doing, but in reality the Arbitration Act does not allow for arbitration in family matters, so already they're not really supposed to be doing any of that stuff. Some people make a differentiation between the Arbitration Tribunals and the councils, because the Sharia councils that have actually been around since the eighties and have tried over 7,000 cases are a charity. They have been around for a long time and have even issued death fatwas.

Britcit: But these sharia councils, despite being around for a long time and having charitable status, have no legal power.

Maryam Namazie: Right, but I don't get why that's so important; I mean, I do get why that's important but I think that it's a mistake if we only focus on that, because in reality anything that the Arbitration Tribunals decide on would not get legal backing if it contradicts UK law. But the point is that for many of the people who go to these courts, that's the end of the road. So it's not like they are going to say: "Oh, I'm not really happy with the fact that I've been told it's ok that my marriage was arranged when I was 13 years old and I should stay in it, now let me go to a UK court and get my rights there." It's actually the end of the road for a lot of people.

Britcit: Why can't they simply seek redress in the UK courts?

Maryam Namazie: For many reasons. It could they don't know what their rights are, they might think that what these courts are doing is legal, or they don't want to be labelled as an apostate or someone who is transgressing roles and norms.

Britcit: So it is social pressures and consequences that prevent muslim women from equal access to justice?

Maryam Namazie: Yes, definitely. If you look at some of the statements that the group that was trying to introduce sharia courts in Canada made, they effectively said: "obviously it's voluntary, but if you choose not to go to these courts the you're not really a good muslim and you should be more worried about blasphemy and apostasy than whatever little civil matter it was that you were supposed to go to court for in the first place" and I think that's the general impression that people get. If we only foucs on the legal side then we are going to miss the fact that so many people are being judged, and their lives decided upon, in what are effectively courts to them even though it has no legal backing.

Britcit: So there are actually two distinct issues: the legal issues around using the Arbitration Act, but also this unseen pseudo-legal process going on in muslim communities?

Maryam Namazie: I think this is actually becoming an issue for activists and advocates, that they are getting so stuck on the legal issue that hey are not willing to say Sharia Councils need to be banned, because "that's a personal matter and it's got nothing to do with the Arbitration Act." I think we need to be very clear that it is important, and that even if it's a private council and not a legal court, it affects people's lives, it's a violation of their rights and we need to do something about it.

We are putting together a legal team, and basically a lot of the things that are being done, it seems not that they are illegal but that they're not legal either, and so we are trying to see if their are ways we can actually make them illegal, because that's part of the effort in law to change things to improve people's situations; to ban them from pretending they are legal courts or that they have legal legitimacy.

For example, one of the things they are not allowed to do is to intervene in criminal issues, but we know they have already tried criminal cases in the councils; and the Muslim Arbitration Tribunals have given their own statistics that they have intervened in six domestic violence cases -- now I know they don't think this is a crime, which is why they think they can go and intervene in it -- but in all six cases the women have dropped the charges the police and all the men have been sent on anger management courses. So it's going beyond the Arbitration Act.

Britcit: They're exceeding their bounds?

Maryam Namazie: Yes. They're not supposed to do family, they're not supposed to do criminal, yet they are.

Britcit: This whole dilemma comes from the difficulty we seem to have in balancing freedom of religion with citizenship rights and equality under the law. Where do you draw the line between private faith and public policy?

Maryam Namazie: People can believe in whatever they want, right, and even practice it to some extent, but there are limits. You might believe that women are inferior to you and that one who is disobedient should be beaten, but there are laws against it because there are limits especially when it comes to harm. I think that sharia law is a violation of people's rights and we need to think of it that way; I think it's wrong to think of it as some sort of cultural practice that's not harmful and that people can choose to do what they want in the same way that they can wear a sari if they want, or eat certain foods if they want. It's harmful. What it does is it redefines the status of women in society and it redefines the relationship between men and women, things that have been fought for and changed as a results of social movements.

Freedom of religion is not the same as freedom to a religious court. I think there is a distinction there.

Britcit: Yet when it comes to Islam it seems tricky to draw that distinction.

Maryam Namazie: But let's say you have the right to be a Christian; does that give you the right in Britain to live under canon law?

Britcit: No.

Maryam Namazie: Ok - but when it comes to Islam, suddenly there is a fine line, there's a question, do you know what I mean? It's very simple, I think, I don't see why it's so difficult to understand. We are going the wrong way when we talk about the right to religion because it sort of implies that women want to be unequal, they want these sharia courts, and here are all these westerners stopping them from achieving it. If you look at the evidence, for example Channel 4's Divorce - Sharia Style, there's a woman saying: "he's happy, his second wife's happy, what about me?" And this is something they allowed to be filmed because they think it was a perfectly good decision that they made: that's the outrage of it.

Or if you look at the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, they've done a report where they have interviewed 70-90 women who have accessed sharia courts and a majority weren't happy with the decision; and this includes decisions such as a 13-year-old who was forced into marriage who's been to three sharia councils and been told that her marriage is legal according to sharia. And the report blames foreign imams for this, as if sharia is radically different from place to place.

But there are so many women who are not happy with the situation and if we can give them an opportunity to come out and say that, given that it's now so impossible to criticise sharia how can women who are persecuted by it and feel victimised by it even come and say anything when the rest of us who do say something become pariahs.

Britcit: That's what's compunding the problem, isn't it? A reluctance to speak out against sharia for fear of muslim outrage?

Maryam Namazie: It's not muslim outrage, it's Islamist outrage; and I think we have to make that distinction, because a vast majority of muslims don't support Political Islam.

Britcit: Nevertheless that fear of offending people's religious views seems to be overwhelming the ability to make such a distinction.

Maryam Namazie: Right; but that's why I keep saying it because we have got to start making the distinction or you start blaming muslim immigration as Geert Wilders does, and the reality is that the right wing are making a grave mistake thinking this is an ideological battle, in the sense that we see really stupid petitions about banning the Koran or getting rid of muslims etc. And Christianity wasn't pushed back by banning the Bible, it was a political battle and this is a political movement and so obviously intellectuals and free thinkers should always fight against reactionary ideas, including religion. But the only way we can push back sharia and islamic schools and islamic terrorism is by a political battle -- that's why we need to focus our attention and our allies in this include muslims as they are very often at the front lines.

Britcit: What about the view that Islam is itself the problem? That even 'moderate' mulsims believe in the literal truth and unquestionable authority of the Koran?

Maryam Namazie: Yes, but that's Political Islam again. I think the 'moderate' Islam thing is a mistake. You can't have moderate religion unless you push it out of political power. The only way Christianity became moderate and stopped killing its apostates was when it was pushed back by the Enlightenment. I think it's a mistake to look for moderate Islamic voices. But I think that there is so much resistance against Political Islam in the countries that are deemed 'muslim countries' with a population that is deemed entirely muslim, for example in Iran there are Koran burnings at demonstrations and there are hijab burnings at demonstrations. Yet to criticise the hijab here is racist!

I was on a panel discussion in Sweden with a famous Syrian atheist and when the Swedes called his criticism of Islam racist, he said: "I've been arrested by the Syrian government, I've been tortured, I've been accused of warring against God, but 'racist'? I've never heard this in my life!"

There's so much of this going on -- because the whole debate is limited to this thing about racism, that we are attacking a personal right to religion -- it's not seeing the bigger picture, which is that it is a political battle against a political movement.

Britcit: Even 'moderate' religions (to use that term again) insist on some level of involvement in public life. Can religion ever be just a private matter?

Maryam Namazie: I really do think it needs to be a private matter, but there is a distinction even between the Beth Din and the sharia councils because sharia courts in this country are an appeasement of the Political Islamic movement. We are dealing with a different context, we are dealing with Islamic terrorism, we are dealing with Islamic states, we are dealing with a movement that actually stones people to death in the 21st century. So even though we are opposed to all religious tribunals because that's a minimum for secularism, when you talk about sharia courts we are talking about a political movement and not about people's right to religion.

Britcit: So sharia is an issue not just because it is faith-based, but because it is tied to a particularly strident form of faith?

Maryam Namazie: It's strident because it has political power. I understand that the Church of England still has some political power in this country, but it's been clipped. It doesn't have the power it had during the Inquisition; but we are living through an Islamic Inquisition now. So we can't compare the two because one represents a religion at full power and the other has limited power.

The debate has become about a religious private matter whereas it is a political issue. We all have the right and duty to intervene and have a say in how things happen and I don't think there's an undue burden on muslims. why should there be?

Britcit: Only, I suppose, because non-muslims are afraid of being labelled racist.

Maryam Namazie: Well, they need to get over it. That's not the problem of a poor muslim, like my father, who opposes the Political Islamic Movement. He has to come out vocally because people are uncomfortable? Get over it.

Britcit: How will that happen?

Maryam Namazie: Well, we (The One Law For All campaign) are key in this, I think. People who have experienced Islamic law and fled from it are key in because people do feel more comfortable to say it when they hear us saying it, and I think there is a reason why 9,000 people have signed our petition in two months, it's because it gives people courage.

Britcit: So, although I suspect I know your answer, you see no way whatsoever of integrating sharia into UK law?

Maryam Namazie: Well, sure, if you can integrate domestic violence and female genital mutilation and honour killings, great, integrate sharia as well. For me it just seems impossible.

Britcit: What about, for example, requiring sharia council members be justices of the peace?

Maryam Namazie: Oh, no. That would be such an outrage. I mean, seriously, that would be the institutionalisation of misogyny and discrimination.

Britcit: It would require a total transformation of sharia?

Maryam Namazie: But sharia is based on the Koran and the Hadith, it's always been there and won't change. I'm not sure how you can integrate it. The only way that Islam can become 'integrated' in the same way that Christianity is is to remove its political power, then it becomes a personal matter and if someone thinks that gays should be thrown off of mountains, who cares? We can just ignore them, as Richard Dawkins says. But when there's actually a leading political movement that does that when it's in power and is advocating it here, well that's a very different story.

Britcit: What do you think is likely to happen regarding sharia in the UK?

Maryam Namazie: Well, I think anything can happen. If we don't fight back, sharia can very well happen. So we've just got to not let it.

Britcit: What's the UK government's role been so far?

Maryam Namazie: I think the government's actually had a key role in promoting Political Islam and appeasing it. Again I think there's a mistake in their outlook. If you look at the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, they strengthened Political Islam. If you look at the Israeli offensive in Gaza, even though it caused short-term military damage, they were strengthened politically as a result. And I think the UK government's policies also strengthen the Political Islamic Movement. First of all, the distinction between the extremists and the so-called moderate islamists -- there's none really.

Britcit: I take it you believe there are muslims who are not Islamists?

Maryam Namazie: Muslims I do, yes, of course. I think that there are a lot of secularist muslims just as there are a lot of secularist christians.

Britcit: The One Law For All campaign emphasises that sharia discriminates against women and children - what about other vulnerable groups? Mentally-ill muslims, gay muslims?

Maryam Namazie: I'm sure if someone takes there son or daughter to these councils and says "They are gay, what can we do to them", there's definitely concern as to their well being. Or if they are apostates, there's a lot of people in hiding. For example, a woman came to me in a full burkha but she's an atheist and we helped her get away from her family and she's staying in a refuge now. There are so many instances like that where people have to pretend they're muslim and they're not necessarily. But the thing is, for now, because the sharia council are concentrating on civil matters it mainly relates to women and children because it's marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance cases.

Britcit: What is your campaign's main objective?

Maryam Namazie: To get rid of them (sharia courts).

Britcit: And what about other religious tribunals, e.g. Beth Din? If sharia goes, they will surely need to go too?

Maryam Namazie: I think they should. But I think it's not right anyway. For example, in Beth Din there's a lot of examples of what they call 'women in limbo'. Because they are not able to get their divoirce from the Beth Din, they are not able to marry again and so they are in limbo and cannot move on. If we look at the Canada experience, they got rid of [all religious courts] and I think it would be better if we just got rid of it all here too.

Britcit: Tell me about the March 7th event.

Maryam Namazie: People need to register for the public meeting, but the rally is free. It will be a good gauge as I think there is a lot of support for this campaign. There are people who feel scared to come to a demonstration liek this, so we are going to try in full control of it. We are not going to have any slogans, we are not going to be chanting, it's going to be mainly silent with some music. We want it to be very laid back and relaxed because this is going to be the first of many, many other protests that we are going to be organising. So we want the first to give the impression of something people can feel comfortable joining. But they need to join, because we are not going to get anywhere if we remain a small group. We have to become a mass movement, and I think we can.