In this guest post, Russell Sandberg discusses the latest Resolution on sharia by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

On 22 January 2019, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe agreed the text of Resolution 2253: Sharia, the Cairo Declaration and the European Convention on Human Rights. The Resolution reiterates the obligations found in Article 9 ECHR and the Assembly’s “support for the principle of the separation of State and religion” (para 3) – which, in itself, ignores the fact that several members of the Council of Europe have state Churches and is based more on notions of laïcité than on the observable facts in countries such as England, Denmark and Finland. Unfortunately, this confusion and simplification set the tone for what is to come.

The Resolution focuses on two issues. Continue reading →