Does Sharia law have an influence in Scotland?

Amidst the UK’s raging culture war and increasingly polarised debate about immigration, claims about “sharia law” are a permanent feature. 

Last year Reform UK councillor Audrey Dempsey caused controversy after claiming sharia law was an attempt by migrants to threaten the British “way of life”. 

She is not alone. Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick called for an end to sharia courts while he was shadow justice secretary for the Conservative Party, and tens of thousands have signed petitions calling for sharia law to be banned in the UK. 

Polling in 2024 by the anti-racism charity Hope Not Hate found 37 per cent of people believed that areas of Britain are under the control of sharia law.

But what’s the reality of the situation? What exactly is sharia law and how does it operate in practice? In our latest De-noiser, The Ferret has taken a deep dive into the issue.

What is sharia law?

The word sharia – derived from the Quran, Islam's holy book – is an all-encompassing term which includes Islamic worship, religious observances such as fasting and prayer, and ritual practices such as halal slaughter. 

In Arabic, sharia literally means "the clear, well-trodden path to water" and it can inform every aspect of daily life for a Muslim.

Sharia law is “written jurisprudence and law developed on the basis of a diversity of opinions among jurists in the classical period of Islam”. Effectively Islamic law, its rulings are still observed by Muslims, mostly concerning marriage and divorce. 

There are five different schools of Islamic law including four Sunni schools: Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanafi, and one Shia school, Jaafari. These five differ in how literally they interpret the texts from which sharia law is derived.

Are there dozens of UK “sharia courts” and is sharia law misused?

In 2016, following calls for “sharia courts” to be banned, Mona Siddique OBE, then a professor of Islamic and interreligious studies at Edinburgh university, was asked by the UK government to review sharia law, focusing on England and Wales. 

Siddique found there were between 30 and 85 sharia councils operating down south, describing them as a “voluntary local association of scholars who see themselves or are seen by their communities as authorised to offer advice to Muslims principally in the field of religious marriage and divorce”. 

There are common misconceptions around sharia councils, she concluded, particularly the use of “incorrect terms” by the media such as referring to them as “courts” rather than councils. It is this misrepresentation of sharia councils as courts, she argued, that “leads to public misconceptions over the primacy of sharia over domestic law and concerns of a parallel legal system”.

She concluded that proposals for a ban on sharia councils would not end the “demand”, saying they were “fulfilling a need in some Muslim communities”. If sharia councils were banned and closed down, she feared they could go ‘underground’, making it “even harder to ensure good practice”.

How does sharia law work in Scotland?

Sharia law does not have legal jurisdiction in Scotland, and it is not part of the Scottish legal system. Scotland operates under a single legal system, and all residents are subject to Scots civil and criminal law.

Sharia law’s focus is family law, mostly religious marriages and mediation when relationships break down, or divorce. Muslim couples getting married in Scotland can do so by the religious ceremony of “Nikah” under sharia law, but to ensure the marriage is legally recognised under Scots law, many carry out a religious ceremony and civil marriage at the same time. 

Khalda Wali, a female Muslim solicitor in Glasgow, said councils “play an important role for Scottish Muslims and complement the civil legal system”. They do not deal with child custody or contact disputes, nor financial or property matters.  

“Many mosques encourage couples to hold the religious ceremony and obtain the necessary documents from the civil registrar so that the marriage which takes place is recognised and registered,” said Wali. “Once the religious vows are taken, the couple then sign the civil marriage documents and have these registered. This gives proper and full legal effect of a civil marriage under Scots law as well as Islam.”

How many sharia councils are there in Scotland?

There is one council in Scotland – Islamic Sharia Scotland Council. The council's Mufti Zoheeb told The Ferret that its main aim is to assist women who are experiencing physical or mental abuse from their partners.

He said: “Just as many Muslim couples have both a civil marriage and an Islamic marriage conducted in a mosque, the same distinction can apply when a civil divorce takes place. In some cases, men may continue to hold their former partners accountable on the basis of the Islamic marriage. 

“This is where we step in. We review the client’s documentation and circumstances, and where there has been a civil divorce, or where there is evidence of mental or physical abuse, we can proceed with an Islamic annulment. Our primary focus is therefore on matters of religious divorce, though we also play a limited role in mediation between couples where appropriate.”

Zoheeb said that before making any decisions or offering advice, the council ensures that its processes and actions align with Scottish law. 

In 2025, the council completed a total of 67 divorce cases.

Do other religious courts operate in Scotland and what are their roles?

There are Jewish courts called Beth Din which can issue a Get – a document which grants a Jewish couple’s religious divorce, and there are Catholic tribunals which deal with marriage nullity. 

As with Islamic councils, Jewish Beth Din and Catholic tribunals are unofficial bodies with no legal standing.

Is there a need for reform in sharia councils?

Professor Siddique recommended changes to the law to ensure “that civil marriages are conducted before or at the same time as the Islamic marriage ceremony, bringing Islamic marriage in line with Christian and Jewish marriage in the eyes of the law. She called for “awareness campaigns” and the regulation of sharia councils.

“The panel believes that some degree of regulation is required to achieve that response,” the review said. “This approach is essentially procedural rather than substantive. It is designed to preserve the right of women to seek a religious divorce without risking exposure to discriminatory practices. It is to be noted that in speaking with the sharia councils, none were opposed to some form of regulation and some positively welcomed it.”

Khalda Wali said there are no female members of any sharia councils and this needs to change. “There are many female sharia scholars in Scotland. The involvement of female members would certainly bring a fresh outlook which would be welcome,” she added. “The difficulty also is the lack of uniformity or structure in the local mosques for giving clear guidance or advice. Each mosque has its own procedure and each imam gives his own advice. There is no register of imams and no regulation of them.”

She also said that councils need to “recognise the changing environment in which they exist, and adapt to ensure they remain relevant to Scottish Muslims and their increasingly diverse ways”. 

Muslim women and Islamic law

Last year, two academics at Glasgow University – Dr Rosemary Elliot and Dr Nughmana Mirza –  conducted a pilot project with eight Muslim women to understand the relationship between Scottish civil law and Islamic law in cases of divorce.

In an article for the Law Society of Scotland’s Journal, they said the women faced problems, despite all having a marriage registered in law. Interviewees claimed the religious divorce was done with a “lack of consultation and support, within a context of community stigma towards being divorced”. 

The interviews were carried out prior to the creation of a sharia council in Scotland, the academics noted, and in some cases women seeking divorce from abusive husbands had to travel to England. “It remains to be seen how the advent of a sharia council in Scotland changes the experiences of religious divorce for Muslim women,” the academics wrote.

Several common themes emerged which, they said, “spoke to some of the problems and inequalities that participants faced”, despite all having a marriage registered in law.

They added: “We found that the women we interviewed had to engage in two divorce processes – religious and civil – where the withholding of divorce, financial exhaustion and the need to formally agree child arrangements exacerbated existing forms of coercive control.”

Do sharia law decisions have any legal standing?

Last September Sarah Pochin, a Reform MP in England who has called for the closure of “sharia courts”, asked Sarah Sackman MP, the secretary state for justice, if she recognised “sharia law and sharia courts in the United Kingdom”. 

Sackman replied: “Sharia law forms no part of the law of England and Wales, but where people choose to put themselves before those councils – in common with Christian, Jewish and other courts of faith – that is part of religious tolerance which is an important British value.”

Professor Siddique, now at King’s College, London, said sharia councils have no legal status and no legal binding authority under civil law.

“Whilst sharia is a source of guidance for many Muslims, sharia councils have no legal jurisdiction in England and Wales,” she wrote. “Thus if any decisions or recommendations are made by a sharia council that are inconsistent with domestic law (including equality policies such as the Equality Act 2010) domestic law will prevail. Sharia councils will be acting illegally should they seek to exclude domestic law.”

Mufti Zoheeb, of the Islamic Sharia Council Scotland, told The Ferret: “Before making any decisions or offering advice, we ensure that our processes and actions align with Scottish law.”