Among all the countries of Europe, it is Germany that has accepted the most refugees from the war-torn countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Millions fled from Syria, where a civil war has raged for five years now. Many others came from northern Iraq where, to this day, fighting rages around the city of Mosul between jihadist forces of the Islamic State and Iraqis with their Kurdish allies.
Germany is now facing problems related to its acceptance of nearly a million asylum seekers, with religious and cultural practices that conflict with those of their host country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, campaigning for reelection, has found it necessary to allay the fears of her constituents by assuring that the Shariah Law of the Muslims will never replace German justice anywhere in the country. She supported a ban on full-face veils as practiced by some Muslim women. She added that Germany will now be more cautious in welcoming immigrants in the future.
The other countries of Europe have long resisted the influx of refugees from the Middle East. The United States too has not been as welcoming to them as Germany. With the election of Donald Trump as president, the doors may just be shut. Among Trump’s campaign pledges was that he would ban all Muslim immigrants, especially those coming from “terrorist states” like Syria, Iran, and the Philippines.
Trump’s mention of the Philippines arises from reports, widely spread abroad, of the kidnapping and beheading of foreign hostages by the Abu Sayyaf and the Maute in Mindanao. Before that, there were the battles between Philippine government forces and the two major Muslim combat groups – the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Muslim separatists seek to return the country to the age before Spanish Catholic colonization began in 1565. Two hundred years before the Spaniards, Islamic missionaries had come to the Philippines and the Islamic faith had spread widely in Mindanao. After the Spaniards, the Americans continued foreign domination of the country, which ended only with Philippine independence in 1946.
In 1977, President Ferdinand Marcos issued Presidential Decree 1083, a Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines, establishing a Muslim legal system in Filipino Muslim communities. Today there are Shariah district and circuit courts, mostly in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. Islamic law also applies to civil cases involving all Muslims nationwide through civil courts under a session from the five Shariah district courts.
Many nations have long shared the same concerns and problems. Germany today is rejecting the Shariah system of justice proposed for its nearly one million Muslim refugees. The Philippines, which is now mostly Christian, faced and acted on this matter as early as 1977, when President Marcos established Shariah courts for Muslims in the country.