Ukip’s vow to beat extremism with Sharia Law and burka ban

UKIP has launched a campaign to ban Sharia Law in Britain as part of a package of policies to tackle Islamic extremism.

It came as leader Paul Nuttall confirmed he would make a decision on Friday over whether he would stand at the General Election.

Party donor Arron Banks had announced he would stand as a Ukip candidate in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex. But yesterday he said he had decided to pull out in favour of “hard-working local activists”.

Deputy leader Peter Whittle told reporters he thinks Mr Nuttall “will be running” for a Westminster seat.

At the launch, Ukip announced measures to fight Islamic extremism with a ban on the burka in public, a refusal to allow new Islamic faith schools and a call to prosecute the parents of young girls subjected to female genital mutilation.

Mr Nuttall said the plans will “promote integration” and he believed Ukip was “10 years ahead of our time” on the issues, predicting the Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats will be “where we are today at some point in the 2020s”.

Mr Nuttall said: “Today’s message will be a message of positivity, it will not be about negativity. What we will say today is not designed to sow the seeds of division. It is about promoting integration in British society.”

Mr Whittle insisted that Ukip was talking more frankly about cultural issues following the Brexit vote “because no other party will”.

He said: “[The other parties] occasionally bring it up, give it lip service, but do nothing about it. The biggest issues of our time are cultural ones, and I think that is now accepted across the board.”

He said it was “unacceptable” for communities to not abide by British law and use “parallel legal systems” in promising that the party will push for Sharia courts to be banned.

Ukip education spokesman David Kurten announced policies which included Muslim schools being taken over by the Department for Education and measures to stop children being exposed to extremist clerics.