No evidence for Donald Trump’s claim about Sharia law in London

Addressing the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said: “I look at London—where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor—it’s been so changed. Now they want to go to Sharia law. But you’re in a different country, you can’t do that.”

Exactly what Mr Trump meant by his comments—and who “they” refers to—isn’t entirely clear. (Some reports have suggested he was claiming the Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan wants to introduce Sharia law, while others have said he was referring to the city as a whole.)

But there is absolutely no evidence that either Sir Sadiq or London as a city wants to introduce Sharia law.

Sharia generally refers to a system of guidance based on Islamic principles and teachings and some Sharia councils do operate in the UK, but the government has said they have no legal status, and there has been no suggestion that that could change.

In a response published on X, health secretary Wes Streeting wrote: “Sadiq Khan is not trying to impose Sharia Law on London.”

A spokesperson for the Mayor said: “We are not going to dignify his appalling and bigoted comments with a response.” We have contacted the White House for comment.

What do we know about Sharia law in the UK?

Sharia councils, also known as Sharia courts, have existed in the UK since the early 1980s.

They typically involve a group of local religious scholars who advise on issues principally relating to Islamic marriage and divorce. A 2018 Home Office review of Sharia law in the UK stated that these councils have “no legal status and no legal binding authority under civil law”. The issue was raised again in Parliament last week, when the government stated that “Sharia law forms no part of the law of England and Wales”.

We’ve previously written more about how Sharia courts work and the powers they have.

Mr Trump’s comments about Sharia law came in a part of his speech which talked more generally about the impact of immigration on Europe, and it’s possible he was intending to suggest more broadly that there is overall support for the introduction of Sharia law in London.

But we’ve found no reliable evidence to support this either.

A number of media reports in the past year have looked at Sharia councils operating in the UK, and the Standard suggested in April that there has been a “surge” in “back-room”, or unofficial, Sharia councils, but it didn’t provide specific figures.

In general hard data on the prevalence of Sharia councils and support for Sharia law in the UK is limited. The 2018 Home Office review estimated that there were between 30 and 85 such councils in England and Wales and said there was “anecdotal evidence” the number had increased in recent years. But as there is no official register of Sharia councils the true number is uncertain, and we’ve not found any more recent reliable estimates.

A survey carried out by polling firm J L Partners last year found that 32% of British Muslims and 9% of the general public believed that the implementation of Sharia law in the UK in the next 20 years would be very or somewhat desirable.

Other claims

We have looked at other claims about Sharia law in the UK before, and in 2020 other fact checkers debunked claims circulating on social media which appeared to falsely suggest that Sir Sadiq had said Sharia law was being trialled in three London boroughs.

We have also previously checked a number of false claims about the mayor of London, including that he said people should learn Arabic to create harmony and that he was building 40,000 Muslim-only homes in the capital.