More on the implications of “noble Islamic religious law”.  Via the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center:

The Hamas administration’s Legal Advise and Legislation Office in the Gaza Strip announced that, within its capacity as legislator, it was drafting penal codes according to the “noble Islamic religious law”. In a press release dated November 5 and published in the Hamas mouthpiece Felesteen (November 6), the office said that the bill included penal codes based on Quranic laws, punishments based on civil law, ransom, punishments that do not appear in the religious law and which are decided by the Hamas administration, imprisonment, fines, and confiscation. It also includes a separate chapter dealing with computer and Internet crime. After the bill is drawn, it will be submitted to the administration which will order the Hamas-controlled Legislative Council to approve it in accordance with legislative procedures (Felesteen, November 9)

2. According to the announcement, the bill includes a chapter which defines some 150 terms used in it. This is meant to make it easier for the Gaza Strip legal institutions to understand, implement, and locate the laws. The bill consists of 14 chapters and 220 clauses. There is a special chapter which renders obsolete the old penal codes. The new penal codes abolish Gaza Strip’s old penal codes (which date back to the British mandate in 1936), the Jordanian penal codes which are in force in the West Bank , as well as the Egyptian laws and Israeli military decrees.

Implications

3 . Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip marked the emergence of a radical Islamic political entity, which has some characteristics of a sovereign state. That entity is governed by Hamas, a movement which subscribes to a radical Islamic worldview and views internal and external terrorism and suppression as a means to achieve its goals. Hamas is closely related to Egypt ‘s Muslim Brotherhood and to Iran , a country with a radical Shi’ite Islamic regime. ¹

4. Since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip (June 2007), radical Islam has become the obligatory way of life, whose influence on the population’s daily lives just keeps getting bigger. The enforcement of radical Islamic codes on the population is already partially implemented by Hamas’s control over all political, social, educational, and religious systems whose activities have a significant impact on the prevailing ethos of the Gaza Strip (the education system, mosques, the da’wah infrastructure, the media). The enforcement of Islamic social codes on the population is mostly done by the Hamas interior security services, which also operate as a “moral police”. ² That activity has no legal basis, relying instead on Islamic religious law (s hari’ah ), giving it a clearly totalitarian nature despite the existence of allegedly democratic institutions.

5. Should it take place, the enforcement of Islamic penal codes, even if for the time being it will be integrated into civil law rather than replacing it, is yet another step in the Islamization process of the Gaza Strip. This step has numerous political and social consequences, and may completely change the way of life in the Gaza Strip, especially over the long term (combined with other Islamization measures taken by Hamas).

See this Information Bulletin: “Since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, it has intensified its activities to impose an Islamic social code. Hamas is careful not to represent it as a step toward establishing a radical Islamic state. The process is just beginning but indicates an increase in the Islamization of the Gaza Strip” ( August 31, 2008 ).

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