For Example
A little more about that meeting and press conference at the UN last week. It’s interesting that one of the available articles is from the CBC – the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – since Canada has some ‘issues’ itself on this stuff, as regular readers of B&W know. Homa Arjomand has been working tirelessly to oppose the introduction of Sharia law in Ontario, but Ontario in its wisdom has not changed its decision. Ontario should have been at the UN last Monday. Ontario needs to pay attention.
Hirsi Ali, a Somali immigrant who has become a prominent women’s advocate in the Dutch parliament, said European countries have to accept that women are more threatened within Muslim communities than in their wider secular societies. Governments must take measures to protect these vulnerable women, even if such action is deemed culturally insensitive to the Islamic community or leads to accusations of anti-Muslim bias, she said. “If you look at the women’s shelters in the Netherlands, the majority of the victims are women from non-Western countries and the majority of them are Muslim women,” she said. “Liberal democratic governments are not interfering because they argue that that’s their culture,” she added.
And if they’re Ontario they go beyond not interfering, and actually help. Not clever. Not even all that culturally sensitive, really. Culturally sensitive toward fundamentalists who want to push women around, but damn insensitive toward the women who don’t want to be pushed. Odd to take the side of the former rather than the latter, isn’t it.
Respecting cultural diversity is really a form of “upside-down racism,” preventing immigrant women from enjoying the same freedom and protection as native European women, said Iranian activist Azam Kamguian. While Europe pays lip service to universal human rights, it is in reality “bribing Islamic countries and Islamists to give up terrorism and then saying the rest is OK,” Kamguian said. By turning a blind eye to Islam’s hostility toward homosexuality and Jews, European governments are buying “a one-way ticket to the Middle Ages,” Hirsi Ali said.
And they don’t even get frequent flier miles. Not clever and not even smart shopping.
Homa gives an example.
In communities where Sharia law interferes with people’s lives, family problems are not simply disagreements between a man and a woman and who gets what. In fact, private matters and religion are closely linked together. To make my point clear, I would like to present one case study I have come across in my social work. I have a client in Toronto who was taken out of school by her parents at the age of 15 and forced to marry a 29 year old man; according to Sharia, she is married whilst under the Canadian legal system she is not. At the age of 16, this young pregnant girl is going through separation because of domestic abuse. In a secular court, the fact that she was forced to marry at a young age is considered a crime and her husband will be charged for assault and child abuse. As for her parents, they too will be charged. The Children’s Aid Society will get involved and if they have any other children younger than 16, all will be moved out to the Aid Society’s care. While in the eyes of the Sharia tribunal no crime has taken place and the matter is a civil one, which can be resolved by the Islamic tribunal, under the modern secular system of Canada, the child will be immediately protected and the abusers prosecuted.
Cultural sensitivity, eh?
Hey! Bigoted, maniacal fundies are people too, you know. Why can’t you respect their sincere, deeply-held faith? Why must you keep harping on this oppression of women thing? Anyway, women are only, what, 51% of the population? What about the other 49%, huh? If we don’t get diligent and proactive, these ancient, irreplaceable religious traditions may vanish forever. And it’ll be all your fault.
I know, I know, I’m sorry. And there are all those mothers-in-law, too, who are just desperate to pass on to their daughters-in-law what was passed on to them. You’re quite right; I’ll give it all up. The peace and harmony of the world depends on 15-year-old girls being yanked out of school to be married to abusive men twice their age. Yes indeed.
I don’t see how the introduction of voluntary Sharia arbitration in Ontario is such a big deal. As I understand it, it’s only for civil cases (not criminal), and both defendant and prosecutor have to agree to it in order for a case to be tried under it.
Eugene Volokh had a post to this effect a while back: http://volokh.com/2003_11_23_volokh_archive.html#106999686027106312
So the girl described by Homa wouldn’t be much if at all affected by this. What her parents and “husband” did is still illegal under Canadian criminal law. And if she wants to add civil suits to the criminal ones all she has to do is not say she wants them arbitrated by Islamic law.
Now, if Sharia arbitration was required when Muslims were involved, or people had to face criminal charges under Sharia, that would be wrong. But to say there’s a splippery slope from this to that seems a bit much.
But it’s not voluntary if a woman is, say, threatened or dominated by a man, and that situation is not exactly rare. It may be voluntary for the man but not for the woman. And don’t think she can just walk out any old time, especially not if she’s a recent immigrant who doesn’t know the language and is completely dependent on her husband.
And then, voluntariness is not necessarily good enough. You can’t voluntarily sell yourself into slavery, for instance. If the laws are bad laws, then Ontario has no business allowing them.
As for Volokh – he’s the guy who thinks publicly torturing a murderer to death is a good thing. Who cares what he says?
Furthermore…
“And if she wants to add civil suits to the criminal ones all she has to do is not say she wants them arbitrated by Islamic law.”
She’s sixteen, pregnant, involuntarily married. What do you mean, “all she has to do is not say” – how, when, to whom, under what circumstances? What makes you think she is free to do any of that? Have you never, for instance, heard of ‘honour killings’? Women with fundamentalist Muslim male relatives are not safe. They can’t just stroll out the door.
Sorry, I didn’t say that properly. I meant that in order for state-recognized Sharia to affect her, she would have to file civil suit (or, I guess, have a civil suit filed against her) and agree to it being handled by Sharia law. If she doesn’t agree, it doesn’t hold.
Even if she did agree to Sharia, if the tribunal’s ruling violates secular law (by requiring her to be killed, enslaved, or remain forcibly married), then it isn’t binding even if both parties volunteered.
She’s sixteen, pregnant, and involuntarily married, and that’s horrible, but she would be in the same situation whether or not Ontario recognized Sharia arbitration. She may face reprisal from relatives, but she’ll face that whether or not Canada recognizes Sharia arbitration. What has happened to her is a separate issue.
If she’s a recent immigrant who doesn’t know the language and is completely dependent on her husband, it doesn’t matter whether Sharia arbitration is legal or not because his husband would isolate her from the legal system either way.
The situation of oppressed immigrant women is a big problem, but the reaction against this limited Sharia arbitration strikes me as barking up the wrong tree.
As for Eugene Volokh, I was just citing him for his legal knowledge, not his moral judgment.
A curious argument, Philip. It’s OK to introduce ill-thought out and potentially prejudicial laws because, hey, people will do bad things even if we don’t.
I find this quote interesting ‘Respecting cultural diversity is really a form of “upside-down racism,” ‘.
To me there has always seemed to be a great deal in common between ‘muliticulturalism’, ‘cultural diversity’ or whatever it is called these days and that once-great enemy of the ‘progressive-left’ – or whatever they call themselves these days – apartheid.
Both seem more interested in keeping peaople apart than in bringing them together.
PM “they are rare occurences, and are investigated by the police like any other crime.” Unless the victim and perpetrators extract themselves from the UK to say, Pakistan, where the authorities may or may not choose to completely ignore the pleas for assistance from e.g Scotland Yard. I have personal knowledge of four murder suspects vanishing from the Midlands in the UK, via Leicester to Pakistan. The County police & CID hit a stone wall when they came to requesting cooperation in extradition for a UK trial; the response was that suspects had vanished, and that was all there was to it. It may be rare, but getting back to the initial point – legitimising in law the concept of ownership of a human being is not a healthy step for a modern secular democracy.
“Unless the victim and perpetrators extract themselves from the UK to say, Pakistan, where the authorities may or may not choose to completely ignore the pleas for assistance from e.g Scotland Yard.”
Escaping to another jurisidiction, who are less than willing to help, is a problem in more than just cases involving Muslims! Perhaps the lack of an extradition agreement with Pakistan has more to do with it?
“To me there has always seemed to be a great deal in common between ‘muliticulturalism’, ‘cultural diversity’ or whatever it is called these days and that once-great enemy of the ‘progressive-left’ – or whatever they call themselves these days – apartheid.”
Exactly. And the consequences in many cases are every bit as progressive and inspiring as apartheid was.
“such action is deemed culturally insensitive … ” In other words, it hurts people’s feelings. How can we convince people that this kind of offense-taking is [1] miniscule in importance compared to the hurt of, say, rape; and [2] usually not any kind of hurt at all, but merely an attempt by those in power to stay in power. They hide behind their holy books and pretend to be following some idea of “duty” but this is a lie. What does the subjugation of women have to do with *religion* (if there is such a thing)? Nothing. The subjugation of Muslim women is convenient for Muslim men, that’s why it persists. We have to keep reminding ourselves that if there are no gods, then all appeals to the policies of those gods are bullshit. They don’t have any preferences, because they aren’t there. I’m getting mad as hell and I think that those of us who understand that there are no gods should stop letting people getting away with blaming their atrocities on divine guidance. God didn’t ask them to do it. There is no such god, so he can’t tell you what to do. There is no such god, so he has no opinion on what people should do. There is no such god, so talking about him is ALWAYS a COVER for some ulterior motive. GRRRR!
“I think that those of us who understand that there are no gods should stop letting people getting away with blaming their atrocities on divine guidance.”
Yup – that is certainly my policy.
Is no one going to hold Mr. Brooks accountable for this bit of nonsense? “As for Eugene Volokh, I was just citing him for his legal knowledge, not his moral judgment.”
Firstly, you are citing Volokh as an expert with respect to a Canadian law, wherein one of the first things he says in the cited blog entry is “I’m no expert on Canadian law”? Second, Volokh’s whole argument consists in an utterly specious comparison of the civil application of sharia to the American process of binding arbitration. The comparison is absolute nonsense on the face of it: The U.S. legal institution of binding arbitration takes place in genuine circumstances of freedom and equality, with lawyers representing both sides and similar mechanisms to insure fairness. Sharia… has no institutional mechanisms guaranteeing fairness, to say the least. The presumption of equal voluntary participation is a grotesque legal fiction that ignores the entire history and cultural context of Islam and sharia with respect to the absolutely subordinate status of women, not to mention the content of the sharia laws themselves – which, unlike binding arbitration, are manifestly unjust.
This position also – and I must say willfully – ignores the *motives* of those pushing for the sharia in Canada: Those motives are not simply any abstract commitments to Islamic religious ideals, but rather the specific commitment to keeping women in their traditional religious roles as defined by (their interpretation of) the Koran. For any democracy to support such an agenda is repugnant.
Even if the concerns about women being stoned and such are overblown rhetoric, which I will grant, to focus only on the limited application of sharia to civil law as if that settled the matter is evading the real issue: The fundamental problem is that sharia itself is wholly illegitimate as any kind of legal system – civil only or not, “voluntary” or not – because it violates the fundamental principle of equality before the law.
Volokh here, as elsewhere, demonstrates his quality as a legal scholar: He’s a right-wing ideologue whose legal opinions are shaped to fit whatever pre-conceived (and ill-conceived) notions he brings to the table.
Very well said, G.
“The presumption of equal voluntary participation is a grotesque legal fiction”
That’s pretty much what I meant by my hyperbolic statement that women with fundamentalist Muslim male relatives are not safe. PM is right that that’s hyperbolic overgeneralization; I should have said that it’s not safe to assume that women with fundamentalist Muslim relatives are free to “choose” to resort to Sharia or not – that that’s another grotesque fiction.