The archbishop gets his wish
The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court. Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims. It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The government did this quietly? Why, exactly? And how? And what are they thinking?
There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men. Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons. The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.
Well, exactly. This is why this kind of shit is not a good idea and should not be done, not noisily and certainly not ‘quietly.’
In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment. In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations. Siddiqi said that in the domestic violence cases, the advantage was that marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.
No – that’s dead wrong. The men were given a second chance, and the women were denied the chance to escape violence. ‘The marriage’ should not be ‘saved’ at the expense of the woman’s safety and freedom, and it’s not ‘couples’ who need chances, it’s people who do, one at a time. This business of valuing marriages and couples more than the women who are trapped inside them is a terrible cheat.
This seems absolutely bizarre! How was this done? Who did it? And how are the decisions of Sharia courts enforceable in English law? Could not the women whose claim to the family estate was halved by a Sharia court go to the legitimate courts of the land to recoup their losses? And if they cannot, is that because they dare not, or because English courts would uphold Sharia decisions? This makes no sense to me. And if it does make sense, the noose is a degree tighter on our freedoms, don’t you think?
“And how are the decisions of Sharia courts enforceable in English law?”
It is apparently considered arbitration. If both parties agree to submit to the decisions of the fake court, there isn’t a damn thing English law can do about it.
The question then becomes, how long before someone refuses to submit to the sharia judgment process and has something nasty happen to them as a result? Will that be handled ‘quietly’, one wonders?
But surely there has to be some independent, unbiased evidence of consent to submit issues to arbitration? The law cannot just take the word of a Sharia court that consent was given? Consent must, I would have thought, have to be independent of the Sharia process itself.
Is this not the way it is with Jewish courts? Do they operate completely independently of the legal process of the country in which they function? Would a Jewish person not have recourse to English law, failing satisfactory outcome of proceedings in a Jewish court?
Obviously, I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they are of some considerable importance, I should have thought.
Consent? CONSENT?!?!?!!!!
There can be no consent without the power to dissent. In the sociocultural context of Islam, women cannot and do not consent to anything because they are not seen as moral agents, as adults who govern their own lives and are therefore capable of consent or dissent: They are not permitted to make their own decisions, or appear in public without being accompanied by a male relative, or even show their faces in public – but somehow they can “consent” to abide by decisions handed down by the very men who forbid them any possibility of consent or dissent in any and every other aspect of their lives.
Consent? I do not think that word means what they think it means…
This is the worst home news I’ve heard in a long time, and there is bad news everyday.
(cont’d)
So of course any interpretation of sharia law accepted by these courts will treat these women as subhuman…which makes it really weird to justify the system by pointing to consent.
‘”Well, this would never affect me or my daughter or my sister”‘
EXACTLY. That was going to be my line in the concluding chapter of the book. It might still be, if I can fit it in. Or rather my line was going to be the obverse of that – ‘You would never in a million years want this for yourself or your daughter or sister or best friend – so why the HELL are you willing to settle for it for other people?’ ‘You’ being of course the people who shrug it off…or who make sharia decisions binding in the UK, god save the mark.
If I recall correctly, and if it be any comfort to Andy Gilmour, What he describes is what happened in the Province of Ontario. Not only was Sharia denied the power to arbitrate, but (fair being fair) the power of Jewish courts to arbitrate was rescinded.
Yes Elliott, you recall correctly:
McGuinty rejects Ontario’s use of Shariah law and all religious arbitrations
One law to rule them all
Sorry, that first link should be:
McGuinty rejects Ontario’s use of Shariah law and all religious arbitrations
I would like to see plumbers courts where plumbers arbitrate on reasonable call out rates!
The line in The Times article about the government sneaking this in quietly is a bit misleading.
These sharia courts have been set up independently to exploit a piece of legislation passed 12 years ago by the previous government.
But of course everything bad is Gordon Brown’s fault these days.
I’d have thought that any court applying to perform arbitration under the Act would need to be approved, i.e. you must not give judgments that conflict with existing UK law on (say) sexual (and sexuality) equality, religious freedom, property and inheritance rights etc. Which prompts one of two questions: (a) are these sharia folk complying with those laws and guidance and, if so, why the need for a sharia court if a more conventional arbitration panel or County Court judge could sort if out; or (b) are these sharia folk not complying with those laws and guidance and, if not, why are they being allowed to set up a court under the Arbitration Act? It further makes me ask just what is in the Act that might allow a tribunal to stick two fingers up to existing laws on equality and so forth. Is there a lawyer in the house?
“That means that British common law is no longer the touchstone for settlements of disputes between citizens. This seems to me a very serious infringement on the liberty of British citizens.”
This seems like the dream scenario of the “communitarians”, here at last. One law for your sort, a different law for mine. What could possibly result other than balkanization and marginalization?
Sharia courts, in a nutshell: women making a sham of consent to a man’s decision to have their case heard in a men’s court where men hand down all the judgments.
Where were the sagacious denizens of the women’s studies mailing list when we needed them?
The next thing one will hear – is that another branch of the Abrahamic faith will follow suit and set up its own court – with absolute approval of the government.
It will, in all probability, appoint Blair as one of its judges.
Confessions will then be brought to a more supreme level.
Out with the boxes and in with the court rooms.
The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges…[i]nvolving domestic violence.”
Surely to goodness the British government must be aware of the present day barbaric practices that occur in the countries from whence these people originated. Their ancient rituals and dealings with situations are certainly going to rub off in the Sharia courts that the British government has sanctioned. We are already reading about it happening in that “the judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia”.
Cpme into the Sharia parlour said the spider to the fly. We will deal fairly and squarely with all your domestic problems – according to the rites of Mohammad.
Gosh, it is so scary to think that this kind of thing is happening in GB.
I wonder, could people trying to extend human rights to Muslim women in the UK bring cases that get the problems into the public space?
eg, charge a woman with adultery and watch as the ‘legal’ court is forced to sentence her to death by stoning?
Kathy Shaidle–one of the women being sued in Canada for offending the Muslims here–has just published an article on this:
Britain’s Sharia Courts
“I would like to see plumbers courts where plumbers arbitrate on reasonable call out rates!”
I would like to see children’s courts where handicapped children arbitrate (in their own words) on child sexual abuse matters. Their cases are known to be by the courts system thrown out of courts because they are considered by the them to be incompetent in giving evidence. It is grossly unfair.