What are the hours?
In the theocracy section of the job ads:
A job advert for a role in a sharia court posted on a government website has caused major controversy, with critics saying it promotes a separate Islamic legal system in the UK.
Well yes, separate and Islamic, but more to the point, women-hating and theocratic. It wouldn’t be nearly so alarming and disgusting if, say, a job advert for a role in a Quaker organization were posted on a government website.
What next?
Will the UK government be offering roles for Christian Reconstructionist or Hindutva courts as well?
The advert having been deleted, I can’t say with any authority what it says. But I suspect it’s been rather over-hyped. There’re lots of – if you insist – parallel legal systems. Jews might go to Beth Din courts. Trade Unions offer mediation services. All kinds of things can be accommodated within the Arbitration Act.
Inasmuch as that there are, as a matter of fact, people who would prefer to settle some matters by appealing to non-standard legal and quasi-legal means, a decent society will try to ensure that that’s done as well as possible. Some of those people will be Muslim. And, yes, some of those Muslims will be women, who – whatever we might think of Islam as an institution – prefer to settle things this way. There is therefore a reason for a community centre to offer some kind of service in respect of that. Better that, at the very least, than things being settled ad hoc in someone’s living-room, no?
Then again, once such an option is available, I can easily imagine how a lot of women (especially women caught in fundamentalist communities, the ones most in need of a neutral system) will feel under immense pressure to say they “prefer to settle things this way” whether it’s true or not. And even if the “preference” is real, would they still have wanted the same without the lifetime of indoctrination, coercion, and threats? You cannot be pro women’s rights and pro sharia at the same time.
Yes, there are a number of systems, especially religious, of courts. The problem is, many, if not most, of these courts operate on a system of laws of their own devising (and attribute them to some deity no one has ever seen or heard). This means that some people are left with fewer rights than others. If there are ‘alternative’ courts, those courts need to operate within the same laws of the country in which they exist. That way someone could have someone they trust to make the decision, but the rights of citizens within the country would be protected. So no, I don’t think it’s okay that some people ‘prefer’ to be in other courts. Most murderers, I imagine, would like to select a court run by other murderers, and burglars would love to choose a court made up of burglars. That doesn’t mean we can allow that.
This popped up on another forum I’m on earlier. I didn’t pay a lot of attention, but it was posted by someone who’s openly anti all immigrants. Someone else responded that it wasn’t the UK government providing the position, but rather a UK govt website that aggregates available job offers. The job was funded and provided by a mosque. So, in my view an awful job that shouldn’t exist anywhere, and especially not a western country, but not the ‘fault’ of the government.
Not the fault of, but not ideally something governments should be promoting. Maybe that’s me being all US-ish separation of church and state.
@Bjarte –
Absolutely. But, still: if a woman is going to be pressured into seeking a Sharia resolution to a dispute, better that it be done as openly as possible, where there’s at least the formal possibility of its being compatible with echt law.