A press release from Maryam and One Law for All:
Dear Mona Siddqui
RE: Independent Review into Sharia Law
Thank you for your invitation to give evidence to the Sharia review.
We will not be able to accept your invitation. We are boycotting the review because of its limited terms of reference; the panel makeup (including yourself – a theologian – as chair and a former Judge who is a member of the Christian Lawyers Fellowship); imams as ‘advisors’; and your labelling the legitimate concerns of women’s rights campaigners and organisations as ‘arrogant’. The above confirm our fears that the review will be nothing but a whitewash aimed at further legitimising parallel legal systems at the expense of women’s rights.
Our concerns have been clearly laid out in an open letter to the then Home Secretary signed by nearly 200 prominent women’s rights campaigners and organisations to which we have yet to receive a response.
As mentioned in the open letter, minority women deserve an independent, impartial, judge-led inquiry centred on human rights and not theology. Theologians and those invested in augmenting religion’s role in the law cannot impartially investigate a system from which they benefit. As testimonies gathered from women reveals, religion in the law is discriminatory particularly against women. Any review that does not look into the full extent of rights violations of Sharia bodies from a human rights perspective cannot be considered a legitimate review nor taken seriously.
Sincerely
Maryam Namazie, Spokesperson, One Law for All
Gina Khan, Spokesperson, One Law for All
BM Box 2387, London WC1N 3XX, UK
tel: +44 (0) 7719166731
email: onelawforall@gmail.com
It’s horrifying that this is going ahead.
Comments
4 responses to “Nothing but a whitewash”
Sharia ‘law’ isn’t a legal system, it’s theocratic oppression, it should have no status whatsoever in a liberal democracy. A review is not appropriate. The implications are alarming—that any ethno-religious group can develop and maintain its own ‘legal’ system, another triumph for ideological multiculturalism. While we’re all focussed on terrorism the public seems to ignore the constant accommodations made to placate the sensitivities of religious minorities. One example is ‘creeping Sharia’.
One law for all.
Ophelia,
Er, I was simply expressing a supportive opinion, like other commenters on B&W, not pursuing an educational agenda.
I just deleted my name from the top, so now that’s what it looks like. Sorry for snippyness.
Thanks for the clarification.