Sharia Courts in Britain
 

It seems that this Times article confirms Britain has officially sanctioned Sharia Courts for Muslims in Britain.
This is how it came about.
One country with two legal systems sounds like a bad idea to me.

Nope, don't think it's a good idea at all. :headshake

Nor do I; however, I think the way to prevent it is to remove all faith-based arbitration bodies from the legal system. As long as other groups have the right to seek arbitration from the elders/authorities of their religious bodies then to disallow Sharia is to take a moral stance against Islam in law: that seems inappropriate to me.

Remove all faith-based arbitration (in terms of their legal standing) and the problem is gone. Fairly.

Just as an additional point: we are hearing more and more these days, how this parent or that child was persuaded by clergymen, not to take issues of abuse to the civil authorities. How many catholic victims of domestic abuse do we think the catholic arbitration system persuaded back to their violent husbands and fathers? How open do we think religious arbitration bodies (some of which have legal standing, such as in catholic and jewish arbitration systems) generally are to solutions that might involve the breaking up of families, or the subversion of dearly held gender beliefs?

Sharia seems, to me, and probably to most people in the Cellar, a very extreme version of faith-based law. But let's not paint the horns too firmly onto it: that lets others, with a similar guilt-load off the hook entirely and sows dissent and fear where it isn't needed.

I'm not letting anyone off the hook, if people of a particular religion want to use their own arbitrators, and all parties agree, to settle contracts and disagreements of that ilk, fine and dandy. But anytime British law has been broken, especially when there is a victim and not just a disagreement, the British legal system should not acquiesce to any arbitration system.

I didn't know Britain had such a system in place. It may allow minorities to preserve their culture, but the potential for coercion and abuse of the weak are too great. It just seems strange for immigrants to bring their law with them, from an American perspective, many of our ancestors came here to divorce themselves from old world power structures. It is too easy to extrapolate the eventual failure of Western Civilization from this. Reactionaries would have us revert to our old oppressive power structures in response to theirs, but I'd rather see some respect for what we've built over the last couple hundred years with a focus on identifying the big ideas that cannot be subverted. We need to look for the values Westerners find universal.

I would have no problem with Sharia courts for civil law, if both parties agree without coercion to enter into that arbitration, but for criminal law, that should be left up to the government.

It's not used for criminal law.
In the cases of domestic violence, the women withdrew the complaints with the Police - this happens in many, many domestic violence cases, regardless of the faith of those involved. The Police cease investigations simply because of the difficulty in obtaining a conviction when the victim will not give evidence.

I'm not a fan of Sharia or having a two tier system, but please don't confuse these "Courts" with the law of the land. They can operate only within the framework of the law, and will at least keep some disputes out of the courts.

It is supposedly for civil law (ie domestic disputes). The problems tend to come in where 'domestic' actions constitute a crime. As I mentioned, other religious arbitration bodies may well see fit to advise an abused wife to stay with her husband and suggest anger management for the man.

It's not about 'immigrants' bringing their laws and culture with them. It's about allowing people of different faiths to arbitrate their own 'domestic' and civil disputes. We already have such bodies in place and with a similar legal standing for other groups (such as the jewish arbitration 'courts').

We already have laws here. I don't think we need another set.
Especially Sharia.

No thanks.

Arbitration is a bad idea in general, especially with regard to individuals. It is seldom agreed upon freely by both parties. If Muslims have found a way to inadvertently discredit it, that's at least a silver lining.

*nods* I guess. It just worries me that it all feeds into the growing islamophobia in Britain.

Yeah, that's why I said "silver lining" instead of a "good thing". Discrediting arbitration is good, but doing so in this way relies on everybody being afraid of Muslims. And, because of that, it's only talked about with regard to Muslims.

People are saying "Sharia is a parallel law system in Britain!", instead of "arbitration is a parallel law sytem all over the place, usually dominated by corporations, but now some religious fundamentalists are taking advantage of it!"

Why is arbitration bad for individuals? It's cheaper in legal fees. To arbitrators generally side with the big guy or something?

They're generally chosen by the big guy, and forced on the little guy by mandatory arbitration agreements. If the arbitrators want to get chosen, they'd better be a good investment.

Feingold has a proposed law to make such agreements unenforceable.

He may be on his way out.

So in big guy vs. little guy situations, I would agree with you, but in little guy vs. little guy situations, is there anything wrong with them then?

It does if one of the 'little guys' has a culturally enforced power and authority over the other 'little guy'.


I completely agree.

Not if it truly is little guy vs little guy (or big guy vs big guy). I've heard of court-appointed arbitrators, to ease the court's schedule, which I think wou'd generally be pretty fair. But even if they're set up so that the fact that they do justice for profit is mitigated by the way they are paid for, the reason they are cheaper than court is that they don't have all of the legal safeguards and transparency of the court.

[edit] - and, like DanaC said, it's not truly little guy vis little guy in this particular situation, and similar effects may pertain to many other situations that may look at first glance like a little guy vs little guy situation.

I had to kind of laugh at this. Britain has always had two separate systems (a civil and a religious: court/chancery, and we inherited this system through our common law. That's why lawsuits ask for relief either in law or in equity. Kind of an archaic concept, and I'm not suggesting it has a great deal of relevance to the point of the thread, but just pointing out--this is not unprecedented.

This really is not the big deal it looks on the face of things, it's only legitimising what has been going on for nearly two hundred years.

In family court, arbitration usually equates to very expensive marital counseling that does not actually manage to reach an agreement on any terms. The whole reason for going to court over family matters is because you can't agree on things, so it's better (and cheaper) to just have a judge rule quick and dirty on the contested issues rather than trying to make everyone feel happy about the situation. Maybe it's different in other civil matters, but my experience with arbitration was that it was a hugely expensive waste of time.

I think one of the big problems with the arbitration system in the Uk is that so much of it is faith-based. They are generally fundamentally weighted to solutions that retain family (and in particular marital) unity at all costs.

Wut Clod said. Total waste of time AND money.

I find it slightly worrying that 'international law' and sharia law are being equated here.

It's a shame that they didn't include the ten commandments

At first, I thought the same thing, Dana. Then I thought it was just the way I was reading it. Perhaps they aren't relating the two other than they cannot be considered...

Is it because of the UNCRC maybe?

I think we should allow Sharia Law to be implemented in the US so we can let all the fun loving liberals assimilate the practice and tell us how wonderful it is to embrace other cultures.

Would countries with a "Sharia" law system allow that kind of thing?

I don't think so...

In my opinion, it is the first step for them to evolve towards a completely separate law system.

:borg:

There is a similar dilemma DownUnda with Aboriginal Traditional Law.

Suppose an Aboriginal man in a traditional community beats his wife.

General law makes this a crime, probably punishable by prison. Prison rarely rehabilitates or prevents it from happening again, or deters others.

Aboriginal law makes this a crime, punishable by spearing in the leg and/or a beating from the wife's relatives. For their culture, this seems to produce better results in terms of not re-offending, etc.

Problem is, under general law, spearing in the leg is assault, punishable by prison, and there is no legal way that can be allowed.

So do we (a) over-ride Aboriginal culture and ban traditional punishments? or (b) deny the Aboriginal man protection of the general law and let people spear him?

Any answers?

Don't whine to me because you weren't smart enough to exterminate the native riffraff.

Haw, we did in Tasmania. Well, nearly.

You devils, you.

Just put them all in jail - sooner or later you'll run out of room or relatives. /snark.


That is a different situation though. The Aboriginal laws were there first, no?

Unfortunately, having allowed other religions such systems, were we to disallow a sharia version, that would create a serious inequality in law, founded on religious identification.

Quite aside from the fact that targeting moslems in particular as a problem, increases the general levels of intolerance towards them from other groups; there's also the knotty problem of the 'kulturkampf' effect. History tells us, very clearly, that if you want a religion to lose ground then the worst possible thing you can do is stamp down on it.

I guaran-fucking-tee you that there will be moslem men and women in the Uk arguing fervently for the right to have such courts, who five or ten years ago would have argued just as vehemently against.

No. But surely the "enlightened" West is about bringing people to our standard, not sinking to the lowest common denominator?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22044724#TWEET712894

BBC Panorama has uncovered fresh evidence of how some Sharia councils in Britain may be putting Muslim women "at risk" by pressuring them to stay in abusive marriages.

I can't imagine how hard it would be to break free from your community when you're being abused by your man and your culture. Are there women's groups working to free people from this?

There are, yes. I've seen interviews with some really impressive young women who are at the frontline of the fight against forced marriage and domestic abuse in their communities. From what I've heard there are some women working within the sharia courts system to try and push female rights to divorce settlements and child custody and the like.

Bogging down the system with lengthy processes when justice could be just a stone's through away, tough sell.

You, sir, are smart and eloquent. I would vote for you.

man, that's dark. Clever, but dark.

:vader1: The dark side of the Cellar is strong.