When cultural worlds collide The duel over dual (religious vs civil) courts

When the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a lecture on civil and religious law… from the religious perspective… at the Royal Courts of Justice on Feb 7th of this year, I was quick (as were the media and other bloggers) to hit the “publish” button with my opinion. I figured this is a “no brainer”, right?

Certainly the Archbishop has taken more than his fair share of criticism in the wake of his published opinion. But first, let’s establish just what the Archibishop said as perspective: You can read his lecture, linked above. But I’ll pull shorter summaries from a report about his interview with BBC on his website.

The Archbishop made no proposals for sharia in either the lecture or the interview, and certainly did not call for its introduction as some kind of parallel jurisdiction to the civil law.

Instead, in the interview, rather than proposing a parallel system of law, he observed that "as a matter of fact certain provisions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law" . When the question was put to him that: "the application of sharia in certain circumstances - if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples' religion - seems unavoidable?", he indicated his assent.

Since February, I’ve been watching to see just how the UK was going to respond to what appears to be the advocation of a dual court system (however the Archbishop doth protest...). I certainly got a whiff of the latest news - first on our Independence Day when The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, weighed in on the issue in a speech to a Muslim audience at the London Muslim Centre, saying that residents of Wales and England had to accept the laws as they found them.

“There is no question of such [Sharia] courts sitting in this country or such sanctions being applied here.

“So far as the law is concerned, those who live in this country are governed by English and Welsh law and subject to the jurisdiction of the English and Welsh courts,” he said.

snip

“Those who come to live in this country and benefit from the rights enjoyed by all who live here also necessarily come under the same obligations that the law imposes on all who live here.”

He stressed that Muslims were free to practice their religion without being in conflict with UK laws, but that some Sharia court sanctions (i.e. flogging, chopping off hands, stoning, executions) were clearly not applicable to Muslims in the UK's jurisdiction. All in all, sounds like a strong statement, yes? As the infomercials say... but wait! There's *more*!

Let's get a bit of groundwork leading up to this most current debate. One might say it came to the forefront (again...) just a month before when Dr. Suhaib Hasan, a judge in an east London Sharia court... yes you heard me right, a judge in an existing Sharia court in London... started pushing for integrating Sharia law into the British legal system, saying if Sharia law is implemented, this country will be a haven of peace."

Dr Hasan, who has been presiding over sharia courts in Britain for more than 25 years, argues that British law would benefit from integrating aspects of Islamic personal law into the civil system, so that divorces could be rubber-stamped in the same way, for example, that Jewish couples who go to the Beth Din court have their divorce recognised in secular courts.

He points out that the Islamic Sharia Council, of which he is the general secretary, is flooded with work. It hears about 50 divorce cases every month, and responds to as many as 10 requests every day by email and phone for a fatwa - a religious verdict on a religious matter.

Dr Hasan, who is also a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain on issues of sharia law, says there is great misunderstanding of the issue in the West.

In fact, the first English Muslim court opened for business in 1982. Since then, they've grown to ten courts: three in London, others in Birmingham, Rotherham and Dewsbury. Unlike the hardline courts in Islamic law Muslim nations, they handle more mundane and financial issues according to Muslim beliefs.

Speaking to The Times, Suhaib Hasan, from the Islamic Sharia Council, who also acts as a judge, said his organisation receives 10 to 15 e-mails a day about different aspects of Sharia, from inheritance to marriage.

“From the beginning, people have wanted our services. More and more come back to us,” said Dr Hasan. “Each month we deal with 20 cases.”

snip

Though their rulings have no basis in law, participants abide by them voluntarily and often settle their disputes without referral to British law authorities.

I certainly think the "haven of peace" bit from Dr. Hasan escapes me with his argument, but I sure got the idea that he wanted that "no basis in law" bit to change so that their rulings can be accepted as legitimate in British law. Which seems rather one sided as the Sharia law doesn't appear to accept English law decisions (i.e. divorce) with the same legitimacy.

Naturally we all make leaps to Sharia court decisions that are the height of western injustice. One relatively "tame" example might be the 28 year old Malaysian woman who's husband converted not only himself, but their three children to Islam without telling her. Then he forced her into a Sharia law court for a divorce and custody terms. As a non-Muslim in an Islamic law nation, she did not have the Malaysian constitution on her side.

Then there are the more brutal sentences associated with Islamic law, an example of which is the Afghanistan student, sentenced to death in Feb of this year for downloading and distributing a report on abuse of women in Islam, and asking for a debate.

But this is not the first time the Sharia court debate - or in fact it's Jewish court counterparts - has been raised. Canada also has it's history of addressing the same problem, and a recent Feb 2008 article by James Sturcke on the Guardian blog, gives us a recap.

After Canada's 1991 Arbitration Act, both Catholic and Jewish communities set up faith based tribunals to alleviate the back log of court cases on divorce, inheritance and custody issues. In 2003, the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice announced it's intention to follow suit for the 400K Muslims in Ontario.

Needless to say, da sheeeet hit the fan and the protestors hit the streets in Canada. And that included many Muslims averse to the prospect... such as Iranian Homa Arjomand, who organised International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada, saying that such a creation would set back Canadian law by 1,400 years.

Premiere Dalton McGuinty equalized all with a stroke of a pen, deciding to ban all faith based arbitrations in Canada in 2005.

I admit I had no knowledge of the existence of the Jewish or Catholic courts in other countries. Even Australia's Melbourne has a Jewish court, and in 2005, Australia underwent the same debate Canada did - also rejecting the proposal. Under the circumstances, Canada's Premiere McGuinty did exactly as he should... separate *all* church and state courts.

Back to Britain's current day debate and the pros and cons. As was pointed out, there are already 10 Sharia courts operating in the UK today. Those that have benefited are those caught between two cultures and Muslim lands. i.e the cases of divorce. In Islam, unless the husband says he divorces you, women cannot remarry. Thus Islamic women can obtain UK or Australia civilian divorces, but they are not recognized by the Muslim faith, and are not free to remarry.

In this instance, an Islamic woman's divorce thru western civil courts gives her no relief. In order to claim her rights and status as an unmarried woman, she must go thru the Sharia court. One might almost say that the lack of those courts is actually denying her a right to be divorced according to her religion. ahhhh... the plot thickens.

On the flip side, some of these same Islamic courts have taken overstepped the bounds of sensibility by taking their justice into the criminal realm as well, freeing some London Somali youths accused of stabbing another.

Youth worker Aydarus Yusuf, 29, who was involved in setting up the hearing, said a group of Somali youths were arrested by police on suspicion of stabbing another Somali teenager.

The victim's family told officers the matter would be settled out of court and the suspects were released on bail. A hearing was convened and elders ordered the assailants to compensate the victim.

"All their uncles and their fathers were there," said Mr Yusuf. "So they all put something towards that and apologised for the wrongdoing."

As is usual with most our debates, what appeared to be a "no brainer" issue is actually clouded by legitimate concerns on both sides of the religious court debate. But one overwhelming issue remains at the center. If Sharia courts are granted some legitimacy with British law, where does that legitmacy begin and end? How can one draw a dividing line between the more mundane financial and divorce decrees, and those that may then tread on a UK citizen's human rights?

And more importantly, should we be setting up these "compromise" legal systems anyway?

Which brings us to today's latest from the London Times, "The Sharia debate: we can't all be equal under different laws", where journalist Matthew Parris was less than bowled over the Lord Chief Justice's speech to the Muslim audience.

“Equality” is a dummy concept in the philosophy of law. Here it allowed both speaker and audience to overlook real differences between them, because everyone is in favour of equality. But Lord Phillips was wrong to say that only recently has English law developed a respect for equality. Common Law and Statute have always regarded everyone as “equal before the law”, but depending on who and what you are and what you've done, your rights may differ. A cat burglar and a householder are not equal before the law.... snip

The only interesting question is whether these inequalities are fair and in the public interest. This must depend on moral and cultural standpoints, which change over time. The argument about “equality” for (say) women who wanted the right to vote, gays who want the right to marry, slaves who wanted to be free, or convicted paedophiles who want the right to be considered for employment in children's homes, has only and always been about the suitability of these categories to enjoy the rights urged for them; not whether the law should be “equal”.

No more than English law does even the most brutal Sharia advocate “inequality”. It simply reflects a cultural belief that women are different. Lord Phillips ducked that by taking equality as his theme.

Certainly Parris has valid points here, for women's rights in Islam are far from equal... even in divorce. But it is later on that he brings this down to a subject near and dear to both my own, and Wordsmith's, hearts. And that is this whole collide of cultural worlds highlights nations created of a subset of hyphenated citizens, each adhering to, and demanding, a different perspective of laws.

But the second claim that Lord Phillips endorses is more dangerous. Decoded, Dr Williams is saying that in a multicultural society it is fine for people within a culture to agree not to exercise certain rights, even if English law would allow them to.

This is a charter for male dominance. It's a charter for cultural bullying; for peer-group pressurising; for self-oppression.... snip

Peer-group pressure and cultural bullying. Yes, that can describe America's prevalent affirmative action mentality in a nut shell. We already see the resurgence (and worse yet, acceptance) of hypenated Americanism as this 2008 POTUS election progresses. We, ourselves, have a large constituency of American Muslims who may see both the benefits, and pitfalls, of attempting to force a legally recognized Sharia court in the US.

The burning question is, will we see this same battle come to our shores? And how will that legalized "hypenating" affect our nation's unity?

Political Islam as the Spanish Inquisitor

Barry Rubin's article, "The Region: Stuck in the Middle Ages, Islam targets moderation" is an excellent analysis of the multifacets of Islam.

There are clerics radical in their oppression and adherence to fundamental Islam... or at least the Koran as interpreted by them. Many of these clerics advocate that Islam be the law of the land (Pakistan's Maulana Fazlur Rahman,of JUI-F in Pakistan's Parliament, just to name one), but do so via attempted legislation.

This has not fared well with the population, as they reject such strict governance and do embrace some western ideals. Such was the result of Pakistan's last election, and previous elections. There are areas (NWTA, i.e.) that do enforce it in their villages and regions. But Islam was not to be the law of Pakistan.

Hamas won elections in Palestine. However the party did not gain favor with Palestinians for totaltarian rule, or even their devotion to the elimination of Israel. Instead Hamas got the vote because of their nanny welfare programs to impoverished and war ransacked Palestinians. In essence, Palestinians are leaning Marxist/socialist in their governing views.

Then we have the militant clerics... those that demand Islamic law, and seek to implement it via violence and fear. This is "the enemy", as cleverly UN'defined by the current administration and talking heads. Their desires are clear, and most lately evoked in Zawahiri's Open Forum Part One Q&A session. They seek to not only turn all (what they consider) Arab lands into a Muslim Caliphate, but to eliminate all influences of the west. This could include everything from Embassies to corner Starbuck coffee stores.

And now we come to Rubin's analysis... likening the global jihad movement to an oppressive Spanish Inquisition. Clerics fear that with democracy and elections come an increasing irrelevance of themselves and the Islam they teach.

Those who think the problem stems from a need to make Western policy more palatable, showing enough empathy or appeasement, have no idea of the historical processes in play. Consider an interview by Munajid on Al-Majd television on March 30.

Focusing on the threat within Islam, Munajid warns (translation by MEMRI) that advocates of change are heretics engaged in "a very dangerous conspiracy." Why? Because rather than depending on clerics, they claim the right to interpret Islam, are reopening the gates of ijtihad - closed among Muslims for almost 1,000 years - and applying reason to religious doctrine. "This is the prerogative of religious scholars, not of ignorant people... fools or heretics."

Of course, Islamists as well as liberal reformers threaten the mainstream (conservative) clerics' monopoly over Islam. Many Islamists are not qualified theologians.

But moderates are more dangerous, in the mainstream view, since they may loosen religion's hold altogether. Thus, mainstream clerics are more sympathetic to radical Islamists - a key factor in the reformers' weakness and the Islamists' strength. To paraphrase an old Cold War slogan, they say: "Better green than dead."

To allow an Islamic state under jihad is to allow the enemy to completely suppress all forms of modernization and technology. For these allow an open window into the western temptation.

...Munajid and others know something past Europeans didn't: how far secularism can go. As a result, Muslims are extraordinarily insecure. Munajid warns that reformers "want to open up everything for debate," so that "anyone is entitled to believe in whatever he wants... If you want to become an apostate - go ahead. You like Buddhism? Leave Islam, and join Buddhism. No problem...."

Today, new interpretations; tomorrow, rampant alcoholism, short skirts, empty houses of worship, and punk rock. It begins with freedom of thought, it continues with freedom of speech, and it ends up with freedom of belief.

An excellent example of this thought in action comes from an article just today from AP's writer, Ali Akbar Dareini - "Iranian official warns against importing Barbie dolls".

Now how much harm can come from a little Iranian girl, clutching a Barbie doll, you say? To Muslim clerics, irreparable harm.

"The irregular importation of such toys, which unfortunately arrive through unofficial sources and smuggling, is destructive culturally and a social danger," Najafabadi said in his letter, a copy of which was made available to The Associated Press.

snip

While importing the toys is not necessarily illegal, it is discouraged by a government that made its name on preserving Iran from Western cultural influences.

In Monday's letter, Najafabadi said the increasing visibility of Western dolls was raising the alarm among authorities who were considering intervening.

"The displays of personalities such as Barbie, Batman, Spiderman and Harry Potter ... as well as the irregular importation of unsanctioned computer games and movies are all warning bells to the officials in the cultural arena," the letter said.

snip

"Undoubtedly, the personality and identity of the new generation and our children, as a result of unrestricted importation of toys, has been put at risk and caused irreparable damages," he said.

Iran has gone so far as to create competition for Barbie... twins Dara and Sara, with modest clothing and more befitting the Muslim cultural rules of no make up, head scarves, etc. Needless to say, they have been a flop. And go no... Iran is the 3rd largest importer of toys. Clerics are obviously desperate to shelter their Muslim youth from western culture, and this becomes more and more difficult in this Info Age world with satellite TV, cell phones and the Internet.

But it's not only western toys or clothing under assault. The League of Arab States recently voted in satellite broadcast restrictions to the Cairo Charter. This charter, agreed upon by 22 of the members (including Iraq and Pakistan), allows host countries to annul or suspend the licence of any broadcaster found in violation of the rules. i.e. broadcasting anything considered "un Islamic". It is the US "Fairness Doctrine", Arab style.

What may be the most ironic is that the jihad movement themselves are masters and ardent users of the very technology they seek to ban for the rest of their fellow Muslims. But then, that is what oppressors do.... deprive others while they live in relative comfort.

Rubin's article is a fabulous read, and right on point about the desperation of Muslim clerics - likening it to a desperate Catholic Church during the Spanish Inquisition. However Christianity has grown, and been forced to reconcile man's progress as part of it's religious teachings. Islam, however, can not.

Though Rubin's presentation is thorough of the past, it does not go far enough, IMHO. Just what does the future with a massive Muslim Caliphate mean to the world?

Part of the difficulty of this war is the western ignorance of the enemy and their goals. Too many live in a bubble and believe that what happens in the ME and Europe has nothing to do with the US. Perhaps in Colonial days, that was true. But in this world of global trade and relationships, isolation of their desired Caliphate - from the Andulusians (Spain) to China - under political and oppressive Islamic law would have catastrophic effects on our shores as well.

A jihad victory and Caliphate affects the world economy. Trade and products from west to Arab lands would no longer be possible. And that would include from Arab lands to the west. Can any of you say "beg for oil"? How about the beautiful artifacts and rugs? Other cultural beauties would become taboo.

Banking institutions would probably separate as well. In short, the entire flow of currency, products and international trade would be slashed severely... affecting jobs and prosperity not only here at home, but world wide.

You can expect third world conditions to increase in Arab lands as they shun technology. These conditions breed poverty, disease and food shortages - all the things the US battles even now by trying to help developing countries.

Like it or not, technology,communications and transportation has linked our world together. And what happens enmasse elsewhere can have great effect on America.

What is the church thinking?? Archbishop of Canterbury advocates British Sharia law

Unbelievable. It boggles the mind that Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, suggests that the introduction of Sharia law and courts in Britain will "help maintain social cohesion".

Rowan Williams told BBC Radio 4's World At One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

He says that Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

He says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".

Dr Williams said there was a place for finding a "constructive accommodation" in areas such as marriage - allowing Muslim women to avoid Western divorce proceedings.

Other religions enjoyed such tolerance of their own laws, he pointed out, but stressed that it could never be allowed to take precedence over an individual's rights as a citizen.

Really now... is the church so naive that they don't know a woman found guilty of adultry in an Islamic court will be put to death? He advocates allowing the second legal system in Britain, but in the next breath dictates they can't carry out the laws and punishment to which they adhere.

Huh??

His "cure"? Well, our "perception" of Sharia law must change.

He said people needed to look at Islamic law "with a clear eye and not imagine, either, that we know exactly what we mean by Sharia and just associate it with ... Saudi Arabia, or whatever.

"Nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that has sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states: the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women."

I'm sorry... but I must be missing something. Is there another, kinder-gentler Sharia law in existance somewhere that doesn't require women being put to death for adultry? Whipped for appearing with other men in public? Refuses education to female youth? Forbids contact with certain western cultural phenoms?

Is this guy kidding? Or just unbelievably stupid?

Nations thrive when there is unity and pride in their national kinship and shared laws. The biggest problems Europe has - most especially the Netherlands and France - is the fact that the Muslim immigrant population refuses to integrate.... to be part of the nation they migrated to. This is diversity to the extreme, and leads only to a nation torn asunder.

The Archbishop calls for an act that will be the beginning of the end for GB as the world knows it. Having two separate justice systems based on religion will create islands of stateless denizens that do not interact, nor care about the well being of their neighbors. His notion of a utopian "cohesion" is more than seriously flawed... it's downright dangerous. It is, in fact, handing a Caliphate, sans protest, to Muslim militants.