Oh!! My!!! God!!!
Down there a few entries ago I asked who took the Great out of Great Britain. If this is true, I now have my answer.
Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.
Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.
"Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case."[---]
"There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men."Ya' think??
"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."
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.Who in their right mind would believe Muslim women are fully capable of making independent decisions in their own interests in a cultural milieu that considers them to be inferior and wholly subservient to men!! Nuff said!!
In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations.
posted by Louise at 7:18 am
7 Comments:
You can relax a little bit. It is the same in Canada.
Its not a separate or special rule for Muslims its the arbitration act that has been around for a very long time.
It works like this. If you and I have a dispute we can go to a costly court or we can agree instead to arbitration.
Arbitration just means that we agree to trust and abide the judgment of a third party who we both pick to be our arbitrator.
For example lets say we picked our barber as our arbitrator. Each of us tells our side of the story then the barber makes his decision.
Since we both agreed that we would trust the barbers decision we might have a harder time going to court if we don't like the outcome.
People do this all the time in Canada. Sometimes the choose a Rabi, a priest, a notary public, a mutual friend, a professional arbitrator, or whomever they both agree on.
First of all, welcome to my blog, but I must say, your ignorance of this matter is appalling. I understand the concept. What you don't understand is the status of women under Muslim culture and what that does to a woman's self esteem and to her power to stand up to an abusive husband. You must have heard of honour killings, have you not? There can be no free choice on the woman's part.
There is a reason Muslim women, and women in general in Canada and even women outside Canada spoke out so vigorously a few years back when Ontario was threatening to introduce Sharia law in family disputes.
The status of women in Muslim countries is universally condemned by human rights groups.
You should sit down some day and have a heart to heart with some Muslim women. Having been married to a Muslim for several year I know whereof I speak.
Scout around in my back pages here for some more information.
Here's another good one from Indonesia.
I am well versed in this subject thank you.
I think you are confusing two issues. Arbitration involves both parties agreeing to attend Arbitration and to the arbitrator.
If a woman or any other person is being forced or coerced into Arbitration than it is not binding.
The status of treatment of women is another issue. If an arbitrator told a husband it was ok to beat his wife and told the wife she had to take it, we would still arrest the husband if he did so. In other words Shari law in no circumstances ever supersedes Canadian law.
One could point to many passages of the Bible that informs a man that he has the right under biblical law to commit all manner of abuses against his wife. Do moderate Christian leaders preach these? Of course not (or I hope not).
The point being that it really comes down to the nature of the arbitrator. In moderate Muslim nations you would get moderate interpretations of Shari.
How exactly would you fix this? Would you draft a law saying that people could not seek counseling from their local preachers?
Or would you simply draft a law saying people couldn't seek arbitration from people with regressive views? But then how would that work in cases of birth control, abortion or homosexuality? Exactly who's views would we consider regressive?
At any rate, I am glad to see a self proclaimed redneck being so progressive and standing up so strongly for woman's rights.
"If a woman or any other person is being forced or coerced into Arbitration than it is not binding."
"The point being that it really comes down to the nature of the arbitrator."
That right there is the nub of the issue. You didn't read the article where it discusses real cases that have actually happened, did you? Or at the very least listen to the words of Wafa Sultan on the first video at my link in the comments?
I suspect you have no clue what kind of influence an abusive relationship where the power is extremely imbalanced can have on a woman. How on earth are you going to be sure that such a woman is not being coerced if she dare not contradict her husband and his family, or for that matter, frequently her own family.
How do you explain the outcry from Muslim women when Ontario was contemplating the introduction of sharia law into the arbitration process? Women in the West fought that battle a long time ago and here we are in 2008 allowing Muslim women to be treated to second class status in legal processes.
At least we rednecks deal with the real world, not some la-la- land ideation that inhabits the minds of the politically correct left.
We as far as my understanding of abuse issues go I worked for many years with street kids who had been abused by their fathers (and sometimes mothers). And my wife has worked in a downtown east side womans shelter for well over a decade. Not to mention one of my best friends ran a transition house for 30 years. If there is an issue outside my main profession that I am well versed on it, is the plight of abused women.
However, my central point and one that you may agree with, is that arbitration does not harm people, people do.
It would be impossible to draft a law that prevented people from seeking advice and arbitration from their spiritual leaders.
Would I would recommend is to find another way to intervene. For example, perhaps immigration Canada should provide a women only orientation course so that women arriving from other countries learn what is and is not permissible under Canadian law, and exactly how a woman could seek recourse to the law if her human rights are violated.
It would have to be mandatory and it would have to be required regardless of country of origin. Otherwise their would be charges of discrimination or husbands would forbid their wives to attend.
So while I agree with your outrage about the plight of women, drafting effective and implementable public policy takes a bit more work then cries of alarm.
btw: My friends got a kick out of me being called part of the politically correct left. They are always calling me a right wing asshole :)
Darling, you've gone off on a tangent that has nothing to do with my post. I am not talking about Canada. We have no instance in Canada nor in any of its provinces of the state sanctioning the use of sharia law as the basis for dispute settlement. (THANK GOD and the women of Ontario who protested so vigorously against it's introduction!!!)
I am not talking about the usefulness of the instrument of arbitration, per se, nor am I talking about drafting a law that prevents people from seeking advice and arbitration from their spiritual leaders.
What I am talking about is Great Britain, where the use of sharia law for the settlement of family disputes, a system that enshrines extremely unequal treatment of women, is now sanctioned by the state!!
I can't count the number of times I have heard Muslims in Canada say that they came here to get away from that sort of backward ideology, and I'm sure there are many who feel the same why in Britain, and here we have the British government and legal system allowing the pernicious system to spring up in their new country.
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