1. “religion should not provide an excuse to break the law”

no, it shouldn’t. i’ve never said it should. if the law is being unreasonable, then lobbying is possible for all groups of interested voters to have it changed. either way, the mechanism exists, so this doesn’t seem like much of an objection to me.

2. “it’s not really voluntary if your alternative is to be ostracised by the community”

religious communities are inherently about those who opt into them. of course it is far better for the community to learn to tolerate or otherwise deal with dissent and multiple opinions, which i would argue is certainly possible within both jewish and communities. however, if you are really determined not to succumb to pressure, you can get together with a group of like-minded people (british muslims for secular democracy spring to mind) and leverage the power of your own constituency. breaking the mould is not for the faint-hearted, never has been and never will be. i’m sure the first vegetarians and anti-smokers felt the same way.

3. “religion is a lower moral standard than the secular standard”

i think many of us would beg to differ. where’s the binge drinking? the poor parenting? the poor schooling? the economic inactivity? the endemic violent crime and antisocial behaviour? walk down golders green high street on a weekend night, why don’t you?

4. “all special pleading should be outlawed”

well, fine, as long as you do the same for absolutely all interest groups including trade unions, the poor, immigrants, asylum seekers, care workers and members of the armed forces.

5. “it’s not like an ISO standard”

yes it is. the standard is defined by a group of people selected by their peers for their technical expertise and then individual compliance with the standard is assessed on a case-by-case basis. the point is that this is a self-policing group saying “this is the standard we expect from our members”.

6. “it’s not like inquisition-era spain”

i meant *after the expulsion*, when practicing judaism or “judaising” was punishable by death. it carried on nevertheless, just as it did in the soviet union.

7. “what about FGM?”

see my point about “no harm” and the other point about the reasonableness of the law, to say nothing of “dina-de-malkhuta-dina”. besides, this is not a jewish thing and, arguably, not really an islamic thing either.

8. “religious courts are primitive iron age relics”

that must be why rape within marriage, alimony and financial compensation for injury or embarrassment were recognised concepts within halakhah 2000+ years ago when they have barely gained a foothold within civil law even now.

9. “state law and religious law should both be agreeing their boundaries”

i agree – and it is not for religious law to say where state law should and shouldn’t rule, all i am saying is that state law has a tendency to arrogate to itself powers that it really can’t effectively police, like the ability to ban drugs and prostitution.

10. “this is just a selfish defence of batei din”

well, i did say that myself, didn’t i? actually, however, i believe that there’s a larger principle at stake and, more to the point, trying to impose a harsh central standard will do nothing to end the abuses that concern all of use whilst disadvantaging those who rely on these systems for everyday assistance in going about our business.

11. “this will help scientologists and anti-semitic islamic fundamentalists”

aren’t they, under uk law, already entitled to set up alternative dispute resolution frameworks? i know i wouldn’t go to one but i can’t see how you would ban it unless you were able to show it did harm. that’s what i mean by a principle – i don’t have to support all the groups benefiting from the principle, isn’t that a version of the statement by voltaire:

“i do not agree with the rules you use to decide this dispute or the probable outcome, but i will defend to the death your right to opt to use them (as long as everyone doing so is doing so of their own free will)”.

12. “religious courts interfere with access to secular justice”

this is the best objection – if it can be shown to be the case, then i would support legislation to rectify the situation. a beth din at least is not there to be a “stumbling block to the blind”.

13. “let’s get rid of it all so we can get rid of shechita as well”

you’re entitled to this opinion and to action it through point 1 above – but the price for doing so will be the loss of your jewish community. you may think this is a good thing, or you may not, but you cannot have one without the other and if you want to abolish judaism entirely you might as well be honest about it.

libertyphile, if i have time i’ll respond to the archbishop cranmer post.

b’shalom

bananabrain

It would be very interesting to have your views on Archbishop Cranmer’s post point by point especially those points concerning the division and segregation Sharia encourages and the desirablity or otherwise of parallel legal systems in one society wherein next door neighbours have different ideas of what is fair.

BTW, I will take up your invitation and call you an “idealist”.

The whole power of Islam is its anarchic decentralism. I actually think that providing a centre you are actually arming the Islamists with a focal point.

perhaps, but you are also arming the “silent majority” with a focal point and, more to the point, arming the government with a truly credible interlocutor rather than the current situation which has been exploited by our current crop of weaselly so-called community leaders and the “beards of terror”. i undestand your concerns and i’m not saying that the central standard should be *enforced* – it stands and falls on its own credibility – i’m just telling you how it works rather effectively in our community both as a social control on us as a community and as a point of engagement with the civil authorities – if there is an issue, for example, with halaal, there is a proper central body that everyone can agree represents a certain standard. its authority cannot, however, be made compulsory, just as that of the beth din is, effectively, restricted to those who choose to acknowledge it – and many do not, so just as there has been no homogenisation of judaism, there is no reason to suppose there would be homogenisation of islam. it’s not a monolithic central control like the islamists want, it’s simply an accretion around standards, a flocculation if you will.

david t:

absolutely, except of course in the case of 3, where the halakhic incapability has led to the civil court taking account of the halakhic incapability to prevent abuse and stepping in itself to *prevent an outcome at odds with natural justice and british civil law* – it is not enforcing the judgement of the beth din, but preventing its authority being abused by those who do not respect it.

faisal:

It is the responsibility of Shariah courts to map out where their influence starts and where it ends. What coverage do Shariah courts’ jurisdiction have? Who is affected by it? In other words: what aspects of Muslim lives do courts apply to and which Muslims are affected by them? Unless and until we have that information, any talk of Shariah courts is simply academic.

precisely, which is why i am saying that muslims need to get organised, because the current anarchic, tribal free-for-all is allowing the wrong things to happen. if muslims cannot run a respectable, credible and consistent court system with some level of integration, then shari’a will just look like what the islamists would make it, a sort of people’s revolutionary tribunal dispensing summary justice in the neighbourhood, rather than something worthy of respect.

Also I think it is rather silly to say “alternative arbitration is, effectively, a human right”.

well, possibly, i’m not sure i could entirely define what i mean by that – i suppose i mean the right of free association, i can live my life by whatever rules i wish and by whatever authority i wish, as long as i don’t break the civil law. in the same way relate or acas can’t dispense arbitration in a way that breaches these rights. it seems pretty clear who trumps who.

In this scenario, the female witness’s account is over-ridden by that of the male witness. As a result, the abusive marriage is allowed to continue.

in terms of what i am proposing, there are two things to consider:

1. a consistent standard and quality by a centralising body, which can be investigated by the civil authorities for its compliance with human rights legislation is far more transparent and far easier to police than the current “village council” model.
2. abolishing it will just drive it underground.

the solution is, naturally, for shari’a courts to be mindful of human rights legislation under whatever provisions in shari’a are equivalent of the halakhic “dina de-malkhuta dina” – the “law of the land is binding upon us”.

Shariah is basically weighted against women. I hope non-Muslim supporters of Shariah courts are aware of what it is they are supporting.

call me an idealist, but i would like to treat the shari’a system as if it could find an islamic solution to address these very important issues rather than as if it couldn’t. that involves challenging it and the challenges you make are important ones which i’d like to see addressed. the other option, you see, is either to discriminate against islam (as the islamists claim) by maintaining a double standard, or to be forced to disestablish the church of england as well as effectively forcing the jewish community to emigrate en masse. that may be what the campaign wants, but if i thought that’s what the writers here wanted i don’t think i could continue in good conscience to write here.

I don’t think that there’s much one can do if a woman decides that she would like to be discriminated against.

that’s a good point – in the case of agunah, it is of course arguable that it is discriminatory against women, so the batei din do their best to ensure it won’t happen. when i got married, i signed a pre-nup such that in the event of a divorce, i obliged myself to go through the beth din for the jewish bit. now, this is, of course, non-binding, but that could very easily be rectified. i expect mrs bb could, in the unlikely (i hope) event, take the pre-nup to the civil court and use it as evidence that they shouldn’t grant decree nisi until the get (release document) had been handed over. i don’t think it’s beyond human ingenuity to design a process whereby the gender-weighting of evidence was defanged by, say, forcing both sides to give evidence via male third parties, or finding technical means to double the female witnesses either practically or symbolically. that’s the sort of way we’d approach it.

Imagine a scenario where reformists try to set up a tribunal using a woman-friendly interpretation of fiqh: under BB’s plans this would give the Islamists power to declare this tribunal unIslamic while further empowering the maniacs with beards whose sexist interpretation is, like it or not, more in tune with tradition. Just look at the fate of the Muslim Institute’s Muslim Marriage Contract.

the point is, though, that the islamists will declare anything non-islamist unislamic, which they do at the moment, but popular support of this would make such objections irrelevant. that’s how we do things and it works. i’m aware that there is an islamic equivalent of dina-de-malkhuta-dina, can’t remember what it’s called at the moment, but it means, among other things that non-halakhic contracts are binding under halakhah. if non-shari’a contracts are binding under shari’a, then all the parties concerned have to do is make the relevant contract to redress any inequity the court might impose.

It’s horrendous but accurate to say that in some countries a document issued by profiteering maniacs has a higher legal standing than one issued through the courts of this country.

it’s the same here, except that the standards of the are the most stringent in the world, believe it or not, so the profiteering maniacs are able to operate in israel and the us and then raise questions via the uk – centralisation would help this in terms of shari’a, not hinder it.

libertyphile:

I think in light of this your comparison with Beth Din and Anglican courts is a poor one. The canadians solved the “seen to be fair” problem by withdrawing recognition from all religious courts.

but the beth din isn’t recognised at present and cranmer doesn’t even consider it as an issue. “banning” shari’a, in order to be “seen to be fair”, would a) not work and b) penalise the jewish community and the c of e. in such a case, i would be forced by such idiocy to make common cause with people whose viewpoints i actually strongly disagreed with to preserve my own liberty.

b’shalom

bananabrain

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2009/11/equality-under-law-is-abrogated-by.html

I think in light of this your comparison with Beth Din and Anglican courts is a poor one. The canadians solved the “seen to be fair” problem by withdrawing recognition from all religious courts.

Whoops.

Questions of human rights are ratherbeside the point when almost all interpretations of fiqh run counter to CEDAW 16 & 17, which guarantees men and women equal status within family law. Most Muslim-dominated countries have an exception to these Articles, and this is why, IMO, the family remains the main locus of women’s oppression within those countries. Even secular Muslim-dominated countries have been willing to cede family law to Islamists whilst keeping a secular criminal code. It’s been deadly for the progress of women’s equality, locking women’s rights activists into arguing for microlegal reforms framed Islamic terms rather than confronting patriarchy head-on.

There’s a further point at issue here that’s rarely addressed: the civil law is failing many of its citizens, a lot of them Muslim, through failure to work through the international dimensions of family law. Case in point: a Muslim woman gained a divorce in the UK and later returned to visit her country of origin, where she was imprisoned indefinitely for desertion at the request of her husband — on the grounds that her UK divorce was invalid. It’s horrendous but accurate to say that in some countries a document issued by profiteering maniacs has a higher legal standing than one issued through the courts of this country. There are thousands of people in married/not-married limbo through the failure of British law to address their issues, and leaving this problem to self-styled sharia courts is a dereliction of Britain’s responsibility to its subjects. In itself fosters Islamism by default, allowing fiqh to give itself the appearance of being an universal law. Where more families are formed (and break up) across national boundaries these lacunae need to be filled. It’s one thing for a person to use a court because they are invested in a very orthopraxic reading of religion; it’s quite another when they do so as a last resort when the civil law has failed to meet their needs.

David T at 10:46: Do you mean ‘proper’ for ‘improper’?

http://www.surrenderedwife.com/

What you can do something about, however, is attempts to coerce women into systems of arbitration that will result in the abuse of their fundamental human rights. Similarly, coercing women into abiding by the terms of an arbitration which is discriminatory, is a mischief that the law can and should remedy.

It would be quite improper for such decisions to be declared void, for religious tribunals which impose such decisions to be stripped of their power to arbitrate generally, and for individuals who attempt to impose these decisions or this system of arbitration on women to be prosecuted.

However, within those limits, if a woman genuinely and freely wishes to be discriminated against, I don’t think that the state can really do anything about it.

Unless and until we have that information, any talk of Shariah courts is simply academic.

Also I think it is rather silly to say “alternative arbitration is, effectively, a human right”. Is that also the case if the methods or dispensation of that arbitration fails to uphold or goes against other human rights as well? What trumps what? Here is a illustration:

A Muslim woman wants to divorce her husband because she claims he is physically violent and abusive towards her and their children. Her husband claims he is not beating her and does not want to give her a divorce. The whole matter is taken to a Shariah court to resolve. A witness who speaks on behalf of the wife happens to be a woman, whilst another witness who speaks in defence of the husband is a man. The male witness’s account is worth twice that of the female witness – as stipulated by Shariah law. In this scenario, the female witness’s account is over-ridden by that of the male witness. As a result, the abusive marriage is allowed to continue.

I’m not a lawyer, so excuse my layman’s terminology. But cases like the ones I’ve illustrated happen all the time in majority-Muslim countries. In the above case, the woman is offered “alternative arbitration” as per her “human right” but it is also a gross violation of her own rights.

Shariah is basically weighted against women. I hope non-Muslim supporters of Shariah courts are aware of what it is they are supporting.

This is what I think the proper limits of the power of religious courts should be in a democratic liberal and secular society.

1. People should be free to choose any system they want for arbitrating purely arms length commercial disputes. That would include Sharia and Halacha systems – although there is some question as to whether the latter provides the necessary level of certainty needed to allow individuals to predict and plan according to the likely judgement of the tribunal.

2. The state should have no role at all in relation to such questions as the siting of fonts in churches or whether or not a particular shop is kosher. The former would require the disestablishment of the Church of England.

3. In relation to personal matters – such as marriage and inheritance, where the potential for abuse is highest, the state should never under any circumstances enforce the judgement of religious court. That does not mean that such courts could not pronounce or give opinions.

However, if a religious court, or those associated with it, or those seeking to enforce its decisions were to do so in a manner which amounts to blackmail, those responsible should most certainly be prosecuted by the state.

Is there anything here that either you or One Law for All would disagree with?

As someone else said, people have gone and lost their minds. They’re trying to oppose something no one is clamouring for (esp the MCB) and something that has no chance of coming in (sharia law outside civil arbitration).

Might as well rail against the return of the Satan!

[T]he muslims of the uk need to centralise, integrate and get organised, not around gesture politics, foreign policy grievances and communalist battles imported from bangladesh and elsewhere, but around the needs of the uk community for communal standards, consistent quality and procedures. that’s how we did it and, largely, it has worked. it would certainly provide a refutation of the trope of squabbling, shrill lobbyism that has characterised british islam in recent times.

No, no and double no. The whole power of Islam is its anarchic decentralism. I actually think that providing a centre you are actually arming the Islamists with a focal point. The whole point of Islamism is that it thinks there is a “standard measure” , a sort of pole around which Islam in all revolves. F*ck them and NO to the homogenisation of Islam.