Sharia courts are getting out of control
Dear Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT),
Your propoganda mission in support of sharia courts in Britain continues unabated. Today, The Times reports on your claims that 5% of Sharia court cases involved non-Muslims who were using the courts because they were less cumbersome and more informal than the English legal system. While you seem to take some pride from this, it yet again emphasises to me why Sharia law operating in the UK is totally unacceptable and contravenes even the most basic tenets of British law.
Freed Chedie, a spokesman for Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siqqiqi, a barrister who set up the MAT, said: “We put weight on oral agreements, whereas the British courts do not.” In a case last month a non-Muslim Briton took his Muslim business partner to the tribunal to sort out a dispute over the profits in their car fleet company. “The non-Muslim claimed that there had been an oral agreement between the pair,” said Mr Chedie. “The tribunal found that because of certain things the Muslim man did, that agreement had existed. The non-Muslim was awarded £48,000.” He said that the tribunal had adjudicated on at least 20 cases involving non-Muslims so far this year. The rulings of the tribunal are legally binding, provided that both parties agree to that condition at the beginning of any hearing. Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said that organisations should be free to conduct arbitration under Sharia, provided that it did not infringe British law and was a voluntary process. Baroness Warsi, the Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion, who is Muslim, said that there were many forums for arbitration and alternative dispute resolution in Britain. “There is no problem with that, as long as it is always subject to English law,” she said. The Times also learnt that the MAT is planning to triple the number of its courts by setting up in ten new British cities by the end of the year. It will expand its network further by acting as an advisory body to dozens of other Islamic courts, with the intention of achieving national consensus over rulings and procedures. As such, if the MAT was successful in bringing a number of the existing councils into line with its own courts, it would in effect create Britain’s largest national co-operative of tribunals. The MAT is now inviting 24 Sharia councils to attend the conference so that it can train them on procedures and rulings in an attempt to achieve national consistency. An abitration service that both Muslims and non-Muslims can go to to settle their personal disputes – how can I possibly object?
Actually, the question should be ‘how can I possibly support this’. Firstly, claiming to put weight on oral agreements is fraught with problems. You might have noticed that the British legal system is founded on the basis of requiring EVIDENCE that something has or has not occurred. For gods sake, even ’Judge Judy’ requires the participants to provide evidence about what allegedly happened! If both parties agree on the terms then so be it, but it leaves your rulings wide open to subjectivity and distortion. Secondly, why is it that someone would use a Sharia court for abitration instead of a non-religious organisation? Hmmm? Why do you think that might be? Do you really think it all comes down to efficiency and cost-effectiveness? Seeing as Islam has a well-deserved reputation on unequal rights for women, for example, I can see why Sharia courts would be extremely popular with certain sections of the community. Furthermore, seeing as women in more conservative sections of the Muslim community are brought up to respect Sharia law – not just Sharia courts – then they will no doubt agree to any ruling of these abritration panels even though their rights may be grossly infringed. According to The Times, most Sharia courts deal only with divorce and family disputes but you also rule on commercial matters and mediate over forced marriages and domestic violence. Oh, great. A Sharia court based on Sharia law ruling over forced marriage and domestic violence when womens’ rights are almost non-existent. I cannot possibly see how that could go wrong. Naturally, one of your spokesman claimed that “there is hysterial and inherent prejudice against Sharia, but the overwhelming opinion of the judiciary is that English law and Sharia are compatible. It is only people at the right end of the political spectrum who are scaremongering.” No, you idiots, the people who complain about Sharia law are those who want everyone to be treated equally in the eyes of the law and want everyone’s basic rights to be respected – and that is clearly not compatible with the existence of Sharia courts.
I’ve long given up hope of the Labour government giving a toss about Sharia courts so it really is left to the Conservatives to take a stand against your appalling assault on our legal system. Pauline Neville-Jones, the Shadow Security Minister, said last year that “We are not going to have any status for sharia courts. Absolutely not.” However, things have been a bit quieter since then and I hope this is not a sign of a softening stance. Independent arbritration is no bad thing, but when it is conducted by an organisation that has a deeply religious thread and pursues its own social agenda then you cannot expect the British public to just sit here and accept it.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
Allow Sharia courts. Why not?
But the ruling of a UK court will always take precedent if a preceding or subsequent UK ruling takes place.
I doubt realistically that Dave’s Tories will do anything significant to limit this awful development, since they are subject to the cultural hegemony which treats any opposition to the growth of Islam as “discriminatory”. Once a particular view becomes culturally- and morally- hegemonic, it is virtually impossible for any establishment group to stand against it. The “progressives” who have engineered the current state of our cultural hegemony- to a very organised formula derived by post-marxist theoreticians- understand this very well and have done a phenomenally good, comprehensive (from their perspective) job at it. Resistance is virtually, at this point in history, impossible. It certainly seems unlikely that Dave- a progressive social democrat himself- will have either the desire or ability to engineer any signficant reversal. It is most instructive to note that even at the height of Thatcherism, the only political phase we could call genuinely (even if only partially) oppositional to progressivism, this hegemonic programme rolled forward, while Conservatives could do little more than bleat about the “loony left”. Feeble attempts at resistance, such as Clause 28 and the imposition of a National Curriculum, failed utterly; the former had no effect other than providing propaganda opportunities to progressivism, while the latter played into its hands by offering centralised control of schooling to progressivist educrats.
Even if he had the stomach for the hopeless battle, any attempt by Dave to dismantle or contain the Sharia system would be treated by the ruling class en masse as racist and rightwingextremism. Even if he could pass some law, the rest of the ruling class would ensure that it would not be implemented. The views of the greater proportion of the general public- that’s us, that is- are not relevant, since they are only considered when they are in agreement with the views of the ruling class. If you demonstrate in favour of hegemonic values (e.g. for green policy) they will say “this is the voice of the people”. If you demonstrate against hegenomic values you will be dismissed- and perhaps persecuted- as a dangerous extremist; “these demonstrators do not represent the will of the people” will be the answer.
Dave can’t do anything about this, and neither can the rest of us. The negotiations within the ruling class that decide what beliefs are acceptable have concluded in favour of the introduction of sharia. Until we (we in the most general case; who oppose progressivism from whatever perspective) can find a way to clutch the wheel of the west’s moral supertanker and start turning it onto a new heading- and we are not even in the remote vicinity of the wheelhouse, currently- then we must accept such policies as sharia courts as an inevitability, distasteful as that is.
Bill, for private business matters I couldn’t care less what abitration service people use. However, when it comes to social issues such as families (marriage, divorce) and domestic violence, there is absolutely no place for religious courts to pass judgements.
Ian, I honestly think DC would have the country behind him if he said ‘One country, one set of laws’ in front of the TV cameras and wiped Sharia law out of this country. Labour may have decided that Sharia courts are OK but the Conservative faithful will not let Cameron get away with ignoring them.
Ian, I’ve heard most of those panicky arguments before, usually from the poisoned lips of ‘mad’ Mel Phillips.
The problems are:
1) Marxists couldn’t organise a p*ss-up in a brewery; look at the Soviet Union, look at the enormous internal factionalism of the hard left that makes Life of Brian look tame; and
2) While you argue that its a ‘hegemonic’ cultural monolith, there’s scant evidence that this hegemony extends beyond the ruling political elites, if it even stretches beyond the Labour party. It does not, at all, extend to the country at all and people are learning that they don’t have to vote for Labour or Tory if they don’t want to.
3) In the light of 2, resistance is ALWAYS possible.
4) Conflating ‘Section 28′ with opposition to Sharia is ludicrous and irrelevant, not to mention ironic since Sharia opposes homosexuality on pain of death
There can only be one law in the land in order for everyone to be equal before the law. That law does allow for independent, non-judicial, arbitration but such agreements are ALWAYS open to proper legal review. This is not the SWAT valley; people may gripe that our legal system is a bit slow or expensive but it doesn’t take 15 or 20 years to get to a court where the winner is whoever paid the judge the highest bribe.
There is no widespread desire for sharia courts here except from the rabid Muslim fanatics who we, in this country, listen to as representatives of the ‘mainstream’ and swivel eyed loons like Mad Mel who *need* Sharia in order to show how cultural relativism will take us all to hell in a handcart. This is as much of a myth as the lie ‘you have to vote Labour or the BNP will eat your children, burn your pets and rape your home’.
LFAT, given it was the Tories 1996 Arbitration Act that explicitly opened the door to Sharia – although the basis for third party arbitration in the UK goes back centuries – I really don’t get the “it’s up to the Tories” or that it’s something un-British.
As I’ve started in the past, third-party arbitration requires both parties to accept and can be overridden or negated if necessary.
Whilst there is an argument that women may be forced into agreements, that very same argument can be used to suggest they’d be pressurized not to pursue it in the first place, or, if they were the one being claimed against, forced to accept an out-of-court settlement.
You’re wrong with issue over oral evidence too, UK law allows for oral evidence and oral contracts – when you go purchase a pint of milk from the corner shop you’ve made an oral contract in the eyes of the law.
Raging against Sharia in civil cases is pointless, there are bigger fish to fry, and if we can change the discriminatory nature of many Muslim communities – which is the root problem anyway – it’ll automatically correct itself. If we cannot, then banning the use of Sharia will do little more than drive it underground and ensure those sexist Muslim become more insular.
And, as an aside, there are good arguments that English Law has Islamic influences already, from when the Normans consolidated English Law.
Marxists couldn’t organise a p*ss-up in a brewery; look at the Soviet Union, look at the enormous internal factionalism of the hard left that makes Life of Brian look tame;
The Enemy aren’t marxists. They’ve absorbed post-marxist political strategy, but that’s simply because post-marxist strategy (entryism, community organising, identity politics, etc etc) is effective.
While you argue that its a ‘hegemonic’ cultural monolith, there’s scant evidence that this hegemony extends beyond the ruling political elites, if it even stretches beyond the Labour party. It does not, at all, extend to the country at all and people are learning that they don’t have to vote for Labour or Tory if they don’t want to.
The key insight of post-marxist hegemonic theory is one everyone needs to learn; it doesn’t matter whether most people disagree privately with the views articulated by the elite (the “hegemonic discourse”); it is that such dissent is rendered, literally, unspeakable. Using the gay example again, a politician who privately thinks homosexuality is disgusting would not dare publicly say so- his career would be ruined. He would be made an outcast from the ruling class. By setting up moral absolutes as to what is in public discourse beyond the pale- racism, sexism, homophobia, islamophobia, etc etc- the entire polity is effectively controlled by the minority, and the value set becomes self-maintaining. It’s not a specifically marxist thing- other hegemonic values in previous eras, such as christian values, were maintained similarly. What the post-marxists did was to clearly codify and explicate the process.
Broadly speaking, the mass of the people, their values and views, are not part of the debate. The discourse is held between a small number of oligarchic institutions, and in the oligarchy’s mouthpiece, the press and other media. Politicians, in general, do not lead. Their policies are shaped by the cultural hegemony in which they operate. When that hegemony is highly unified- as currently- there is no room for maneuver by politicians, which is why at the moment all three main parties are to all intents and purposes indistinguishable. How would you like to vote, citizen- green, green or green? Multiculturalist, multiculturalist or multiculturalist? Pro EU, pro EU or pro EU? It’s your choice!
No, I understand that theory. However, as with Marxism itself, what starts out well on paper runs into problems in the real world of practice. Additionally while the theory may have improved, my point remains that its the same morons putting it into practice and their eventual failure has its seeds in the genesis of the project.
For example, while ordinary people don’t matter one jot to the elites, the fact remains that there is widespread fear among those elites of where a burgeoning disconnect between the public (voters) and the elected classes promises widespread disaffection. The BNP is a cypher for this argument – they are the worst bogeyman that Labour can conjour up as what will happen if people dare to turn away from them. The disconnect is real and could completely delegitimise the system changing the terms of discussion in fairly unpredictable ways.
“Marxists couldn’t organise a p*ss-up in a brewery…”
Whilst this is undoubtedly true, it’s no small comfort after they’ve burned down the brewery and lost the recipe for beer in the process, is it?
When people enter into any situation, they must do so with the full knowledge of their position. There must be full certainty under the law.
For this to be the case, there must be one law, imposed at a national level. There are reasonable arguments for arbitration services which operate outsde the judicial system (although I am not currently convinced by them), but if they are to exist they must be strictly sanctioned and there must be absolute certainty that no pressure can be applied to use these systems rather than resort to the national judicial system. With Sharia courts, as with the Jewish tribunal system, I am not sure that is the case.
Who shapes our country, if not the lawmakers? We should restrict that ability to shape law to the few that we elect, under the watch of the reforming chamber and the monarch. I realise that that is also an argument for leaving the EU, and restricting the power of judges to ‘make law’ using the HRA and an enacting power. Judicial activism is just as corrosive as Sharia law, but that’s another argument…
I agree Shaun- political manipulations can lead to a failure if the disconnect beceomes too great- you may well get such a stress between dogma and reality that something snaps. We may be heading for that now. What bothers me particularly is that such discontinuties are rarely very positive in nature. I’d like to see our current oligarchy displaced. I do not find the BNP style alternative at all palatable though.
But my original point was that Dave, like all our current politicians, is an insider. As such he is pretty much powerless to do anything but follow the hegemonic value system, even if he might privately wish to (and there is no reason to think he does privately wish to do so anyway).
Tony E, do we need a judiciary? We need laws, and courts, and those courts need juries and some kind of presiding officer ensuring that everyone follows the correct procedures. But does that obligate a guild of “judges”?
A (classical) liberal legal code would be, relative to the present mammoth one, a relatively slim and consistent volume. If conflicts occur within it, would it make more sense to pass it back to the legislature for clarification, rather than to unelected and unaccountable judges to decide? In a liberal democracy, what place is there for judicial review and the inevitable consequent activism?
Ob, my point about oral evidence was taken from the MAT themselves, so the mistake is theirs! I am aware that with sharia law and wearing the burka and many other issues that banning them risks driving them underground, but that is where empowering vulnerable individuals and a totally upfront refusal to accept such practices from the government become the most important goals.
Ian, you might not like the BNP approach but without a strong government to deal with this intrusion into our legal system then the BNP will make even more progress.
Tony E, lawmaking is a very difficult process to make fully ‘accountable’ in the classic sense because a knowledge of the law (which many of us don’t fully possess) is essential. That said, sharia law lacks any form of accountability which is one of the reasons why it has to be got rid of.
Ian, you might not like the BNP approach but without a strong government to deal with this intrusion into our legal system then the BNP will make even more progress.
I have little doubt that they will make even more progress, because they present an alternative. The problem is, their alternative isn’t actually a solution.
LFAT, banning Sharia won’t empower the vulnerable – you might as well hand out condoms to the castrated in the expectations it’d be of use.
As for refusing to accept discriminatory practices, we already do – if a Muslim woman feels she has been discriminated against using Sharia she can ask a civil court to overturn the decision.
That she may be compelled by her culture not to do so is not a fault, nor an issue, with the arbitration law itself. If we’re to start tailoring the legal system to various groups, well, we might as well stick Fuhrerin Harman in charge of the whole shebang.
I’d be surprised if anyone can stop it.
It’s entirely consistent with the principles of Da’Wa, Muslim ‘evangelisation’ (for want of a better description) where part of the aim is the slow and subtle Islamification of standing institutions in a non-Muslim country.
Unfortunately, i don’t see the Great Pretender doing much about it.
My point Ian is that it’s precisely the post-Marxists you rail against who insist that the BNP is what awaits Britain if we lose faith in the cosy, first-past-the-post, Lib-Lab-Con consensensus that governs us. In reality more flakey weirdos voted RCP Green than voted BNP. Irrelevant, though, as our masters ONLY want us to see the literally swivel-eyed Nick Griffin and no things as diverse as Legalise Cannabis, LPUK or whatever. The fact that our ruling elite has chosen to cast the battle as ‘us’ or ‘them’ (pointing at the BNP) is further *proof* of your theory. That we all talk about the BNP as tho they mattered more than the other minor parties goes to demonstrate how far they have inflicted this false-consciousness upon is.
In reality, the major parties can, and probably will, get away with this as long as they do what every governing cliue in British history has done – bend with the popular wind where our European contemporaries get snapped by it (see 1848).
“I’d be surprised if anyone can stop it”
I know who could stop it- rebellious Muslim women & liberal ex-Muslims who, assured of the protection of a secular state, could tell the reactionaries what to do with their attempts to impose on them.
So long as the government is secular, refusing to fund or in any way support faith schools, encouraging & supporting women who leave abusive relationships, no longer having a housing policy that creates ghettoes, promoting the learning of English & full integration, if we hold our nerve in these regards (which unfortunately we don’t) then the great mass of those who are deemed fit only for sharia will be self-confident enough to reject it.
I floated the idea of fast-tracking asylum for Iranian oppositionists & others who have suffered under Islamism. They can explain to the often clueless second & third generation Muslims that it is a stupendously bad idea for them to support this kind of rubbish. I know an Iranian refugee who, being housed in the Asian part of the city, was rebuked for not wearing a veil by a third-generation Pakistani who deemed her face unacceptable. Well, it’s a very pretty face, & one which shouldn’t be covered up because some pointless virgin is afraid of women.
I simply told her to repeat the mantras used by western feminists- it’s my body, not yours, etc. This is the stance taken by those brave souls in Islamic countries who have somehow found the courage to take a stand against sharia, which in all honesty I probably wouldn’t.
It can be done. I refuse to believe that Muslims pick up the mark of the beast at birth & are beyond any hope because I think culture & mentality can change if the conditions are right (which admittedly they aren’t). You have only to look at what this country was like a century ago ago, unrecognisable, & an Irishman who had somehow been frozen in time in the 50s would regard his native country as a foreign land now. Also, in Muslim countries, signs of hope are emerging from countries such as Indonesia & Iran, where resistance to Islamism develops.
I wouldn’t, however, pin my hopes to any party. Labour we can dismiss out of hand. The Lib Dems have a leader who can’t even express his own atheism without a series of apologies & expresssions of “respect” for myths, so I don’t see how he could deliver. Dave from PR, meanwhile, so long as he surrounds himself with the likes of Michael Gove, who explicitly support the building of new faith schools, including Muslim schools, is never going to grasp the nettle.
As I have said before, the difficulty lies in the fact that both the Consistory Courts and the Beth Din are recognised in their own right in this country.
However, we must uphold the Rule of Law as it is fundamental to justice and fairness. While our culture is noted for its tolerance, in my opinion the Executive MUST address the behaviour of the Sharia courts. This is an excellent blog, LFAT as you highlight so many aspects of what is developing. It is far easier to thwart and prevent rather than to bar. In addition, in response to Asquith, charity and example start at home, not overseas. JuliaM, nice irony; Muslims don’t drink so some may burn the brewery. I wouldn’t want to be disrespectful though.
Government needs to decide whether to discourage or integrate the Sharia courts. My way forward would to insist that all courts must abide by and implement our national laws, with identical intepretations and precedents, together with the rigour of process. Any failure to do this results in a strong possibility of the decision being overturned. This is far more rigorous than not upholding any decision shown to be manifestly unfair. It should also be made clear to communities by way of publicity that legal help will usually be granted in all instances where complying with our law has not been seen to occur and that any party may apply for leave to appeal in our civil courts.
Who knows if DC has the b*lls to take this one on, but he should do. This issue is fundamental to the fabric of our society to keep it cohesive. DC will not do anything controversial this side of an election, but do keep this topic rolling, LFAT.
It really is time for this to now cease – this whole islamicization.