Britain Grapples With Role for Islamic Justice

Britain Grapples With Role for Islamic Justice
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/world/europe/19shariah.html
By Elaine Sciolino
New York Times, November 18, 2008

Tenets of Shariah or Islamic law are increasingly being applied by Islamic scholars acting as judges in adjudicating cases concerning everyday life. Most of the cases involve women seeking an Islamic divorce. The evidence is typically of husbands’ beating, cursing and subjecting their wives to fear and or humiliation. However, “Islamic judges usually urge troubled couples to try to preserve their marriages,” especially when husbands are opposed to the divorce. In one such case the wife “sensing defeat, . . . brought our her secret weapon: her father. In walked a bearded man in long robes who described his son-in-law as a hot-tempered man who had duped his daughter, evaded the police and humiliated his family. The judge promptly reversed himself and recommended divorce.” Muslim women who are victims of domestic violence are taking advantage of Islamic law within a democratic society.

Although the Church of England has always had its ecclesiastical courts and the British Jews their “beth din” courts, a “national debate over the limits of religious tolerance and the pre-eminence of British law” is taking place, especially where the Conservatives and Liberals have “repeatedly denounced the courts as poor substitutes for British jurisprudence.” There are no records made of the proceedings. However, justice minister Jack Straw stated that, “There is nothing whatever in English law that prevents people abiding by Shariah principles if they wish to, provided they do not come into conflict with English law” which would “remain supreme.”

Marriage and divorce were traditionally relegated to the church. In democratic societies where the separation of church and state has been established, accommodations have been made to religious traditions in a multi-cultural societies. Indeed, this accommodation (cases have increased 50% since 2005) to the tenets of Shariah to Britain’s nearly two million Muslims, is also being taken advantage of by an ever growing populace of European Muslim women (Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany) as a forum for divorce within the Muslim tradition with a judgment of divorce having the imprimatur of God.

“The conflict over British Shariah courts comes at a time when Islamic principles are being extended to other areas of daily life in Britain. There are now five wholly Islamic banks in the country and a score more that comply with Shariah.” Shariah also has applications to automobile insurance policies and credit cards. France has prohibited Muslim female students from wearing a veil at school. At what point, if any, will Britain’s accommodation become a prohibition? The various frameworks of comparative public administration may address and shed light on these questions that have raised concerns.

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