UK study: Shari'a courts 'incompatible'

by Jonny Paul, THE JERUSALEM POST, 30/06/2009

Dozens of Islamic courts operating in the United Kingdom are "seriously out of step with trends in Western legislation," according to a report published by London think tank Civitas on Monday.
Denis MacEoin, author of the Civitas report "Shari'a Law or One Law For All?" wrote that Shari'a rulings contained great potential for controversy and could involve acts contrary to UK legal norms and human rights legislation.

According to the report, Shari'a courts should not be recognized under Britain's 1996 Arbitration Act, as they claim authority over the private lives of individuals in a way that is contrary to the British tradition.

"Among the rulings, we find some that advise illegal actions and others that transgress human rights standards as applied by British courts," MacEoin wrote.

Examples set out in the study include a ruling that no Muslim woman may marry a non-Muslim man unless he converts to Islam, and that any children of a woman who does should be taken from her until she marries a Muslim.

Other rulings, according to the report, approve polygamous marriage and enforce a wife's "duty" to have sex with her husband on demand.

"The fact that so many Shari'a rulings in Britain relate to cases concerning divorce and custody of children is of particular concern, as women are not equal in Shari'a law, and Shari'a contains no specific commitment to the best interests of the child that is fundamental to family law in the UK. Under Shari'a, a male child belongs to the father after the age of seven, regardless of circumstances," the report said.

"Thus, in October 2008, the House of Lords ruled that Shari'a was incompatible with human rights when a Lebanese woman sought asylum in the UK because, if she had been sent back to Lebanon, she would have been ordered to hand over her son to a violently abusive husband," it added.

"In our legal system, no punishments can be applied to individuals who fail to live up to religious requirements," said David Green, the editor of the study said in the introduction.

In the study, MacEoin reproduces a range of fatwas issued by popular fatwa Web sites, run out of or accessed through mosques in the UK, and in some cases, even from UK Muslim schools. According to MacEoin, the courts operate largely out of mosques and are closed to independent observers. Thus, it is extremely difficult to find out what goes on in them.

Last year, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, said a recognized role for Shari'a law in Britain seemed "unavoidable," and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Philips, who stepped down last October, said there was no reason why decisions made on Shari'a principles should not be recognized by the national courts.

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