You'll be forgiven for not having heard about this yet, because the British government has gone out of its way to keep this vewy, vewy quiet.
The silence is sad, in a way, because the act in question--sanctioning Muslim Sharia courts to serve as officially-recognized arbiters in British civil cases--shouldn't be so repugnant to thinking people. As liberals (and, in global terms, all of us here at the Patriot are liberal), we ought only to worry whether these courts are really as "voluntary" as they claim to be, which are similar to the Beth Din courts that decide civil cases between consenting Jews. We might find Sharia law itself repugnant, but the degree of cultural relativism inherent in liberal political institutions is there for a good reason. If we don't like it, we don't have to consent.
It's an open question just how voluntary these sorts of arrangements really can be. The possibility that participation in these courts could be coerced is there, which is worrisome enough to justify significant state oversight. That is not sufficient reason, though, to dismantle the courts entirely. We have to swallow our principles here and admit that--since we allow people to make self-harming decisions elsewhere all the time--it would make sense only to a xenophobe to stop at sanctioning a Sharia arbitration court. Until more evidence exists to condemn or vindicate these courts in practice, I have to agree with this:
Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “The MCB supports these tribunals. If the Jewish courts are allowed to flourish, so must the sharia ones.”
4 comments:
One wonders what will happen when these courts start forcing 14 year old girls to be sent to their parents countries of origin in order to marry men of a significant older age?
or
When one of these courts sentences a woman to be beaten to within an inch of her life because she disagreed with her husband?
One wonders if Jewish courts ever sanctioned such actions.
One would only wonder these things, Hunter, if one failed to realize that these Sharia courts are courts of arbitrage, settling civil cases with the permission of both parties involved.
An argument could be made that Muslim women will be unlikely to deny them that authority, because of the possible consequences of such a refusal. That argument, however, would undermine a significant portion of the basis for freedom of association and in turn the western conception of liberty. Further, that's an argument that is only worth making in the light of experience with this sort of Sharia-based arbitrage arrangement--which is something we simply don't have much of.
You know that, if these people were being forced by the British government to abide by Sharia law, I would be among the first to object.
For a somewhat more complex view of the actual experience inside a British Sharia court, see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7238890.stm
Yeah Bill!
According to the linked article, "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."
I don't think these courts should be handling domestic cases. If I were living in the UK, I would like to see the jurisdiction of these courts to be severely limited. If Jewish courts have jurisdiction over domestic violence, it should be taken away from them.
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