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Sharia Law Becomes Official in Britain (pg. 2)
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| Moral Hazard |
| quote: | Originally posted by George Smiley
Some people in the UK choose (or do not choose) to live by Sharia law, that fact will not change because of these arbitration courts, so I don't think we will see any different. A battered wife under an oppressive husband will remain so whether these courts exist or not, like I said, I don't expect anything to change |
If anything; formalizing this process creates an added layer of accountability for these tribunals. This has probably been going on for years (as it has here) but without oversight at any level. It has likely been something done quietly in mosques or people's homes for quite some time. Making it a formalized process that can be observed, scrutinized and controlled is a step in the right direction; under the conditions that it is voluntary and subject to the rule of law. |
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| Kinezi |
| Fire3starter should go to hell for making such useless hate threads. |
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| Fir3start3r |
Come on guys, if I would have posted an article, I would have posted the source - I always do.
And blaming me for posting a pic that has nothing to do with me but shows exactly whats happening in Britain doesn't make sense either.
When did we become so elitest on this board that we're judged by sources?
It's a legitimate concern right now and you guys jump all over sources? Come on...
Can't bring a subject up without a news story attached or something? :conf:
I honestly thought you guys were a little smarter than that...
It's a frakin' parallel legal system for those that want to be tried under Sharia Law.
Stoned your wife? Hey Shira Law will take care of that.
Honour killing? Hey Shira Law will take care of that.
Honestly don't see a creeping problem here? :conf:
Fine, here's an article...(but honestly Google would have sufficed for any of you...)
| quote: |
From The Times
July 5, 2008
The Sharia debate: we can't all be equal under different laws
Allowing British Muslims recourse to Islamic law would be a charter for male dominance and peer-group bullying
Matthew Parris
Sneakily, Britain's first Muslim Minister, Shahid Malik, has ducked the critics that he will enrage in an interview to be broadcast on Channel 4's Dispatches programme on Monday.
Knowing that the phrase he uses to describe the situation of British Muslims - “the Jews of Europe” - will make the headlines, he has put it in the mouths of others. “If you ask Muslims today what do they feel like,” he says, “they feel like the Jews of Europe.” He does not say if he thinks that they are right.
I'll respond in the Malik method. If you asked most non-Muslims what they feel about the suggestion, they would say that it was disgraceful, outrageous and insulting.
Mr Malik's assessment of how some British Muslims feel may be accurate; but they are wrong. Race is not the issue. Unless we face up honestly to the incompatibilities between aspects of the ways of life of some (not all) Muslim groups in Britain, and the British mainstream culture, we shall find ourselves babbling about racism when the issue has less to do with race than with culture.
The speech has been variously reported as anything from a gentle warning to cultural separatists within Islam, to a craven endorsement of the compromising speech about Sharia made by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, last year. Lord Phillips took as his theme and title Equality Before the Law. This was shrewder than it was brave.
“Equality” is a dummy concept in the philosophy of law. Here it allowed both speaker and audience to overlook real differences between them, because everyone is in favour of equality. But Lord Phillips was wrong to say that only recently has English law developed a respect for equality. Common Law and Statute have always regarded everyone as “equal before the law”, but depending on who and what you are and what you've done, your rights may differ. A cat burglar and a householder are not equal before the law. An under-age teenager and an adult, a British citizen and an illegal immigrant, are not equal. An in-catchment-area and out-of-catchment-area parent are not (in their children's access to a local school) equal. It's all a question of category; the categories of citizen that our laws create do and must create differences - inequalities - in the rights of individuals.
The only interesting question is whether these inequalities are fair and in the public interest. This must depend on moral and cultural standpoints, which change over time. The argument about “equality” for (say) women who wanted the right to vote, gays who want the right to marry, slaves who wanted to be free, or convicted paedophiles who want the right to be considered for employment in children's homes, has only and always been about the suitability of these categories to enjoy the rights urged for them; not whether the law should be “equal”.
No more than English law does even the most brutal Sharia advocate “inequality”. It simply reflects a cultural belief that women are different. Lord Phillips ducked that by taking equality as his theme.
He ducked again by denying that Dr Williams had said anything surprising. He reminded his audience (as Dr Williams had) that it is possible under English law for groups to agree on whatever rulebook (or adjudicator) they like, and that Sharia cannot be excluded from the available range of rulebooks.
That apparently bland reminder steers round some serious difficulties about jurisdictions-within-a-jurisdiction. The key paragraph in Lord Phillips's speech is this: “A point that the Archbishop was making was that it was possible for individuals voluntarily to conduct their lives in accordance with Sharia principles without this being in conflict with the rights guaranteed by our law. To quote him again ‘the refusal of a religious believer to act upon the legal recognition of a right is not, given the plural character of society, a denial to anyone inside or outside the community of access to that right'.”
There are two statements here, both doubtful. It is by no means certain that a group of individuals may voluntarily conduct themselves according to Sharia without breaking English law. It depends what Sharia says. We are not free under English law to agree (however willingly) to break English law. We may not agree to discriminate on racial or (usually) on religious grounds against third parties or even each other. A woman may not agree to accept diminished employment rights. We may not agree to punish each other (as elsewhere Phillips acknowledges) unlawfully. Without a clear account of what Sharia demands, Lord Phillips cannot know.
But the second claim that Lord Phillips endorses is more dangerous. Decoded, Dr Williams is saying that in a multicultural society it is fine for people within a culture to agree not to exercise certain rights, even if English law would allow them to.
This is a charter for male dominance. It's a charter for cultural bullying; for peer-group pressurising; for self-oppression. It's a charter against women and teenagers who cannot make wholly free choices because they have nowhere else to go; a charter against individuals whose circumstances have made it difficult to think outside the cultural box; a charter for discreet duress. I am sorry to hear the Lord Chief Justice endorsing it.
Public policy in Britain, however cloudy a thing, goes wider than law but informs the law and lawmaking. Make no bones about what 21st-century British public policy thinks of arranged marriage, the subjection and seclusion of women, unequal divorce and property arrangements within marriage, preaching hatred against apostasy, or the ostracising of homosexuals.
Public policy dislikes these things. Sometimes the State legislates to discourage them. Sometimes the State stands back.
Whether or when to intervene will in the end depend on no clear doctrine, but on a general understanding that things must not be allowed to get out of hand. How widespread, how deep, how harmful and how infectious are bad cultural attitudes, will ultimately be the decider.
Neither the Archbishop nor Lord Phillips do any service to public policy by seeming to encourage a recourse to religious rulebooks that runs against the modern British grain.
It made me sad to note that Lord Phillips began his speech by describing his maternal grandparents' arrival in Britain in 1903, Sephardic Jews who eloped from Alexandria and their families' attitudes “because they understood that England was a country in which they would enjoy freedom”. How fortunate that the attitudes they were escaping did not pursue them here with “voluntary” codes pushed forward by a “shared” culture whose compelling nature is more insidious in reality than it seems in law.
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>> Hey look. It's the source! << |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Moral Hazard
PKC, you're looking at this wrong. This is not really a court run on religious law... it's independent arbitration. Just like in collective bargining or seeking settlement of a tort action... the two sides agree on an arbitrator and to be bound by their decision, they present their case, the arbitrator decides, and the parties comply with the arbitrator's decision. Who cares what the arbitrator bases their decision on as long as both parties agree to the rules. This is for private disputes, not public policy, and it's not a body that has the authority to make/change/or otherwise overrule law. |
oh yeah man, i know i know i know :haha: ive been having this argument with myself since like the archbishop commented on it whenever that was :D and my liberal self is hating my religious bigot self etc etc ha.
but obviously im gonna come out against any move i see as legitimising religious influence in the public sphere. that's just how my breakfast is in the morning :D
how many of the arbitrators are women for instance? just a hunch i have, if im wrong fine ill retract that comment ;) but if it can be shown that the arbitration works against principles of equity between say, husbands and wives, then im still gonna call that bollocks and im not ashamed to admit it.
but anyway, im too offa to do this topic justice right now so i will undoubtedly annoy you all tomorrow. im sure our good friend pat will have a new rant about it, you should all check it out :D
nighty night! :) |
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| George Smiley |
Ah but that's not your source tho, is it, Mr Moonbattery?
Anyway, nobody's having a go at you for not using a source (that we all found anyway using the techniques you describe above), they're having a go at you for posting unsubstantiated e... |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
Considering a long lasting culture of endorsing women rights and opinions in the islamic world, I'm fairly certain that a lot of women will not have much say in their decisions on whether they'll adhere to sharia or civil courts. A couple of whacks on the head from the husband, and they'll sign up for the sharia court in no time.
Really, there should be one single law for every citizen of the country regardless of religious orientations, or anything else for that matter. This is either extreme cultural relativism or sucking up to islamic loonies out of fear for terrorist attacks. Either way, it undermines the basis of democracy and free western societies - equal rights and opportunities. |
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| George Smiley |
| quote: | Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0
Considering a long lasting culture of endorsing women rights and opinions in the islamic world, I'm fairly certain that a lot of women will not have much say in their decisions on whether they'll adhere to sharia or civil courts. A couple of whacks on the head from the husband, and they'll sign up for the sharia court in no time. |
But if that is the case, then what exactly will change in that woman's life? She will be forced to live by Sharia law now, and in those circumstances, where somebody is forced by duress to abide by the rulings of an arbitration panel, that would render the contract illegal under British law anyway. Arbitration courts are not courts of law, they have no influence over, and cannot effect, British law. They are simply a means of bringing two parties in dispute together in agreement without it having to go to a court of law.
| quote: | | Really, there should be one single law for every citizen of the country regardless of religious orientations, or anything else for that matter. This is either extreme cultural relativism or sucking up to islamic loonies out of fear for terrorist attacks. Either way, it undermines the basis of democracy and free western societies - equal rights and opportunities. |
There is a single law for everybody! This is not a separate layer of law or anything like that, it is a dispute resolution service, nothing more, nothing less. |
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| shaolin_Z |
| quote: | Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0
Considering a long lasting culture of endorsing women rights and opinions in the islamic world |
Actually it does, women have property rights, inheritance rights, the right to choose their partner etc etc which they didn't enjoy before Islam, something women in the West have only enjoyed for less than a century (as opposed to 1400 years). Might want to do a little research before making hasty generalizations ;). |
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| DJ Shibby |
| Thanks for the propagandistic photograph. ;) |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by George Smiley
Ah but that's not your source tho, is it, Mr Moonbattery?
Anyway, nobody's having a go at you for not using a source (that we all found anyway using the techniques you describe above), they're having a go at you for posting unsubstantiated e... |
First off, it's just a picture that was randomly googled and second, this is hardly 'unsubstantiated'... :rolleyes: |
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| LazFX |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Shibby
Thanks for the propagandistic photograph. ;) |
 ;) |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0
Considering a long lasting culture of endorsing women rights and opinions in the islamic world, I'm fairly certain that a lot of women will not have much say in their decisions on whether they'll adhere to sharia or civil courts. A couple of whacks on the head from the husband, and they'll sign up for the sharia court in no time.
Really, there should be one single law for every citizen of the country regardless of religious orientations, or anything else for that matter. This is either extreme cultural relativism or sucking up to islamic loonies out of fear for terrorist attacks. Either way, it undermines the basis of democracy and free western societies - equal rights and opportunities. |
Someone who actually understands... ;)
I agree DrUg_Tit0.
I don't remember there being an open discussion, or anything addressed to the people asking if the law could kowtow to these minorities or act in such a Dhimmis-like fashion.
These people have used the law against itself to serve themselves towards an Orwellian future... |
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