A lady reporter from the Daily Mail rang me yesterday afternoon to ask about my thoughts regarding a new report on shariah “courts” that operate in the UK
“The report is published by the Civitas thinktank and has been written by Denis MacEoin. It says that there are around 85 sharia courts now operating. That is a far higher figure than previously thought. Do you have any comment to make about the implications this has for our country?”
What I should have said in response to this was:
“Yes, MacEoin’s earlier report ‘The Hijacking of British Islam’ – which similarly sought to scaremonger about mosques in the UK – has now been utterly discredited after forensic investigation suggested that evidence had been falsified and the report has since been pulled from the website of Policy Exchange, the rightwing thinktank that was stupid enough to publish it. Still, given that you work for the Daily Mail, I can well understand why MacEoin’s hysterical tirade would be right up your street.”
According to the Civitas press release, MacEoin has researched the present report on sharia tribunals in the UK by: “Reproduc[ing] a range of fatwas issued by popular online fatwa sites, run out of or accessed through mosques in the UK, and in some cases … from UK Muslim schools,” because, he claims, “It is extremely difficult to find out what goes on in these courts” and “these online fatwas can give a good indication of the rulings of sharia courts in Britain.”
It might seem perfectly possible in our Wikipedia age to trawl through online fatwas and infer from them a summation of the operations of sharia tribunals, but it would hardly stand up to scrutiny as a piece of serious, reliable work. Nor would it accurately reflect what sharia tribunals mediate on and what sorts of mediated outcomes arise from their involvement.
Such would require proper investigation of the workings of the sharia councils themselves. An exercise MacEoin doesn’t seem to have bothered with. One should recall here that never having observed teaching in a Muslim school didn’t prevent MacEoin from writing a report about them.
Anyway, I tried patiently to explain to the Daily Mail journalist a bit about the work that sharia councils do and make it clear that they were perfectly lawful and existed to help in voluntary arbitration in civil disputes between Muslims. They do not deal with criminal matters. Sharia councils deal mainly with marital disputes, with the most common referrals being from Muslim women who have approached the sharia councils to grant them an Islamic divorce (khul’a) because of the refusal of the husband to agree to do so.
Orthodox Jewish communities have a similar set up with their Beth Din courts. They are regarded as a form of alternative dispute resolution. But I’m not aware of MacEoin accusing the Beth Din courts of “communal claims to superiority” and “special status”.
The supremacy of English law has always been acknowledged by Beth Din courts that have existed and operated for decades in the UK. Never has the authority of English law been questioned in relation to the arbitration offered by the Jewish courts, so why then the fuss concerning sharia councils that operate under exactly the same regulations? Sadly, for no other reason, it seems, than that the latter are intended for use by Muslims. Rarely does one hear of the criticisms made of the sharia courts similarly extended to the Beth Din courts though both essentially serve the same purpose.
Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) refers to the mechanism by which people can voluntarily settle their civil disputes with the help of a third party without having to resort to a formal court hearing. They are meant to help relieve pressure on an already overburdened court system.
Last year, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, made clear that:
Those who, in this country, are in dispute as to their respective rights are free to subject that dispute to the mediation of a chosen person, or to agree that the dispute shall be resolved by a chosen arbitrator or arbitrators. There is no reason why principles of sharia law, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution. It must be recognised, however, that any sanctions for a failure to comply with the agreed terms of the mediation would be drawn from the laws of England and Wales.
It is not difficult to go and visit sharia courts. There was an interesting write-up by Dan Bell in the Guardian a couple of years ago about the best-known sharia council in London, which operates out of the back-room of a converted corner shop in Leyton. He found that:
The Muslims who consult the Islamic Sharia Council are not asking for permission to stone adulterous wives, or chop off the hands of thieves, but simply for day-to-day guidance on living in accordance with their faith.