The Regressive Left and Islam -- What is happening here?

[Coyote]

You accused Ravi of wanting to bring Sharia here. You suck at English....or you are frighteningly stupid.

What I actually said is that those who support the establishment of sharia family courts in the United States are supporting the importation of this legal system. This was in respose to Mac pointing out a thread in the CDZ where leftists were doing exactly that.

And you call ME stupid and unable to comprehend English, child?

No one here is supporting the "establishment of sharia family courts" - you either misunderstand what is going on or you're deliberately being an idiot. There are no COURTS being supported in any way.

Sharia councels (as in UK), or individual Imams (as I think it is in the US) - can engage in arbritation, rule on whether specific things or actions are sharia compliant, provide counsel or grant RELIGIOUS divorces, or RECOMMEND distribution of property and child custody arrangements. In order for any of those to have the force of law, they must be ratified by a SECULAR court. They operate in much the same way as rabbinical councels in applying Halakah to those who wish to use it. None of this is NEW in our country.

I'm sure you're going to find some way of twisting this, but at least we should start with the actual facts.

Sharia courts in Britain operate with the backing of U.K. law.

Your calling them "councils" as a slippery rhetorical ruse does not change the facts of the matter one bit. .

THIS is what you are actually supporting

http://www.bowgroup.org/sites/bowgroup.uat.pleasetest.co.uk/files/Bow Group Report - A Parallel World - Confronting the abuse of many Muslim women in Britain today 24 03 15.pdf

Thanks for the link.

 

[Seawytch]

I think it is cute when the uneducated use the term "rwnj" to describe people who support the views of liberals like Sam Harris and Bill Maher. What's next in this little Orwellian world of the uneducated -- calling somebody who supports the work of George Will a Communist?

The shallow, simplistic, binary thinking of hardcore partisan ideologues.

If you're not a LWNJ, you must be a RWNJ. And vice versa.

But I am convinced they don't even see it.
.

I think some of them see it, and it might even make them vaguely uncomfortable. For example, when they find themselves making excuses for aspects of Islam that go against the principles of universal human rights and women's rights, the very rights they are supposed to champion.
However, remain in lockstep they must, so they can't/won't back down and therefore find themselves having to employ false equivalances and reductio ad absurdums galore, to both safe face, and to insinuate those in opposition are bigots, racists and islamophobes, who therefore they have an alterior motive, whos word is dirt, and who are (hopefully), discredited.
I suspect some wouldn't behave like this in RL if faced with someone attempting to discuss where Islam and women's rights, for example, diverge, at least I hope so. In fact, we have an example in this thread where coyote is amicable and even in agreement with flacc, but virulently disagrees and mock funnies other posters when they express exactly the same concerns. Go figure.

I see the regressive left making the comparisons of which is worse. Trump is worse than Clinton, earlier in this thread Christians are worse than Muslims. You also so them comparing transgenders using bathrooms as an equivalent to the Civil Rights of blacks.

This entire thread has been enlightening to the regressive left.

Trump is "worse" than Clinton.

Christians and Muslims (and Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, numerologists, etc) are equal parts good and bad (same goes for their fan clubs)

Transgender rights and civil rights for blacks may not be the same, but the bigots and their justifications are almost identical.

 

[Seawytch]

It isn't even meant to be a legal system in Islamic countries but a spiritual path to follow.

.

Oh, my goodness.

Is your job here to throw out any truly idiotic nonsense that comes into your head as long as it supports Islam?

Obviously, sharia is not a legal system here, but there are those who advocate establishing it. When I opposed it's establishment, your puerile response was a bunch of your typical crap about my supposed "partisanship".

You are so thoroughly stuck in your adolescent acting-out phase that you simply oppose as a conditioned response.

Why did you edit out much of my post? Too cowardly to address it, I'm guessing.

Do a little research and you will discover that Sharia is exactly what I stated. That it is perverted in some cultures does not change that fact.

It cannot be law in the USA as religions are not allowed to dictate laws.

Well...except for Blue Laws...

 

[Ravi]

It isn't even meant to be a legal system in Islamic countries but a spiritual path to follow.

.

Oh, my goodness.

Is your job here to throw out any truly idiotic nonsense that comes into your head as long as it supports Islam?

Obviously, sharia is not a legal system here, but there are those who advocate establishing it. When I opposed it's establishment, your puerile response was a bunch of your typical crap about my supposed "partisanship".

You are so thoroughly stuck in your adolescent acting-out phase that you simply oppose as a conditioned response.

Why did you edit out much of my post? Too cowardly to address it, I'm guessing.

Do a little research and you will discover that Sharia is exactly what I stated. That it is perverted in some cultures does not change that fact.

It cannot be law in the USA as religions are not allowed to dictate laws.

Well...except for Blue Laws...

Yes, that is true. Only Christians can legislate their beliefs in the US and that needs to end. No religion should be allowed to trump the constitution.

 

[Norman]

You accused Ravi of wanting to bring Sharia here. You suck at English....or you are frighteningly stupid.

What I actually said is that those who support the establishment of sharia family courts in the United States are supporting the importation of this legal system. This was in respose to Mac pointing out a thread in the CDZ where leftists were doing exactly that.

And you call ME stupid and unable to comprehend English, child?

No one here is supporting the "establishment of sharia family courts" - you either misunderstand what is going on or you're deliberately being an idiot. There are no COURTS being supported in any way.

Sharia councels (as in UK), or individual Imams (as I think it is in the US) - can engage in arbritation, rule on whether specific things or actions are sharia compliant, provide counsel or grant RELIGIOUS divorces, or RECOMMEND distribution of property and child custody arrangements. In order for any of those to have the force of law, they must be ratified by a SECULAR court. They operate in much the same way as rabbinical councels in applying Halakah to those who wish to use it. None of this is NEW in our country.

I'm sure you're going to find some way of twisting this, but at least we should start with the actual facts.

Sharia courts in Britain operate with the backing of U.K. law.

Your calling them "councils" as a slippery rhetorical ruse does not change the facts of the matter one bit. .

What do they actually do in Britain? I admit, I'm less familiar with Britain than the US, but the information is readily available, so lets look at the FACTS before proclaiming "slippery rhetorical ruses" and all the usual name calling.

According to Wikipedia: Islamic Sharia Council - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Islamic Sharia Council (ISC) is a London-based, quasi-Islamic court that provides legal rulings and advice to Muslims in accordance with its brand of Islamic Sharia based on the four Sunni schools of thought. It primarily handles cases of marriage and divorce and, to a lesser extent business and finance.[3] According to BBC News, thousands of Muslims have turned to the Council to resolve family and financial issues. The Council operates 16 tribunals in Britain, including in Birmingham, Bradford and London.[4] The Economist magazine states it has offered rulings to "thousands of troubled families since the 1980s",[5] the council states that it has dealt with an average of between 200 to 300 cases monthly as of January 2012.[6]


One authority holds that the council has no legal authority or jurisdiction in the United Kingdom,[3] and can not impose any penalties; many Muslims would appear voluntarily to accept the rulings made by the ISC.[6] Another report holds that Muslim tribunals exploit a legal loophole which allows sharia courts to be classified as arbitration courts, which allows their rulings to be binding in law.[4]


The Islamic Sharia Council says it is ‘devoted to the articulation of classical Islamic principles in a manner that provides a platform for Islam to be the cure of all humanity’s ills.’[7] According to The Economist magazine its "two main founders come from purist schools of Islam, the Deobandis and the Salafis".[5] A rival service, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, was founded in 2007 by followers of the Barelvi school of South Asian Islam, is reportedly "less strict than the Deobandis" and as of 2010 offered dispute resolution in half a dozen British cities.[5]​

According to: Dan Bell on sharia law - the use of Sharia Councils or Sharia "courts" - is, variable in the quality of the advice it gives or how liberally sharia is interpreted, and whether or not women are protected enough. Divorces clearly constitute the majority of their work.

Pros/Cons:

"In every situation our motto is: reconciliation first. So we try to reconcile, but in cases where a marriage was enforced on a girl against her wishes, against her own opinion, we don't want to negotiate. What we do is, we try to make their guardians, their parents, understand the Islamic position, and also we tell them what is the position of British law on marriage." Sayeed tells them that they "will also be guilty of [breaking] heavenly laws - that is how we try to convince the parents". Does it work? "Not all the time. We are human and working in human society. Not all the time; most of the time, yes."


But not all councils are as committed to liberal interpretations of sharia. Estimates of the number of mosques across the country range from 1,000 to 2,000. They serve a hugely diverse Muslim community - at 1.6 million people, Muslims are the largest religious minority in Britain. Each mosque has its own imams, some of whom are scholars like Sayeed, while others are simply devout Muslims fulfilling a need for religious guidance in their communities. The Islamic Sharia Council is one of the oldest and most respected, but it admits that there is no single body that can claim to be fully representative of all British Muslims.


Neither is there any regulation of imams, or any benchmark for the quality of advice that they give. Abdul Jalil Sajid, former secretary of the mosque and community affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, estimates that 35% of imams are unqualified. No one knows how many of them are operating in sharia councils, applying their own interpretations of Islamic law.


According to Cassandra Balchin, of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), too many of them promote a highly conservative interpretation of sharia that overemphasises the rights of the husband. "They don't seem to recognise the multiple forms of divorce that are available to women," she says. "There are usually no women involved, whereas in a lot of Muslim countries you can have women judges involved in family courts."​

More complications:

Another major problem is bad advice over what exactly constitutes a valid marriage and divorce in the first place. The councils "seem to imply that their decisions would be valid in some other legal context", says Balchin, "but that, in fact, is not the case".


Islamic marriages and divorces conducted in Muslim countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh are recognised as valid in the UK, but the British courts do not recognise Islamic ceremonies carried out in this country unless they are registered separately with the civil authorities. The result is that some Muslims think they are protected by family law when they are not, and others think they are properly divorced when, in fact, they are still married. In one case, Luton police contacted WLUML after pursuing a man for bigamy who had married in Luton, then flown to Pakistan and married again. After looking into the case, they found that the first marriage was invalid as it had been conducted by an imam in an unregistered mosque. His first wife was left with no legal protection by the family courts, and the husband was free to bring his second wife back to Britain as his legal spouse.​

Convoluted, confusing and legally messy, but it also points out the extreme difficulty of sorting out these matters and the lack of any kind of standard for those giving religious advice.

But do the Islamic Councils in Britain have the force of British secular law? There seems to be a lot of conflicting claims.

I think this article offers the most thoughtful analysis of the issue:

http://www.economist.com/node/17249634
Sharia in the West
Whose law counts most?

ANY Western politician, judge or religious leader desiring instant fame or a dose of controversy has an easy option. All you need do is say “sharia” in public.


Sharron Angle, a Republican candidate for the Senate, proved the point when she suggested that Frankford, Texas, and Dearborn, Michigan, were both subject to a sharia regime, as a result of the “militant terrorist situation” that existed in those places. Critics retorted that Frankford, after its absorption by Dallas, no longer existed as an administrative unit. Dearborn's mayor, Jack O'Reilly, tartly told her that his town's 60 churches and seven mosques were flourishing happily under American jurisdiction. But for some tea party fans, she was guilty at worst of slight exaggeration.


Less weirdly, but just as controversially, Archbishop Rowan Williams, leader of the world's 80m Anglicans, will never be allowed to forget saying in February 2008 that some accommodation between British law and sharia was “inevitable”. Lord Phillips, then England's senior judge, drew equal ire by adding that sharia-based mediation could have some role as long as national law held primacy.


IIt is easy to see why the word sharia has emotional overtones, especially today. The appalled reaction to the case of Sakineh Ashtiani, an Iranian woman who has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, has stoked a global campaign for her acquittal. The sentence was suspended last month, but her fate looks dicey. She could still face execution on a murder charge.


Such cases reflect only one part of sharia: the system of corporal and capital punishments such as stoning for adultery, death for murder or apostasy (abandoning Islam), whipping for consuming intoxicants or the cutting off of a hand for theft. Muslims themselves disagree over how, if at all, these penalties should be practised in the modern world. Tariq Ramadan, a prominent European Muslim thinker, caused a furore in 2003 when he suggested that stoning and other physical punishments should be “suspended”. Hardline Islamists regarded that as backsliding. Nicolas Sarkozy (then the interior minister, now the president of France) pointed out that the formulation could imply a future resumption of physical punishment.


Horrifying as these punishments might be to modern sensibilities, there is no prospect of their exercise in any Western country. Muslims living in the West may (as has sometimes happened) take the “law” into their own hands by killing an apostate. But that counts as murder pure and simple.


Where sharia poses genuine dilemmas for secular countries with big Muslim minorities is not in the realm of retribution but in its application to family matters such as divorce, inheritance and custody. English-speaking countries boast a strong tradition of settling disputes (commercial or personal) by legally binding arbitration. This already includes non-secular institutions such as longstanding rabbinical tribunals in Britain and many other countries, or Christian mediation services in North America. Now Islam-based outfits are entering the market.


Perhaps inevitably, the procedures and general ethos of Muslim mediation are very different from those of a secular court. Many of Britain's 2m or so Muslims come from socially conservative parts of South Asia, such as rural Kashmir. The practice of sharia-based family law both reflects and to an extent mitigates that conservatism. A network of sharia councils—whose two main founders come from purist schools of Islam, the Deobandis and the Salafis—has offered rulings to thousands of troubled families since the 1980s. Much of their work involves women who have received civil divorces but need an Islamic one to remarry within their faith. The councils can overrule a husband's objections. Few would decry this. But the woman may well also forfeit her mahr (marriage settlement). Critics call that unfair. They also complain that, when faced with domestic violence, these councils merely administer a scolding or prescribe an “anger-management” course, rather than the safe house and prosecution that the state-run system should offer.


Still, British sharia arbitrators may alleviate a peculiarly British woe. Some Muslim Britons contract an Islamic marriage (but not a civil one) and then fail to confer on the bride the marriage settlement that would be obligatory in say, Pakistan. If the union sunders, such men then escape their obligations under both English law and Pakistani custom. The councils advise against such deviousness.


A rival set-up, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunals, now offers dispute resolution in half a dozen British cities. Founded in 2007 by followers of the Barelvi school of South Asian Islam, they are less strict than the Deobandis. But when asked to divide up an intestate's assets, they follow Islamic law, giving daughters half as much as sons. The tribunals say they operate under the Arbitration Act of 1996. That makes rulings binding once both parties have given authority to the arbitrator.


In Canada legislation framed with secular arbitration in mind but used by religious courts is a hotter issue than in Britain. In 2003 a Toronto lawyer, Syed Mumtaz Ali, proclaimed an “Islamic Institute of Civil Justice” and urged Muslims to use it. The province of Ontario reacted in 2005 by stripping religious tribunals (including Jewish and Catholic ones) of legal force. It also stiffened rules on arbitrators' qualifications and record-keeping. Quebec tightened its law too.


That has not stopped devout Canadian Muslims from seeking religious guidance on family and personal matters. As Harvey Simmons, a York University professor, wrote last month: “Because religious arbitration now takes place mainly outside the scrutiny of the Ontario courts, there is no way to tell whether women are being treated well or badly by informal religious arbitration.”


In the United States both secular and religious arbitration are firmly established, operating under a Federal Arbitration Act that gives robust standing to the procedure but also allows the parties to counter-appeal to ordinary courts on certain grounds (though America's church-state separation stops courts hearing arguments about doctrine). Christian and Jewish arbitration is well-organised. The Muslim variety is lower-key and less formal, but so far not (barring outbursts from tea-partistas like Ms Angle) especially controversial.


So...are they Islamic courts? I still say no, a court implies a lot more than what they are doing.

Do they have the force of law? It appears that under Britain's Arbritation Act, the US' similar legislation, they do have some force of law.

Are there problems with it? Apparently, not the least of which is whether women are sufficiently protected or adequately advised and lack of any sort of "standard" or credentialing for those doing the advising.

Is there a need for it at all? That's a matter of opinion. If one is religious, the answer is yes. There is also a very complicated mess involving religious divorce vs secular divorce that needs to somehow be addressed. It's clear that the Catholic community and the Jewish community have similar issues though it's not complicated by poloygamy.

Can the system be fixed to work better? The article implied that something was done to do just that in the Jewish rabbinical councils to address divorce, so why not? In Britain, it looks extremely messy, inept and disorganized. Perhaps Canada's system is a better one, no force of law (which I like) implying that though that the religious divorce can be offered but they still must get a secular one or have it ratified by the secular court.

Last question: Let's say you make sharia illegal. Ok, how will you handle people seeking religious arbritration, divorces, advice etc? Do you apply it to ALL religious arbitration venus or just some?

Perhaps the first step, before even thinking about making anything illegal, would be to stop apologizing for, or importing muslims.

It's amazing that even after walls and walls of text, and almost 150 pages of discussion people still don't get this. The OP was 100% right.

 

[Papageorgio]

I think it is cute when the uneducated use the term "rwnj" to describe people who support the views of liberals like Sam Harris and Bill Maher. What's next in this little Orwellian world of the uneducated -- calling somebody who supports the work of George Will a Communist?

The shallow, simplistic, binary thinking of hardcore partisan ideologues.

If you're not a LWNJ, you must be a RWNJ. And vice versa.

But I am convinced they don't even see it.
.

I think some of them see it, and it might even make them vaguely uncomfortable. For example, when they find themselves making excuses for aspects of Islam that go against the principles of universal human rights and women's rights, the very rights they are supposed to champion.
However, remain in lockstep they must, so they can't/won't back down and therefore find themselves having to employ false equivalances and reductio ad absurdums galore, to both safe face, and to insinuate those in opposition are bigots, racists and islamophobes, who therefore they have an alterior motive, whos word is dirt, and who are (hopefully), discredited.
I suspect some wouldn't behave like this in RL if faced with someone attempting to discuss where Islam and women's rights, for example, diverge, at least I hope so. In fact, we have an example in this thread where coyote is amicable and even in agreement with flacc, but virulently disagrees and mock funnies other posters when they express exactly the same concerns. Go figure.

I see the regressive left making the comparisons of which is worse. Trump is worse than Clinton, earlier in this thread Christians are worse than Muslims. You also so them comparing transgenders using bathrooms as an equivalent to the Civil Rights of blacks.

This entire thread has been enlightening to the regressive left.

Trump is "worse" than Clinton.

Christians and Muslims (and Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, numerologists, etc) are equal parts good and bad (same goes for their fan clubs)

Transgender rights and civil rights for blacks may not be the same, but the bigots and their justifications are almost identical.

I see no difference, lying to put innocent lives endanger is deplorable. Calling women who accuse a man of sexual abuse "bimbo eruptions" is cold and uncaring. I wouldn't vote for either, they are both corrupt the fact this is the two parties choices shows how low we are as a nation politically.

That partisan politics gets us to the spot is disturbing.

 

[Coyote]

You accused Ravi of wanting to bring Sharia here. You suck at English....or you are frighteningly stupid.

What I actually said is that those who support the establishment of sharia family courts in the United States are supporting the importation of this legal system. This was in respose to Mac pointing out a thread in the CDZ where leftists were doing exactly that.

And you call ME stupid and unable to comprehend English, child?

No one here is supporting the "establishment of sharia family courts" - you either misunderstand what is going on or you're deliberately being an idiot. There are no COURTS being supported in any way.

Sharia councels (as in UK), or individual Imams (as I think it is in the US) - can engage in arbritation, rule on whether specific things or actions are sharia compliant, provide counsel or grant RELIGIOUS divorces, or RECOMMEND distribution of property and child custody arrangements. In order for any of those to have the force of law, they must be ratified by a SECULAR court. They operate in much the same way as rabbinical councels in applying Halakah to those who wish to use it. None of this is NEW in our country.

I'm sure you're going to find some way of twisting this, but at least we should start with the actual facts.

Sharia courts in Britain operate with the backing of U.K. law.

Your calling them "councils" as a slippery rhetorical ruse does not change the facts of the matter one bit. .

What do they actually do in Britain? I admit, I'm less familiar with Britain than the US, but the information is readily available, so lets look at the FACTS before proclaiming "slippery rhetorical ruses" and all the usual name calling.

According to Wikipedia: Islamic Sharia Council - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Islamic Sharia Council (ISC) is a London-based, quasi-Islamic court that provides legal rulings and advice to Muslims in accordance with its brand of Islamic Sharia based on the four Sunni schools of thought. It primarily handles cases of marriage and divorce and, to a lesser extent business and finance.[3] According to BBC News, thousands of Muslims have turned to the Council to resolve family and financial issues. The Council operates 16 tribunals in Britain, including in Birmingham, Bradford and London.[4] The Economist magazine states it has offered rulings to "thousands of troubled families since the 1980s",[5] the council states that it has dealt with an average of between 200 to 300 cases monthly as of January 2012.[6]


One authority holds that the council has no legal authority or jurisdiction in the United Kingdom,[3] and can not impose any penalties; many Muslims would appear voluntarily to accept the rulings made by the ISC.[6] Another report holds that Muslim tribunals exploit a legal loophole which allows sharia courts to be classified as arbitration courts, which allows their rulings to be binding in law.[4]


The Islamic Sharia Council says it is ‘devoted to the articulation of classical Islamic principles in a manner that provides a platform for Islam to be the cure of all humanity’s ills.’[7] According to The Economist magazine its "two main founders come from purist schools of Islam, the Deobandis and the Salafis".[5] A rival service, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, was founded in 2007 by followers of the Barelvi school of South Asian Islam, is reportedly "less strict than the Deobandis" and as of 2010 offered dispute resolution in half a dozen British cities.[5]​

According to: Dan Bell on sharia law - the use of Sharia Councils or Sharia "courts" - is, variable in the quality of the advice it gives or how liberally sharia is interpreted, and whether or not women are protected enough. Divorces clearly constitute the majority of their work.

Pros/Cons:

"In every situation our motto is: reconciliation first. So we try to reconcile, but in cases where a marriage was enforced on a girl against her wishes, against her own opinion, we don't want to negotiate. What we do is, we try to make their guardians, their parents, understand the Islamic position, and also we tell them what is the position of British law on marriage." Sayeed tells them that they "will also be guilty of [breaking] heavenly laws - that is how we try to convince the parents". Does it work? "Not all the time. We are human and working in human society. Not all the time; most of the time, yes."


But not all councils are as committed to liberal interpretations of sharia. Estimates of the number of mosques across the country range from 1,000 to 2,000. They serve a hugely diverse Muslim community - at 1.6 million people, Muslims are the largest religious minority in Britain. Each mosque has its own imams, some of whom are scholars like Sayeed, while others are simply devout Muslims fulfilling a need for religious guidance in their communities. The Islamic Sharia Council is one of the oldest and most respected, but it admits that there is no single body that can claim to be fully representative of all British Muslims.


Neither is there any regulation of imams, or any benchmark for the quality of advice that they give. Abdul Jalil Sajid, former secretary of the mosque and community affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, estimates that 35% of imams are unqualified. No one knows how many of them are operating in sharia councils, applying their own interpretations of Islamic law.


According to Cassandra Balchin, of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), too many of them promote a highly conservative interpretation of sharia that overemphasises the rights of the husband. "They don't seem to recognise the multiple forms of divorce that are available to women," she says. "There are usually no women involved, whereas in a lot of Muslim countries you can have women judges involved in family courts."​

More complications:

Another major problem is bad advice over what exactly constitutes a valid marriage and divorce in the first place. The councils "seem to imply that their decisions would be valid in some other legal context", says Balchin, "but that, in fact, is not the case".


Islamic marriages and divorces conducted in Muslim countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh are recognised as valid in the UK, but the British courts do not recognise Islamic ceremonies carried out in this country unless they are registered separately with the civil authorities. The result is that some Muslims think they are protected by family law when they are not, and others think they are properly divorced when, in fact, they are still married. In one case, Luton police contacted WLUML after pursuing a man for bigamy who had married in Luton, then flown to Pakistan and married again. After looking into the case, they found that the first marriage was invalid as it had been conducted by an imam in an unregistered mosque. His first wife was left with no legal protection by the family courts, and the husband was free to bring his second wife back to Britain as his legal spouse.​

Convoluted, confusing and legally messy, but it also points out the extreme difficulty of sorting out these matters and the lack of any kind of standard for those giving religious advice.

But do the Islamic Councils in Britain have the force of British secular law? There seems to be a lot of conflicting claims.

I think this article offers the most thoughtful analysis of the issue:

http://www.economist.com/node/17249634
Sharia in the West
Whose law counts most?

ANY Western politician, judge or religious leader desiring instant fame or a dose of controversy has an easy option. All you need do is say “sharia” in public.


Sharron Angle, a Republican candidate for the Senate, proved the point when she suggested that Frankford, Texas, and Dearborn, Michigan, were both subject to a sharia regime, as a result of the “militant terrorist situation” that existed in those places. Critics retorted that Frankford, after its absorption by Dallas, no longer existed as an administrative unit. Dearborn's mayor, Jack O'Reilly, tartly told her that his town's 60 churches and seven mosques were flourishing happily under American jurisdiction. But for some tea party fans, she was guilty at worst of slight exaggeration.


Less weirdly, but just as controversially, Archbishop Rowan Williams, leader of the world's 80m Anglicans, will never be allowed to forget saying in February 2008 that some accommodation between British law and sharia was “inevitable”. Lord Phillips, then England's senior judge, drew equal ire by adding that sharia-based mediation could have some role as long as national law held primacy.


IIt is easy to see why the word sharia has emotional overtones, especially today. The appalled reaction to the case of Sakineh Ashtiani, an Iranian woman who has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, has stoked a global campaign for her acquittal. The sentence was suspended last month, but her fate looks dicey. She could still face execution on a murder charge.


Such cases reflect only one part of sharia: the system of corporal and capital punishments such as stoning for adultery, death for murder or apostasy (abandoning Islam), whipping for consuming intoxicants or the cutting off of a hand for theft. Muslims themselves disagree over how, if at all, these penalties should be practised in the modern world. Tariq Ramadan, a prominent European Muslim thinker, caused a furore in 2003 when he suggested that stoning and other physical punishments should be “suspended”. Hardline Islamists regarded that as backsliding. Nicolas Sarkozy (then the interior minister, now the president of France) pointed out that the formulation could imply a future resumption of physical punishment.


Horrifying as these punishments might be to modern sensibilities, there is no prospect of their exercise in any Western country. Muslims living in the West may (as has sometimes happened) take the “law” into their own hands by killing an apostate. But that counts as murder pure and simple.


Where sharia poses genuine dilemmas for secular countries with big Muslim minorities is not in the realm of retribution but in its application to family matters such as divorce, inheritance and custody. English-speaking countries boast a strong tradition of settling disputes (commercial or personal) by legally binding arbitration. This already includes non-secular institutions such as longstanding rabbinical tribunals in Britain and many other countries, or Christian mediation services in North America. Now Islam-based outfits are entering the market.


Perhaps inevitably, the procedures and general ethos of Muslim mediation are very different from those of a secular court. Many of Britain's 2m or so Muslims come from socially conservative parts of South Asia, such as rural Kashmir. The practice of sharia-based family law both reflects and to an extent mitigates that conservatism. A network of sharia councils—whose two main founders come from purist schools of Islam, the Deobandis and the Salafis—has offered rulings to thousands of troubled families since the 1980s. Much of their work involves women who have received civil divorces but need an Islamic one to remarry within their faith. The councils can overrule a husband's objections. Few would decry this. But the woman may well also forfeit her mahr (marriage settlement). Critics call that unfair. They also complain that, when faced with domestic violence, these councils merely administer a scolding or prescribe an “anger-management” course, rather than the safe house and prosecution that the state-run system should offer.


Still, British sharia arbitrators may alleviate a peculiarly British woe. Some Muslim Britons contract an Islamic marriage (but not a civil one) and then fail to confer on the bride the marriage settlement that would be obligatory in say, Pakistan. If the union sunders, such men then escape their obligations under both English law and Pakistani custom. The councils advise against such deviousness.


A rival set-up, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunals, now offers dispute resolution in half a dozen British cities. Founded in 2007 by followers of the Barelvi school of South Asian Islam, they are less strict than the Deobandis. But when asked to divide up an intestate's assets, they follow Islamic law, giving daughters half as much as sons. The tribunals say they operate under the Arbitration Act of 1996. That makes rulings binding once both parties have given authority to the arbitrator.


In Canada legislation framed with secular arbitration in mind but used by religious courts is a hotter issue than in Britain. In 2003 a Toronto lawyer, Syed Mumtaz Ali, proclaimed an “Islamic Institute of Civil Justice” and urged Muslims to use it. The province of Ontario reacted in 2005 by stripping religious tribunals (including Jewish and Catholic ones) of legal force. It also stiffened rules on arbitrators' qualifications and record-keeping. Quebec tightened its law too.


That has not stopped devout Canadian Muslims from seeking religious guidance on family and personal matters. As Harvey Simmons, a York University professor, wrote last month: “Because religious arbitration now takes place mainly outside the scrutiny of the Ontario courts, there is no way to tell whether women are being treated well or badly by informal religious arbitration.”


In the United States both secular and religious arbitration are firmly established, operating under a Federal Arbitration Act that gives robust standing to the procedure but also allows the parties to counter-appeal to ordinary courts on certain grounds (though America's church-state separation stops courts hearing arguments about doctrine). Christian and Jewish arbitration is well-organised. The Muslim variety is lower-key and less formal, but so far not (barring outbursts from tea-partistas like Ms Angle) especially controversial.


So...are they Islamic courts? I still say no, a court implies a lot more than what they are doing.

Do they have the force of law? It appears that under Britain's Arbritation Act, the US' similar legislation, they do have some force of law.

Are there problems with it? Apparently, not the least of which is whether women are sufficiently protected or adequately advised and lack of any sort of "standard" or credentialing for those doing the advising.

Is there a need for it at all? That's a matter of opinion. If one is religious, the answer is yes. There is also a very complicated mess involving religious divorce vs secular divorce that needs to somehow be addressed. It's clear that the Catholic community and the Jewish community have similar issues though it's not complicated by poloygamy.

Can the system be fixed to work better? The article implied that something was done to do just that in the Jewish rabbinical councils to address divorce, so why not? In Britain, it looks extremely messy, inept and disorganized. Perhaps Canada's system is a better one, no force of law (which I like) implying that though that the religious divorce can be offered but they still must get a secular one or have it ratified by the secular court.

Last question: Let's say you make sharia illegal. Ok, how will you handle people seeking religious arbritration, divorces, advice etc? Do you apply it to ALL religious arbitration venus or just some?

Perhaps the first step, before even thinking about making anything illegal, would be to stop apologizing for, or importing muslims.

It's amazing that even after walls and walls of text, and almost 150 pages of discussion people still don't get this. The OP was 100% right.

Well, #1 - I don't see anyone apologizing for it. And #2, Islam varies according to the culture that is practicing it so...which Muslims do you think we should stop "importing" and why? (The "why" being asked because, in the US, there has been little problem with Muslims from a variety of cultures integrating). The only "why" that comes to mind for me is national security reasons necessitating good vetting of ANYONE from particular regions.

 

[Norman]

What I actually said is that those who support the establishment of sharia family courts in the United States are supporting the importation of this legal system. This was in respose to Mac pointing out a thread in the CDZ where leftists were doing exactly that.

And you call ME stupid and unable to comprehend English, child?

No one here is supporting the "establishment of sharia family courts" - you either misunderstand what is going on or you're deliberately being an idiot. There are no COURTS being supported in any way.

Sharia councels (as in UK), or individual Imams (as I think it is in the US) - can engage in arbritation, rule on whether specific things or actions are sharia compliant, provide counsel or grant RELIGIOUS divorces, or RECOMMEND distribution of property and child custody arrangements. In order for any of those to have the force of law, they must be ratified by a SECULAR court. They operate in much the same way as rabbinical councels in applying Halakah to those who wish to use it. None of this is NEW in our country.

I'm sure you're going to find some way of twisting this, but at least we should start with the actual facts.

Sharia courts in Britain operate with the backing of U.K. law.

Your calling them "councils" as a slippery rhetorical ruse does not change the facts of the matter one bit. .

What do they actually do in Britain? I admit, I'm less familiar with Britain than the US, but the information is readily available, so lets look at the FACTS before proclaiming "slippery rhetorical ruses" and all the usual name calling.

According to Wikipedia: Islamic Sharia Council - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Islamic Sharia Council (ISC) is a London-based, quasi-Islamic court that provides legal rulings and advice to Muslims in accordance with its brand of Islamic Sharia based on the four Sunni schools of thought. It primarily handles cases of marriage and divorce and, to a lesser extent business and finance.[3] According to BBC News, thousands of Muslims have turned to the Council to resolve family and financial issues. The Council operates 16 tribunals in Britain, including in Birmingham, Bradford and London.[4] The Economist magazine states it has offered rulings to "thousands of troubled families since the 1980s",[5] the council states that it has dealt with an average of between 200 to 300 cases monthly as of January 2012.[6]


One authority holds that the council has no legal authority or jurisdiction in the United Kingdom,[3] and can not impose any penalties; many Muslims would appear voluntarily to accept the rulings made by the ISC.[6] Another report holds that Muslim tribunals exploit a legal loophole which allows sharia courts to be classified as arbitration courts, which allows their rulings to be binding in law.[4]


The Islamic Sharia Council says it is ‘devoted to the articulation of classical Islamic principles in a manner that provides a platform for Islam to be the cure of all humanity’s ills.’[7] According to The Economist magazine its "two main founders come from purist schools of Islam, the Deobandis and the Salafis".[5] A rival service, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, was founded in 2007 by followers of the Barelvi school of South Asian Islam, is reportedly "less strict than the Deobandis" and as of 2010 offered dispute resolution in half a dozen British cities.[5]​

According to: Dan Bell on sharia law - the use of Sharia Councils or Sharia "courts" - is, variable in the quality of the advice it gives or how liberally sharia is interpreted, and whether or not women are protected enough. Divorces clearly constitute the majority of their work.

Pros/Cons:

"In every situation our motto is: reconciliation first. So we try to reconcile, but in cases where a marriage was enforced on a girl against her wishes, against her own opinion, we don't want to negotiate. What we do is, we try to make their guardians, their parents, understand the Islamic position, and also we tell them what is the position of British law on marriage." Sayeed tells them that they "will also be guilty of [breaking] heavenly laws - that is how we try to convince the parents". Does it work? "Not all the time. We are human and working in human society. Not all the time; most of the time, yes."


But not all councils are as committed to liberal interpretations of sharia. Estimates of the number of mosques across the country range from 1,000 to 2,000. They serve a hugely diverse Muslim community - at 1.6 million people, Muslims are the largest religious minority in Britain. Each mosque has its own imams, some of whom are scholars like Sayeed, while others are simply devout Muslims fulfilling a need for religious guidance in their communities. The Islamic Sharia Council is one of the oldest and most respected, but it admits that there is no single body that can claim to be fully representative of all British Muslims.


Neither is there any regulation of imams, or any benchmark for the quality of advice that they give. Abdul Jalil Sajid, former secretary of the mosque and community affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, estimates that 35% of imams are unqualified. No one knows how many of them are operating in sharia councils, applying their own interpretations of Islamic law.


According to Cassandra Balchin, of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), too many of them promote a highly conservative interpretation of sharia that overemphasises the rights of the husband. "They don't seem to recognise the multiple forms of divorce that are available to women," she says. "There are usually no women involved, whereas in a lot of Muslim countries you can have women judges involved in family courts."​

More complications:

Another major problem is bad advice over what exactly constitutes a valid marriage and divorce in the first place. The councils "seem to imply that their decisions would be valid in some other legal context", says Balchin, "but that, in fact, is not the case".


Islamic marriages and divorces conducted in Muslim countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh are recognised as valid in the UK, but the British courts do not recognise Islamic ceremonies carried out in this country unless they are registered separately with the civil authorities. The result is that some Muslims think they are protected by family law when they are not, and others think they are properly divorced when, in fact, they are still married. In one case, Luton police contacted WLUML after pursuing a man for bigamy who had married in Luton, then flown to Pakistan and married again. After looking into the case, they found that the first marriage was invalid as it had been conducted by an imam in an unregistered mosque. His first wife was left with no legal protection by the family courts, and the husband was free to bring his second wife back to Britain as his legal spouse.​

Convoluted, confusing and legally messy, but it also points out the extreme difficulty of sorting out these matters and the lack of any kind of standard for those giving religious advice.

But do the Islamic Councils in Britain have the force of British secular law? There seems to be a lot of conflicting claims.

I think this article offers the most thoughtful analysis of the issue:

http://www.economist.com/node/17249634
Sharia in the West
Whose law counts most?

ANY Western politician, judge or religious leader desiring instant fame or a dose of controversy has an easy option. All you need do is say “sharia” in public.


Sharron Angle, a Republican candidate for the Senate, proved the point when she suggested that Frankford, Texas, and Dearborn, Michigan, were both subject to a sharia regime, as a result of the “militant terrorist situation” that existed in those places. Critics retorted that Frankford, after its absorption by Dallas, no longer existed as an administrative unit. Dearborn's mayor, Jack O'Reilly, tartly told her that his town's 60 churches and seven mosques were flourishing happily under American jurisdiction. But for some tea party fans, she was guilty at worst of slight exaggeration.


Less weirdly, but just as controversially, Archbishop Rowan Williams, leader of the world's 80m Anglicans, will never be allowed to forget saying in February 2008 that some accommodation between British law and sharia was “inevitable”. Lord Phillips, then England's senior judge, drew equal ire by adding that sharia-based mediation could have some role as long as national law held primacy.


IIt is easy to see why the word sharia has emotional overtones, especially today. The appalled reaction to the case of Sakineh Ashtiani, an Iranian woman who has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, has stoked a global campaign for her acquittal. The sentence was suspended last month, but her fate looks dicey. She could still face execution on a murder charge.


Such cases reflect only one part of sharia: the system of corporal and capital punishments such as stoning for adultery, death for murder or apostasy (abandoning Islam), whipping for consuming intoxicants or the cutting off of a hand for theft. Muslims themselves disagree over how, if at all, these penalties should be practised in the modern world. Tariq Ramadan, a prominent European Muslim thinker, caused a furore in 2003 when he suggested that stoning and other physical punishments should be “suspended”. Hardline Islamists regarded that as backsliding. Nicolas Sarkozy (then the interior minister, now the president of France) pointed out that the formulation could imply a future resumption of physical punishment.


Horrifying as these punishments might be to modern sensibilities, there is no prospect of their exercise in any Western country. Muslims living in the West may (as has sometimes happened) take the “law” into their own hands by killing an apostate. But that counts as murder pure and simple.


Where sharia poses genuine dilemmas for secular countries with big Muslim minorities is not in the realm of retribution but in its application to family matters such as divorce, inheritance and custody. English-speaking countries boast a strong tradition of settling disputes (commercial or personal) by legally binding arbitration. This already includes non-secular institutions such as longstanding rabbinical tribunals in Britain and many other countries, or Christian mediation services in North America. Now Islam-based outfits are entering the market.


Perhaps inevitably, the procedures and general ethos of Muslim mediation are very different from those of a secular court. Many of Britain's 2m or so Muslims come from socially conservative parts of South Asia, such as rural Kashmir. The practice of sharia-based family law both reflects and to an extent mitigates that conservatism. A network of sharia councils—whose two main founders come from purist schools of Islam, the Deobandis and the Salafis—has offered rulings to thousands of troubled families since the 1980s. Much of their work involves women who have received civil divorces but need an Islamic one to remarry within their faith. The councils can overrule a husband's objections. Few would decry this. But the woman may well also forfeit her mahr (marriage settlement). Critics call that unfair. They also complain that, when faced with domestic violence, these councils merely administer a scolding or prescribe an “anger-management” course, rather than the safe house and prosecution that the state-run system should offer.


Still, British sharia arbitrators may alleviate a peculiarly British woe. Some Muslim Britons contract an Islamic marriage (but not a civil one) and then fail to confer on the bride the marriage settlement that would be obligatory in say, Pakistan. If the union sunders, such men then escape their obligations under both English law and Pakistani custom. The councils advise against such deviousness.


A rival set-up, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunals, now offers dispute resolution in half a dozen British cities. Founded in 2007 by followers of the Barelvi school of South Asian Islam, they are less strict than the Deobandis. But when asked to divide up an intestate's assets, they follow Islamic law, giving daughters half as much as sons. The tribunals say they operate under the Arbitration Act of 1996. That makes rulings binding once both parties have given authority to the arbitrator.


In Canada legislation framed with secular arbitration in mind but used by religious courts is a hotter issue than in Britain. In 2003 a Toronto lawyer, Syed Mumtaz Ali, proclaimed an “Islamic Institute of Civil Justice” and urged Muslims to use it. The province of Ontario reacted in 2005 by stripping religious tribunals (including Jewish and Catholic ones) of legal force. It also stiffened rules on arbitrators' qualifications and record-keeping. Quebec tightened its law too.


That has not stopped devout Canadian Muslims from seeking religious guidance on family and personal matters. As Harvey Simmons, a York University professor, wrote last month: “Because religious arbitration now takes place mainly outside the scrutiny of the Ontario courts, there is no way to tell whether women are being treated well or badly by informal religious arbitration.”


In the United States both secular and religious arbitration are firmly established, operating under a Federal Arbitration Act that gives robust standing to the procedure but also allows the parties to counter-appeal to ordinary courts on certain grounds (though America's church-state separation stops courts hearing arguments about doctrine). Christian and Jewish arbitration is well-organised. The Muslim variety is lower-key and less formal, but so far not (barring outbursts from tea-partistas like Ms Angle) especially controversial.


So...are they Islamic courts? I still say no, a court implies a lot more than what they are doing.

Do they have the force of law? It appears that under Britain's Arbritation Act, the US' similar legislation, they do have some force of law.

Are there problems with it? Apparently, not the least of which is whether women are sufficiently protected or adequately advised and lack of any sort of "standard" or credentialing for those doing the advising.

Is there a need for it at all? That's a matter of opinion. If one is religious, the answer is yes. There is also a very complicated mess involving religious divorce vs secular divorce that needs to somehow be addressed. It's clear that the Catholic community and the Jewish community have similar issues though it's not complicated by poloygamy.

Can the system be fixed to work better? The article implied that something was done to do just that in the Jewish rabbinical councils to address divorce, so why not? In Britain, it looks extremely messy, inept and disorganized. Perhaps Canada's system is a better one, no force of law (which I like) implying that though that the religious divorce can be offered but they still must get a secular one or have it ratified by the secular court.

Last question: Let's say you make sharia illegal. Ok, how will you handle people seeking religious arbritration, divorces, advice etc? Do you apply it to ALL religious arbitration venus or just some?

Perhaps the first step, before even thinking about making anything illegal, would be to stop apologizing for, or importing muslims.

It's amazing that even after walls and walls of text, and almost 150 pages of discussion people still don't get this. The OP was 100% right.

Well, #1 - I don't see anyone apologizing for it. And #2, Islam varies according to the culture that is practicing it so...which Muslims do you think we should stop "importing" and why? (The "why" being asked because, in the US, there has been little problem with Muslims from a variety of cultures integrating). The only "why" that comes to mind for me is national security reasons necessitating good vetting of ANYONE from particular regions.

I am not talking about the US, but about the recent developments in Europe. If you haven't seen the regressives apologize for Islam, it's time to update your vision.

Here is a pretty funny example, of no other than fellow atheists of all people, could easily pass for the average USMB regressive:


Little trouble with the integration?

Shall I bring up the statistics again? Haven't I posted about it enough here? I think I have, the integration of the muslims is a myth, especially when they come in big batches (this is possibly why in USA it has worked much better, even if not perfectly). Islam is a far worse religion than the others, so you can stop with the false equivalencies...

 

[Coyote]

Here is something to think about. We have thread after thread of name calling, insults, circle jerks and back patting. What do we have in the way of constructive dialogue and solutions?

We have the Regressive Right with it's Hysterical Diatribes.
We have the Regressive Left with it's Total Denial.

Ok...I can agree with the assessments of those extremes. Maybe it's time for both sides to think instead of react. I made myself go through a mental exercise with Sharia councils in the UK and the results weren't totally what my conceptions were - ok, I can acknowledge that there is some truth in the other side's concerns (we'll see if it's reciprocated), and I'm wrong in some of my assumptions.

Don't you think it's time that the Regressive Right start looking at facts in context instead of hysterical hyperbole and the Regressive Left stops the total denial and starts looking at some uncomforatable facts and TOGETHER start considering SOLUTIONS rather than finger pointing, insulting and demonizing?

For example - look at Sharia Law in the West - or, make it ANY religous law in western countries that are typically secular in law, and have the concept of human rights, religious liberty and tolerance, and gender entrenched in their social fabrics (at least in theory).

Facts:
Western countries are are strong proponants of gender equality, religious and ethnic tolerance, individual liberties and freedoms. The degree to which each is supported varies but in general those values are supported.

Within those countries, the majority religious group is some form of Christianity or non-affiliated. There minorities of many other faiths - Jewish, Islam, Hindu etc. that form distinct communities, further subdivided by their ethnic origins.

There is a degree of seperation between church and state - state does not involve itself in religious matters and vice versa.

I think most of us can agree this is a good workable structure. At least I think so. But in some countries, it seems to be failing while in other countries, in continues to operate strongly. The reasons are multiple - to do with the countries own culture, the immigrant cultures, the ability on either side to encourage integration. This isn't fact, this is opinion

Within all this, we have RELIGION. And we don't really want the state ruling on religious matters of doctrine (unless they violate the law which usually involves violating someone else's rights). We have the secular and we have the religious. Stuck between the two we have People of Faith.

People of Faith need a means to resolve religioius and doctrinal matters that CAN'T be resolved and shouldn't be resolved by the state. The two groups who have the most complex and encompassing set of rules are Jews and Muslims. Catholics are another group often mentioned.

In order to accommodate these groups' needs, under freedom of religion, certain councils were formed to provide religoious guidance, rulings or advice on religious matters and legal matters that crossed into the religious domain. The degree to which these decisions have the force of law seems to vary according to nation, but all of them only cover civil matters and family law.

Can we agree on all this so far?

This SEEMS to have worked for years, it's not something new but now we are running into problems or, maybe the problems are just being brought to light. There are pro and con claims and defenses I won't go into, but they seem to be along the following lines:

• Women's rights - religious rules take advantage of women, could be making it difficult for vulnerable women to leave an abusive situation, force a woman (if she instigates a divorce) to have to pay back her dowry (which she may not have since the man typically holds the wallet).

• The quality of advice women get on religious divorce is all over the board in terms of compentancy and attention to HER rights. There is no single standard that applies to all imams in regards to their knowledge of the law or Islamic custom - in other words anyone can hang up a shingle.

• In some cases, the rulings have the force of law without the safeguards other than it being "voluntary".

The arguments supporting these religious "courts" are - they fulfill a need. People of faith - be it Islamic, Jewish, Christian - want this, it's truly important to them. They need it to remain true to their faith, and maintain their standing in their communities and feel spiritually on the right path. So although courts can grant them a secular divorce they cannot grant them a religious one.

Given all the above - what is the solution?

There is a system in place, but clearly in some places it is not serving women well. If you abolish it in entirety (ie outlaw any role for religion), then you are also not serving the religious community and infact you have the state enroaching on religion. I'm a very strong opponent of seperation of church and state. But along with not having religion interfering with government, I also do not think the government should interfere with religion unless it involves the rights of other's.

So what solution?

In my opinion, we should allow religious arbritation, but - in order to have the force of law, it needs to be ratified by a secular court, and part of that court's job would be to insure everyone's right's are adequately protected and each party is fully knowledgable.

 

[Papageorgio]

Isn't this about the regressive left? Not sure why women and religion are now the topic. Sounds like a topic on another thread, it's way off topic in this thread.

The other idea of having religion be infiltrated by secular law sounds like a violation of separation.

 

[Seawytch]

I think it is cute when the uneducated use the term "rwnj" to describe people who support the views of liberals like Sam Harris and Bill Maher. What's next in this little Orwellian world of the uneducated -- calling somebody who supports the work of George Will a Communist?

The shallow, simplistic, binary thinking of hardcore partisan ideologues.

If you're not a LWNJ, you must be a RWNJ. And vice versa.

But I am convinced they don't even see it.
.

I think some of them see it, and it might even make them vaguely uncomfortable. For example, when they find themselves making excuses for aspects of Islam that go against the principles of universal human rights and women's rights, the very rights they are supposed to champion.
However, remain in lockstep they must, so they can't/won't back down and therefore find themselves having to employ false equivalances and reductio ad absurdums galore, to both safe face, and to insinuate those in opposition are bigots, racists and islamophobes, who therefore they have an alterior motive, whos word is dirt, and who are (hopefully), discredited.
I suspect some wouldn't behave like this in RL if faced with someone attempting to discuss where Islam and women's rights, for example, diverge, at least I hope so. In fact, we have an example in this thread where coyote is amicable and even in agreement with flacc, but virulently disagrees and mock funnies other posters when they express exactly the same concerns. Go figure.

I see the regressive left making the comparisons of which is worse. Trump is worse than Clinton, earlier in this thread Christians are worse than Muslims. You also so them comparing transgenders using bathrooms as an equivalent to the Civil Rights of blacks.

This entire thread has been enlightening to the regressive left.

Trump is "worse" than Clinton.

Christians and Muslims (and Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, numerologists, etc) are equal parts good and bad (same goes for their fan clubs)

Transgender rights and civil rights for blacks may not be the same, but the bigots and their justifications are almost identical.

I see no difference, lying to put innocent lives endanger is deplorable. Calling women who accuse a man of sexual abuse "bimbo eruptions" is cold and uncaring.

Links would be good. Actual news sources if you please.

 

[ptbw forever]

No one here is supporting the "establishment of sharia family courts" - you either misunderstand what is going on or you're deliberately being an idiot. There are no COURTS being supported in any way.

Sharia councels (as in UK), or individual Imams (as I think it is in the US) - can engage in arbritation, rule on whether specific things or actions are sharia compliant, provide counsel or grant RELIGIOUS divorces, or RECOMMEND distribution of property and child custody arrangements. In order for any of those to have the force of law, they must be ratified by a SECULAR court. They operate in much the same way as rabbinical councels in applying Halakah to those who wish to use it. None of this is NEW in our country.

I'm sure you're going to find some way of twisting this, but at least we should start with the actual facts.

Sharia courts in Britain operate with the backing of U.K. law.

Your calling them "councils" as a slippery rhetorical ruse does not change the facts of the matter one bit. .

What do they actually do in Britain? I admit, I'm less familiar with Britain than the US, but the information is readily available, so lets look at the FACTS before proclaiming "slippery rhetorical ruses" and all the usual name calling.

According to Wikipedia: Islamic Sharia Council - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Islamic Sharia Council (ISC) is a London-based, quasi-Islamic court that provides legal rulings and advice to Muslims in accordance with its brand of Islamic Sharia based on the four Sunni schools of thought. It primarily handles cases of marriage and divorce and, to a lesser extent business and finance.[3] According to BBC News, thousands of Muslims have turned to the Council to resolve family and financial issues. The Council operates 16 tribunals in Britain, including in Birmingham, Bradford and London.[4] The Economist magazine states it has offered rulings to "thousands of troubled families since the 1980s",[5] the council states that it has dealt with an average of between 200 to 300 cases monthly as of January 2012.[6]


One authority holds that the council has no legal authority or jurisdiction in the United Kingdom,[3] and can not impose any penalties; many Muslims would appear voluntarily to accept the rulings made by the ISC.[6] Another report holds that Muslim tribunals exploit a legal loophole which allows sharia courts to be classified as arbitration courts, which allows their rulings to be binding in law.[4]


The Islamic Sharia Council says it is ‘devoted to the articulation of classical Islamic principles in a manner that provides a platform for Islam to be the cure of all humanity’s ills.’[7] According to The Economist magazine its "two main founders come from purist schools of Islam, the Deobandis and the Salafis".[5] A rival service, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, was founded in 2007 by followers of the Barelvi school of South Asian Islam, is reportedly "less strict than the Deobandis" and as of 2010 offered dispute resolution in half a dozen British cities.[5]​

According to: Dan Bell on sharia law - the use of Sharia Councils or Sharia "courts" - is, variable in the quality of the advice it gives or how liberally sharia is interpreted, and whether or not women are protected enough. Divorces clearly constitute the majority of their work.

Pros/Cons:

"In every situation our motto is: reconciliation first. So we try to reconcile, but in cases where a marriage was enforced on a girl against her wishes, against her own opinion, we don't want to negotiate. What we do is, we try to make their guardians, their parents, understand the Islamic position, and also we tell them what is the position of British law on marriage." Sayeed tells them that they "will also be guilty of [breaking] heavenly laws - that is how we try to convince the parents". Does it work? "Not all the time. We are human and working in human society. Not all the time; most of the time, yes."


But not all councils are as committed to liberal interpretations of sharia. Estimates of the number of mosques across the country range from 1,000 to 2,000. They serve a hugely diverse Muslim community - at 1.6 million people, Muslims are the largest religious minority in Britain. Each mosque has its own imams, some of whom are scholars like Sayeed, while others are simply devout Muslims fulfilling a need for religious guidance in their communities. The Islamic Sharia Council is one of the oldest and most respected, but it admits that there is no single body that can claim to be fully representative of all British Muslims.


Neither is there any regulation of imams, or any benchmark for the quality of advice that they give. Abdul Jalil Sajid, former secretary of the mosque and community affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, estimates that 35% of imams are unqualified. No one knows how many of them are operating in sharia councils, applying their own interpretations of Islamic law.


According to Cassandra Balchin, of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), too many of them promote a highly conservative interpretation of sharia that overemphasises the rights of the husband. "They don't seem to recognise the multiple forms of divorce that are available to women," she says. "There are usually no women involved, whereas in a lot of Muslim countries you can have women judges involved in family courts."​

More complications:

Another major problem is bad advice over what exactly constitutes a valid marriage and divorce in the first place. The councils "seem to imply that their decisions would be valid in some other legal context", says Balchin, "but that, in fact, is not the case".


Islamic marriages and divorces conducted in Muslim countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh are recognised as valid in the UK, but the British courts do not recognise Islamic ceremonies carried out in this country unless they are registered separately with the civil authorities. The result is that some Muslims think they are protected by family law when they are not, and others think they are properly divorced when, in fact, they are still married. In one case, Luton police contacted WLUML after pursuing a man for bigamy who had married in Luton, then flown to Pakistan and married again. After looking into the case, they found that the first marriage was invalid as it had been conducted by an imam in an unregistered mosque. His first wife was left with no legal protection by the family courts, and the husband was free to bring his second wife back to Britain as his legal spouse.​

Convoluted, confusing and legally messy, but it also points out the extreme difficulty of sorting out these matters and the lack of any kind of standard for those giving religious advice.

But do the Islamic Councils in Britain have the force of British secular law? There seems to be a lot of conflicting claims.

I think this article offers the most thoughtful analysis of the issue:

http://www.economist.com/node/17249634
Sharia in the West
Whose law counts most?

ANY Western politician, judge or religious leader desiring instant fame or a dose of controversy has an easy option. All you need do is say “sharia” in public.


Sharron Angle, a Republican candidate for the Senate, proved the point when she suggested that Frankford, Texas, and Dearborn, Michigan, were both subject to a sharia regime, as a result of the “militant terrorist situation” that existed in those places. Critics retorted that Frankford, after its absorption by Dallas, no longer existed as an administrative unit. Dearborn's mayor, Jack O'Reilly, tartly told her that his town's 60 churches and seven mosques were flourishing happily under American jurisdiction. But for some tea party fans, she was guilty at worst of slight exaggeration.


Less weirdly, but just as controversially, Archbishop Rowan Williams, leader of the world's 80m Anglicans, will never be allowed to forget saying in February 2008 that some accommodation between British law and sharia was “inevitable”. Lord Phillips, then England's senior judge, drew equal ire by adding that sharia-based mediation could have some role as long as national law held primacy.


IIt is easy to see why the word sharia has emotional overtones, especially today. The appalled reaction to the case of Sakineh Ashtiani, an Iranian woman who has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, has stoked a global campaign for her acquittal. The sentence was suspended last month, but her fate looks dicey. She could still face execution on a murder charge.


Such cases reflect only one part of sharia: the system of corporal and capital punishments such as stoning for adultery, death for murder or apostasy (abandoning Islam), whipping for consuming intoxicants or the cutting off of a hand for theft. Muslims themselves disagree over how, if at all, these penalties should be practised in the modern world. Tariq Ramadan, a prominent European Muslim thinker, caused a furore in 2003 when he suggested that stoning and other physical punishments should be “suspended”. Hardline Islamists regarded that as backsliding. Nicolas Sarkozy (then the interior minister, now the president of France) pointed out that the formulation could imply a future resumption of physical punishment.


Horrifying as these punishments might be to modern sensibilities, there is no prospect of their exercise in any Western country. Muslims living in the West may (as has sometimes happened) take the “law” into their own hands by killing an apostate. But that counts as murder pure and simple.


Where sharia poses genuine dilemmas for secular countries with big Muslim minorities is not in the realm of retribution but in its application to family matters such as divorce, inheritance and custody. English-speaking countries boast a strong tradition of settling disputes (commercial or personal) by legally binding arbitration. This already includes non-secular institutions such as longstanding rabbinical tribunals in Britain and many other countries, or Christian mediation services in North America. Now Islam-based outfits are entering the market.


Perhaps inevitably, the procedures and general ethos of Muslim mediation are very different from those of a secular court. Many of Britain's 2m or so Muslims come from socially conservative parts of South Asia, such as rural Kashmir. The practice of sharia-based family law both reflects and to an extent mitigates that conservatism. A network of sharia councils—whose two main founders come from purist schools of Islam, the Deobandis and the Salafis—has offered rulings to thousands of troubled families since the 1980s. Much of their work involves women who have received civil divorces but need an Islamic one to remarry within their faith. The councils can overrule a husband's objections. Few would decry this. But the woman may well also forfeit her mahr (marriage settlement). Critics call that unfair. They also complain that, when faced with domestic violence, these councils merely administer a scolding or prescribe an “anger-management” course, rather than the safe house and prosecution that the state-run system should offer.


Still, British sharia arbitrators may alleviate a peculiarly British woe. Some Muslim Britons contract an Islamic marriage (but not a civil one) and then fail to confer on the bride the marriage settlement that would be obligatory in say, Pakistan. If the union sunders, such men then escape their obligations under both English law and Pakistani custom. The councils advise against such deviousness.


A rival set-up, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunals, now offers dispute resolution in half a dozen British cities. Founded in 2007 by followers of the Barelvi school of South Asian Islam, they are less strict than the Deobandis. But when asked to divide up an intestate's assets, they follow Islamic law, giving daughters half as much as sons. The tribunals say they operate under the Arbitration Act of 1996. That makes rulings binding once both parties have given authority to the arbitrator.


In Canada legislation framed with secular arbitration in mind but used by religious courts is a hotter issue than in Britain. In 2003 a Toronto lawyer, Syed Mumtaz Ali, proclaimed an “Islamic Institute of Civil Justice” and urged Muslims to use it. The province of Ontario reacted in 2005 by stripping religious tribunals (including Jewish and Catholic ones) of legal force. It also stiffened rules on arbitrators' qualifications and record-keeping. Quebec tightened its law too.


That has not stopped devout Canadian Muslims from seeking religious guidance on family and personal matters. As Harvey Simmons, a York University professor, wrote last month: “Because religious arbitration now takes place mainly outside the scrutiny of the Ontario courts, there is no way to tell whether women are being treated well or badly by informal religious arbitration.”


In the United States both secular and religious arbitration are firmly established, operating under a Federal Arbitration Act that gives robust standing to the procedure but also allows the parties to counter-appeal to ordinary courts on certain grounds (though America's church-state separation stops courts hearing arguments about doctrine). Christian and Jewish arbitration is well-organised. The Muslim variety is lower-key and less formal, but so far not (barring outbursts from tea-partistas like Ms Angle) especially controversial.


So...are they Islamic courts? I still say no, a court implies a lot more than what they are doing.

Do they have the force of law? It appears that under Britain's Arbritation Act, the US' similar legislation, they do have some force of law.

Are there problems with it? Apparently, not the least of which is whether women are sufficiently protected or adequately advised and lack of any sort of "standard" or credentialing for those doing the advising.

Is there a need for it at all? That's a matter of opinion. If one is religious, the answer is yes. There is also a very complicated mess involving religious divorce vs secular divorce that needs to somehow be addressed. It's clear that the Catholic community and the Jewish community have similar issues though it's not complicated by poloygamy.

Can the system be fixed to work better? The article implied that something was done to do just that in the Jewish rabbinical councils to address divorce, so why not? In Britain, it looks extremely messy, inept and disorganized. Perhaps Canada's system is a better one, no force of law (which I like) implying that though that the religious divorce can be offered but they still must get a secular one or have it ratified by the secular court.

Last question: Let's say you make sharia illegal. Ok, how will you handle people seeking religious arbritration, divorces, advice etc? Do you apply it to ALL religious arbitration venus or just some?

Perhaps the first step, before even thinking about making anything illegal, would be to stop apologizing for, or importing muslims.

It's amazing that even after walls and walls of text, and almost 150 pages of discussion people still don't get this. The OP was 100% right.

Well, #1 - I don't see anyone apologizing for it. And #2, Islam varies according to the culture that is practicing it so...which Muslims do you think we should stop "importing" and why? (The "why" being asked because, in the US, there has been little problem with Muslims from a variety of cultures integrating). The only "why" that comes to mind for me is national security reasons necessitating good vetting of ANYONE from particular regions.

I am not talking about the US, but about the recent developments in Europe. If you haven't seen the regressives apologize for Islam, it's time to update your vision.

Here is a pretty funny example, of no other than fellow atheists of all people, could easily pass for the average USMB regressive:


Little trouble with the integration?

Shall I bring up the statistics again? Haven't I posted about it enough here? I think I have, the integration of the muslims is a myth, especially when they come in big batches (this is possibly why in USA it has worked much better, even if not perfectly). Islam is a far worse religion than the others, so you can stop with the false equivalencies...

And the best part is that the poster of this video is Clinton supporter leftist who wants to ban guns.

LOL

 

[Norman]

We have the Regressive Right with it's Hysterical Diatribes.
We have the Regressive Left with it's Total Denial.

Nah, it's just sane people making fun of the regressive idiots. In most cases these people are LIBERALS (who the regressives call "extreme right wingers"). RWers generally don't use vile language as much as the lefties. Regressives just can't ever stop with the false equivalencies.

 

[Mac1958]

Isn't this about the regressive left? Not sure why women and religion are now the topic. Sounds like a topic on another thread, it's way off topic in this thread..

Yep, another great example of the point of the thread.

Too many examples now to count.
..

 

[Tehon]

Isn't this about the regressive left? Not sure why women and religion are now the topic. Sounds like a topic on another thread, it's way off topic in this thread..

Yep, another great example of the point of the thread.

Too many examples now to count.
..

You made the connection between Islam (religion), women's rights and regressive leftists in the OP.

Unfortunately this is all you are willing to tolerate in your thread.

What I expect from you is the standard deflection, derision, personal insults and name-calling.

I agree with you though in that this thread has been very informative and I thank you for that.

C'mon people, save your reasoned debate for threads intended for such. Your arguments are not welcome here.

 

[Mac1958]

Isn't this about the regressive left? Not sure why women and religion are now the topic. Sounds like a topic on another thread, it's way off topic in this thread..

Yep, another great example of the point of the thread.

Too many examples now to count.
..

You made the connection between Islam (religion), women's rights and regressive leftists in the OP.

Unfortunately this is all you are willing to tolerate in your thread.

What I expect from you is the standard deflection, derision, personal insults and name-calling.

I agree with you though in that this thread has been very informative and I thank you for that.

C'mon people, save your reasoned debate for threads intended for such. Your arguments are not welcome here.

Nope. I'm more than happy to see this stuff in the thread, because it provides me more material and examples. There have, predictably, been myriad efforts to deflect away from the topic of the thread - just as those same people will deflect away from criticisms of Islam - and I'm all too happy to point them out. All they do is further make my point for me.

In this case, Papageorgio identified it.
.
.

 

[Papageorgio]

Isn't this about the regressive left? Not sure why women and religion are now the topic. Sounds like a topic on another thread, it's way off topic in this thread..

Yep, another great example of the point of the thread.

Too many examples now to count.
..

You made the connection between Islam (religion), women's rights and regressive leftists in the OP.

Unfortunately this is all you are willing to tolerate in your thread.

What I expect from you is the standard deflection, derision, personal insults and name-calling.

I agree with you though in that this thread has been very informative and I thank you for that.

C'mon people, save your reasoned debate for threads intended for such. Your arguments are not welcome here.

You can't refute a thing so it's a troll thread. That isn't logic. The arguments you can't refute are not welcome here? LOL! More regressive logic.

 

[Tehon]

Isn't this about the regressive left? Not sure why women and religion are now the topic. Sounds like a topic on another thread, it's way off topic in this thread..

Yep, another great example of the point of the thread.

Too many examples now to count.
..

You made the connection between Islam (religion), women's rights and regressive leftists in the OP.

Unfortunately this is all you are willing to tolerate in your thread.

What I expect from you is the standard deflection, derision, personal insults and name-calling.

I agree with you though in that this thread has been very informative and I thank you for that.

C'mon people, save your reasoned debate for threads intended for such. Your arguments are not welcome here.

You can't refute a thing so it's a troll thread. That isn't logic. The arguments you can't refute are not welcome here? LOL! More regressive logic.

It was a deliberate attempt at provoking people to make emotional responses. Debate about the meaning of the term regressive leftist was discouraged even though the several examples offered by the OP were not in harmony. The incessant self congratulatory nature of the OP is a quite revealing tell tale as to his intent. It is what it is.

Are you accusing me of being regressive?

 

[Papageorgio]

Isn't this about the regressive left? Not sure why women and religion are now the topic. Sounds like a topic on another thread, it's way off topic in this thread..

Yep, another great example of the point of the thread.

Too many examples now to count.
..

You made the connection between Islam (religion), women's rights and regressive leftists in the OP.

Unfortunately this is all you are willing to tolerate in your thread.

What I expect from you is the standard deflection, derision, personal insults and name-calling.

I agree with you though in that this thread has been very informative and I thank you for that.

C'mon people, save your reasoned debate for threads intended for such. Your arguments are not welcome here.

You can't refute a thing so it's a troll thread. That isn't logic. The arguments you can't refute are not welcome here? LOL! More regressive logic.

It was a deliberate attempt at provoking people to make emotional responses. Debate about the meaning of the term regressive leftist was discouraged even though the several examples offered by the OP were not in harmony. The incessant self congratulatory nature of the OP is a quite revealing tell tale as to his intent. It is what it is.

Are you accusing me of being regressive?

If you are part of the Progressive political movement, you are a regressive. Regressive's, fall back on isms to advance his agenda. Using divisiveness to advance an agenda, demonizing you opponent, an all or nothing attitude without debate, it is regressive. Look at global warming, look at marriage, look at the restroom debate. If you question, you are called a fool, an idiot, a racist, a sexist a homophobe. That hatred of an opposing position is very evident.

Many times in this thread the regressive will condemn Christianity as a threat to peace. It is the intolerance of the regressive that is a real threat to peace. The mere fact that the White House refused to deal with real terrorist attacks and wanted to label as something entirely different was eye opening. The avoidance of the word terrorists when referring to actual terrorists was mind numbing.

Last year a when the convention with cartoon characters that were made to look like Muhammad were attacked by terrorists, this nation with the freedom of expression condemned the artists. A few years back when a cross was put into a jar of urine, it was freedom of expression, why the change? Why is one allowed to make fun and blaspheme one group, but we aren't allowed to make fun and blaspheme another.

I wouldn't support either artists for what they did, I would support the freedom to do so.

True progressives and liberals, encouraged debate and diversity of opinion, not today. That is why they are regressive.

 

[Mac1958]

True progressives and liberals, encouraged debate and diversity of opinion, not today. That is why they are regressive.

No doubt one of them is going to deny this, and that should be fun.
.