[ingliz]

Your reading of my post pointing out that you know nothing of how these courts work is "defending reactionaries"?



How they work:

Their legal authority comes from being voluntarily chosen as a decision-maker, and they can't make any decisions that are contrary to national law.

UK Sharia courts are not courts of law.

The system is voluntary i.e. No-one can be forced to make use of these tribunals. It's up to the people having the dispute to agree to arbitration, and they can choose to apply rules other than English law, as long as there is no conflict between the two.

The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal appoints one qualified lawyer and one expert in Islamic law to each case to ensure that the decision reached is in line with both secular and religious law.

If both parties agree, an arbitral tribunal can decide certain issues by applying religious principles.

[ThirdTerm]

Family law and Sharia

Other services related to family issues might be offered by a Sharia council. Family mediation is one example.

Some campaigners worry about using mediation by religious bodies to work out agreements about children and finances after a marriage breaks down.

In 2014 Baroness Cox, a member of the House of Lords, tried to introduce a law to ensure that women aren't disadvantaged in mediation by religious bodies, and make clear that they aren't a court.

But, formally, this is already the case.

While feuding couples have to at least consider mediation before going to court, it doesn't override family law. A court has to sign off on any agreement made after divorce for it to be legally binding, and won't do so if the judge thinks it's unfair.

In 2013, the High Court was asked by an Orthodox Jewish couple to accept the ruling of a Jewish religious court on post-divorce family arrangements. The judge said that while the agreement would carry weight, it would be non-binding—neither party could get around English law by agreeing to abide by the decision of another tribunal.

https://fullfact.org/law/uks-sharia-courts/

Sharia courts cannot overrule the regular courts and they can't make any decisions that are contrary to national law, such as forcing Muslim women to wear the burka. Sharia courts in the UK mainly deal with family matters, especially divorce cases. British Jews have their own religious courts for the same purpose. British Jews frequently turn to their own religious courts, the Beth Din, to resolve civil disputes, covering issues as diverse as business and divorce.

Like Sharia, Talmudic law has faced criticism for inequality towards the sexes. When a Jewish couple want to get divorced, a woman has to obtain a "get" from her husband. If he refuses, the divorce cannot go ahead and there is no way for the Beth Din to compel him to do so. This has resulted in the phenomenon of "chained women", unable to remarry without consent from their estranged partner.

Beth Din have tried to resolve the issue through everything from naming and shaming uncooperative spouses to pushing for government legislation, passed in 2002, that allows women to go to the High Court and petition for their husbands to be denied a decree absolute – a British court's final order that ends a civil marriage – until they have provided a get. But even this hasn't solved the problem.

Frei is unapologetic about the issue that this creates for some Jewish women, arguing that when Jews have a religious marriage, they are accepting the rules – unequal or not. If they are not happy with the system, they can go to other less conservative branches of the Beth Din run by the Reformed or Liberal Jewish movements. Or they can have a civil ceremony – and the same goes for divorce.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/sharia-law-uk- ... em-1540381

[noir]

Sharia courts cannot overrule the regular courts and they can't make any decisions that are contrary to national law, such as forcing Muslim women to wear the burka. Sharia courts in the UK mainly deal with family matters, especially divorce cases. British Jews have their own religious courts for the same purpose.

You can't really compare Islamic law with all its barbaric honor killing etc to anything. The Islamic courts are violeting basic human rights yet they are tolerated because of "moral relativism" and "multiculturalism". This diametrically opposite society can not function in a democratic liberal state.

[ingliz]

non-binding

My reading is commercial arbitration is final and binding, given that the decision reached does not raise any questions in law.

This diametrically opposite society can not function in a democratic liberal state.

The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal has been functioning since 2008.

[noir]

The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal has been functioning since 2008.

The tribunal is one area where Islam entrenches European society, steadily it's going to change local culture. You don't need to practice Islam to be effected. The human rights violations inherited in it will effect in the end the entire society. On a secular level, many British universities like SOAS become hotbed for Islamic hate cult and racism.

[Rugoz]

Wait...any agreement reached in these Arbitration Tribunals will actually be enforced by the state? Wtf?

The system is voluntary i.e. No-one can be forced to make use of these tribunals.

Yeah right , you apparently don't know how religious cults operate.

[noir]

The moral relativism (tribunal, honor killing, Islamic nationalist racism etc) is the greatest danger.

[SolarCross]

Wait...any agreement reached in these Arbitration Tribunals will actually be enforced by the state? Wtf?

They are riding on contract law basically, so yeah contracts are enforcable. Contract law is super flexible which is what makes it a hallmark of a genuinely liberal legal system as well as indispensable for a vibrant economy but therein lies the rub.. what happens when totalitarian cultists use its flexibility to accommodate their goofy ways.. lol.

Note however I don't believe they can use contract law to circumvent criminal law, so honour killings are still illegal.

[Pants-of-dog]

Sorry to change the subject, but do we actually have any evidence to support or corroborate the story in the OP?

[Igor Antunov]

Of course we do. It's right the in the OP. England is a festering sore. It won't survive this century.

[Pants-of-dog]

Of course we do. It's right the in the OP. England is a festering sore. It won't survive this century.

The OP has what seems to be an uncorroborated tweet and a photo that is apparently from another event years ago.

[ingliz]

Family law

If a man and a woman contract a nikah marriage under Islamic law but do not also contract a civil marriage, it is difficult to see at what point their relationship engages the secular courts. There is no concept of "common-law marriage" in English law; and though irregular marriage existed in Scotland until very recently, marriage "by habit and repute" was finally abolished by s 3 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 (though not in respect of subsisting marriages).

So if a couple who contracted a nikah marriage but not a civil one obtain a religious divorce, absent any criminal behaviour such as domestic violence and always provided that proper and adequate arrangements are agreed for any children, it is difficult to see what concern that is of the domestic law. To take the extreme case, in the eyes of the secular law a childless couple in a nikah marriage are in no different position from a childless couple who live together without getting married. Any associated difficulties in the case of a break-up, such as dividing their assets, is a problem that they will have to sort out between themselves.

The problem:

Under Islamic law divorce may be instituted unilaterally by the husband, the most common means being ṭalāq. The wife, on the other hand, must petition for khula (literally “extraction”, or release from the marriage) and if the husband refuses her request may petition the sharia tribunal to overrule his refusal.

Contract law

There is always the possibility that a couple who have contracted a religious but not a civil marriage may find themselves in a (?quasi-) contractual relationship. In Uddin v Choudhury & Ors [2009] EWCA Civ 1205 the court was prepared to accept evidence of an arranged marriage under sharia for the purposes of civil proceedings. A nikah ceremony had taken place in Battersea Town Hall in August 2003 but the intended civil ceremony had never taken place because the marriage had not worked; and on the application of the bride the Islamic Sharia Council pronounced a sharia decree of divorce in December 2004. The subsequent dispute was, in short, over the return of the dowry to the bride’s family and whether various gifts made to her should be returned to the groom’s family. Mummery LJ concluded at para 11 that the agreement under sharia should stand:

“… it was a valid marriage under sharia law and… it was then validly dissolved by decree of the Islamic Sharia Council. This was not a matter of English law. There was no ceremony which was recognised by English law, but it was a valid ceremony so far as the parties were agreed and it was valid for the purposes of giving legal effect to the agreement which had been made about gifts and dowry”.

Sharia councils

Around 90% of the work of Sharia Councils is related to Islamic divorce.

The United Kingdom Board of Sharia Councils insists that Islamic adjudication needs regulation and licencing, to make sure that the councils limit themselves to their proper role: which is to certify the validity of marriages and divorces from an Islamic viewpoint and not get involved in matters of custody and alimony which were best left to civil courts.

[Frollein]

I'm really enjoying your posts, ingliz. A communist defending the existence of Sharia courts in Great Britain.

This is what the LEFT looks like, Decky. Stop denying it.

[Decky]

He isn't denying that they exist. Are we even reading the same thread?

[ingliz]

A communist defending the existence of Sharia courts in Great Britain.

I am not defending Sharia courts.

If the Government makes no effort to prevent individuals from seeking to regulate their lives through religious beliefs or cultural traditions - And in England, provided their activities do not contravene the law, there is nothing to prevent people from living how they please - Why should I?

I was trying to counter argument from opinion with a few facts, and now I point up some of the problems that arise when a secular state recognises some but not all religious marriages.

A solution:

Parliament could make it illegal for any religious body to conduct a wedding ceremony without a prior civil wedding – as in France. But that might possibly be regarded as a step too far (and, incidentally, marriage law in Scotland and Northern Ireland are devolved matters, so in order to have a UK-wide system the Westminster Government would have to gain the agreement of Edinburgh and Belfast).

[SolarCross]

Parliament could make it illegal for any religious body to conduct a wedding ceremony without a prior civil wedding – as in France. But that might possibly be regarded as a step too far (and, incidentally, marriage law in Scotland and Northern Ireland are devolved matters, so in order to have a UK-wide system the Westminster Government would have to gain the agreement of Edinburgh and Belfast).

I don't see why hindus, jews, buddhists etc need be pulled up in the same dragnet.

If Islam is a problem, proscribe Islam. When Japanese authorities wanted to act against the Aum Shinriko cult, they didn't do so by busting up Christians, Buddhists, Shinto etc.

[Pants-of-dog]

I guess Frollein cannot tell the difference between reporting a fact and supporting it.

And SolarCoss is not aware of the fact that his country supports religious freedom.

And there is still no reason to think the OP has any truth to it.

[SolarCross]

nd SolarCoss is not aware of the fact that his country supports religious freedom.

For most of the UK's history it hasn't and for most the history of the constituent kingdom's history they haven't, only until the UK became a signatory to the ECHR with its article 9 and the ECHR was adopted into UK law with the Human Rights Act of 1988. And until the re-awakening of Islamic jihadism there wasn't apparently any problem with this new development and all was well but then 9/11 happened and all the rest.

Moreover the UK is leaving the EU now and so all such things are up for revision anyway. What you imagined to be the dawn of new idealistic era is rather more likely to be a brief fad doomed to be mercilessly crushed by the remorseless logic of survival needs against a hostile and alien culture.

Pragmatists win not idealists.

[Pants-of-dog]

For most of the UK's history it hasn't and for most the history of the constituent kingdom's history they haven't, only until the UK became a signatory to the ECHR with its article 9 and the ECHR was adopted into UK law with the Human Rights Act of 1988. And until the re-awakening of Islamic jihadism there wasn't apparently any problem with this new development and all was well but then 9/11 happened and all the rest.

Moreover the UK is leaving the EU now and so all such things are up for revision anyway.

Feel free to give up your freedoms as a solution to an imaginary problem.

What you imagined to be the dawn of new idealistic era is rather more likely to be a brief fad doomed to be mercilessly crushed by the remorseless logic of survival needs against a hostile and alien culture.

Pragmatists win not idealists.

As always, you are incorrect about what I imagine.

Anyway, I find it amusing that you see your paranoid fantasies of Islamic occupation as "pragmatism".

When my thirteen year old is scared of spiders, she is being "pragmatic" according to you.

[One Degree]

No minority culture is a threat as long as their numbers remain under 1% or some fool decides minorities have equal rights. Minority rights should be respected but they should be secondary to the rights of the cultural majority. There is no sane reason why the majority should sacrifice their beliefs to appease a minority. Why would anyone willingly do this unless they hated their own culture?