BBC Panorama documentary on British Sharia courts

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Anyone watched this? It's available on BBC's iPlayer and will no doubt be circulated over the web,

Apparently, it pretty effortlessly exposes the misogyny in the Islamic jurisprudence system.

Oh yes, I knew you would be on this like the white on rice.

I agree that the double standards are pretty backward and obstinate. However as a westerner I feel ill placed to lecture muslims on civil rights while my own country is behaving the way it is in muslim countries.

Have the Brits stoned any women for committing adultary lately?

ruveyn

Never the point. The UK is not an absolute moral authority.

We're not talking about what is happening in Pakistan or anything like that. We're talking about what is happening here in the UK.

Your cowardly moral relativism is shameful and, well, racist. You wouldn't agree with this sort of crap from 'white' people (what about white Muslims? there are plenty of those, so the dawah people keep telling us), and a lot of people you consider 'brown' think this is as abhorrent as the rest of us.

You'll find that there are an increasing number of ex-Muslim apostates (you know, those people that Islam says should be put to death for leaving the faith), genuine liberals and other freethinkers that are willing to challenge those tenets of Islam that are simply unacceptable in a free society.

You know that Islam would conquer the West if it had the chance. There's a reason that Salafists say stuff like "Islam will conquer the world". They truly mean this, and their scripture can back them up. This just isn't true for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists or any other religion.

If you think that the U.S. and the UK are imperialist, I wouldn't mind knowing how you think Islam became the dominant religion in North Africa and South Asia. Like Christianity, it got to where it was through imperialism and violence. It is still imperialist and violent, mistreating and subjugating minorities unfortunate enough to live in its borders.

You can talk about drone attacks or whatever you like, but in essence the U.S. and the other major powers try to minimise casualties if they're able. I don't see this happening when there are Sunni terrorist attacks on Shias, or attacks on Christians by Muslim mobs, or when Ahmadis are persecuted, or women are stoned to death for 'zina', or any of this other crap.

One law for all.

If you live in this country, you obey the law. It's as simple as that.

Saying that some people or religious traditions can simply ignore the law is a very dangerous road to be going down.

You're right, I forgot that the British have traditionally respected the customs and laws of countries they have entered. How silly of me.

It is amazing how your mind works. You simply wish counterexamples away.

ruveyn

The Brits our out of the empire business. Times change, people learn and things march on. On the other hand look at what the Muslim savages are doing NOW. Forget 200 years ago. Pay attention to NOW.

ruveyn

So because IT HAPPENED THEN, Britains track record is completely expunged of wrongdoing and its indigenous people are now magically and suddenly a moral authority qualified to critique the misgivings of other peoples. Your mind is more mysterious, if you think that.

Would you like to talk about the imperial empires and the widespread subjugation of your Muslims that Denmark, Sweden, Finland or Norway took part in? They have most of the same problems regarding Islamic misogyny that Britain do, yet none of these countries had empires of note that went near Muslim countries.

There are a lot of peoples that suffered far worse treatment than Muslims under British India, yet they don't immigrate to the UK, rape white teenage girls in gangs, set up their own Islamic ghettos, support terrorism, commit genital mutilation of women, or consider apostates to be completely beyond the pale. Just look at the experiences of the Hindu and Sikh communities.

You are an apologist for barbarism, and you are condoning the abuse of women from ethnic minorities by refusing to condemn their treatment. We are lucky that there weren't people like you around in slavery-era America.

History will not look kindly upon you and your kind. And neither will the ethnic minorities in question. (I read a lot of Muslims who are intensely embarrassed by the backward nonsense in their communities and I sympathise with them a lot.)

If you are talking about public law, then I am fully and unreservedly in agreement with you. The public law is universal, and applies equally to all people within a jurisdiction. Sharia has no place governing aspects of the individual's relationship to the state, such as the Criminal Law or Administrative Law.

But public law is not the entirety of law.

There is also private law. If you and I make a contract, we are free to decide that disputes under the contract shall be abitrated according to the law of the Grand Duchy of Hesse as it was in force on January 1, 1850 if we feel like it. We can adopt Sharia, or any other sytem of law that we choose. There is no "One law for all" in the private sphere.

Now that leaves family law. While it is technically private law, since it affects the private rights of individuals with respect to each other, it has been raised to the public sphere, because of the way that it touches on the Crown's parens patriae jurisdiction.

Religious courts can often perform a beneficial function of giving couples a low-cost, expeditious way of setting out their issues of dispute, and potentially finding an agreement on them, which civil courts can then ratify, saving everyone involved time and expense. Clearly they don't always function this way. But since they can never supplant civil courts, they are only binding to the extent that people who rely on them choose to be bound.

A woman who goes to a Sharia court seeking a dissolution of her religious marriage is under no legal obligation to do so. If there is no recognized civil marriage, and a civil court has already ruled on custody and access to children, then she is free to forego a dissolution of her unrecognized religious marriage. If she chooses, however, to attorn herself to the Sharia court in order to obtain that religious divorce, who are we to tell her that she is wrong to do so?

Typical left-wing pinko stinko bigotry. Once an imperialist, always an imperialist. And it is all the fault of White Men.

ruveyn

Thats hardly what I said either. All I said was that Britain is not qualified to instruct others how to conduct their internal affairs properly. Frankly I think when Tequila talks about his empathy for muslim women its crocodile tears. If he had his way, there would be no Islam in Britain.

It's simple. If these guys wanna have their Sharia, then they can have it back home. If you move to another country, any country, then do as the Romans do. I don't think anyone has the right to impose their will on anyone, but even less so in a nation that has welcomed you in and accepted you. Imagine if you invited someone into your home, and they were a complete boor, ordering you about, trying to tell you how your wife and daughter should behave, what rules you should live by. You'd kick them out in a heartbeat. Now imagine that several generations ago, your ancestor killed one of his ancestors. In what way are you responsible? The answer is that you are not.

Personally, I find it easy to condemn Sharia because it is brutish, unjust, and sexist. What would happen if an Orthodox Jew came to Britain and demanded the Mitzvok be made law? He'd be a laughingstock. The Mitzvok are about as fair and sensible as a chimpanzee tripping balls. Same goes for Sharia. Any law that denies the rights of man should have no place in the West.

Why shouldn't muslims have the same right to have their family law disputes mediated by a Sharia court as Jews have to have their family law disputes mediated by a Bet Din? Or the rights of Roman Catholics to seek dissolution of their marriage by way of annulment?

If we encourage people to settle their disputes through Alternative Dispute Resolution means (and we do), then why are those people free to use the ADR forum of their choice?

Now, if a woman is being compelled to submit herself to a religious court, then that's a totally different matter. But if she has attorned herself to the court, and agrees to be bound by its ruling, who are we to complain?