From the link supplied, it seems to me that what's being offered is an "arbitration" service that parties can agree on that will hear civil cases or minor criminal cases--those that require a plaintiff to file out a complaint in order to be prosecuted. These would include typical property disputes, and some domestic disturbances, but if it's anything like U.S. law, sharia arbitration would not be available for those cases that the police were able to prosecute as typical criminal offenses. If the police have to rely upon one spouse filing out a complaint about the other, and the only grounds for a criminal charge is that complaint, the case could be heard in sharia court. If a spouse is reported for domestic violence by a third party, or by a hospital, or by the direct observation of a crime by a police officer, the case would not be eligible for sharia--At least this is what I'm getting from the article.
There are lots of places where this is common. In the U.S., the most popular equivalent to sharia would probably be the TV show "Judge Judy." Two parties can both agree to appear before her and have her decide their case, and agree to be bound by her decision. But just yesterday, on a re-run, one of the parties didn't like where the questioning was going and she gave him the option of withdrawing from the proceedings and taking it to another ("official") court. He did withdraw.
Although I think the TV show makes for "great" reality TV (an oxymoron, perhaps? or just an over-use of "air" "quotes?") I think I'd much prefer to appear before a sharia court than before her typically short-tempered and inadequately reasoned proceedings. Lots of people apparently are willing to appear before her even though I don't think she always does a good job of being fair; she needs to speed things up for TV, so lots of stuff gets settled by reference to how her own children behave or whether her own grandchildren would not be without their laptop for six months. She just "knows" when one of the parties is lying, and typically nothing the party says can dissuade her from that view. But if two people who have some kind of conflict are willing to have her settle things, even though she is probably less fair than a court settling inheritance rights based on Islamic principles, I say let people have their moment of sublime folly on TV if they want, or let them go to a sharia court if they want.
The other place where something similar can happen in the U.S. is in divorce cases; the two parties can both try to work out their differences with a mediator or arbitrator, whose job is to help both parties work out as amicable and reasonable a settlement as possible, not by the parties hiring their own attorney to represent each client, doing as much financial damage as possible to the opponent. If both parties find this arbitration acceptable, the results of the arbitration are used by the court (with court review of the proceedings) as a reasonable settlement.
What WOULD bother me about sharia courts in England is:(1) if they were somehow required for some parties despite their desire to have their cases tried under the English adversarial system,
OR(2) if there is no court review of the proceedings of a sharia arbitration to ensure that the process has been reasonably fair.
With both of those in place, setting up sharia arbitrations seems to be both reasonably just and a service to the citizens, the way any other arbitration system would be.
Veronica Caley wrote:
Did anyone on this list know that Sharia Law is in Britain? I just read it in Sunday "Times" Sept. 14th, 2008. Tried to copy the link but couldn't. You can find several articles by Googling: England/Sharia Law. I wonder how many people using this legal system can even read or write English. I was surprised because Canadians tried it but their Supreme Court ruled against it.Veronica Caley Milford, MI
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