A sensationalistic Fox News report declares: "Britain Adopts Islamic Law." This story is referencing a new report, in the Times of London, that the UK now has its first official sharia courts. From the Times:
The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court…. Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, said he had taken advantage of a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996. Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.
What to make of this development? In my judgment, the issue is significant-but is also rather complex, and shouldn't be oversimplified. The proclamation that Britain has "adopted Islamic law" is plainly inaccurate. Sharia only governs where both parties agree to its implementation. It won't subsume British law unless there is a specific contract or agreement to apply sharia in civil disputes rather than British law: thus the sharia courts' classification as arbitration tribunals (a form of what is called "alternative dispute resolution"). A basic freedom of contract issue about whether a form of religious law should apply in place of secular law arises whenever a religion has specific rules for civil life, and two devout adherents to that faith enter into an agreement. For this reason, the Times notes that Britain also has Jewish beth din courts that "operate under the same provision in the Arbitration Act and resolve civil cases, ranging from divorce to business disputes." These sharia courts are not designed to apply criminal law: we will not suddenly see amputations and beheadings in Britain.That being said, I see three significant issues. First, there is a question about rights that are due to specific political communities. Are the rights provided to women under British marriage or inheritance law a baseline that they are due, or can they freely contract to be given fewer rights? We have in fact already seen this happen under the sharia tribunals. In a recent inheritance dispute described by the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal's Siddiqi, a deceased man's estate was divided between his three daughters and two sons. The Times reports: "The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts."
This fact raises a question about how voluntary individuals' accession to the sharia tribunals will actually be. Are women (for example) going to be forced by their families into marriages under sharia that provide them with fewer rights than they would have under British law? Will they be fully informed of the differences between the two systems when they enter into these contracts? This is a particular concern because Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has warned of "no-go" areas in some Muslim communities in the UK, a concern that has been echoed by British police officials.
The third question is who will be on the courts interpreting sharia law? Will they be Salafis, Sufis, Shias? Will they have a conservative or liberal interpretation? Will this empower scholars who are contemptuous of British society, or those who encourage integration? The concerns commentators are expressing about a "parallel legal system" for some British Muslims are not baseless.
These real problems should be watched carefully. Hyperbolic coverage of the tribunals is likely only to obscure, rather than illuminate, these deeper issues.
