Archbishop sparks UK Sharia law row

[Variable]

The epic UK Pushpa/Roberto row continues over the UK Archbishop row

[Pushpa]

Variable said

The epic UK Pushpa/Roberto row continues over the UK Archbishop row

I was just congratulating myself on the fact that we haven't had to resort to verbal fisticuffs - yet

[roberto]

Pushpa said

.


Interestig link about the Arbitration Act, by the way. I didnt know that the Jewish courts simply operated under this Act. In that case, they are pretty much the same as what the existing Sharia councils are.

Which beg the questions :

So why are some who claim to represent Muslim pushing for an unnecessary change in the law, is it lack of knowledge, or is it that leaders always seek to increase their power base.

Why did Rowan Williams make the remarks, surely he must have been aware of the situation, was he just trying to be trendy

[roberto]

Variable said

The epic UK Pushpa/Roberto row continues over the UK Archbishop row

I like the "epic”; "row" not yet, but I’m working on it.

[jinnzaman]

Here are my thoughts on it:
Live Free or Shari'ah Hard: Democracy in the East? Shari'ah in the West? | Global Intifada

[Jamroll]

jinnzaman said

Here are my thoughts on it:
Live Free or Shari'ah Hard: Democracy in the East? Shari'ah in the West? | Global Intifada

Nice article.

[jinnzaman]

Jamroll said

Nice article.

Jazakallah khairun.

[Pushpa]

roberto said

Which beg the questions :

So why are some who claim to represent Muslim pushing for an unnecessary change in the law, is it lack of knowledge, or is it that leaders always seek to increase their power base.

Why did Rowan Williams make the remarks, surely he must have been aware of the situation, was he just trying to be trendy

I have no idea. I think perhaps the Archbishop thought that perhaps by opening up a debate about Sharia law it might pave the way for thinking about the role of religion in law for Christians - I think he mentioned the fact that people are in some cases compelled to accept practices which their religious principles do not permit, such as homosexuality. i think he gave the example of Catholics looking to give children up for adoption are not permitted to specify that they want their child to be raised by a heterosexual couple, though I'd have to check this - I may have got the details wrong.

[Revert]

roberto are you a British National?

[ChotooMotoo]

Another perspective on the issue:

Our British laws are there to protect Muslim women | Mary Ann Sieghart - Times Online
Our British laws are there to protect Muslim women
Mary Ann Sieghart

Gina Khan knows the horrors of polygamy. Her mother was married off at 15 and only when her father took his new bride to the other side of Pakistan did Gina’s mother discover that he already had another wife and five children. Later he married a third woman, but when Gina’s parents came to Britain, her mother made him divorce the third wife: “She knew that there was a law in this country that protected her. He never did it again.”

Gina’s mother was traumatised, though, and would burst into tears at the recollection. But the family brush with polygamy doesn’t stop there. Gina’s sister suffered the same fate and ended up being sectioned under the Mental Health Act. And Gina, when happily married to a Pakistani man, had to endure him being forced by his family to take a second wife: his 16-year-old cousin. With reluctance, she divorced him.

I interviewed Gina for The Times a year ago, and she was determined to highlight the plight of Muslim women living in an utterly male-dominated community. She has had to endure persecution, including a brick through her window and threatening phone calls. But she won’t give up. “We are in the 21st century; we’re not in the 7th century.” Yet, even though polygamy is illegal here, the Government still pays extra benefits to men with more than one wife, as long as the marriage was conducted in a country where polygamy is allowed. When John Hutton was Work and Pensions Secretary, he demanded a review: the conclusion, last December, was that it should remain.

Why, when ministers claim to be trying to empower Muslim women, do they support a barbaric tradition that is against women’s interests and against the law? The DWP tries to play down the number of people able to claim such benefits, but its guidance still talks about “valid polygamous marriages”. How can a polygamous marriage be valid in any circumstances here? This is just one example of Muslim women being denied the same rights as other women, in the name of respecting different faiths. The exaggerated attempt to embrace “diversity”, exemplified by the Archbishop of Canterbury, is disastrous not just for social cohesion, but for many members of the Muslim community too, most of them female.

It is one thing to respect Muslims’ need for halal butchery or for Sharia-compliant mortgages: these are genuine religious differences that harm nobody. But polygamy, forced marriages and (dis)honour violence are practices more cultural than religious. They are rooted in the culture of South Asian communities, often deeply rural, and have no place in modern Britain. They do not deserve respect or even toleration.

Yet still there are schools that refuse to put up posters giving warning of the dangers of forced marriages, according to a recent report by the Centre for Social Cohesion. Shazia Qayum, team leader at Karma Nirvana, a refuge in Derby, claims: “We approached schools to get posters up that let children know that there was help available. This was just before the holidays, which is the most critical time, because this is when girls get taken off to Pakistan or Bangladesh to be married. Unfortunately, none of the schools would let us put them up because they said it would offend the parents.”

And still there is often collusion within the Asian community to prevent women running away from forced marriages. Taxi drivers taking battered women to refuges will sometimes report their whereabouts to their abusive husbands. John Paton, manager of the Lancashire Family Mediation Service, says: “It’s extremely difficult for an Asian woman to go to a community worker or an agency where she knows that there are potentially people there who will report back to her family what she has said.”

There have even been complaints about local councillors intimidating Asian women’s groups. As the chair of a women’s project, who wants to remain anonymous for her own safety, explains: “We have a lot of pressure from the local councillors in Bradford; they are the bad ones, because they abuse their power by trying to get details on who is staying with us and what they are doing. They give us a hard time, until we have to complain to the police and they back off. They are dominant males who are trying to bully us.” Unfortunately, Britain’s Asian community is full of dominant males, and unless we work actively to resist them, Asian women will continue to be bullied. Giving them the “choice” of using Sharia, when such a choice is likely to be forced on them by their husbands, fathers or brothers, is no help at all.

You don’t just have to be concerned about women’s safety to be alarmed. According to Nazir Afzal, the Crown Prosecution Service’s lead on such matters: “If you had a map of the UK showing the location of Islamist groups – or terrorist cells – and you had another map showing the incidence of honour-based violence and you overlaid them, you would find that they were a mirror; they would be almost identical. It could be that this is simply because this is where South Asians live or it could suggest there is a strong link between these two attitudes.” So we should all be concerned that life in Britain can be miserable for South Asian women. They are at least three times more likely to kill themselves than white women of the same age. We should not be encouraging them to use Sharia courts run exclusively by men, even for civil matters. Nor should we be worried about offending cultural sensitivities by standing up for their rights. We should be telling their menfolk that the traditions of rural Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are unacceptable enough over there. They are completely intolerable in this free country.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She rightly states that the bad things are not religious, which is something rare from a British writer.

[roberto]

[QUOTE=roberto;83261]
Independent.co.uk
Johann Hari: Rowan Williams has shown us one thing – why multiculturalism must be abandoned
The Archbishop has unwittingly pointed us towards a vision of a better Britain

If you really believe that Britain is comprised of a smorgasbord of "cultures" that need to be preserved, promoted and respected as an end in itself, then this proposal is perfectly logical. Different cultures should have different courts, and rules, and schools.

We don't need to speculate about what these British sharia courts would look like. They already exist in some mosques across Britain, as voluntary enterprises. Last month, a plain, unsensationalist documentary called Divorce: Sharia Style looked at the judgements they hand down.

If a man wants a divorce, he simply has to say to his wife, "I divorce you" three times over three months. The wife has no right of appeal, and no right to ask for a reason. If a woman wants a divorce, by contrast, she has to humbly ask her husband. If he refuses, she must turn to a sharia court, and convince three Mullahs that her husband has behaved "unreasonably" – according to the rules laid out in a pre-modern text that recommends domestic violence if your wife gets uppity.

Irum Shazad, a 26-year-old British woman, travels from her battered women's refuge to a sharia court in East London. She explains that her husband was so abusive she slashed her wrists with a carving knife. The court tells her this was a sin, making her as bad as him. They tell her to go back to her husband. (They grant a divorce half a year later, after a dozen more "last chances" for him to abuse her.)

Then we meet Nasirin Iqbal, a 27-year-old Pakistani woman who was shipped to Britain five years ago to marry. Her husband, Imran, has kept her isolated, and she does not speak a word of English. "I came here thinking he'd treat me well," she says. "But he keeps hurting me. He brought me here to use me. I'm not an object.... Do I not have a heart?... He tells me I'm stuck with him, and under Islam he can treat me however he wants. 'I am a man, I can treat you how I want'."

We see how Imran torments her, announcing, "You are a reject. I didn't want to marry you." He takes a second wife in Pakistan, and texts her all day in front of Nasirin declaring his love. The sharia court issues a fatwa saying the marriage stands. She doesn't seem to know this isn't a court of law. "I can't ignore what they say," she cries. "You have to go with what they say."

These are the courts that Rowan Williams would give the stamp of British law. In his lecture, he worries that this could harm women – before serving up a theological gloop, saying that sharia could be reinterpreted in a way compatible with the rights of women. But if that happens, why would you need different courts? What would be the point?

The argument that women will only have to enter these courts if they freely choose to shows a near-total disconnection from the reality of Muslim women's lives. Most of the women who will be drawn into "consenting" are, like Nasirin, recent immigrants with little idea of their legal options. Then there are the threats of excommunication – or violence – from some families. As the Muslim feminist Irshad Manji puts it: "When it comes to contemporary sharia, choice is theory; intimidation is the reality."

These courts highlight in their purest form the problem with multiculturalism. It has become a feel-good doctrine mindlessly celebrating "difference", without looking at what that difference actually means.

Yet many people feel instinctively uncomfortable when we talk about ditching multiculturalism – for a good reason. The only alternative they are aware of is the old whiter-than-white monoculturalism. This view, voiced most clearly by Enoch Powell and Norman Tebbit, believes that if people are going to live together, they need to look and feel similar, and have a tightly prescribed shared identity. They argue that the number of newcomers should be small, and need to be pressured to assimilate to the 1950s norm of a suburban white family, fast.

Multiculturalism was formed with good intentions as a counter-reaction. But it has become a mirror-image of this old racism, treating Muslim women – and others – as so different that they do not deserve the same rights as the rest of us. As the European-Iranian feminist Azar Majedi puts it: "By creating different laws and judicial systems for each ethnic group, we are not fighting racism. In fact, we are institutionalising it."

When people talk about defending Muslim culture, ask them – which culture? The culture of Irum and Nasireen, or the culture of their abusive husbands? Multiculturalism patronisingly treats immigrants as homogenous blocks – when in fact they are as diffuse and dissenting as the rest of us. Would anybody lump me in with Richard Littlejohn and Nick Griffin as part of a "white community"?

There is a better way for the state to understand and regulate human differences, beyond the old oppositions of Tebbittry and multiculturalism. It is called liberalism. A liberal society allows an individual to do whatever he or she wants, provided it doesn't harm other people. You can choose to wear PVC hotpants or a veil. You can choose to spend all day praying, or all day mocking people who pray.

Where a multiculturalist prizes the rights of religious groups, a liberal favours the rights of the individual. So if you want to preach that the Archangel Gabriel revealed the word of God to an illiterate nomad two millennia ago, you can do it as much as you like. You can write books and hold rallies and make your case. What you cannot do is argue that since this angel supposedly said women are worth half of a man when it comes to inheritance, and that gay people should be killed, you can ditch the rules of liberalism and act on it.

The job of a liberal state is not to stamp The True National Essence on its citizens, nor to promote "difference" for its own sake. It is to uphold the equal rights of every individual – whether they are white men or Muslim women. It has one liberal culture, with freedoms used differently by different people.

So as well as scorning the Archbishop, we should thank him. He has helped to deliver the funeral rites for multiculturalism. With his matted beard and tortured hand-wringing to a desert-God, the Archbishop has unwittingly pointed us towards a vision of a better Britain – one that chooses proudly to be liberal.

j.hari@independent.co.uk

[Revert]

If you can't answer a simple question then kindly go away.

[Pushpa]

[QUOTE=roberto;85608]

roberto said

Independent.co.uk
Johann Hari: Rowan Williams has shown us one thing – why multiculturalism must be abandoned

.....

Yet many people feel instinctively uncomfortable when we talk about ditching multiculturalism – for a good reason. The only alternative they are aware of is the old whiter-than-white monoculturalism. This view, voiced most clearly by Enoch Powell and Norman Tebbit, believes that if people are going to live together, they need to look and feel similar, and have a tightly prescribed shared identity. They argue that the number of newcomers should be small, and need to be pressured to assimilate to the 1950s norm of a suburban white family, fast.

Multiculturalism patronisingly treats immigrants as homogenous blocks – when in fact they are as diffuse and dissenting as the rest of us. Would anybody lump me in with Richard Littlejohn and Nick Griffin as part of a "white community"?

I think these are the most important points this article raised, notwithstanding the rather tabloidy style of writing that the article opened with - which I was surprised to see in a paper like The Independent.

"When it comes to contemporary sharia, choice is theory; intimidation is the reality."

Sadly, I agree.

[Aryan_]

[roberto]

[QUOTE=Pushpa;86427]

roberto said

I think these are the most important points this article raised, notwithstanding the rather tabloidy style of writing that the article opened with - which I was surprised to see in a paper like The Independent.


Sadly, I agree.

This is my choice:

The job of a liberal state is not to stamp The True National Essence on its citizens, nor to promote "difference" for its own sake. It is to uphold the equal rights of every individual – whether they are white men or Muslim women. It has one liberal culture, with freedoms used differently by different people.

To which I would add:

Whereby in order to uphold the equal rights of every individual, all must accept and live within the same laws.