Roi,

Nice choice of subject and good writeup!

It's my impression that sharia aspires to obviate the need for any other law.
Not sure about the beit din or whatever it's called.

Concerning rules & principles for the regulation of public and social life,
it's been said that Civil Society means whatever is not: the prerogative/authority of

the military
the state
the religion

(Chapter on Secularism and the Civil Society in "What Went Wrong" by Lewis.

In the US, and I suppose in the UK, the distinction between civil and criminal law is
pretty well settled.

I would guess that sharia and the existing US/UK notion of "civil law",
while having substantial overlap, would not have anything like the same scope.

Interesting that the church of england is pushing this.
If they have been marginalized in this regard then one could conjecture that
this is a scheme to better Christians with respect to Jews in the UK using Muslims as a tool:

get sharia to be considered and rejected
have beit din considered and rejected,.

Editing is a little sloppy - Is this a translation or is it the original article language?

beit din <-> batei din (However it's spelled, it should be one of the tags.)

effect <-> affect

Regards,
-Fred

- Hide quoted text -

On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 3:26 AM, Roi Ben-yehuda <rbenyehuda76@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hello Good People,

Check out my Op-Ed in Haaretz today: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/954471.html

Don't forget to leave a comment at the end of the article - Haaretz talkbacks are harsh :)

Peace,

Roi

http://roiword.wordpress.com

p.s. If you are in Israel, pick up the English print edition.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/954471.html

Last update - 05:38 15/02/2008

Keeping the faith? By Roi Ben-Yehuda Tags: sharia, Rowan Williams

Last week, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams set off a firestorm of debate when he stated in an interview that the partial introduction of sharia (Muslim law) into the British legal system was both "unavoidable" and desirable, as it would aid "social cohesion." While preliminary and vague, Williams' proposal would allow Muslims to have the option of using sharia and its court system for civil matters such as marriage, divorce and financial disputes.

Under English law, civil disputes can be arbitrated privately by a third party, provided that the process is chosen freely by both sides and the conclusion reached is reasonable (even if not necessarily based on English law). This, in effect, makes room for faith-based arbitrations of family law disputes.

In explaining his proposition, Williams, the head of the Anglican Church, noted that the Jewish community in Britain already enjoys such legal privileges. Referring to the beit din, the Orthodox Jewish court, which the state recognizes as a voluntary court of arbitration whose rulings on civil matters are valid, Williams said: "We already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of religious communities is recognized by the law of the land ... We have Orthodox Jewish courts operating in this country legally and in a regulated way because there are modes of dispute resolution and customary provisions which apply there in the light of Talmud." Following the archbishop's lead, Muslim groups and individuals who support the proposal to give standing to sharia have invoked the Jewish example in calling for equality. The Muslim Council of Britain, the country's largest Islamic organization, issued a statement suggesting that "British Muslims would wish to seek parity with other faiths, in particular the followers of the Jewish faith in the United Kingdom, in facilitating choices for those who wish, as Muslims, for their personal relationships to be governed by a sharia civil code."

In using the Jewish example, advocates of the proposal make a compelling argument. After all, if the Jews have such rights, on what grounds can they be denied to the Muslims? And if you deny them to the Muslims, should you not also deny them to the Jews?

Some have said that the Jewish case is different, that the archbishop's original comparison of sharia courts with the Jewish batei din is flawed. Sharia, according to this position, in contrast to Jewish law, represents a legal system that is incompatible with the values of democracy. But that argument doesn't hold up under scrutiny. After all, when was the last time a woman served as a judge or witness in an Orthodox beit din? Primitive is primitive.

Make no mistake about it: If the sharia proposal gets rejected, as it is bound to, recognition of the beit din will surely follow. And arguments against the recognition of sharia are already piling up. Government officials, public intellectuals and others have made a strong case against the idea, in each case centering on the principle that there should be one law for all without exception. The very identity of a nation, they say, is bound up in the law, and if separate legal systems are allowed to operate, the thread that unites British citizens will be sundered.

To see how this may effect the beit din, one need only look at Canada for a case in point. In 1991, the province of Ontario implemented the Arbitration Act, which allowed for arbitration of civil disputes by a third party. This made room for faith-based adjudication as a substitute for secular family law. However, when in 2003 the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice announced its intention to begin offering arbitration services based on Islamic family law, a great debate ensued. Many people (particularly Muslim women) feared that having the state recognize the decisions of a sharia tribunal would undermine the equal rights guaranteed Muslim women under Canadian law.

In the end, the province's premier, Dalton McGuinty, declared: "There will be no sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians." In 2005, the Arbitration Act was amended so that private arbitration was permitted to rely on Ontario law alone - and not religious-based law - for settling civil disputes. It is hard to imagine why the case in Britain would end any differently.

The debate over the sharia proposal is really a debate over the status and role of communal rights in a multicultural society. Britain, like the rest of Europe, is experiencing profound anxieties over the place of a growing Muslim minority in its midst. It is clear that a great deal of the backlash against this proposal stems from that very anxiety. But the rules of democracy have no room for double standards. The bottom line is that the future of the beit din is intimately tied to whether or not sharia is able to get some legal footing in Britain. A decision against the sharia proposal will ultimately be a decision against the beit din.

Roi Ben-Yehuda is an Israeli-American writer living in Spain. His work has appeared in such publications as Jewcy, Tikkun and Zeek, and he blogs at http://roiword.wordpress.com.