Apathy Sketchpad

I just read on Chicken Girl’s blog that, thanks to the Arbitration Act 1996, if both parties agree to it in advance then the judgements of a Sharia court can be legally binding in Britain. This only applies to civil cases. According to 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.

I’m not certain when domestic violence became a civil offence. It seems to me that beating someone up is a criminal act whether or not they were dumb enough to marry you first. I understand that in these situations what tends to happen is that the Sharia court gives a non-binding ruling and the woman drops her criminal case. This is, of course, fine, as long as both parties are happy with the outcome. That’s the same as the idea behind arbitration: no point invoking big, clumsy, expensive laws when the parties can agree on something cheaper and simpler. The problem… well, it’s pretty clear but let’s leave it for now.

It also strikes me that divorce, financial disputes and cases involving domestic violence are the worst possible cases to apply Sharia law to (with the exception of apostasy, although it’s hard to see a non-Muslim agreeing to a Sharia hearing and I’m pretty sure arbitrators aren’t allowed to sanction executions) because as bad as the brutal punishments Sharia metes out are, they are at least even-handed, whereas Sharia is so preposterously misogynistic that you know in advance how the court will rule in all three of those cases…

The judges on the panel gave the sons [in a divorce case] 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.

In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

How exactly this is sqaured with the Arbitration Act, I’m not sure, because the Act says

The provisions of this Part are founded on the following principles, and shall be construed accordingly-

(a) the object of arbitration is to obtain the fair resolution of disputes by an impartial tribunal without unnecessary delay or expense; …

Hard to see by what reasonable measure a system where a woman is considered to be worth half a man can possibly be considered ‘impartial’ in a case of domestic violence or a divorce settlement. That sounds to me like a very clear bias. I do wonder if that would make the courts’ rulings invalid. My internationally renowned legal expertese, alas, does not exist, but apparently I shouldn’t let that stop me making pronouncements based on what it tells me so I have decided that they are. That said, the act also says

An arbitrator is not liable for anything done or omitted in the discharge or purported discharge of his functions as arbitrator unless the act or omission is shown to have been in bad faith.

Bad faith, you say..?

The Sun has shown impressive restraint; the Mail reports it and manages (I think) to get a factual error into the first paragraph; the Mirror says

The Muslim tribunals are exploiting a loophole in the Arbitration Act 1996 which allows sharia courts to be classified as arbitration courts - with their rulings binding in law.

which I think is unfair: this isn’t a loophole; this is the whole idea. If you’re going to grant people the power to make binding judgements then you have to check them. After all, there’s no reason they should call it Sharia. They could hand out all the same rulings in a secular court. Would that be a loophole?

This is the problem: the whole idea of arbitration hangs on the ability of both parties to give voluntary consent to abide by its findings. The hoops a scientist has to jump through before an ethics committee will accept such consent are so small and high up that there are loads of scientific papers just about collecting it, so I doubt very much that we can ever be properly sure that a woman has given uncoerced consent to be judged by such ‘law’. I’m forced to agree with shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve, who said

If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so.

That said, this appears to have been reported in only one newspaper whose average reader understands the difference between ‘imply’ and ‘infer’, so I’m not really sure how much credence to give it. (Certainly the fact that an MP has commented on it shouldn’t be taken as evidence even that the story is partially true.) The Independent and the Guardian both, as far as I can see, entirely ignored this story.

Apart from anything else, as far as I can see the problem here isn’t really all that different from the one we had before they got wise to the Arbitration Act: if people agree to be oppressed, what are you going to do? The problem is in the subcultures that allow — indeed encourage — women to be treated as property and men to kill them if they won’t. I don’t mean to imply that this is the majority (or even a large minority) of muslims, but it happens. I don’t think there is a solution, but a good start would be to expose all muslims to other faiths by banning any and all faith-based school selection or home-schooling, and providing anyone who thinks they are at risk of such oppression to  go to the police and have their concerns treated very seriously and discretely investigated. I guess people have to remain free to join cults or give up freedoms for dumb reasons. But if we help them recruit or hold onto members then we’re complicit, and the present system just doesn’t give anyone adequate chance to escape.

Most of the comments on the Times piece are tripe from people who haven’t understood the situation, but I did like this one, with its utter failure to use almost any word correctly:

Adolf Hitler never succeeded in his attempts tosubmit UK to german nazi law . Muslims have managed to do what Hitler failed to obtain : Having a foreign fascist law , sharia , ruling british citizens .
I’m french , so I don’t have to tell British citizens what they should do , but …

docdory, Rouen, France

Is it wrong that my first thought was “surrender?”?