There are a lot of assumption in that post.

Nevertheless, in cases where a Muslim man refuses to grant his wife an Islamic divorce the woman can seek a divorce from a sharia court. Similar to the Jewish courts.

Quote:

Under some interpretations of Sharia law, men can have up to four wives and are given the primary right of divorce, or talaq.

This means he can leave one wife and remarry, but refuse to give the first wife a divorce, and yet still feel he is living in accordance with his faith.

In the eyes of the community his wife is still married, and because women are only allowed one husband at a time, she is left unable to remarry and move on with her life.

These women in so-called "limping marriages" come to the Islamic Sharia Council who write to her husband and try to convince him to give her a divorce. If he refuses, after about three months they annul the marriage.

Quote:

No-one knows how many Sharia courts there are in the country, and not all will follow such liberal interpretations of Sharia.

Some level of state legitimacy for the more liberal courts would make them more accessible and encourage others not to be so hardline.

Quote:

There is no regulation of the councils and no formal qualifications are needed to preside over a Sharia court. Some imams are highly educated scholars like Sheikh Sayeed, others less so.

As well providing accessibility and encouraging a degree of liberalism, state intervention would also formalise things, make the courts more organised and encourage higher standards.

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7238890.stm]BBC: The view from inside a Sharia court[/url]

"Beast" wrote:

There are a lot of assumption in that post.

Nevertheless, in cases where a Muslim man refuses to grant his wife an Islamic divorce the woman can seek a divorce from a sharia court. Similar to the Jewish courts.

In Hari's examples the sharia court was the problem. In the case of the Beth Din it was the Beth Din looking to Parliament to coordinate a liberal solution to the problem. Would a sharia court want to enact rulings authorised by Parliament?

Good question. I don't suppose it would.

But the sharia arbitration courts don't do anything to contravene laws passed by parliament either.

I don't wish to rule out the possibility so having expressed some concerns and distinguished the Archbishop's argument from the situation of the Jewish courts I will try to leave this topic for discussion between everyone else here, being as I'm not Muslim. Just to clarify the Beth Din thing:

"[url=http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/ldhansrd/text/70510-gc... wrote:

parliament.uk[/url]"][b]Lord Lester of Herne Hill:[/b] Oddly enough, I know a bit about this because I introduced another Private Member’s Bill, which someone else took over, which concerned the problem of Jewish religious marriages where, owing to an extremely narrow interpretation of the Book of Deuteronomy in the 12th century where Moses Maimonides adopted a liberal view but subsequently, unfortunately, Jewish sages adopted a narrower view, there was the problem of the chained wives. The problem was that if a Jewish man wanted to marry another woman and had had a religious marriage, he could have a civil divorce but not a religious divorce. Under Jewish traditional law, as under Muslim family law, the woman would remain married to him. If she remarries her children would be stigmatised as illegitimate and so on. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Hendon, was a particular supporter of that Bill.

It was pointed out that my Bill dealt only with Jewish marriages; it was discriminatory and needed to deal with, for example, Muslim marriages. A power is included in the Bill to allow the provision to be extended to Muslim marriages and to give power to the family judge to refuse to give a civil divorce to a man in such a position until he is given the religious divorce. I very much hope that that point will be taken up. It has not been yet. So the answer is that there is not much that a civil judge can do at the moment about the religious wedding and divorce in that context, but there is a power for the Lord Chancellor to extend the law. That is amazingly learned and boring, but I thought I should just mention it to answer the question.

That is the only sense in which there is interaction between the religious and the civil courts.

"Irfan.Khan" wrote:

What if the child eats the candy, when his parents tell him not to, do you suggest poisoning it?

Nope just sprinkle some mirch (chilli) on it. :twisted:

That will teach the lil bugger to listen in future.

Lol i can remember when i was little my mum put this black stuff on my thumb to stop me sucking on it.