NEWS STORY: Ontario Muslims Tussle Over Sharia Courts

c. 2004 Religion News Service TORONTO _ It may be a long, hot summer for Muslims in Ontario as activists make arguments for and against proposed tribunals that would use Islamic law to settle family, marriage and business disputes in the province. Detractors fear the panels _ legal under the province’s 1991 Arbitration Act _ […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

TORONTO _ It may be a long, hot summer for Muslims in Ontario as activists make arguments for and against proposed tribunals that would use Islamic law to settle family, marriage and business disputes in the province.

Detractors fear the panels _ legal under the province’s 1991 Arbitration Act _ would oppress women. Critics predict that new immigrant women, in particular, would be coerced into accepting rulings that would favor men.


Proponents argue that “sharia” _ a vast, complex body of Islamic law that varies from country to country _ has been unfairly criticized and that any rulings by the tribunal would be subservient to Canadian laws.

In late June, the Ontario government announced that a former provincial attorney general, Marion Boyd, had been appointed to review the Arbitration Act, which allows religious groups to resolve civil disputes within their faith, provided all parties involved consent to the process.

Native groups, Jews, Ismaili Muslims and in some instances Catholics already use the act to operate internal religious courts. Those court decisions are binding but must be consistent with Canadian laws and human rights codes.

Boyd’s report is due in September, and Muslim groups say they will make their cases to her as forcefully as possible over the summer.

The issue has been front-page news in Toronto since a report in a legal publication late last year announced the formation of the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, which would operate panels of trained arbitrators to settle private disputes using sharia. The tribunals, known as “darul qada,” were set to start up later this year.

Almost immediately, women’s and legal groups protested. The International Campaign Against Shari’a Court in Canada was formed and gathered thousands of signatures on a petition calling on the government to halt the panels and revamp the Arbitration Act.

The issue has resonated around the world. Protests are scheduled for Sept. 8 in several Canadian cities and in front of Canadian embassies in France, England, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland.


“We believe that all people who live in Canada are citizens with equal rights, and should live according to the same social laws and norms,” campaign coordinator Homa Arjomand told a packed meeting of supporters at a Toronto community center. “We demand the separation of religion from the Canadian justice system.”

Arjomand is a social worker and transitional counselor in Toronto for immigrant women, and claims to have witnessed the harm sharia can do. In 1989, she and her husband paid smugglers $15,000 to help them and their two young children escape from Iran.

“I’ve seen it. I’ve seen how much damage it can cause women, and that has not changed in 1,000 years. If a murder occurs in front of me and my son, who’s 7, I cannot be a witness but he can because I don’t count as a person.”

If a woman refuses to submit to the panels or seeks to overturn their decisions, “she would be named anti-Islam and would be isolated from her family,” Arjomand said.

Often, she added, these women are forcibly separated from their children, ostracized from their communities and become suicidal.

Opponents of the judicial initiative have argued that Islamic family law dictates that male heirs receive a greater share of inheritance than females (in order to look after female relatives); that only husbands may initiate divorce; that fathers are usually awarded custody of children; and in extreme cases, that fathers may force their underage daughters to marry.


Nuzhat Jafri, representing the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, which has logged hundreds of e-mails opposing the panels, said she sees “a long fight ahead.” Others noted that it may be easier to amend the Arbitration Act than repeal it.

But supporters of the panels have spoken out with equal fervor, saying opposition is a result of anti-Islam sentiment.

Canadian Muslims are treated as “children of a lesser God,” said mediator Mubin Sheikh at a pro-sharia meeting at a local library. He portrayed the campaign against the tribunals as “part of the demonization of Islam” and said arguments against it “are just rubbish.”

Sheikh noted that the panels will merely formalize an ad hoc system that has been quietly mediating marital and business disputes in Ontario using sharia for years.

And, he added, there are safeguards in place to ensure that no decision would be contrary to public policy, encroach on existing statutes or violate any aspect of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is similar to the U.S. Bill of Rights.

“Islamic law provides for a woman things she could not dream of in secular law,” said Sheikh. “In some instances, she gets 100 percent of disputed property. No other system has treated women more fairly and equitably.”


Sheikh said that in 80 percent of cases, sharia favors women over men. He called sharia “an exercise of basic human rights.”

While there are details to “iron out,” such as which model of sharia to employ, Sheikh said “it’s irrelevant what your experience was in Nigeria, Iran or Afghanistan. This is Canada.”

KRE/MO END CSILLAG

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