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The plan to establish Islamic courts in the Canadian province of Ontario and
leave the Muslim minority to the mercy of Sharia, has unleashed a wave of
protest. Muslim women are horrified about the idea that a secular western
democracy like Canada invites archaic religious laws, deeply committed to the
concept of gender inequality, to strike root in its legal system. Growing
resistance against the threatening human rights crisis has forced the government of
Ontario now, to reconsider the matter.
"We see no compelling reason to live under any other form of law in Canada
and we want the same laws to apply to us as to other Canadian women", demands
the national Canadian Council of Muslim Women. But some self nominated Muslim
leaders have different plans, and the government of Ontario seemed willing
to cooperate.
Entry point for the 1400-year-old Quran-based Sharia is the Ontario
Arbitration Act of 1991. It allows religious and other groups to settle civil legal
disputes among their members according to their own rules and arbitrations.
Under this act, Hassidic Jews are running their own Beit Din, based on Jewish
law. Catholics, Ismaili Muslims (followers of Aga Khan) and aborigines, too,
are maintaining their traditional arbitration. In October 2003, conservative
Muslim Sharia campaigners discovered that this legal loophole could be used to
enforce Islamic law in Canada. Securing acceptance of representatives of
some major Muslim groups, sects and national communities, they were fast to
create an Islamic Institute for Legal Justice and declare it the highest Islamic
arbitration board in the country.
If the government does not act fast, Sharia courts may soon start handing
down their rulings in Ontario. Those rulings would be final and binding, as the
full authority of the Canadian judiciary is conferred on them and guarantees
their enforcement by Canadian police and local Canadian courts - without
them having any discretion in the matter. There will be ghettos of religious law
in Canada, pressing the secular democracy's executive machinery into
service.
That does not mean that adulterers will be stoned to death, the authorities
are fast to explain. They feel they have already done enough by establishing
certain "safeguards" against such excesses: Sharia courts will - for the time
being - not be in charge of criminal cases, but civil cases only (divorce,
separation, child custody, division of property etc.). Their decisions are
required to be consistent with Canadian laws and the Human Rights Charter. And
finally, they can only act, provided all parties involved give their consent
to the process.
So everybody is equal - but some are far less equal than others. To get
their fair share, inhabitants of the ghettos would have to bluntly refuse the
participation in religious tribunals or challenge decisions, passed in the name
of Allah, in an ordinary Canadian court. That is certainly possible.
The "model Ontario", once practiced, will set new standards. It will help to
legitimize the demands of fundamentalist religious leaders to establish
autonomous legal ghettos all over the secular world. Delegates of the
International Islamic Conference in Cairo in April urged already the incorporation of
Sharia and its moral values into the International Law.
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