Another important Bill

Not so long ago I wrote about Baroness Cox's Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill, For a while it did not seem to be getting anywhere. But the times they are a'changing even among front benches and government ministers. Theresa May, as that posting mentions, referred to Sharia courts specifically as something that needs to be looked at very seriously. We are awaiting the list of people who will be in that commission that will be looking at the problem.

Gerald Howarth MP wrote on ConHome that Baroness Cox should be appointed to lead the investigation into the courts and how right he is. Who has done more to alert the peers, the government, the civil service (with inadequate results, needless to say) and the public in general but she to the sheer wrongness of the system.

Caroline Cox, the independent Peer, is one of the most highly regarded parliamentarians in the Lords. The nature of her humanitarian work requires her to spend half her life in a jungle or a desert – or part-way up a mountain. It means that she is often required to enter war zones under fire, visiting people off the radar screen and largely out of sight of the world’s media.

She is no less keen on promoting human rights at home. In 2013, she established the All-Party Parliamentary Group on ‘Honour’-Based Abuse, of which I am the Vice-Chairman. The group has heard countless testimonies of women oppressed by intense community pressure, by inequalities in access to divorce or by the implicit sanctioning of domestic violence.

In October, Lords debated Baroness Cox’s Private Member’s Bill to protect vulnerable women from religiously-sanctioned gender discrimination. Read the Hansard, and you’ll soon lose count of how many peers speak of her expertise and compassion. She is respected by parliamentarians of all parties and, more importantly, trusted by women’s groups who support victims of abuse. For years, she has been raising these issues in parliament, instigating debates, representing the oppressed, and holding our Government to account.

In other words, Baroness Cox is the go-to expert on the very issues which Theresa May is hoping to explore in the forthcoming review and I very much hope she will be appointed as Chairman or, at the very least, given a position on the panel.

In the meantime, the Bill has progressed, largely by lack of opposition or even desire to amend. On December 11, therefore, the order of commitment was discharged and the Bill is proceeding directly to Third Reading.

According to the rules amendments can be put down at that stage as well but it is considered to be bad form (to use the Baroness's own words in private conversation) to do so unless they are ones that had been put down before. Second Reading showed that the House is largely on her side and the few who oppose the Bill find it hard to come up with rational arguments. We may assume tentatively that the Bill will get through the House of Lords and will go to the Commons. There, the situation will be more difficult: HMG will be able to control the amount of time allocated to it and lack of it may well kill the Bill again. Arguments such as equality of women and the wrongness of a parallel legal system in one country might not have a chance to be aired. Still, getting this far is an enormous achievement.

Other news from the House of Lords - 1

Indeed, there are many other subjects that are debated in the Upper House but I neither can nor want to follow them all. It is, however, time to turn to something else apart from the EU Referendum Bill to which I shall, no doubt, return.

Baroness Cox's Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill is back in the House. I mentioned it in the past here and here. That time it did not go beyond the Second Reading so I did not do a further direct report. I also mentioned it here and wrote:

At the heart of the Bill is the need to make it legally clear that Arbitration Tribunals are not law courts, that there is only one legal system in this country and that an alternative system, which discriminates against women must not be allowed to exist, let alone flourish.

This is absolutely vital for our understanding of what is going on. Arbitration Tribunals in themselves are a reasonable addition to the legal system (though if any qualified lawyer will explain that they are not I am prepared to listen and maybe accept arguments) but they must stay within the framework of English or Scottish law as, let me add, Beth Din courts do. Sharia Tribunals are steadily encroaching on family and criminal matters and claim the right to use traditional Sharia instead of English or Scottish law. Their intention is to create a legal apartheid and separate as many of the Muslim community as they can from the rest of this country and society. Then there is a question of inequality between men and women and between Muslim and non-Muslim in Sharia law, which is wholly contrary to our laws.

Since that time the Bill was reintroduced into the House at every possible opportunity but did not get very far. But the times, they are a'changing. Among the various counter-extremism proposals the Home Secretary, Theresa May mentioned Sharia courts, deemed unacceptable, and promised to tackle them. There will be a commission set up to study the subject, which sounds like an excellent idea until we ask ourselves who might sit on that commission. So far we do not know.

Generally speaking, no Private Member's Bill in either House gets anywhere unless there is a fair wind behind it from HMG. Looking at the Second Reading that took place on October 23 one can begin to see two developments: HMG is definitely more favourably inclined and there are some strong voices on all sides that are supporting the Baroness Cox.

The one voice that sounded against it was Lord Sheikh's (Col. 892). He did not do particularly well and was later told by Lord Kalms (Col. 898):

I heard all the explanations given by the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, previously and I reject them completely. I think that the noble Lord stands for views which are totally incompatible with ours in this country. 

Here is Lord Sheikh's attempt to explain certain peculiar features of Sharia law that, he insisted, no Muslim wants to substitute for English law. It just happens to be used in Sharia courts into which those Arbitration Tribunals have developed. I may add that the noble Lord's explanation of niquah leaves something out.

All religious establishments have an agreement with the civil authorities, which involve them to carry out civil ceremonies at the same time as religious ones. The Church of England, as the national church is automatically enabled to do so. The exceptions are numerous mosques that are not registered for this and, therefore, the nikuah, the religious ceremony, has no civil validity. This is not, as Lord Sheikh implies, a choice taken by the couples in question but a simple matter of omission and ignorance especially on the part of the women, many of whom do not realize that they are not married in law and have no rights as a wife. (Yes, I know all the arguments against state involvement in marriage and am sympathetic to them. But, at present, it is involved and those who remain outside that because of the activity of their religious leaders are at an enormous disadvantage.)

Some Muslims have an Islamic marriage, known as a nikah, without also having a civil wedding. Ideally, I would like to see imams performing a nikah only after a civil wedding has taken place. We should perhaps look at the possibility of amending the Marriage Act 1949 to address this issue. Having said that, if an imam receives a request to perform a nikah without a prior civil wedding, it is imperative that he emphasises to both husband and wife the drawbacks of a nikah-only marriage.

Many couples choose to cohabit without getting married and we do not pass any judgment on them—nor should we. More than 3 million couples in this country are cohabiting at the moment. When a nikah takes place, a contract is signed between the man and the woman containing the terms and financial obligations of the marriage. Under Islamic law, a man can divorce his wife by stating this. If a woman feels that her marriage has broken down and that they should divorce, she can ask the man to divorce her. If the man refuses to divorce her, she can approach the sharia council and petition for a divorce to be issued. It is therefore essential that there are sharia councils that she can approach for this to take place. I believe that all Muslims should be encouraged to use the already- drafted Muslim marriage contract, which perhaps needs simplifying.

Apart from his economic approach to the truth about nikah, the noble Lord obviously finds it a little difficult to confirm equality in Sharia law. The man can divorce his wife but a woman has to ask her husband to divorce her.

Lord Sheikh did not go unchallenged, notably by Lord Carlile of Berriew, described as one of Britain's top legal experts and a man who knows a thing or two about fighting for real human rights, as well as Lady Flather, a delightful person with an outstanding collection of gorgeous saris but one whom you challenge at your peril. I feel that the blog will benefit from the entire exchange (Col. 893):

Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD): I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord. As a matter of fact in sharia law, if a man wishes to obtain a divorce, does he have to ask his wife first, before he approaches the sharia council?

Lord Sheikh: No. Under sharia law he does not have to do that. If sharia councils make unfair decisions, these must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I feel that there must be a mechanism to deal with such cases and that we should put in place an appeals procedure.

Baroness Flather: Is the noble Lord saying that there is equal treatment of women and men under sharia or is he saying that whatever sharia prescribes is correct? I am not sure; I think he is saying that whatever sharia prescribes is correct and proper. However, is there not discrimination against women?

Lord Sheikh: It depends on what the noble Baroness means by discrimination.

Baroness Flather: I see that the noble Lord has not found that out yet.

Lord Sheikh: That might be amusing to the noble Baroness but it is not amusing to me.

Baroness Flather: It is not funny to me—I am a woman.

Lord Sheikh: I will continue. In the same way as sharia councils cannot claim to make legally binding decisions, some religious decisions have no place in English law.

Lord Sheikh does not come out well.

Other speakers emphasised the importance of having just one legal system for all in the country, a system in which all are treated equally and individually. Let me recommend the entire debate to people.

You can also follow the progress of the Bill and other related developments and discussions on Equal and Free.

It all matters

Yesterday was rather varied in activity. I was interviewed on the BBC Russian Service about the last PMQ of this Parliament and about PMQs in general. The aim of all these interviews, I suspect, is to explain to the Russian audience (which is not as big as it used to be since the Russian Service was taken off short wave radio and left solely on the internet) about real Parliaments and real constitutionalism. I also suspect that most Russians know that what they have is a shame but the big question is to what extent and to whom that matters.

As far as I was concerned there was one benefit: for the first time in years I actually watched PMQ and very entertaining it was, too. When they are back, I should do it more often. It must be admitted (says she with gritted teeth) that the Boy-King did rather well and the Leader of the Opposition, one Ed Miliband, did not. It also struck me that the Labour MPs were a little subdued in their reaction to the proceedings. Make of that what you will.

Later on I went to the launch of a joint report by the Bow Group and a new Austrian think-tank, Die Österreichische Gesellschaft für Politikanalyse (ÖGP) on the subject of abuse, much of it physical, that Muslim women face in the UK. A Parallel World - Confronting the abuse of many Muslim women in Britain today was written by that doughty campaigner for human rights, Baroness Cox and is very well worth reading (though I should issue a warning about some of the accounts: they can be horrific). The link will lead you to a PDF version. There is also a very useful analysis of the situation with regards to Sharia courts and the Bill that Baroness Cox has been trying to put through Parliament for some years. (And an explanation of the difference between Sharia courts and Beth Din ones, a subject that I read up on when I was doing some research for the Baroness.)

Moving right along, I come to a few articles that were handed out after the launch. I thought they might interest readers of this blog. One was by another highly admirable and awesome (in the true sense of the word) woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, published in the Wall Street Journal last Saturday but, miraculously, freely available on the internet. It seems to be a summary of her latest book that was due out in the States earlier this week.

Her theme: Islam needs a Reformation very badly and it needs it now. Her arguments are, as ever cogent and I was particularly interested in her division of Muslims across the world into three distinct groups:

The first group is the most problematic. These are the fundamentalists who, when they say the Shahada, mean: “We must live by the strict letter of our creed.” They envision a regime based on Shariah, Islamic religious law. They argue for an Islam largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version. What is more, they take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone else.

I shall call them Medina Muslims, in that they see the forcible imposition of Shariah as their religious duty. They aim not just to obey Muhammad’s teaching but also to emulate his warlike conduct after his move to Medina. Even if they do not themselves engage in violence, they do not hesitate to condone it.

It is Medina Muslims who call Jews and Christians “pigs and monkeys.” It is Medina Muslims who prescribe death for the crime of apostasy, death by stoning for adultery and hanging for homosexuality. It is Medina Muslims who put women in burqas and beat them if they leave their homes alone or if they are improperly veiled.

The second group—and the clear majority throughout the Muslim world—consists of Muslims who are loyal to the core creed and worship devoutly but are not inclined to practice violence. I call them Mecca Muslims. Like devout Christians or Jews who attend religious services every day and abide by religious rules in what they eat and wear, Mecca Muslims focus on religious observance. I was born in Somalia and raised as a Mecca Muslim. So were the majority of Muslims from Casablanca to Jakarta.

Yet the Mecca Muslims have a problem: Their religious beliefs exist in an uneasy tension with modernity—the complex of economic, cultural and political innovations that not only reshaped the Western world but also dramatically transformed the developing world as the West exported it. The rational, secular and individualistic values of modernity are fundamentally corrosive of traditional societies, especially hierarchies based on gender, age and inherited status.

Trapped between two worlds of belief and experience, these Muslims are engaged in a daily struggle to adhere to Islam in the context of a society that challenges their values and beliefs at every turn. Many are able to resolve this tension only by withdrawing into self-enclosed (and increasingly self-governing) enclaves. This is called cocooning, a practice whereby Muslim immigrants attempt to wall off outside influences, permitting only an Islamic education for their children and disengaging from the wider non-Muslim community.

It is my hope to engage this second group of Muslims—those closer to Mecca than to Medina—in a dialogue about the meaning and practice of their faith. I recognize that these Muslims are not likely to heed a call for doctrinal reformation from someone they regard as an apostate and infidel. But they may reconsider if I can persuade them to think of me not as an apostate but as a heretic: one of a growing number of people born into Islam who have sought to think critically about the faith we were raised in. It is with this third group—only a few of whom have left Islam altogether—that I would now identify myself.

These are the Muslim dissidents. A few of us have been forced by experience to conclude that we could not continue to be believers; yet we remain deeply engaged in the debate about Islam’s future. The majority of dissidents are reforming believers—among them clerics who have come to realize that their religion must change if its followers are not to be condemned to an interminable cycle of political violence.

Not being an Islamic scholar I cannot pronounce on the theological problems she raises but I have listened to a sufficient number of such people to realize that the article simplifies those problems somewhat. It is obvious even to a non-expert that a closer analysis of the Quran and the Haditha are needed for that Reformation to take place; it is also true that such analyses are taking place despite the fact that the people who are carrying them out are in some danger but, so far, the results are little known.

What we, outsiders, need to do and Ms Hirsi Ali says so in her article (also very well worth reading in full and is considerably less stressful than the pamphlet) is to support people who are willing to risk much to spread ideas of freedom and reform in the Muslim world.

And that brings me to the problem we are facing with our own officials and Ministers who have, on the whole, aligned themselves on the wrong side of this debate though there is some indication that they are beginning to realize that.

Two more articles, one published in the Sunday Telegraph on February 22 and a more recent one on Lapidomedia. The latter, by Dominik Lemanski, may well have taken the former, by Andrew Gilligan as the basis with some extra research added.

Andrew Gilligan's article is entitled Islamic 'radicals' at the heart of Whitehall and puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of Baroness Warsi who allowed entryism by people connected with radical Islamic groups into Whitehall and, particularly, the "cross-Government working group on anti-Muslim hatred".

Baroness Warsi, the first Muslim woman to sit in Cabinet, handed official posts to people linked to Islamist groups, including a man involved in an “unpleasant and bullying” campaign to win planning permission for the controversial London “megamosque” proposed by a fundamentalist Islamic sect.

He sits – alongside other radicals or former radicals and their allies – on a “cross-Government working group on anti-Muslim hatred” set up by Lady Warsi and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister.

Some members of the group are using their seats at the table to urge that Whitehall work with Islamist and extremist-linked bodies, including one described by the Prime Minister as a “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood”. Some are also pressing to lift bans on foreign hate preachers from entering Britain, including Zakir Naik, who has stated that “every Muslim should be a terrorist”.

Fiyaz Mughal, a former member of the working group, told The Telegraph that he had resigned in protest at its activities. “I was deeply concerned about the kinds of groups some of the members had connections with, and some of the groups they were recommending be brought into government,” he said. “It seemed to me to be a form of entryism, by people with no track record in delivering projects.” Mr Mughal is head of Tell Mama, the national organisation for monitoring anti-Muslim attacks.

Another member said: “The working group was Sayeeda [Warsi]’s personal project and she was responsible for the appointments. There was very little transparency about who was put on.”

The working group, set up in 2012, has continued after Lady Warsi’s resignation last summer in protest at the Government’s “morally indefensible” policy on the Gaza crisis. It is based in Eric Pickles’s Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and includes officials from there, the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Department for Education, the Foreign Office and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Among its most prominent non-government members is Muddassar Ahmed, a former senior activist in the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), an extremist and anti-Semitic militant body which is banned from many universities as a hate group.

During Mr Ahmed’s time, MPAC campaigned heavily against “Zionist” MPs, in particular Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, and Lorna Fitzsimons, the former Labour MP for Rochdale. She lost her seat after MPAC sent thousands of leaflets to local Muslim voters saying they should sack her because she was “Jewish”. She is not Jewish. MPAC has stated that Muslims are “at war” and that “every Muslim who does not participate in that war is committing a major sin”.

Mr Ahmed maintains that his MPAC days are long over and he had nothing to do with various unpleasant events that his present PR company is supposed to have been connected and one might believe him. Nevertheless, one has to ask why he and people like him were singled out by Baroness Warsi for various appointments. Unfortunately, the evil that men (and women) do lives after them and the people promoted by the Baroness, herself seriously over-promoted as everyone knew all along, are still there and still active.

Dominik Lemanski raises the question whether it is the influence of Baroness Warsi's appointees that has pushed back the most recent decision on the Megamosque in Newham over which the battle has been going for a considerable number of years. Of course, I do not rule out the possibility that the decision has been pushed back for reasons of political pusillanimity.

About Baroness Cox's Bill

I have not written much about the Arbitration and Mediation Bill, introduced in the House of Lords by Baroness Cox, which had its First Reading on June 7, though I have referred to it here and here. Once the date of the Second Reading is announced I shall write more about the Bill itself and its purpose.

In the meantime, here are two links, one to an article in the Harrow Observer and one to a posting on Harry's Place, a left-leaning blog with which I often find myself in agreement. (Shum mishtake shurely.)

The article focuses on the work of a lady I admire greatly, Tehmina Kazi, who is Director of British Muslims for Secular Democracy. (Yes, indeed, I do know her.) She has, as the newspaper points out, been advising Baroness Cox and campaigning to make the Bill better understood in the Muslim community.

Ms Kazi claims the controversial bill, which has been opposed by some parts of the Muslim community, would give Muslim women greater clarification on their rights.

Ms Kazi, a law graduate of the London School of Economics, said: “There is a gap in the system for Muslim women due to the prevalence of Sharia councils.

“They don’t have any legal power and are completely informal so very hard to regulate and they rule on things such as divorce in Muslim communities. We want to educate women so they know what their rights are.”

The campaigner said she is concerned about the number of women who don’t have marriages registered under civil law as some Muslims have the religious ceremony of Nikah, which is not valid as a legal marriage under UK law, therefore don’t have the same legal rights if the couple decides to separate.

At the heart of the Bill is the need to make it legally clear that Arbitration Tribunals are not law courts, that there is only one legal system in this country and that an alternative system, which discriminates against women must not be allowed to exist, let alone flourish.

Harry's Place has an interesting and coldly angry discussion of what sort of people run Sharia courts in real life. No point in quoting because the whole of it is important and worth reading. It is not very long. At the end it, too, refers to the Bill and Tehmina Kazi's work. The author of the posting was very quick off the mark after the article in the Harrow Observer.

Bishop Nazir-Ali on Shari'a and Western legal structures

I shall be writing more about Baroness Cox's new Bill that has had its First Reading in the House of Lords but, first, here are a few quotations from one of its supporters, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, formerly Bishop of Rochester.

Bishop Michael, as he seems to be known by many, is highly knowledgeable about Islam, its history and theology as well as the legal structures. As a Christian convert in Pakistan he experienced many problems in Pakistan and has little sympathy with those who consider Shari'a law to be either inevitable or acceptable as either part of British law or as a parallel system.

These quotations come from his chapter in a book edited by Rex Ahdar and Nicholas Aroney, Shari'a in the West. The chapter has a suitably scholarly title: Islamic Law, Fundamental Freedoms and Social Cohesion: Retrospect and Prospect.

The quotations come from the end of the chapter after a fascinating historical overview and analysis of the subject:

In the West today, Muslims, along with other religionists, enjoy the right to practise and propagate the faith. Their religious leaders, moreover, should be free to guide them according to the tenets of the faith, and this includes the Shari'a (as codified by the various schools of law, with their differences and similarities). We must also expect that Muslims will seek to influence public policy in accordance with the teachings of Islam.

There is, however, another side to the coin. The autonomy of the public law of the land must be upheld. In most Western contexts this law is derived from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, as interpreted and clarified by aspects of the Enlightenment. The Shari'a even if influenced by the laws of Byzantine, is actually founded on quite different assumptions. Its recognition or incorporation into public law could cause not only confusion, but an undermining of the fundamental assumptions undergirding the general law. Family law, for example, is often mooted as an area of Islamic law that might, somehow, be recognized by public law in the West. But what would be the consequences? I noted earlier the unequal position of Islamic women in the context of divorce. Similar questions would arise with respect to the custody of children, the laws of inheritance and of evidence, the legality of polygamy, and so on.

To repeat: Muslims should be free to order their lives, including their family lives, according to Islamic teachings. As with other communities, there may be arrangements for the restoration of disputes which arise within Muslim communities. They should not, however, take on a quasi-legal form, nor can their jurisdiction be acknowledged in matters that are for the courts to address. If any question arises about the fundamental rights and responsibilities of a citizen or resident, there must continue to be free access to the courts to enable such matters to settled in accordance with the law of the land. The possibility of some persons, such as women or young people, being coerced into accepting the decisions of so-called Shari'a 'councils' or 'tribunals' has to be monitored carefully. Moreover, it should not be possible for the structures and institutions of any religion to deal with criminal matters - domestic violence and rape come to mind here.

We have noted the difficulties surrounding the operation of Islamic finance in Muslim countries, let alone in the West. Once again, Muslims should be free to comply with Shari'a teaching on this subject and financial institutions can offer products that Muslims judge to be Shari'a compliant. But equally again, any dispute must be settled according to the commercial law of the land.

One can see even from those few paragraphs that many problems and difficulties can arise from trying to ensure freedom of religion and religious practice as well as equal rights and duties, regardless of gender or religion. Bishop Michael is unequivocal on his opposition to the incorporation of Shari'a law "into the public law of states, or of groups of states (such as the EU)". He also opposes the creation of a parallel system of courts, tribunals or councils that decide according to a parallel legal system. On the whole, I think, given his knowledge and understanding, I would rather take his opinion on the subject than that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who can, at best, be described as somewhat naive.