How a misleading YouTube video is stoking fears about Shariah law before the federal election

2019/07/23 Leave a comment

Expect we will see more of this in the lead up to the election:

A short, grainy YouTube video circulating on social media purports to show evidence of an imam claiming that if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is re-elected, he will institute Shariah law, the legal code of Islam, based on the Qur’an.

But the video was taken out of context, according to the man featured in it, and it was created by Sandra Solomon, known for her anti-Islam views.

The video has about 50,000 views on YouTube, a middling amount, but it has been posted on at least three different Facebook groups that are critical of Trudeau. Altogether, the groups have more than 185,000 likes, and posts of the video were shared more than 7,000 times.

The three pages get high engagement in terms of reactions, comments and shares, and they are in some of the most popular groups spreading memes and disinformation online. These groups equal or often exceed many traditional media outlets for engagement on Facebook.

The video itself includes a short section from a speech about Islam delivered by Mufti Aasim Rashid in Kamloops, B.C., in October 2017. It also features a picture of Justin Trudeau praying at a mosque and ends on a clip of Trudeau championing diversity, which is then covered up by a photo illustration of a small child wearing a “Make Canada Great Again” hat.

What’s in the video

In the full-length recording of Rashid’s speech posted to YouTube, he is critical of fears over Shariah, saying it is a principle that underpins Islam, and there is no conspiracy among Muslims to bring Shariah to Canada.

Nowhere in the video does Rashid mention Trudeau or the 2019 federal election. In fact, during the portion of the speech used in the misleading video, Rashid said he was actually referring to the former Stephen Harper Conservative government.

Taken out of context, the section that Solomon excerpted appears to show that Rashid believes the Canadian government wants Shariah law.

“The Canadian government wanted the Muslims to be able to regulate their own issues of marriage and divorce and set up systems of mediation and arbitration to solve their problems amongst themselves through Shariah law so that it’s not a burden on the court system, which is already so bogged down,” he said.

“The Canadian government wanted people like myself to sign off on custody cases, where there was an allegation of parental abduction,” he said in the video, specifying it relates to Muslim countries who might seek the approval of Muslim clerics in such cases.

Reached by phone, Rashid was surprised to find that a clip of his speech was circulating.

“I had no idea that someone would use that clip in that way,” he said.

Rashid told CBC News that his comments on arbitration referred to the Ontario government, which had allowed religious-based arbitration from 1991 until Premier Dalton McGuinty said in 2005 that “there will be no Shariah law in Ontario, there will be no religious arbitration.” The Liberals then passed an amendment to the province’s arbitration act.

Rashid said his second comment concerned the Stephen Harper government, and that representatives of the government had approached Muslim leaders in 2015 to help regarding custody cases where one parent in a couple has taken a child or children to a country whose legal system uses Islamic law. He specified that many countries with Islamic law haven’t signed on to the Hague convention on international child abduction, so according to Rashid, the federal government was meeting with Muslim organizations to see if they could offer endorsements or rulings that would be accepted by those countries, affirming whether a parent had permission to take their child.

Rashid said he was the director of religion for the B.C. Muslim Association when they were approached by the government.

A Senate committee in 2015 did look at the issue of cross-border child abduction, and did focus on the issue of working with countries whose legal systems are based in Islamic law.

Shariah law fears unfounded

Disinformation about the government and Shariah isn’t new — and some of it can be traced to fears around the federal government’s motion to condemn Islamophobia, religious discrimination and systemic racism in 2017.

This year, posters claiming the government wants Shariah were on display at a yellow vest protest in Alberta. Yellow vest protesters often espouse anti-immigration views, and the City of Hamilton is currently investigating the legal ramifications of banning yellow vest protests in front of city hall over safety concerns.

Just this week, People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier accused Trudeau in a tweet of having room in his party for people who want to institute Shariah law. In another tweet this week, Bernier accused both Trudeau and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer of pandering to people who “promote sharia law.”

Trudeau has been clear on several occasions this year that Canada doesn’t have Shariah law and he is not seeking to implement it.

At a town hall in Ste-Hyacinthe, Que., in January, Trudeau said when asked about Shariah lawthat “Canada doesn’t have it and will not have it.”

The Prime Minister’s Office also referred CBC News to another town hall in Regina the same month, when Trudeau said that “misinformation” was circulating about his position on Shariah law.

“You should be looking into what the facts are, you should be a responsible consumer of information,” he told a woman who claimed to have read a report indicating Trudeau had said Shariah law was compatible with Canadian values.

“I am pleased to be able to tell you that that also is not something that I ever said,” he told her.

A longer clip from Rashid’s speech circulated on anti-Muslim websites last year, but got little traction. Even Solomon’s video, a minute-long clip of his hour-long speech, didn’t get much attention when it was posted on her YouTube page in November 2018. It wasn’t until April this year that it first appeared on a Facebook page called United Conservative Movement of Canada. Then it appeared on two more pages in June and July and began to circulate more widely on Twitter.

Who’s behind the video

Sandra Solomon was investigated by Peel Police in March of 2018 for ripping out pages of a Qur’an and placing them on the windshields of cars parked outside an Islamic centre in Mississauga, Ont.

At the time, police investigated the behaviour as possibly “hate-motivated” but they did not lay charges in the case because “it was determined that no criminal offence has taken place,” a Peel Police spokesperson said.

CBC News reached out to Solomon by phone and email. She did not return emails, and a person who answered a phone number listed on her website said it was a wrong number.

Evan Balgord, the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said the video plays into two primary fears pushed by anti-Trudeau and far-right groups online.

“That there is a secret Muslim conspiracy to take over Canada is like, their No. 1 thing, and their No. 2 thing is that Trudeau is a secret Muslim,” he said.

Balgord said the video hit on those two points, and since the comments were made by a Muslim man, it has all necessary conditions to be shared widely in outrage.

Source: How a misleading YouTube video is stoking fears about Shariah law before the federal election

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‘Shame and humiliation’: Aceh’s Islamic law violates human rights

2019/06/29 Leave a comment

The part of Indonesia which belies its otherwise more moderate Islam:

Hendra, an academic in Indonesia’s semi-autonomous region of Aceh, vaguely remembers the first time he saw a public caning take place in his 20s. It was years ago and it didn’t faze him much.

The 35-year-old cannot even remember what the people were accused of – just that they were taken to a public square at a local mosque and flogged with a rattan cane in front of a crowd of onlookers.

But in recent years, Hendra, a lecturer in communications at Ar-Raniry University in Banda Aceh, has started to feel differently.

Now he avoids public canings. “I always think, ‘Imagine if that was a member of my family’,” he told Al Jazeera. “Do these people really deserve this?”

Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, is one of Indonesia’s most religiously conservative areas, and is the only part of the archipelago to impose penalties on its residents under Islamic law.

Once one of the most powerful Islamic sultanates in Southeast Asia, the area had long used an informal kind of Islamic law mixed with local laws, known as “hukum adat”. But the legislation was enhanced when Aceh’s long-running separatist conflict ended in 2005. The laws have been gradually expanded to more offences, most recently in 2014.

Advising Brunei

“Sharia police monitor public behaviour and enforce the rules, including in relation to the clothing women choose to wear,” Usman Hamid, the executive director of Amnesty Indonesia, told Al Jazeera.

“People can be subjected to public canings for a range of offences, including gay sex, which carries a penalty of up to 100 lashes, sex before or outside marriage, gambling and the sale and consumption of alcohol.”

The practice had already caused shock among the international community, and after Brunei attracted global condemnation over its plan to step up punishments under Islamic law, attention also turned to Aceh.

Officials from Brunei had travelled to the area for advice on implementing the punishments. Initially, the plan was to impose the death penalty for gay sex, but Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Brunei’s absolute monarch, then announced that a moratorium on capital punishment would be extended.

Those who had picketed the sultan’s luxury hotels and called for a boycott of the country claimed the decision as a victory.

“Sharia law in Aceh is Aceh’s Islamic Criminal Code or the usage of corporal punishment upholding Islamic views in Aceh,” Amnesty’s Usman told Al Jazeera. “But in actuality, the many provisions of the law [are] a breach of international human rights law and standards that create serious barriers for women and girls to report rape or other forms of sexual violence.”

In 2016, the first full year when Islamic laws were implemented in Aceh, 339 people, including 39 women, were caned, according to Human Rights Watch.

‘Not my concern’

No one who had been whipped was prepared to talk about what had happened to him, even anonymously. Many choose to move elsewhere after the punishment – to a new village or town where they can start afresh – due to stigma.

Hamid says caning in public violates international law prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment to which Indonesia is a state party.

He adds the punishment is severer than a “light tapping with a cane” as it is often described by its supporters.

Hendra, the academic, says that while there are people who oppose Islamic law punishments, few are willing to discuss the issue publicly.

“People are scared of speaking out to say they don’t support public canings,” he said. “They take the attitude that they see them, but that they don’t know anything about the cases or the law. ‘It’s not my concern’ is how many people view it.”

Sense of shame

Aryos Nivada, an activist and researcher based in Banda Aceh, said shame and humiliation was the main force behind Islamic law.

The shame factor is why the punishments take place in public, usually in front of a local mosque, where those watching take photos and videos of the event. Some are then uploaded to the internet.

“With the rise of social media,” Hendra added, “people can see your face within five minutes [of the punishment being carried out].”

Last year, the then Governor Irwandi Yusuf stopped the practice of public caning. But after he was arrested for corruption last July, the punishments resumed and the issue barely rated a mention in this year’s regional elections.

Yusuf became Aceh’s second governor to be convicted with economy and corruption topping people’s concerns.

Aryos said there was no chance punishments under Islamic law would be abandoned given the close links with traditional Acehnese culture. “Ten years in the future, Aceh will still have Sharia law,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s part of the character of Aceh.”

Source: ‘Shame and humiliation’: Aceh’s Islamic law violates human rights

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The rise of female Sharia judges in India

2019/06/15 Leave a comment

Of note:

Earlier this year, Maya Rachel McManus, a British Muslim, walked down the aisle in Kolkata on her wedding day and exchanged garlands with her partner in a traditional Hindu ceremony.

Later, her marriage was solemnised by female qazis, or judges, who govern Islamic law. 

“Maybe my multicultural wedding would have been frowned upon if the qazis were men,” McManus told Al Jazeera.

“The ones my husband and I had spoken to had problems with some of my basic rights; like keeping my maiden name and my British passport after marriage.”

She insisted that women perform her wedding rites.

“This was the first time one of our qazis solemnised a marriage,” said Noorjehan Safia Niwaz, cofounder of Bhartiya Mahila Muslim Andolan (BMMA), an organisation that launched in 2007 in India advocating for secular rights.

In 2016, BMMA began training Muslim women to become qazis, a role traditionally held by men.

To McManus, and many of India’s millions of Muslims, the recent rise of female qazis means fewer compromises and a chance at more justice for women.

“What is common between all versions of Sharia or Islamic law that is followed today is that it is extremely patriarchal,” said Niwaz, who is also a qazi.

“Women continue to suffer. They become victims of nikkah halala (a practise in Islam where a woman once divorced by her husband must consummate her marriage with another man if she wants to remarry her first husband), polygamous marriages and unilateral divorces.”

There are no teachings in either the Quran or the prophetic tradition that prohibits women from being qazis. Even the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, known as Sayyida Aisha, performed and solemnised the nikah of several people.

EBRAHIM MOOSA, PROFESSOR OF ISLAMIC STUDIES AT INDIANA’S UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

To replace what Niwas describes as a “misogynistic syllabus” designed for male qazis, BMMA drafted its own curriculum in which women study the Quran from a feminist perspective and examine the Indian constitution so they can make decisions, keeping in mind the law of the land.

“The practice of female [qazis] is novel in India, but the idea is not novel,” says Ebrahim Moosa, a professor

of Islamic studies at Indiana’s University of Notre Dame. “Muslims in North India followed the Hanafi school of law for centuries that allows women to be judges.”

According to BMMA, which is funded by private donors and charities, there are 15 female qazis spread across India including West Bengal, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Orissa.

“We have over 150 cases in our centre alone,” said 47-year-old Hina Siddiqui, a qazi from Bandra, a western Mumbai suburb. “Though unlike male qazis, in each case we summon both the man and the woman involved. We don’t hear just one side of the story.”

Since triple talaq, or instant divorce, led by Muslim men was criminalised in India, carrying a possible jail sentence, Siddiqui and her colleagues have seen an increase in the number of distressed women in their offices.

“The men are now scared to give triple talaq,” said 60-year-old Zubeda Khatoon, another qazi in Bandra.

“So they abuse their wives both physically and emotionally, hoping that the woman will leave them instead. Another way this works in the man’s favour is that according to Sharia law if a woman asks for a divorce, her husband owes her no liabilities. “

This is where female qazis step in and attempt to ensure that women receive their legal rights during including receiving her mehr – a sum of money given to the bride on her wedding day, alimony and the belongings she contributed to the home after marriage.

For couples who wish to be married by a female qazi, there is a rigorous process. 

Through a period of one month, the judges verify the bride and groom’s details – including their identity, economic status, marital status and even their marzi, or personal reasons for wedlock. This is to reduce the rate of fraudulent marriages.

“They [the female qazis] explained the various aspects of the nikah [wedding] procedure to me. They were extremely helpful,” said McManus. “This kind of support was not forthcoming from the male qazis I had approached earlier.”

‘No such thing as women qazis’

But not everybody agrees that female qazis can better safeguard the interests of Muslim women.

“There is no such thing as women qazis in Islam. It is just a new-age thing,” Muslim leader Syed Moinuddin Ashraf, from Sunni Jama Mosque in Mumbai, told The Hindustan Times.

Moosa, the professor in Indiana, said while some schools of Islamic thought such as Shafiʿi, Ahl-e Hadis, and Salafi, prevent women from becoming qazis, it remains religiously permissible. 

“There are no teachings in either the Quran or the prophetic tradition that prohibits women from being qazis,” he said. “Even the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, known as Sayyida Aisha, performed and solemnised the nikah of several [people].”

In the two years that Siddiqui and Khatoon have been practising as qazis in Mumbai, they have presided over only one mutually consenting divorce. 

“In that case, we were able to get the woman two lakhs ($2,874) as maintenance from her husband,” said Khatoon. “But most people still prefer to have their divorce issued on the letterhead of male qazis.”

According to Niwaz, 30 more women eager to enrol in the second batch of qazi training by BMMA.

“Maya’s wedding [McManus’s] went through without any objections,” she says. “We haven’t had any fatwas issued for the work we [female qazis] are doing. We exist. That in itself is a positive thing.”

Source: The rise of female Sharia judges in India

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Stoning Gay People? The Sultan of Brunei Doesn’t Understand Modern Islam

2019/04/11 Leave a comment

Akyol on blind literalism:

At a time when Islam’s place in the modern world is a matter of global contention, Brunei, a small monarchy in Southeast Asia, has offered its two cents. By April 3, the nation, which is predominantly Muslim, had begun adhering to a new penal code with harsh corporal punishments. Accordingly, gay men or adulterers may be stoned to death, and lesbians may be flogged. Thieves will lose first their right hand, and then their left foot.

Understandably, these bits of news brought outcries from the United Nations, human rights organizations and celebrities like George Clooney. In return, the Brunei government dismissed all criticisms, reminding the world that the country is “sovereign” and “like all other independent countries, enforces its own rule of laws.”

As a Muslim, I should first tell my coreligionists in Brunei that their argument is not very good. Of course every country can enforce its own laws, but the content of those laws isn’t immune from criticism when it violates human rights. Otherwise, we would have no basis to criticize China’s totalitarian persecution of Uighur Muslims or the illiberal bans on “religious symbols,” including the Islamic head scarf, in France and, more recently, Quebec.

However, the real issue isn’t Brunei. It is Islamic law, or Shariah, the penal code from which law is applied not just in Brunei but in about a dozen other nations as well, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan. It includes brutal corporal punishments that shock the rest of the world. It also criminalizes acts that shouldn’t be crimes at all — such as consensual sex, loss of faith in Islam (“apostasy”) and the right to criticize it (“blasphemy”).

Muslims who insist on keeping or reviving these measures have a simple logic: Shariah is God’s law, and enforcing it is a religious duty. But their blind literalism is wrong for three reasons.

First, the corporal punishments in the Quran — amputation of limbs and flogging — may simply be related to the context of the Quran. In seventh-century Arabia, where the Prophet Muhammad lived, there were no prisons in which to incarcerate and feed people for a long time. For the same reason, corporal punishments — much cheaper and easier than imprisonment — were the universal norm until a few centuries ago. The Hebrew Bible commanded many of them, as did pre-modern European laws.

Second, much of the Shariah is actually man-made. Islamic scholars expanded jurisprudence based on debatable reports about the words and deeds of the Prophet, as well as the norms of their time. That is how blasphemy, apostasy and drunkenness, none of which is penalized in the Quran, became crimes.

Third, Islamic jurisprudence was developed for Muslims only, whereas Christians and Jews had their own laws. But all modern nation-states, including Brunei, are both centralized and diverse. So imposing Shariah as the law of the land will go against the rights of minorities, in addition to unorthodox Muslims.

All of those arguments are persuasively made by reformist thinkers in Islam. But I doubt that conservative authorities in Brunei will have much heart for them. So let me call on them to check an authority they can’t dismiss that easily: the Ottoman Empire, the last Islamic superpower of the world and the last seat of the Sunni Caliphate.

The Ottomans, who followed the flexible Hanafi school of jurisprudence, were pragmatic about law from the beginning. Decrees issued by sultans introduced fines or prison sentences instead of corporal punishments, rendering the latter often practically obsolete.

Moreover, in the mid-19th century the Ottomans initiated a major Reform (Tanzimat) era, which included the Imperial Ottoman Penal Code of 1858. The French-inspired law was designed to be valid for all Ottoman citizens, regardless of their religion, and remained in practice until the end of the empire with some modifications. It replaced all remaining corporal punishments in Ottoman law with prison sentences or forced labor. It also decriminalized apostasy and penalized blasphemy, or “interference with religious privileges,” with only “imprisonment of from one week to three months” (Article 132).

The penal code’s section on sexual crimes is worth a look, for it is much more liberal than the laws Brunei just began implementing 161 years later.

According to Article 200, for example, “an abominable act” with “a girl who has not yet been married to a man” was an offense — but only when done “by force.” In other words, consensual premarital sex was not a crime.

Extramarital sex, or adultery, was an offense under Article 201 — but to be punished with a prison sentence of “three months to two years,” not stoning to death.

What about homosexuality? The Ottoman penal code didn’t say anything about it. John Bucknill and Haig Utidjian, who translated the law into English in 1913, noted, “It will be observed that unless committed with force” or upon a minor, “sodomy is not a criminal offense under the Ottoman Penal Code.”

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Islam – Tunisia Sharia put aside: women will inherit like men

2018/11/28 Leave a comment

Encouraging:

A wind of freedom is sweeping across North Africa, in Tunisia to be exact. This small, Muslim majority country (over 98 per cent) is on the road to legally recognise equality for both sexes in matters of inheritance. This is a brave step and the first time in the history of the Muslim world since the early Caliphate era.

In general, women are placed in inferior conditions in Muslim countries. Under the Sharia, women (sisters, daughters, etc.) inherit half of what men get (sons, brothers, etc.) in terms of inheritance.

Last Friday, Tunisian President Caid Essebsi announced with clarity and courage that Tunisia will be a democratic and secular state, not a theocratic one. For this reason, he noted that “the Personal Status Code must be changed. This has no link to religion or the Quran.” Citing Article 2 of the Constitution, he said “We are a civil state and we must respect the Constitution”.

Caid Essebsi proposed that gender equality in inheritance be recognised in law, modifying the Personal Status Code. In his opinion, this step should have taken place in 1956, but the Constitution of that time did not provide for it, unlike the current one.

Thus, two days ago, the cabinet agreed to legalise equality between the two sexes in matters of inheritance. This makes Tunisia the first Muslim country to break from Sharia, Islamic (Sunni) law.

I am very happy for this because it is a good start to ending the unjust and misogynistic Islamic Sharia that has ruled the Islamic world since the Middle Ages. The new law does not contradict the Quran. Contemporary Qur’anic interpretations by the exegete Mohamed Shahrour, like those of current Quranist thought, explain with great clarity that women must have the same proportion of inheritance as men.

This kind of law and interpretations will certainly unleash waves of outrage on the grounds that they offend the precepts of Islam and deviate from the words of God. In other words: Islamists will see themselves as defenders of God himself. But is God so powerless that he needs to be defended?

As a Muslim and because I am interested in all the issues that touch the Islamic world, I think that the adoption of this type of law will play a fundamental role in the emancipation of Muslim women, held for centuries under male rule. This is justified in the name of God and his prophet.

I find we must break the taboo with courage and in depth, to allow women, religious minorities and peaceful and modern Muslims to free themselves from the yoke of the Sunni dictatorship.

Based on Islamic jurisprudence (Sharia), adopted centuries ago, Tunisia applied these medieval and rigid religious laws. Now, this country, which little by little has set itself on the path of modernisation, is gently but securely breaking away from the theological foundations laid down by ancient Sunni scholars and has chosen a modern and contemporary vision. And if we want to meet the objections of Sunni Muslims, by referring solely to the Quranic text, we realise that by establishing the equality of the two sexes, Tunisia has respected the religious text.

Tunisia today deserves to be celebrated and encouraged for this courageous achievement and for its challenge to everything concerning the Sunni religious dictatorship. It is another step that follows the adoption last year of the law that allows Tunisians to marry non-Muslims.

On my behalf and that of all the Muslims of the 21st century who want to modernise, update and free our religion from irrational readings, I would like to congratulate the Tunisian people for this result and thank them infinitely for this glimmer of hope sown in our hearts – even if the path will certainly be hard and full of obstacles – to be able to be completely free one day from the Sunni dictatorship. Things will be possible where there is the political will.

Other Muslim peoples must take Tunisia as an example and wake up before it is too late.

Source: ISLAM – TUNISIA Sharia put aside: women will inherit like men

And the counter reaction begins with Egypt’s grand mufti:

Mufti of Egypt Shawki Allam stressed on Monday that granting women and men equal inheritance rights violates Islamic Sharia.

In a statement, the Mufti said the concept of gender equality in inheritance is against Islam’s teachings.

Islamic Sharia allows men to inherit double what a woman would receive.

In Islam, Ijtihad is not employed where authentic texts (Qur’an and Hadith) are considered unambiguous with regard to the matter in question, he said.

All inheritance laws are detailed in Quran in a clear way, he added.

The remarks came after Tunisia’s president on Monday proposed giving women equal inheritance rights in a clear challenge to Islamic law.

Source: Granting women, men equal inheritance rights violates Islamic Sharia: Egypt’s mufti

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The Divide Over Islam and National Laws in the Muslim World | Pew Research Center

2016/04/30 Leave a comment

How_much_should_the_Quran_influence_our_country_s_laws____Pew_Research_CenterUseful indication of the differences among countries in the Muslim world:

As strife in the Middle East continues to make headlines, from the militant group ISIS to Syrian refugees, the Muslim world is sharply divided on what the relationship should be between the tenets of Islam and the laws of governments. Across 10 countries with significant Muslim populations surveyed by Pew Research Center in 2015, there is a striking difference in the extent to which people think the Quran should influence their nation’s laws.

Source: The Divide Over Islam and National Laws in the Muslim World | Pew Research Center

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Douglas Todd: Divorce, Shariah and gold coins

2016/03/02 Leave a comment

 I always find Todd’s articles of interest and this one is no exception:

Lawyer Zahra Jenab often comes face to face with couples embroiled in acidic disputes over a small fortune in gold.The West Vancouver family lawyer, who was born in Iran and raised in Canada, works frequently with ex-partners wrangling over thousands of gold coins, which may or may not have been given by the husband in a dowry under Islamic Shariah law.

Canadian courts are increasingly being called upon to rule on religious laws of the Middle East and Asia. But they’re finding it tricky to distribute family property across nations and in an era when dowries contain symbolic promises of Qur’ans along with valuable coins.

Jenab has made her way through hundreds of trans-national divorces in which Canadian family law clashes with traditions from Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, East Africa and East Asia, and her desk is piled with yellow case files.

When separating immigrant women and men ask her why their divorces can’t follow the rules of their old country, Jenab has to tell them: “Because we’re in Canada, now.”

Estranged couples can be devastated when they discover the religious laws of their homelands don’t apply in Canada.

“My heart often breaks for the suffering couple,” Jenab said. “But the driving issue is Shariah property law.”

As trans-national divorce increasingly falls under the scrutiny of Canadian judges, the decisions they’re making about what Shariah says about the distribution of property are “all over the map,” Jenab said.

Unfortunately, an expert witness on Shariah has not emerged to guide Canada’s courts.

The focus of many trans-national divorces in Canada is the often-considerable dowry, sometimes known as a mahr or meher, which is customary in most countries containing the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.

“The dowry is financial security for the female. It is the man’s promise to provide finances, often in gold. It can be claimed by her at any time.”

When discord tears apart the bonds of matrimony, as it often does in all cultures, conflicts over often-unwritten promises about dowries can become intense.

In some countries where Shariah is enshrined, Jenab says, men can be arrested for not providing the dowry when the wife demands it.

…Property rights are also often not equal in many Muslim countries, where males are favoured.

Trans-national divorces, as a result, are often complicated when spouses work, or hold property, in their country of origin. “That makes the fair division of property hard to enforce.”

Many of Jenab’s clients, women and men, end up wanting both the benefits of Canada’s relatively equal family law and the advantages of their traditional religious culture.

They’re often stunned or angry, she said, when they learn Canadian family law — including the ideal of parents sharing joint custody of children — doesn’t line up with their religious customs.

“It’s difficult to see families struggle as they move out of their marriages, especially the children,” Jenab said. “That’s why I try to talk everyone down from taking a scorched-earth approach.”

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas+todd+clash+cultures+divorce+shariah+gold/11753275/story.html

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Pro-Shariah caliphate lecture held at Ontario college

2016/01/09 Leave a comment

Obnoxious views, but likely better to have them out in the open rather than underground:

Helping Syrian refugees coming to Canada and building an Islamic caliphate are part of the same cause, according to a pro-Shariah speaker at an Islamic conference in Hamilton.

And now Mohawk College, on whose property the event took place, says the group isn’t welcome back.

A YouTube video posted last month shows Mazin Abdul-Adhim delivering a speech entitled “The Truth Behind the Syrian Refugee Crisis” on Nov. 28.

The 40-minute English lecture shows Abdul-Adhim standing at a podium beside the flag and banner of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global organization that promotes the unification of all Muslim countries as one caliphate — an Islamic government led by a religious authority considered a successor to Mohammed.

The speech begins addressing humanitarian matters such as aid and medical support. But the broader thesis is that much of the current conflict in Iraq and Syria is an attempt to stop Muslims from banding together to form their own Islamic government.

“The society (in Syria) has risen up as a society and says that we want Islam as our way of life,” the well-spoken Abdul-Adhim says, dressed in a checkered shirt. “And the West will not have it and this is what we are seeing.”

He later argues: “We’ve been sitting and not really doing very much for the application of Islam in society … We’re required to call for something — the full implementation of Islam — we’re not allowed to call for anything else or compromise in any other way.” However, he believes others are “trying to turn us away from our Deen (faith) by making us scared of even talking about the application of Islam.” He describes sharia as “the best system that exists on Earth” — claiming that it ends racism, has better currency and promotes “economic justice.”

According to Facebook, where he has more than 1,500 followers, Abdul-Adhim lives in London, Ont., and “was born in Canada and is originally from Iraq.”

Source: Pro-Shariah caliphate lecture held at Ontario college | Furey | Ontario | News |

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization, Religion Tagged with , ,

Canada quiet on shariah law in Brunei

2014/09/24 Leave a comment

The age-old problem of balancing human rights with trade interests, whether it be China, Saudi Arabia or Brunei:

Critics say Canada is turning a blind eye toward the enactment of shariah law by Brunei, a small Southeast Asian country that the Harper governments trade strategy has prioritized.

Brunei announced its decision to adopt a shariah-based penal code in the fall of 2013, and began to phase in the new legal system gradually in May of this year. Citizens of Brunei are currently subject to fines and imprisonment for a range of “indecent acts,” including pregnancy out of wedlock and failure to attend Friday prayers.

The government in Bandar Seri Begawan is expected to phase in tougher, corporal punishments in 2015, including floggings for consuming alcohol and amputations for theft. A third phase establishing stoning as an acceptable form of execution for rape, adultery, and homosexuality is planned, but Brunei’s Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, has yet to declare when the third phase will be introduced.

Brunei’s shift towards shariah law has become a cause célèbre for LGBT groups, human rights activists, and high-profile celebrities who have launched a boycott of the Dorchester luxury hotel chain, which is owned by the Brunei government’s investment agency.

The International Commission of Jurists has called the new laws “clearly incompatible with international human rights law,” while Amnesty International has said the decision will send the small, oil-rich Southeast Asian country “back to the dark ages when it comes to human rights.”

“It constitutes an authoritarian move towards brutal medieval punishments that have no place in the modern, 21st century world,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, wrote in an email to Embassy.

Canada quiet on shariah law in Brunei | Embassy – Canadas Foreign Policy Newspaper.

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Why is the UK Law Society throwing its weight behind a regressive form of Islam?

2014/04/21 Leave a comment

More on the UK Law Society’s drafting of guidance of sharia-compliant wills, and the impact this has on already vulnerable women in some Muslim communities:

But this isn’t the whole story: both practically and symbolically the move undermines the axiom that all British people – male and female; gay and straight; Muslim, Christian and atheist – should be equal under the law. As Charlie Klendijan of the Lawyers’ Secular Society explained to me, “The Law Society’s guidance notes have a special influence and prestige. They’re the recognised benchmark of ‘good practice’ for all solicitors, so they have a major impact on how law is practiced in this country. By publishing this guidance note, it has effectively legitimised sharia in the eyes of the legal world.” …

But British Muslims aren’t a single culture with a monolithic faith, and it’s not up to the Law Society to decide which understanding of “sharia practice” is correct. Instead of producing a neutral description of sharia, it has effectively issued a declamation on behalf of a regressive, reactionary version of Islamic jurisprudence that more liberal-minded Muslims fight bravely against.

For an organisation ostensibly committed to the liberal values enshrined in British law to join the theological fray on the conservative side is a cruel blow to reformist Muslims. …

What makes the controversy over these guidelines all the more absurd is their utter pointlessness. The Law Society ought simply to remind its members that their job is to provide legal, not religious, advice: clients looking for guidance on what sharia requires should be advised to consult an Islamic authority of their choice.

The nature of British Islam in not fixed: both moderates like Dr Hasan and reactionaries with their flyblown dogma hope to inherit a greater share of its future. The case continues and continues. Meanwhile is it too much to ask of the Law Society to refrain from taking sides?

Why is the Law Society throwing its weight behind a regressive form of Islam? – Comment – Voices – The Independent.

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