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Friday 3 July 2009

The sham and shambles of shameful sharia

Apart from being seen as unfair, sharia law is also arbitrary and a total shambles, if this article in the Guardian is anything to go by.

The writer, Zeinab Huq, has been on the receiving end, and she says some rulings are carried out by no more than an imam on the end of a phone.

She cites in instance of how she and her sister had to make do with far less of her father’s estate:

When my father died, my mother decided that, although under British law she was entitled to everything, she wanted to settle things according to Islamic law so she could “die with a clear conscience”. She asked my brother to call an imam. The imam said my brothers would get twice the share of my sister and I and so on. On learning that my father had a son by a previous marriage, the imam said my half brother must also have a share in my dad’s estate. So, a man who is a stranger to us tells us that another man who is a stranger to us is entitled to a stake in our family home, where we have lived for 25 years and he has never set foot in.

And, of course, the thing would not be contested, because the womenfolk were too afraid to question it. If it were questioned outside this primitive belief system with its Dark Ages “law”, the machinery of probate would ensure that the estate would be divvied up according to law – proper law, not “law” taken from some holy book.

She also says that sharia law “isn’t even written down and most Muslims will dip in and out of it when it suits them”.

And yet we’re allowing some of these decisions to be ratified under the Arbitration Act in the United Kingdom, instead of insisting that every dispute both begin and end within a properly constituted system.

If Muslims were then found to have ruled on something that has a legal status and should have been ruled on under law, they’d he hauled up before a court for it. A proper court.
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Related links:
How do you solve a problem like sharia?
Creeping ever closer! When will they ever learn?
Sharia in the workplace
Sharia – the disturbing story continues
The danger of sharia courts
Sharia – a waste of time
The shame of sharia
Sharia Law: Islamic Justice

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Are you serious? Sharia is just something they pull out of their own ass? I would never have thought.

Oh who am I trying to kid. Religion in general reeks of being pulled freshly out of an ass.