The existence of Sharia courts and compliance with the Sharia law running parallel to the British legal system has once again been thrust into the spotlight. Recently, some activists have said that there is a growing problem of men “marrying” women in religious ceremonies but refusing to legally register their unions. As a result, women are meant to go through religious courts, wherein some rulings force them to stay with their partners even if they are unhappy. Up until 2018, there were about 30-85 Sharia Courts that were estimated to be operating across the UK. However, there is no clear report or government data which provides an exact account of such “community or religious” organisations functioning.
“The first Sharia Court was established sometime in the late 1980s East London and then there is another one in Regent's Park Mosque. Each of them have a number of people or scholars from different backgrounds including Ahle Hadith and Jamaat-e-Islami. These are mostly South Asian Muslims as well as some clerics or scholars from the European and Middle-Eastern fundamentalist organisations,” said Gita Sahgal, Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.
Nasreen Akhter v/s Mohammed Khan case
The warnings come after the government intervened via the attorney general in the landmark Nasreen Akhter v/s Mohammed Khan case. The government attempted to overturn a family court judge’s decision that a woman was entitled to apply for maintenance payments despite the fact they were not legally married. Akhter, a 47-year-old solicitor, said she was keen to have a civil marriage and presumed they would do so, but her husband refused. She alleges that their relationship dissolved after he said he wanted to take another wife. However, Khan, a businessman implied he did not owe his wife anything by claiming their nearly two-decade-long relationship constituted a “non-marriage”. A final ruling is expected within a few months in this case. However, last year Khola Hasan, a scholar at the Islamic Sharia Council in east London, had also warned that British Muslim women face discrimination as a growing number of “one-man” Sharia councils are now functioning across the country.
“The key observation when studying all these types of Sharia Councils is that they ardently follow regressive Sharia laws in terms of divorce, inheritance and custody law. These laws are not only different from British law but are also set apart from those followed in South Asian countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan.
“What this simply means is that the Sharia Courts here in the UK are not upholding what the family courts might have upheld back in South Asian Countries. In a way, these Sharia councils are taking us more backward than the courts in Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is very important to understand that distinction because people tend to believe that all immigrants from these South Asian countries arrived in the UK with these ideas. However, that is not the case. These people are influenced by the Muslims brotherhood organisations operating here in the UK,” Sahgal continued.
Applying judgments of All India Muslim Personal Law Board
According to Sahgal, some of the judgments issued here in the Sharia courts follow the principles/judgments of organisations such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). The AIMPLB although, is an NGO but it has influences of other fundamentalist Wahabi and Salafi Islamic organisations.
“People like Suhaib Hasan and Abu Saeed in front of others claim that they are only members of the Council. But, they treat themselves as the “judicial authority” issuing legal divorces as part of these Sharia Courts and the British Government has done nothing about that in my view,” emphasised Sahgal.
Home Offices' independent inquiry into Sharia Councils
An independent review into Sharia councils last year had raised concerns that the bodies “engage in practices which are discriminatory to women”. This is particularly because Islamic law grants men the right to divorce their wives by simply declaring the marriage to be over, but insists that wives must seek permission from a scholar to divorce her husband. The review, commissioned by the Home Office, said that there were up to 85 Sharia councils in the UK.
In 2015, the UK government announced that it would hold an independent inquiry into the operation of Sharia Councils in the UK. More than 300 activists, victims, and human rights groups had signed an open letter urging Theresa May to dismantle the panel chosen to oversee the inquiry. However, in the view of these activists, the Government has hardly done much to secure the rights of these Muslim women.
“It is not that the British Government does not have the formal authority to intervene. The Government exists in this limbo wherein they justify their lack of interference by citing the existence of community and religious organisations across the board. All these religious institutions have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The government is not wary of being seen as hostile to one religion rather just wants to secure the interests of all such religious organisations and their laws,” emphasised Sahgal.
Now, some activists such as Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters has also indicated the “growing fundamentalist norms” in the Muslim community and other minority groups. According to her, “religious power” is at the core of the issue, with the wider community to be equally blamed for fostering a climate in which people feel obliged to follow religious, rather than civil law.
“When women go to sharia courts or religious ‘courts’, they often make rulings to the detriment of women and try and force women to stay in marriages. These institutions are misogynistic, patriarchal and anti-democratic. These institutions are more and more governing women’s rights. If the law goes against us, it will lock women out of the civil justice system.”
