Legal scholars say Sharia leads to 'marital captivity'

According to legal scholars in the UK, Sharia councils are doing “nothing to help domestic violence victims” in Britain, which leads them into “marital captivity”.

Sharia law applies the legal and moral code of Islam from the Hadith and the Koran. The sharia law can be used as criminal, business and family law.

It is said that there are an estimated 30 sharia councils in the UK, where they give advice on religious aspects, as well as give Islamic divorce certificates. However, they have received extreme criticism for how their treatment of Islamic women who come to them to seek religious divorces. Women are their main clients.

A Dutch researcher, Machteld Zee (31), was granted unprecedented access to sharia courts in London and Birmingham. She believed that they conduct their work “in the shadow of the law”.

After conducting her research, Zee allegedly concluded that sharia law is not compatible to the European human rights legislation, and also believed it downgraded or humiliated women as men only need to state “I divorce you” three times in order to have a religious divorce; whereas for women, they need the sanction of clerics, or else they would allegedly be deemed as adulterers if they remarried.

During her access to the sharia court, she said, “The judges were very friendly. We chatted between cases. The problem is not that they were mean but the foundation of the judice acts in a system of sharia Islamic law, in which the principle focus is making women dependent on their husbands and clerics. One judge said, 'Under Islam, we should reconcile marriages even if there is violence'. They don't care. It was shocking: they would have you cling to a marriage.

She further stated, “There are also unfair custody statements. The woman has no idea this is a religious institution and she should go to a secular court [for her children's interests]- and once she finds out, a British judge won't switch parents after a few months. But in 2001, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that sharia law is incompatible with liberal democracy.”

Although she has criticised the sharia law, she made it clear that she does not want it to be barred in Europe. “I don't say that you should ban sharia courts. The 'market' for these councils, of women asking for a religious divorce, can be diverted to civil and criminal courts, where you can press charges, as happens in Holland.”

Zee's book, Choosing Sharia? Is based on the 15 hours of cases that she had witnessed in London and Birmingham.