Sharia in Britain

House of Lords debate scheduled for tomorrow

Earlier this week the British government issued a 40-page document setting out its "counter-extremism" strategy. One of the proposals is for an independent review "to understand the extent to which sharia is being misused or applied in a way which is incompatible with the law" in Britain. There is evidence of a problem with sharia law, it says, "but we have an inadequate understanding of all the issues involved" and the plan is to produced "an initial report" some time next year.

As it happens, the sharia question is due to be debated in the House of Lords tomorrow (Friday) when the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill proposed by Baroness Cox, a cross-bench peer, comes up for its second reading.

Some might ask why sharia is being debated at all: we already have a long-established national legal system in Britain – why bring sharia into it? But it's not quite so simple, as the government's document explains:

"Many people in this country of different faiths follow religious codes and practices, and benefit from the guidance they offer. Religious communities also operate arbitration councils and boards to resolve disputes."

The Jewish Beth Din which deals with family matters and civil disputes is one example of this but aside from religion there are also countless bodies outside the court system that arbitrate in the field of business and the professions. When it works well, this can be a simpler and cheaper way of resolving issues than going to court. Depriving Muslims of the right to make similar arrangements would thus be unfair.

Most of these bodies recognise that they have a limited sphere of operation and don't seek to go beyond it by claiming powers of legal jurdisdiction. Professional bodies, for example, may discipline members for professional misconduct but if a member commits a crime it becomes a matter for the police and the courts. This is not necessarily the case with some of the sharia bodies established in Britain.

According to the Lawyers Secular Society, there is evidence (page 10) of Muslim arbitration tribunals "purporting to conduct binding arbitrations on family law issues" and making decisions in areas like inheritance that are "inconsistent with UK law or public policy". In addition, sharia councils have often been found describing themselves as courts and referring to the presiding imams as judges.

The problems with Britain's existing sharia bodies have been described in reports by One Law for All and the National Secular Society but there are some Muslims who would like to extend them further. The logical conclusion of that would be a sectarian legal system with different laws and courts for members of different religions. In the field of personal status law such systems can currently be found in Egypt and Jordan, among other places, and they are certainly not something to be admired or aspired to.

More alarming still are the voices in Britain claiming that sharia provides a superior legal system for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Dr Suhaib Hasan of the Islamic Sharia Council, for example:

"If Sharia law is implemented, then you can turn this country into a haven of peace because once a thief's hand is cut off nobody is going to steal. Once, just only once, if an adulterer is stoned nobody is going to commit this crime at all. We want to offer it to the British society. If they accept it, it is for their good and if they don't accept it they'll need more and more prisons."

There's also this report of a debate which supposedly persuaded a group of British lawyers that sharia law is "fairer than English law". (The attempt at comparison presupposes knowing what sharia law actually says – which we don't, because it is not codified and is subject to a variety of interpretations by individual Islamic scholars.)

Setting that to one side, Baroness Cox's bill is a fairly modest and long-overdue attempt to deal with some of the current problems. In particular, it would:

• Extend the 2010 Equality Act to outlaw gender discrimination by arbitration services. The banned practices would include:

(a) treating the evidence of a man as worth more than the evidence of a woman, or vice versa,

(b) proceeding on the assumption that the division of an estate between male and female children on intestacy must be unequal, or

(c) proceeding on the assumption that a woman has fewer property rights than a man, or vice versa.

There have also been reports of women being charged twice as much as men for using such services – which, again, would be outlawed.

• Courts would be able to set aside negotiated agreements if they determined that one party's consent to the agreement was "not genuine". This would include situations where all parties had not been informed of their legal rights or when any party was "manipulated or put under duress".

• Anyone who "falsely purports to exercise any of the powers or duties of a court or, in the case of a purported arbitration, to make legally binding rulings without any basis whatsoever under the Arbitration Act 1996 ... shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years".

It's possible that Baroness Cox's bill will fall by the wayside in the light of the government's promise of an "independent review". The danger, though, is that the review could simply lead to more procrastination.