Cllr Atiq Malik and Sharia Law

Some time ago Cllr Atiq Malik whipped up a storm by suggesting that British Muslim women should be subject to Sharia Law, including the death penalty. He made these comments on the back of a ConservativeHome blog discussing Rowan Williams view that incorporation of Sharia Law into UK Law was inevitable. He took quite a beating for his views and, as with the Archbishop's original comments, the debate generated more heat than light.

I bring it up again not to carry on flogging a dead subject, or to attack Cllr Malik, whose last hopes of a career in the Tory Party were probably finished by the outcry, but because it is worth thinking about how Muslims could be accommodated.

It is worth remembering that we have lots of quasi-judicial tribunals outside formal legal structures anyway. Lots of people mentioned the Beth Dins, although the Roman Catholics also have a well developed system of canon law. But one shouldn't just recall the religious courts, large companies generally have internal processes to sort out HR problems for example; there are industrial tribunals, and of course professional associations have tribunals with quite draconian powers. For instance the General Medical Council can stop someone practising as a Doctor.

All these bodies (with arguable exceptions in the religious organisations) accept rules of natural justice, and only impose penalties within English Law.

One insurmountable objection to Cllr Malik's proposal to introduce his view of Muslim Law is that he wants to have the death penalty and corporal punishment. In other words powers that established courts cannot themselves use and that many people find revolting.

A second insurmountable objection, as I see it, is that his preferred system denies natural justice to women. Their testimony apparently carries less weight. They are also apparently subject to much more severe penalties than men. We would hardly allow the GMC to strike a doctor off if she were a woman, but to allow a doctor in a similar case to continue practising if he were a man.

A third problem with his vision would be duality. Cllr Malik is arguing for Muslims to be subject to a separate legal system to everyone else. That would set up all sorts of problems of who is a Muslim, what to do with cases involving both sets of people and so on. You can also argue it would be an anti-Muslim policy since Muslims would be subject to more severe penalties than non-Muslims. If the penalties were lighter, you could again object that two sets of people were being treated differently, violating the principle of equality before the law.

However, I don't see why one couldn't have religious courts to rule on things like whether something halel, matters of religious ritual, divorce proceedings and so on.

I think the reason this raises such powerful emotions is that it is seen as a way for the likes of Cllr Malik to seek to control people, and maintain a kind of cultural stronghold. All communities are subject to change and Cllr Malik seems to want to use oppressive methods in a doomed effort to prevent this. Ultimately, he will have to accept that his very narrow views are not the only way to interpret one of the world's great religions.

UPDATE

Cllr Atiq Malik has now sent me a statement on this subject which I publish here.