Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente: "Whistling sharia while we go completely off our rocker"

September 8, 2005

Whistling sharia while we go completely off our rocker

By Margaret Wente
Globe and Mail
http://tinyurl.com

What do Ontario and Iraq have in common?

Here's one thing: In both Baghdad and Toronto, women are taking to the streets to protest against the introduction of Islamic law. They know that Islamic law is no friend of women's rights, and they are fighting to make sure it has no role in the law of the state.

Progressive liberals around the world are raising the alarm over what's happening in Iraq. In Ontario, on the other hand, the progressive liberals in our government think Islamic law is a mighty fine idea. In the interest of cultural sensitivity, they want to give Muslim women the privilege of resolving family disputes through sharia arbitration tribunals conducted by imams. If all goes as planned, Ontario will be the first Western jurisdiction to permit the settlement of family disputes using sharia.

In other parts of the world, the general reaction is that we've gone completely off our rocker. "What is wrong with Canadian civil law that religious Canadians must look elsewhere?" asked Mona Eltahawy, a Muslim writing in The Christian Science Monitor.

Good question. Premier Dalton McGuinty has yet to answer it. He's been cornered by a pro-sharia report his government commissioned from former NDP politician Marion Boyd, who came up with a Rube Goldberg plan to monitor sharia courts so they wouldn't run afoul of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Then there's the awkward fact that Ontario already allows Jewish and Christian religious courts to settle family matters. Naturally, Muslim pressure groups are crying discrimination.

But not all of them. Some Muslims insist the last thing they want is Islamic courts in Canada. They're leading the no-sharia coalition, a broad mix of moderate Muslims, small-c conservatives, social activists, and women's and human-rights groups. "We want the same laws to apply to us as to other Canadian women," says the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. Even the grand mufti of Marseilles, Soheib Bencheikh, thinks we're nuts. When asked to comment on the plan for sharia in Ontario, he said: "It's illogical to apply today the precepts conceived [in tribal, patriarchal societies] to safeguard the interests of yesterday."

In the government's camp is a diehard group of multiculturalists who've decided that group religious rights outweigh women's individual rights. Their allies are conservative Muslims such as Syed Mumtaz Ali, who has campaigned for sharia for the past decade. He recently declared that Muslims cannot live under secular law alone. "Every act of your life is to be governed by [sharia]," he said. "If you are not obeying the law, you are not a Muslim. That's all there is to it."

The government reassures us that rulings under sharia will conform to Canadian law. But many of the people who favour sharia appear to have the opposite impression. "The sharia or divine law of Islam prevails over all man-made laws," wrote Abdul Malik Quraoshi in a letter to The Hamilton Spectator. "It is crystal clear in the Holy Book of Islam. No human institution can have the audacity and the cheek to interpret sharia." But don't worry. As he goes on: "Islam is a positive religion and emphasizes total loyalty and absolute obedience to its fundamental doctrines."

The government has consulted a pile of experts. But evidently it forgot to consult people who actually know a bit about the way that sharia is applied today, unofficially, in Canada's burgeoning Muslim communities. The Premier seems to be unaware that women are forced to relinquish custody of their children after divorce, or are sent packing back to their hometowns if they displease their husbands.

Bad things like this won't happen, we're told, once Muslim arbitration courts are supervised by the state. But why go to all the bother and expense of supervising them? Why give faith-based agreements the imprimatur of the state at all? And why set a precedent that other Muslim groups will point to as they push for Islamic law? "I think the politicians are out of their minds," says Homa Arjomand, who founded the International Campaign Against Shari'a Court in Canada.

Today, people will turn out to protest against sharia courts in 12 cities in Canada and Europe, including Toronto, Victoria, Ottawa, Montreal, London, Paris and Stockholm. And people around the world will marvel that we've gone completely off our rocker. Ontario and Iraq. What a pair.