Niaz Salimi of the Muslim Canadian Congress responds to Toronto Star article on Shariah

The Editor,
The Toronto Star
One Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario

Re: Courts must have final say on arbitration
[http://tinyurl.com/5lvnh]

In his column of Tuesday, December 27, Thomas Walkom writes that "...the Muslim Canadian Congress have come out strongly against giving state sanction to Islamic rulings in family matters. As practised, they say, these rulings tend to be fundamentally unfair to women."

As far as the Muslim Canadian Congress is concerned, our opposition is not just to Shariah courts; rather, we are opposed to all religious courts irrespective whether they Rabbinical, Christian or Shariah.

We believe that if the Marion Boyd report is implemented, Ontario will enter the dangerous road of privatization of our judicial system, which will create a two-tiered level of citizenship. Like our healthcare system, the MCC believes our judicial system should also be free from for-profit operators masquerading as alternate service providers.

We also believe the 1991 amendment to the Arbitration Act that allowed family disputes to be settled outside the family Law Act, was unconstitutional.

This is why we are asking the Ontario government to refer the matter to the Ontario Court of Appeal to determine:

1. Whether the Arbitration Act confers jurisdiction, outside the Family Law Act, to resolve disputes of property, children, inheritance and estates in the family context.

2. If the Arbitration Act does confer such jurisdiction, whether this is constitutional.

We believe that mosques, churches, temples and synagogues have an important role to play in the community, but their role should be restricted to mediation and reconciliation, not interfering with the Canadian justice system and running a parallel private-sector judiciary with self-styled religious judges for hire.

Also, the MCC believes that by invoking the "Buyer Beware" principle in matters of judiciary, Marion Boyd has reduced justice to a mere consumer commodity. This is antithetical to both Islam and Canadian values, which are often one and the same.

Niaz Salimi
Secretary General
Muslim Canadian Congress