Comments on: Mixing up the message on Islamic law

By: Pushing the Law: Challenges for Divorced Women in Malaysia « Muslimah Media Watch

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:02:53 +0000

[...] and historical context, rather than dismissing the concept of “shariah” altogether like some people do), Mokhtar explains that the court system is expensive and subject to frequent delays. Because of [...]

By: Krista

Krista — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 01:07:06 +0000

@ winoceros:
“Sharia law” is not monolithic. It’s a little simplistic to say that it is “de facto discriminatory against women.” I’ll definitely agree with you that most of its implementations HAVE been discriminatory, but “sharia” as a concept is a lot broader than the actual legal systems that are in place in some countries today. See my post on an interview with Asifa Quraishi (http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2009/01/05/asifa-quraishi-on-women-and-sharia/) for an elaboration of that point. Personally, I would argue that if the laws in place in Lebanon really would have forced this woman (or at the very least, her son) to remain with her abusive husband, then there is a lot about that system that is un-Islamic.

Moreover, the judge in the case was quite clear that he was ruling based on the *application* of the law in a specific context. According to the judge, the issue at stake was not “shariah” as a whole, but instead the particular legal system of contemporary Lebanon. Whether or not you think shariah law is discriminatory is beside the point, because my point in this post was that the judge was quite clear that the judgement that *he* was making had more to do with the Lebanese legal system than with the concept of shariah. The article therefore did a poor job of describing the judge’s decision, which was based on a particular legal system and not on Islamic law as a whole, despite what the headline implied.

By: winoceros

winoceros — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:23:26 +0000

The justices rule on facts. EM’s attorney would have been required to present a case that showed that EM would have received discriminatory (not to mention downright dangerous) treatment upon her return to Lebanon. If the crown did not think the facts presented by the petitioner were valid, they would have disproved them, and the justices would have ruled in favor of the appeals court.

The article may be badly written, but to claim that it’s simply a case of the writer painting with broad strokes the decision, remember that the decision was based on the facts. Shari’a law is de facto discriminatory against women. Shari’a (“the way”) is based totally on Islam. You said you didn’t want to address that fact in this article and I respect that, but realize that the judges were in the position of having to rule whether or not the woman and her son faced a potential human rights violation. Based on the evidence, shari’a law, they found it to be so.

What’s so offensive here?

And the argument, “well, Brits had discriminatory laws, too” doesn’t fly. They don’t now. Due to the closing of the gates of itjihad, there is no further evolution of shari’a. The wonderful activists fighting these battles in Muslim nations and nations threatened by the imposition of shari’a on its citizens have a battle against a total ideology, not just a religion.

By: How to Write about Muslims (for real) at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:00:59 +0000

[...] in a vacuum which is devoid of culture, economy, patriarchy, social problems, health issues, etc. Here is an example of taking Muslims out of their context and blaming Islam for their [...]

By: How to Write About Muslims «

How to Write About Muslims « — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:48:09 +0000

[...] in a vacuum which is devoid of culture, economy, patriarchy, social problems, health issues, etc. Here is an example of taking Muslims out of their context and blaming Islam for their [...]

By: How to Write about Muslims (for real) « Muslimah Media Watch

How to Write about Muslims (for real) « Muslimah Media Watch — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:07:45 +0000

[...] in a vacuum which is devoid of culture, economy, patriarchy, social problems, health issues, etc. Here is an example of taking Muslims out of their context and blaming Islam for their [...]

By: Equal-opportunity domestic violence? « Muslimah Media Watch

Equal-opportunity domestic violence? « Muslimah Media Watch — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:01:41 +0000

[...] Posted by Krista in Culture/Society, News. Tags: abuse, domestic violence, fatwa trackback Like last week’s article on Britain’s apparent condemnation of the entire system of Islamic law, it was the ridiculous [...]

By: » MMW Roundup 10/31/08 Talk Islam

» MMW Roundup 10/31/08 Talk Islam — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:11:45 +0000

[...] week on MMW, we got after The Independent’s shoddy reporting, set Johann Hari straight, reported on the Spiced Spare Ribs gathering in the U.K., introduced [...]

By: Krista

Krista — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:48:47 +0000

@ Maarouf:
Thanks for stopping by. That’s interesting (and disturbing) that the court seems to have ignored the ways that the law would be applied, especially when, as you say, the House of Lords has so much authority in setting legal precedents.

It’s bizarre that the court was so careful to specify that it wasn’t passing judgement on Islamic law, and yet apparently much less careful in its judgement of the Lebanese legal system.

By: Maarouf

Maarouf — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:44:03 +0000

The court did not actually make enquiries into the how the law would be applied in Lebanon. Sharia’ law does make provision for such cases. Instead of recognising this, the judges and lawyers were complicit in constructing a caricature of sharia’. They made a very conscious choice to battle a straw man. It is inconceivable that they somehow did not notice the equitable component of Sharia. Generally, Lebanese sharia’ courts follow the Hanafi school, which certainly makes use of istihsan (more or less equivalent to the common law concept of equity). I know from the case of a relative that the court does indeed employ this technique to ensure justice for the wife and children. So the question here is, why would the House of Lords create this deceitful basis for their decision?

This is more significant than it first appears. House of Lords decisions set the standard for the rest of the British judicial system, and are highly persuasive (in the legal sense) for commonwealth judges. Every word in a HL decision is weighed extremely carefully because that decision literally becomes law, every bit as effective as an Act legislated by Parliament.

This decision should be extremely worrying. It is bereft of a factual basis and is quite openly a political, rather than legal, judgement.

So while the situation for this woman was tragic, what is even more pressing is that the House of Lords has chosen to weigh in on a political debate currently raging in the British media, and it has chosen to do so on the basis of an Orientalist fallacy.