Canadian Muslims: Canada’s Muslims divided over “sharia” arbitration boards

Waiting for justice

The Canadian province of Ontario has been involved in a bold legal experiment allowing Muslims to voluntarily resolve family disputes using arbitration boards governed by Islamic principles – but Canada’s Muslims are sharply divided over their implementation. Central to the controversy is the fact that the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice (which administers the rules but does not supercede Canadian law) draws on the expertise of Muslim jurists trained in sharia, interpretations of which differ depending on school of thought and which some fear could be manipulated by conservative elements in the Muslim community.

“The differential treatment under Islamic law in certain circumstances will basically affect equality rights,” says Riad Saloojee of CAIR-Canada, who supports faith-based arbitration as an alternative to litigation so long as additional safeguards are implemented. “Who will represent the rights of women?” asks Alia Hogben, president of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. “We don’t understand, from the Canadian Muslim women’s point [of view], why another system is being applied.” (These concerns aren’t limited to Muslims – Canada’s Jewish community is going through the same internal debate, for many of the same reasons.)

Supporters of the mediation rules, which have been in place in a less formal way since 1991, feel that the concerns has been overblown. “A lot of the hyperbole and the foreboding of doom is just nonsense,” says Mubin Shaikh, a spokesman for Toronto’s Masjid El Noor. “No one is advocating amputations in the public square. We accept that the Charter of Rights is supreme. Sharia won’t be used to contradict that supremacy.” They argue that a multicultural society like Canada, there is flexibility to allow Muslims to govern family life with their own rules. “Other cultural communities like the Francophones, the Jewish people and the aboriginal communities,” explained Syed Mumtaz Ali of the IICJ, “have been using their civil law courts for a long time.”

If the boards do proceed, they will offer a chance to compare Islamic principles closely to those of the West. “Do they meet with modern standards of justice compatible with a liberal democracy in the beginning of the 21st century?” asks Professor Nadere Hashemi of the University of Toronto. “There is a potential here for something positive to come out in terms of a Canadian contribution to an Islamic reformation.”

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.