UK: Sharia courts contravening UK law, oppressing women

My sentiment exactly.

I too agree. This sharia 'court' madness has gone on long enough. That imam should be deported. His damned 'ruling' is a enormous purple-polkadotted hate crime if ever there was one.
These fatwas are not just an assault on individual Muslim women or even Muslims as a group though! It's an assault on free western classical civilization wherein the great national constitutions of today rest upon the Common Law, the Magna Carta, a massive body of case laws stretching back into the fog of history, the early church councils, Greece, Rome and right back to the Ten Commandments. This entire evolution, the eons worth of man-hours that have been spent getting us to where we are, forfeited. Traded for the vain imaginings of some pathetic desert rabble who have just jumped off the boat, barking allahu akbar. In England?!?!?! :'(

because this woman still has not grasped that sharia laws are there to opress her. instead she is trying to find releif from the same system. there is also the fact that she could be threatened or banished by her family or both which is part of islam. I feel for her at the same time I think she is pathtetic.
M

I am sorry but what you have not grassped here is that Islam is supramicist and expasionist. while you are right that sharia laws are incompatible with our constitution, it is the stilth Jihad who is creeping here. so sharia laws being banned is of utmost importance.
M

lorfalcon, I doubt it's that bad yet (although I agree you're right to prepare for the worst in future).

The secular court doesn't officially know what religion its plaintiffs have or whether they have ever brought their case before any religious body. If a woman comes before the family court stating, "I want a divorce on grounds of my husband's unreasonable behaviour," and she can produce evidence, such as a doctor's certificate, her divorce will be granted.

The people who will "send her back to the sharia court" are her own family and neighbours. They will do their best to keep her out of the secular court, to persuade her that the secular judgment is not binding on a Muslim, to take away her children and property regardless of the court order, etc. And they will tell her that if she doesn't do as the imam orders, she will go to Hell.

That is what Mohammed did to his wives when they complained about his adultery. He offered to divorce them all, to be rich in this world and go to Hell thereafter, or to keep them on with all the hardships entailed and go to Paradise thereafter. Only one wife chose divorce. She then fell into such extreme poverty (apparently the Muslim community was not interested in caring for its poor) that she only staved off starvation by working as a gongwoman. She remarried, but her second husband went mad. She constantly lamented how miserable she was. And the community at Medina considered this fate a just punishment for the woman who had rejected their Prophet.

I am not convinced that this story is literally true; the point is that modern Muslims believe it and take Awful Warning from it.

Bill Poser wrote:

I think you have a misconception about the views of non-Muslim critics of anti-Sharia legislation. Their view is not that there is no incompatibility between shari'a and the Constitution. Rather, it is that all of the most offensive aspects of shari'a ARE incompatible with the Constitution, as a result of which anti-shari'a legislation is unnecessary. For example, discrimination against non-Muslims violates the 1st amendment and punishments like amputation violate the 8th amendment.
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With all respect, Bill, I believe you are correct in only a small minority of cases. While some few Westerners know how horrific Shari'ah can be—amputations, crucifixion, and stonings—many more genuinely believe that most Shari'ah is perfectly civilized.

How is this possible, given all evidence to the contrary? Well, many Westerners subscribe to the idea of full multiculturalism, and simply cannot allow themselves to believe that so many people subscribe to an unjust and barbaric system of laws—they want to believe that everyone is, basically, just like us.

And that means that their laws are just like ours, as well. Apparently these people are completely oblivious to how hard-won our civilized system of laws in the West is, and how dependent on both our Judeo-Christian heritage and our rational philosophies.

They also lead themselves to believe that the gaudier aspects of Shari'ah such as stonings are complete aberrations, rather than sanctioned through the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira.

As for your assertion that these same people believe that Islamic discrimination against non-Muslims will not be an issue in the United States because such things are barred under American laws such as the First Amendment, I would respectfully counter that I very much doubt most Infidels have the slightest idea that Shari'ah condones and institutionalizes such discrimination.

I spoke with an acquaintance who is a brilliant lawyer and legal scholar—one of the most intelligent people I know. Unbelievably, he *didn't want to learn any details about Shari'ah*—even to attempt to refute them. This learned man did everything but stick his fingers in his ears and chant "La la la, I can't hear you!". I believe at base that he realized that there was something quite disturbing about Shari'ah, but couldn't face the implications of his finding out just what those things might be. If he knew, he might have to realize something about the ugliness of Islam, and he wasn't ready to even consider facing such a thing.

And would that this Western lawyer was an uncommon specimen—instead, I believe he is *all too common* in his willful ignorance.

Taking your basic premise, don't you believe that Nasrin and all those like her would be protected by civilized British law? Of course, she should be.

But all too many Brits are just like my lawyer friend—unwilling to take a hard look at Shari'ah, lest they become too alarmed by what they find...

As for the Bill of Rights protecting us against Shari'ah, here's what can happen if Americans are in sufficient denial of what Shari'ah entails:

"Constitutional Law 101: Federal Court Rules That Discrimination Against Muslims Violates the First Amendment"

http://www.aclu.org/blog/religion-belief/constitutional-law-101-federal-court-rules-discrimination-against-muslims

Then there's the appalling Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who has infamously asserted that "the American political structure is Sharia compliant". Many clueless Westerners were all to happy to agree...

I hadn't considered that possibility, but there's another one. Perhaps she wants to re-marry another muslim male? If she has male children, then perhaps a muslim divorce would grant the proper inheritance for those boys? I don't know. A divorce is a divorce, and they're really NOT allowed under any religion, but they are accepted so that people can be free.

Meh. While she may think that IF she gets a divorce from an imam she'll go to Heaven, her "prophet" was pretty clear in that he told his followers he didn't see very many muslim women in Heaven. She's doomed either way since her prophet has condemned her to failure.

lorfalcon, if that is the case, Nasrin needs a very different type of legal advice. (I have my doubts about Nasrin being a single human being. I suspect she is a composite. And many of Ms Proudman's clients would certainly wish to remarry.)

If Nasrin doesn't receive an Islamic divorce, then she can't participate in an Islamic wedding. So if she marries her new man in a secular register office, the Muslim community will perceive her as an adulteress. When that happens, she will definitely need protection from sharia fatwas.

I don't think she would need any kind of fatwa to secure the inheritance of her existing children. The fact that she was once Islamically married to their father would be sufficient to for them to inherit according to formula. The problem with inheritance is more likely to concern any future children from her new marriage. Since the Muslim community will deem them illegitimate, they will not be allowed to inherit from their father (because he is not legally their father) but only from their mother (i.e., nothing).

Although most religions discourage/forbid divorce, Islam is the exception. Despite the boast that Mohammed disliked the practice and never divorced a wife against her will, divorce is never forbidden under Islam. On the contrary, the Qur'an regulates divorce in detail ("how to divorce a prepubescent non-virgin..." etc.), which indicates that Mohammed was actually rather in favour of allowing it. He had no personal need for divorce because there was no limit on the number of wives he was allowed or on the length of time he could ignore a wife who had fallen from favour. But he was smart enough to know that a total ban on divorce would have been altogether too harsh for those poor disciples (on whose swords he relied) who were only allowed four wives each at any one time.

Denying Sharia law would be like forsaking not only her family and but all of her community ties as those courageous women who did break away from the grip of this death cult can attest. It is the painful decision each woman must make if she were to claim personal dignity and freedom. Once the decision is made, we can give her the logistic support.

She's going to have to come to that forgone conclusion anyway. She's been forsaken and denied liberty for 10 years. I doubt that her family has supported her through this. If they have then even they must want her to get on with life because she's probably a lost cause to them.

How much of an identity can a muslim woman have in any regard? They are worth half a man according to sharia. They need an underground railroad just to get away from those woman-hating males.

Any woman, not just a Muslim woman, who divorces her husband for violence should put herself right out of his orbit before setting the divorce in motion. If violence is the reason for the divorce, it is utterly predictable that he will hunt her down and kill her.

Many lawyers do in fact know this and take responsibility for warning the woman on how to divorce safely. Others, it appears, do not. It is utter insanity not to arrange for such a woman's re-accommodation.

The real issue is perhaps that domestic violence is not considered "real" violence even in "civilised" society. A man can be incarcerated for getting into a fight with a stranger in a pub, but almost never for years of abusing his wife or daughter.

Dumbledore's Army wrote:

Phyllis Chesler in one of her articles about honor murders states that the victims seem to fall into two categories - nubile girls who are murdered by their fathers or other male kin; and somewhat older women who are murdered by their husbands, and that in the latter case, when the murder happens within the west, one of the major 'triggers' is the wife's decision to seek a divorce (usually by means of Western law).
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This last may well prove to be the case of the Muslim woman in murdered in El Cajon (a suburb of San Diego, California). The family tried to pass it off as a killing by some crazed "Islamophobe", but that story is fast unraveling.

And, yes—it turns out the victim was seeking a divorce from her husband, whom she had been sold to by her Iraqi Imam father at the *age of 14*.

This may also have elements of the former, as well, since it appears the 17-year-old daughter was being forced into marrying her cousin back in Dar-al-Islam—probably so he can be brought to the US, as well.

"Shaima Alawadi victim of honor killing, not 'Islamophobic hate crime'"

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/04/shaima-alawadi-victim-of-honor-killing-not-islamophobic-hate-crime.html