Al hamdu lillah! :-)

Posted by: Mark at September 12, 2005 6:14 AM

Al hamdu lillah! :-)

Posted by: Mark at September 12, 2005 6:19 AM

Well done Canada.

I hope that the concerted campaign against this had this desired effect, & that this issue has been kicked into the very long political grass forever.

Now is the time for Canada to watch the "faithful" very carefully & methodically.

We all know how they take decisions such as this.

Posted by: albion at September 12, 2005 6:34 AM

That is great news!!!! Thanks to all who responded. I agree with the post about the decision, and this may not be the end of it. As long as the legislation that is coming will not be influenced by the ones who lost to this decision in some form or other. My thoughts are that sharia law would work better on its own than having to share it with other platforms. Get rid of the arbritation courts that are in place now, such as the Jewish tribunals and the Christian tribunals, paving the way for new legislation influenced by those who lost this one? Perhaps I am being to pessimistic. This small victory is good. Praise GOD.

Posted by: FHC at September 12, 2005 7:09 AM

Happy 12th September, everyone.

On this day, in 1683, King Jan Sobieski defeated the muslim Turks at the Siege at the gates of Vienna.

If Europe had lost this war, then Europe would be part of the Islamic caliphate by now.

Please enjoy this day, and have a beer on me.

Posted by: Voltaire at September 12, 2005 7:25 AM

very good, but how unfortunate that the muslims have had the lesser victory in getting the other tribunals removed

Posted by: freddiefreeloader at September 12, 2005 7:49 AM

freddie,

I don't think that there should be any religious tribunals. Secular law should rule.

Posted by: Voltaire at September 12, 2005 7:52 AM

I agree that Christian and Jewish laws are in no way equivalent to sharia; nor are these laws caught up in the jihad whirlwind (a.k.a. "political Islam", "the war on terror", "radical Islam" or whatever you want to call it) which threatens civilization. Still, there are aspects of religious law, for example, Catholic and Jewish law pertaining to divorce, that do not belong in civil jurisprudence. In a free society, adherents of these faiths are perfectly within their rights to subscribe to religious law. However, since these ancient codes are usually NOT subject to amendment and cannot be modernized--like the Jewish laws concerning the "get" (divorce), wherein a woman can only gain her freedom if her husband agrees to give it to her--and since many of laws deprive women of rights they are entitled to in the civil code, I believe religious laws should remain within their own domain.

Posted by: scaramouoche at September 12, 2005 8:04 AM

Do not be critical of Canada. McGuinty has come up with a brilliant politically correct way to stop Islam. Ban all religions! This way Moslem sensibilities to being banned will not be slighted.

Posted by: David England at September 12, 2005 8:06 AM

Great news! I think losing the Catholic and Jewish arbitration is worth it. Well, not WORTH it, but an acceptable compromise. I wonder if they thought the other tribunals were the barrel Ontario was over.
Yeah, that's right Mustafa, people get it now, and more get it every day. You were WAY too impatient with the taqqiyah phase, should have worked it longer. Now you went and pissed us off. Your job just got harder.
Haven't felt this hopeful in quite some time.

On a lighter note, my "DEFEAT JIHAD" sticker really gives the black hole that is my work-truck a certain elegance. Funny thing, every time I drive down the street, I hear "Flight of the Valkyries"

Posted by: t-ham at September 12, 2005 8:25 AM

David England,

...a brilliant politically correct way to stop Islam

This way Moslem sensibilities to being banned will not be slighted.

To be careful to not to slight moslem sensibilities is dhimmitude vis a vis political correctness, which practically always leads to dhimmitude vis a vis islam.

Islam is different, so screw moslem sensibilities.

Posted by: thomas. h at September 12, 2005 8:27 AM

For more on this see some soul searching posts following the September 11 article on Sharia.

Posted by: Jen at September 12, 2005 8:49 AM

Sanity prevails.

Posted by: Cornelius at September 12, 2005 9:54 AM

Before handing McGuinty too many laurels for closing down Sharia in Ontario, I'd like to know what was actually behind the decision. His government is labouring against some credibility issues, like the tax hike he promised wouldn't happen and the spiralling cost of electricity. I guess he had to figure he'd alienate far fewer people by dumping the Catholic and Jewish ADR tribunals than by sanctioning Sharia courts.

I expect that the Muslim community in Ontario will still seek the assistance of imams on civil disputes as they have been all along, to the detriment of Muslim women and children. Hard to say if this move is going to make it better or worse on an individual basis, but in terms of socking it to the Islamists, this is a small victory.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at September 12, 2005 10:07 AM

Certainly this does not count as anti-dhimmitude. Premier McGuinty has pretty much banned my religion in order to suck up to Muslims. This is no improvement in maintaining the traditions of Western civilization, this is Islam winning yet another round. The point never was to establish Sharia courts- devout Muslims will still accede to their own religious leaders. The point was always to eliminate Jewish religious courts, and it succeeded brilliantly. Muslims outmaneuver us yet again, and Canada is still at "One is too many" when it comes to tolerating Jews. Thanks a pants-full, McGuinty.

Libbysmom

Posted by: libbysmom at September 12, 2005 10:41 AM

Libbysmom--I think you're way off base. The government was happy to unload the backlog in family courts onto relgious tribunals. The problem arose only when an Islamist pressed for the same rights for Muslims. Had there been no effort to bring sharia law into Ontario, a move which precipitated such a huge outcry not only here but around the world--I have no doubt the other religious courts would have been allowed to continue.

Posted by: scaramouoche at September 12, 2005 11:22 AM

scaramouoche- I think you misunderstood Libbysmom. Her point was that Muslims wanted Jewish and Christian family courts to be banned. And they were. Another win for the Muslims.

Libbysmom--you're right. We sacrificed our own traditions. But I'm sure glad Ontario didn't decide to allow a Sharia court. That would have been worse. So maybe a stalemate?

Posted by: former liberal WF at September 12, 2005 11:31 AM

Yes, Libbysmom is right. I expect that rulings made by Jewish Beit Dins and Catholic ADRs were probably compliant with the principles of Canadian law or we'd be hearing about it.

On the other hand, we already know that the "unofficial" Sharia courts in Ontario operate like a bazaar, where a woman was compelled to waive her right to child support in order to be assured that her ex-husband wouldn't demand custody of their son when the son turns 8, a complete violation of the principles of "means and need" and "best interest of the child".

Posted by: waterdragon52 at September 12, 2005 1:00 PM

former liberal WF--Again, I don't agree. Muslims, being Muslims, were only concerned about their own agenda. Frankly, I think the Islamists pushing for sharia courts did so so they could further the cause of the true believers and NOT because they wanted to prevent Jews, Christians, aboriginals and other groups from being able to have their own religious courts. Trust me, the Islamists are mighty peeved that they're not going to be able to bring their little bit of government-sanctioned sharia into a Western nation. It would have been an immense victory for them.

Posted by: scaramouoche at September 12, 2005 1:01 PM

waterdragon 52--Yes, "unofficial" sharia courts will still be around, but they will not have the imprimatur of the provincial government. Muslims, like any other religious group, will be free to consult their religious leaders, but their decisions will not be enforceable by secular civil law.

Posted by: scaramouoche at September 12, 2005 1:08 PM

Here's a column from the Toronto Star that sums up the issue:

McGuinty faced rebellion in his caucus

By Ian Urquhart

The Liberal government at Queen's Park inherited the political problem of sharia and has been wrestling with a solution for the better part of a year.

But when the problem threatened to consume the government, Premier Dalton McGuinty felt that he had to take action to put it behind him. Hence came yesterday's hasty announcement that the government will prevent the use of any religious law — sharia (Muslim), Jewish or Christian — to settle divorces and custody disputes in a binding fashion.

It was the Arbitration Act — a law introduced by Ontario's NDP government 14 years ago — that opened the door to religious arbitration of family law disputes. The motivation for the move was to offer consenting couples an alternative settlement mechanism and thereby relieve pressure on the province's overcrowded courts.

Since then, Jewish, Christian and Ismaili Muslim couples have made use of the religious arbitration system with little fuss or fanfare.

But the troubles began for the Liberal government last year when Muslim leaders proposed using the umbrella of the Arbitration Act to introduce sharia — a code of living based on the Qur'an.

Sharia has been effectively demonized in the western world as a set of laws that condones stoning, cutting off of hands and, above all, discrimination against women.

To deal with the ensuing uproar, the government asked Marion Boyd, a feminist and a former NDP attorney-general, to review the use of religious arbitration in the province.

It was hoped that her NDP and feminist credentials would inoculate the government against any political fallout if she stopped short of calling for an outright ban on binding arbitration.

Boyd's report, issued late last year, was carefully nuanced. She called for amendments to the Arbitration Act to ensure that the outcome of any religious arbitration is consistent with Canadian law. And she noted that an outright ban would not stop people from turning to religious arbitration panels on an informal basis.

For this, Boyd found herself denounced as "naïve." Far from inoculating the government, her report seemed only to give new impetus to the opponents of sharia.

Even Boyd's former colleagues in the NDP caucus at Queen's Park came out against her report and, by extension, against the law that they themselves had introduced.

Nonetheless, Attorney-General Michael Bryant began preparing amendments to the Arbitration Act that would encompass Boyd's recommendations.

But Bryant encountered ferocious opposition from the Liberal women's caucus at Queen's Park. Some women MPPs on the government side even threatened to vote against the amendments if Bryant brought them forward.

In the face of this opposition, the matter was pulled from the cabinet agenda last spring and a decision put off until this fall.

Last week, McGuinty and Bryant met to discuss the issue and agreed that, in the circumstances, the best approach would be to ban all religious arbitration of family law disputes, not just sharia. If it had just prohibited sharia law, the government would have faced a constitutional challenge that almost certainly would have succeeded.

The matter was supposed to go to cabinet at its next meeting on Sept. 21.

But pressure continued to build on McGuinty and the government, including co-ordinated protests last Thursday at Queen's Park, on Parliament Hill, and in front of the Canadian High Commission in London. McGuinty was portrayed in the protests as a dupe of the ayatollahs.

In an attempt to cool out the protestors, Bryant issued a statement that concluded: "We will ensure that the law of the land in Ontario is not compromised, that there will be no binding family arbitration in Ontario that uses a set of rules or laws that discriminate against women."

But the critics were not mollified. On Saturday, 10 prominent women — including Margaret Atwood, June Callwood, Shirley Douglas, Michele Landsberg, and Maureen McTeer — released an "open letter" to McGuinty in which they accused his government of undermining the "cornerstone of liberal democracy" — the separation of church and state.

McGuinty had had enough. The next day, without waiting for cabinet approval, he issued his own statement promising to amend the law to prohibit all forms of binding religious arbitration.

For a government already dealing with an inherited deficit and the mess in the electricity sector, this was one more problem it didn't need.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1126478107514&call_pageid=971358637177

Posted by: Paul at September 12, 2005 1:56 PM

Its high time all religious hold on Politics was removed .....we need clear and seperate legal processes that maintain a distance from all religions.
That way there can be little or any inroads to merging Sharia law within western democracies.
We have to be willing to compromise in order to stop
this cancer fron spreading.

Posted by: KnightTemplar at September 13, 2005 4:55 AM

Its high time all religious hold on Politics was removed .....we need clear and seperate legal processes that maintain a distance from all religions.
That way there can be little or any inroads to merging Sharia law within western democracies.
We have to be willing to compromise in order to stop
this cancer from spreading.

Posted by: KnightTemplar at September 13, 2005 4:55 AM

I hope this will be the end of the mingling of religion and politics in Canada, but somehow I don't think the struggle is over yet. Also very typical other religious groups do not agree with McGuinty his statement:

A representative from Ontario's Jewish community expressed disappointment and shock over McGuinty's decision. "We're stunned," said Joel Richler, Ontario region chairman of the Canadian Jewish Congress. "At the very least, we would have thought the government would have consulted with us before taking away what we've had for so many years."

Is this religious fundamentalism or dhimmitude? Whatever it is and even if it isn't as dangerous as sharia, it still is damaging for the secular state and thus democracy. Ban those religious courts, they have no place in secular and righteous law.

Posted by: Nordthiad at September 13, 2005 10:26 AM