NRC Handelsblad is running a point/counterpoint about Sharia, asking the question, “Would it be such a terrible thing if sharia courts existed in the Netherlands?” Interestingly enough, answering yes, it would be a terrible thing, is a Muslim woman, Nahed Selim, who knows what Sharia is all about, while the other side is taken up by a dhimmi with probably not the slightest idea what Sharia involves, Maurits Berger.
“Help Muslims escape the tyranny of sharia law,” by Nahed Selim for NRC Handelsblad, July 10 (thanks to Insubria):
Sharia law in the Netherlands may not be practised in an actual ‘sharia court’, but that makes little difference. The point is that Islamic rules about marriage, divorce, custody, parental authority, alimony and inheritance are being implemented according to the sharia, and that these contradict Dutch law.
The clearest example of this is polygamy. Marriages are made and dissolved in mosques in the Netherlands, including polygamous marriages. On September 19, 2008, newspaper De Telegraaf reported that 173 men in Amsterdam are registered as having two legal wives, two men even have three wives. A spokesperson for the city of Rotterdam admitted in NRC Handelsblad last year that polygamous marriages are being registered in that city on an almost weekly basis.
It’s a pity that the national statistics bureau automatically rejects these marriages because it thinks they’re mistakes. Because of this there are no national data about polygamy in the Netherlands. (Non-registered polygamy is probably even much wider-spread.)
The same goes for marriages with underage girls. They are mostly not registered, but sometimes they are. Either way, according to the national statistics bureau they don’t exist.
In a way, we already have two parallel legal systems: some things are illegal for non-Muslims but not for Muslims. This is typical of the Dutch attitude towards the Islamisation of Dutch society. Things are happening that the government doesn’t know about or doesn’t want to know about. They just throw away the statistics, case closed.
Verdicts by imams should not be tolerated by Dutch society even if they happen in the backrooms of mosques. That Catholics and Jews do the same thing, as Berger says, is up to them. Presumably their ‘courts’ do not impose decapitation for heretics or homosexuals, or condone disobedient wives being beaten up by their husbands.
For everything in sharia law is discriminatory against women: marrying a non-Muslim is not allowed, divorce is not allowed unless the husband agrees to it. The man, for his part, can disown his wife whenever he wants. (A sharia court in Malaysia has ruled that a text message saying ‘I disown you’ suffices.) If he changes his mind within three months, he can take his wife back. He can do this up to three times. Custody always goes to the father: the mother may raise the children, but he always has the final word….
There is much more. Read it all.