[FISKING] Siddiqui on Ontario and sharia
Jun. 15th, 2004 04:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThis is the first fisking of an article this year. So far as I remember, my last fisking of an article was done in March 2003. Still, when I read Haroon Siddiqui's article "Global issues, agendas colour sharia debate", published in the Sunday, June 13th edition of the Toronto Star, page F1 in the print edition, I felt that I just had to do it.
* * *
For starters, it's interesting to note how Siddiqui begins by defining the debate as "emotional." In Siddiqui's reading of the debate, emotion isn't merely a background feature of the debate, nor is it one foreground feature among many. No, the debate itself is "emotional," raising the question in Siddiqui's readers' minds of whether or not emotion is overriding the good judgement of one side or the other. And guess which side of the debate is excessively emotional?
It's interesting how Siddiqui commingles four features, the first two quite separate from the third, in his listing of elements in the debate. Concerns over the role of women, and debates between Muslims and non-Muslims over their role, constitute two items of note; the "rocky post-9/11 relationship" is also important, although whether or not it can be dated only so far back as 2001 is a topic open for debate. Siddiqui's usage of "Islamophobia," "stick, and "beat up Muslims," though, is contentious and will receive more examination further down.
Fair enough. I do question Siddiqui's use of language to suggest that the West and Muslims are separate sorts of civilizational entities, or at least that Muslims contitute a domestic Other for the West, but we'll get past this.
This is the point where we come into contentious debate. Yes, Europe--which I'll here sloppily define as the European Union with its frontiers as of 1 May 2004, from Portugal to Poland and then some--as a whole has more restrictive immigration policies than North America has a whole. Yes, Europe of late has been moving towards more assimilationist policies towards the immigrant communities already inside its frontiers, and limiting new immigrants.
Despite this, it strikes me as premature and incomplete to conclude It's not Germany that's establishing a prison camp for Muslim prisoners on an isolated extraterritorial holding. It's not Britain that has popular fundamentalist Christian preachers identifying Islam as a religion deriving its inspiration from demons. It's not France that has decided an ill-defined war against terrorism without any definable end is a good idea. In certain respects, Europe and Islam (though not necessarily Europeans and Muslims, I hasten to add) have a conflictual relationship.
In certain respects, the European-Muslim relationship is much less tense than, say, the American-Muslim relationship. And again, Siddiqui's definitions of "mistreats" and "integrates" are questionable.
Fair enough.
Note, please, how Siddiqui tries to establish some sort of distinction between these two phenomena, to try to establish a difference between an Ideal Islam and an Actual Islam, the first of which shouldn't be challenged, the second of which is open to challenge. This sentence, incidentally, will be the first sign of many as to Siddiqui's intention in his article, which will be to delegitimize all criticism of the sharia's introduction into Ontario law as innately biased against Ideal Islam (and even against Actual Islam).
Fair enough.
This is where we enter serious problems with the sharia, for in a secular state like Canada, public law occupies a much more limited sphere than religious dogma. It's been a common theme of religions in the modern era that as challenges to their authority mount. Witness the importance in the Catholic tradition of confession, for instance; or, in the various Protestant traditions the need for converts to make a full confession of their selves, personal histories and tendencies to sin included. In this sense--in the desire to have their communicants make a completely clean break with their past while confessing their faults--modern religion can show worrying tendencies towards totalitarianism. The nadir in the Western tradition might be the moderately willing collaboration of the Catholic Church in Vichy France and Croatia with Nazi-supported fascist governments which intended to regenerate their subject nations following exposure to cosmopolitan influences which threatened their moral hegemonies. In the contemporary Muslim world, probably the preeminent practitioner is the Islamic Republic of Iran, though sadly, elements of theocracy influence many Muslim countries, particularly in the Arab world.
It's not possible to graft a system of religious law that claims a monopoly over individuals' moral consciences and actions into a liberal-democratic system girded by a philosophy that denies such intensive control. If you believe--just to give one instance--that God ordains the subordination of all women to men in the public sphere, then it's going to be difficult for you to accept a public sphere where women play a high prominent role outside of traditional gendered stereotypes. It's fine, if you want to do that. If you want to establish that law in the public sphere, then there's going to be a contradiction.
Not to deny the importance of colonialism in disrupting traditional cultures, but intellectual stagnation preceded the colonization of the Muslim world. In some places, in fact, colonialism triggered intellectual developments--the Deobandi movement, for instance, was directly triggered by British colonialism in South Asia..
This is another instance of Siddiqui trying to argue that there is a practical difference between Ideal Islam and Actual Islam, that there exists a gap between a mainly benign sharia and a malign implementation.
The problem with that thesis, though, as I pointed in the posting linked to above, is that pure ideologies are essentially irrelevant to the practical considerations of day-to-day life. If, whenever people try to implement Marxism as a philosophy of government--particularly a Marxism inflected by the concept of the vanguard leading the proletariat into a bright socialist future, regardless of whether or not the proletariat wants said future or the vanguard's prescribed route for the future--you get rather impressive numbers of dead and wounded individuals and a blighted economy, in multiple diverse situations, most people would take that as a sign that one shouldn't try to implement Marxism in one's own country, or in any other country, for that matter. If, as a Marxist entirely committed to democratic means, you identify the regimes of Stalin, Mao, and the various lesser tyrannies which once occupied most of Eurasia as non-Marxist for no reason apart from the fact that they're embarrassing, then you're being intellectually dishonest at some level.
Isn't it possible that, if sharia has been implemented in multiple countries worldwide, and the net effect in each of these countries has been to expand the scope of tyranny and to decrease human happiness, that perhaps, it might not be a good idea to implement it?
It's good to see Siddiqui acknowledging this, at least.
Ah, but here's the defense! Never mind, for instance, that the way sharia is structured discriminates against women occupying non-traditional gender roles (their testimony counting for half of a man's, their inheritances being ); never mind that the specific points about inheritances don't detract from a situation where, under Canadian law, women have rather more rights than they would under sharia. No, despite its rampant misogyny sharia law is good for women, particularly Muslim women (who must accept it, of course; we'll get down there later).
This might suggest that perhaps, importing a misogynistic legal code--in part or in full--from the contemporary Islamic world where gender equity is absent, into a society like Canada's where equal rights for men and women are prized, might be a bad idea. Siddiqui doesn't pick up on it, though.
Ah, yes, here it comes . . .
Yes, here it is!
We now see that Siddiqui believes any Muslim who qualifies or criticizes the religion as it's practiced is a sell-out, unfairly pressured by the West into abandoning core beliefs.
We also see that Siddiqui doesn't appear to believe in the universality of human rights, that, for instance, one can be Muslim while accepting the principle of gender equality and criticizing those Muslims who deny that principle.
I vehemently disagree with Siddiqui's two principles. People living inside one cultural tradition are entirely justified to criticize it, even if their culture is under perceived pressure. To extend his reasoning to the past ideological confrontations of the 20th century, one would disqualify Poles and Russians and Chinese who criticized Communism by referring to western European and North American models, even implicitly.
As for the second principle of Siddiqui's, I'm sorry, but human rights don't just apply to white people: If you're a Muslim who believes that women have every right to expect legal equality, you're progressive; if you're a Muslim who believes that women should stay at home and breed more Muslims, you're regressive.
Isn't it just vaguely possible that maybe, just maybe, there really are systemic problems with the Muslim world, particularly with the way that Islam is practiced and interpreted? Maybe these people aren't Uncle Toms. Maybe, just maybe, they're responding to legitimate concerns. Certainly, I didn't get the impression that Irshad Manji was cringing at the behest of her WASP betters when she visited the Queen's Campus. But then, perhaps Siddiqui thinks that maybe all Muslims are supposed to be oppositional by their own nature as Muslims.
(And hope that they stop beating their partners, begin dressing nicely, and start being nice to helpless cute animals while they're at it..)
That's what Little Green Footballs does, yes. Googling in the papers of record, though, I don't see much sign of anti-Islamism, whatever that is. Writers and interviewees in the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail aren't motivated by a hatred of Muslims, not least because many of the people involved are Muslims. If Siddiqui is talking about hostility to a regressive social project that would allow Canadians to accept the subordination of Muslim women, that's not anti-Muslim sentiment. That's concern for Muslim women based on the universality of human rights.
Which media? The Sun, perhaps it's sensationalist; the Star and the Globe and Mail, definitely not. But isn't it convenient how Siddiqui identifies the entire media as sensationalistic and so disqualifies media criticism as biased?
But the debate over whether to include the sharia in Canadian law isn't an internal religious debate. It's a debate on the question of whether or not a restrictive code of religious origins that has shown itself to be a mechanism for oppression should be adopted, in whole or in part, in Canada.
England's racist; therefore, we need not pay any attention to lessons from that country. (Can we count Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland?) It doesn't matter if they're useful lessons, or not. If, for instance, we see that when interviewed by the BBC on the subject of the death sentence applied against Amina Lawal by a sharia court in Nigeria for adultery, Dawud Noybee, a professor representing the Muslim Council of Britain, says things which makes one doubt the validity of sharia in a just society, one shouldn't wonder. Not even when he says things like this:
(To be fair to him, he said that Lawal shouldn't be executed if she was raped. How kind of him.)
With proponents of Noybee's ilk, is it any wonder that the United Kingdom decided not to legitimate sharia law?
And Siddiqui doesn't think it a bit worrying that its proponents do identify it as sharia. No, that doesn't give any idea about their inclinations. When Muntaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims and founder of the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, talks about the sharia in Canada, we shouldn't be concerned. Not even when we see him say this:
No, no cause for concern.
The funny thing is that the people proposing to set up sharia law in Ontario are saying that they want to fully implement sharia, that they don't believe that Muslim women have the right to opt out of sharia. Siddiqui is assuming that a choice exists for women that clearly doesn't exist.
And what happens if Canada doesn't allow the full exercise of sharia? Would people like Ali still think Canada allows Muslims to practice their religion if it denies status to the sharia?
As the above quotes demonstrate, the Muslim (men) proposing the establishment of sharia don't believe that women have a right to opt out. If it's ever established, then the potential for serious problems exists. Margaret Wente wrote an article last month on the topic, interviewing Homa Arjomand, a feminist who fled the persecution of the (sharia-run) Islamic Republic in Iran for safety in Canada. Arjomand has found that many immigrants of Muslim background are threatened directly by sharia:
Canada should accept that barbaric and oppressive legal system as valid? Not if I have anything to say about that.
That's a good point. Myself, I'd favour revoking the 1991 Arbitration Act myself, given how it produces demonstrably and massively unfair results for women in this particular case.
Canadians nowadays in the early 21st century aren't a particularly philosophical sort--we're too much the epitome of First World post-modern consumerists to do that. What they are concerned with, though, is the idea that people should be treated equally under the law regardless of their differences. The implementation of sharia in Ontario, even for the limited purposes that its promoters say they want (for now, anyways), would be a rather massive violation of this basic principle. Canadians should oppose it, on the entirely justifiable grounds that all Canadians--regardless of their religious or ethnic background--should be treated as equals under the law.
I know that Siddiqui's arguing a particular point. It would just be nice if he'd concede that his opponents aren't either anti-Muslim bigots or weak-minded Muslims. Intellectual honesty is always nice in commentators.
"Nobody thinks the extreme sections of sharia will be carried out. But still, if Canada accepts this, it means it will give credibility to the sharia law around the world."
That admission by Sheila Ayala of the Humanist Association of Canada shows how the emotional debate on the proposed religious arbitration for Muslims is not about Ontario alone.
For starters, it's interesting to note how Siddiqui begins by defining the debate as "emotional." In Siddiqui's reading of the debate, emotion isn't merely a background feature of the debate, nor is it one foreground feature among many. No, the debate itself is "emotional," raising the question in Siddiqui's readers' minds of whether or not emotion is overriding the good judgement of one side or the other. And guess which side of the debate is excessively emotional?
It is also about the world of Islam, more particularly, the role of women in it, and the debate on it involving Muslims and non-Muslims, as well as Islamophobes who routinely use it as a stick to beat up Muslims.
It is about the rocky post-9/11 relationship between the West and the Muslim world.
It's interesting how Siddiqui commingles four features, the first two quite separate from the third, in his listing of elements in the debate. Concerns over the role of women, and debates between Muslims and non-Muslims over their role, constitute two items of note; the "rocky post-9/11 relationship" is also important, although whether or not it can be dated only so far back as 2001 is a topic open for debate. Siddiqui's usage of "Islamophobia," "stick, and "beat up Muslims," though, is contentious and will receive more examination further down.
It is about the evolving relationship between the West and its growing Muslim populations -- 12 million in Europe, up to 6 million in America and more than 600,000 in Canada.
Fair enough. I do question Siddiqui's use of language to suggest that the West and Muslims are separate sorts of civilizational entities, or at least that Muslims contitute a domestic Other for the West, but we'll get past this.
It is about how Europe mistreats its minorities but immigrant North America integrates them into the common enterprise of building a mutually beneficial society, Canada more so than America.
This is the point where we come into contentious debate. Yes, Europe--which I'll here sloppily define as the European Union with its frontiers as of 1 May 2004, from Portugal to Poland and then some--as a whole has more restrictive immigration policies than North America has a whole. Yes, Europe of late has been moving towards more assimilationist policies towards the immigrant communities already inside its frontiers, and limiting new immigrants.
Despite this, it strikes me as premature and incomplete to conclude It's not Germany that's establishing a prison camp for Muslim prisoners on an isolated extraterritorial holding. It's not Britain that has popular fundamentalist Christian preachers identifying Islam as a religion deriving its inspiration from demons. It's not France that has decided an ill-defined war against terrorism without any definable end is a good idea. In certain respects, Europe and Islam (though not necessarily Europeans and Muslims, I hasten to add) have a conflictual relationship.
In certain respects, the European-Muslim relationship is much less tense than, say, the American-Muslim relationship. And again, Siddiqui's definitions of "mistreats" and "integrates" are questionable.
It is about a debate among Muslims themselves, which brings forth apologetics -- of both the right and the left, if that's the right terminology.
Fair enough.
It is about the estrangement of some Muslim women from their faith or, at least, from the Muslim culture of patriarchy.
Note, please, how Siddiqui tries to establish some sort of distinction between these two phenomena, to try to establish a difference between an Ideal Islam and an Actual Islam, the first of which shouldn't be challenged, the second of which is open to challenge. This sentence, incidentally, will be the first sign of many as to Siddiqui's intention in his article, which will be to delegitimize all criticism of the sharia's introduction into Ontario law as innately biased against Ideal Islam (and even against Actual Islam).
This is a minefield.
Let's attempt a way out.
Fair enough.
Al-Sharia -- literally, the way -- denotes not just a penal code, as widely assumed, but the entire ethos of Muslims, well beyond the five basics: faith in Allah and his Messenger; praying; fasting; alms-giving; and, if affordable, performing the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Sharia prescribes halal and haram -- the permissible and the banned. It gives guidance on one's relationship with the Creator and fellow human beings, including non-Muslims.
The sharia emanates from the Qur'an and the sunna, the sayings and the deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. But much of it was developed by jurists.
Most of these jurists held that much of the Qur'an and the sunna, like the corpus of other religions, is open to ijtihad, interpretation, which can and must evolve with time.
This is where we enter serious problems with the sharia, for in a secular state like Canada, public law occupies a much more limited sphere than religious dogma. It's been a common theme of religions in the modern era that as challenges to their authority mount. Witness the importance in the Catholic tradition of confession, for instance; or, in the various Protestant traditions the need for converts to make a full confession of their selves, personal histories and tendencies to sin included. In this sense--in the desire to have their communicants make a completely clean break with their past while confessing their faults--modern religion can show worrying tendencies towards totalitarianism. The nadir in the Western tradition might be the moderately willing collaboration of the Catholic Church in Vichy France and Croatia with Nazi-supported fascist governments which intended to regenerate their subject nations following exposure to cosmopolitan influences which threatened their moral hegemonies. In the contemporary Muslim world, probably the preeminent practitioner is the Islamic Republic of Iran, though sadly, elements of theocracy influence many Muslim countries, particularly in the Arab world.
It's not possible to graft a system of religious law that claims a monopoly over individuals' moral consciences and actions into a liberal-democratic system girded by a philosophy that denies such intensive control. If you believe--just to give one instance--that God ordains the subordination of all women to men in the public sphere, then it's going to be difficult for you to accept a public sphere where women play a high prominent role outside of traditional gendered stereotypes. It's fine, if you want to do that. If you want to establish that law in the public sphere, then there's going to be a contradiction.
Alas, there hasn't been much of it lately, due to colonization and intellectual stagnation.
Not to deny the importance of colonialism in disrupting traditional cultures, but intellectual stagnation preceded the colonization of the Muslim world. In some places, in fact, colonialism triggered intellectual developments--the Deobandi movement, for instance, was directly triggered by British colonialism in South Asia..
On women's issues, male interpretations have been made worse by cultural practices, especially in divorce, custody of children and cases of rape in which women get blamed and brutally punished.
Military or monarchical rulers have made matters worse. They seek legitimacy by invoking Islam, often at the expense of women and non-Muslims.
In lawless lands, such as Pakistan and Nigeria, ill-educated mullahs build populist followings through misogynist fatwas that serve as tools of terror even when not carried out.
This is another instance of Siddiqui trying to argue that there is a practical difference between Ideal Islam and Actual Islam, that there exists a gap between a mainly benign sharia and a malign implementation.
The problem with that thesis, though, as I pointed in the posting linked to above, is that pure ideologies are essentially irrelevant to the practical considerations of day-to-day life. If, whenever people try to implement Marxism as a philosophy of government--particularly a Marxism inflected by the concept of the vanguard leading the proletariat into a bright socialist future, regardless of whether or not the proletariat wants said future or the vanguard's prescribed route for the future--you get rather impressive numbers of dead and wounded individuals and a blighted economy, in multiple diverse situations, most people would take that as a sign that one shouldn't try to implement Marxism in one's own country, or in any other country, for that matter. If, as a Marxist entirely committed to democratic means, you identify the regimes of Stalin, Mao, and the various lesser tyrannies which once occupied most of Eurasia as non-Marxist for no reason apart from the fact that they're embarrassing, then you're being intellectually dishonest at some level.
Isn't it possible that, if sharia has been implemented in multiple countries worldwide, and the net effect in each of these countries has been to expand the scope of tyranny and to decrease human happiness, that perhaps, it might not be a good idea to implement it?
All this prompts the argument that Islam is great, its implementation is bad; Qur'an is equitable, man-made sharia is not.
But that doesn't explain the Qur'anic disadvantages for women on inheritance laws or their testimony counting as half.
It's good to see Siddiqui acknowledging this, at least.
That's only half the story, comes the answer. Women's testimony counts for more in family matters, and daughters cannot be deprived of their share of inheritance, as they can be under, say, Canadian law.
Ah, but here's the defense! Never mind, for instance, that the way sharia is structured discriminates against women occupying non-traditional gender roles (their testimony counting for half of a man's, their inheritances being ); never mind that the specific points about inheritances don't detract from a situation where, under Canadian law, women have rather more rights than they would under sharia. No, despite its rampant misogyny sharia law is good for women, particularly Muslim women (who must accept it, of course; we'll get down there later).
But such explanations no longer suffice for many who point out that there was more gender equality in the early Islamic era than at present.
This might suggest that perhaps, importing a misogynistic legal code--in part or in full--from the contemporary Islamic world where gender equity is absent, into a society like Canada's where equal rights for men and women are prized, might be a bad idea. Siddiqui doesn't pick up on it, though.
The debate, raging for centuries, has come alive, partly due to 9/11. Terrorism has also triggered apologetics of a new kind, from some Muslims in the West.
Ah, yes, here it comes . . .
Some call themselves "progressive," as if to say they are not regressive. Some feel the need to apologize for the actions of crazies everywhere. Some join the chorus of Islam-bashing -- an increasingly profitable trade.
Yes, here it is!
We now see that Siddiqui believes any Muslim who qualifies or criticizes the religion as it's practiced is a sell-out, unfairly pressured by the West into abandoning core beliefs.
We also see that Siddiqui doesn't appear to believe in the universality of human rights, that, for instance, one can be Muslim while accepting the principle of gender equality and criticizing those Muslims who deny that principle.
I vehemently disagree with Siddiqui's two principles. People living inside one cultural tradition are entirely justified to criticize it, even if their culture is under perceived pressure. To extend his reasoning to the past ideological confrontations of the 20th century, one would disqualify Poles and Russians and Chinese who criticized Communism by referring to western European and North American models, even implicitly.
As for the second principle of Siddiqui's, I'm sorry, but human rights don't just apply to white people: If you're a Muslim who believes that women have every right to expect legal equality, you're progressive; if you're a Muslim who believes that women should stay at home and breed more Muslims, you're regressive.
This is not to say that some may not believe what they say. But many seem to be striking poses, to escape the collective guilt being spread around.
Isn't it just vaguely possible that maybe, just maybe, there really are systemic problems with the Muslim world, particularly with the way that Islam is practiced and interpreted? Maybe these people aren't Uncle Toms. Maybe, just maybe, they're responding to legitimate concerns. Certainly, I didn't get the impression that Irshad Manji was cringing at the behest of her WASP betters when she visited the Queen's Campus. But then, perhaps Siddiqui thinks that maybe all Muslims are supposed to be oppositional by their own nature as Muslims.
If so, we as a society need to ponder our role in making them so pathetically defensive.
(And hope that they stop beating their partners, begin dressing nicely, and start being nice to helpless cute animals while they're at it..)
Meanwhile, anti-Islamists -- either religiously or politically motivated -- wade into the debate with their own mantra: Islam is evil and so are Muslims.
That's what Little Green Footballs does, yes. Googling in the papers of record, though, I don't see much sign of anti-Islamism, whatever that is. Writers and interviewees in the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail aren't motivated by a hatred of Muslims, not least because many of the people involved are Muslims. If Siddiqui is talking about hostility to a regressive social project that would allow Canadians to accept the subordination of Muslim women, that's not anti-Muslim sentiment. That's concern for Muslim women based on the universality of human rights.
Global issues and agendas thus weigh down the Ontario debate. The media's sensationalist and sometimes shoddy reporting has not helped.
Which media? The Sun, perhaps it's sensationalist; the Star and the Globe and Mail, definitely not. But isn't it convenient how Siddiqui identifies the entire media as sensationalistic and so disqualifies media criticism as biased?
What's the way forward?
This is a Canadian issue with relatively easy Canadian solutions.
If freedom of religion is to mean anything, internal religious debates of all faiths are best left to the believers, so long as they are not violating the law.
But the debate over whether to include the sharia in Canadian law isn't an internal religious debate. It's a debate on the question of whether or not a restrictive code of religious origins that has shown itself to be a mechanism for oppression should be adopted, in whole or in part, in Canada.
It is of no help to be told that Britain rejected a request for the implementation of sharia there.
First, Canada needs no lessons from racism-plagued England on how to deal fairly and equitably with all its citizens.
England's racist; therefore, we need not pay any attention to lessons from that country. (Can we count Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland?) It doesn't matter if they're useful lessons, or not. If, for instance, we see that when interviewed by the BBC on the subject of the death sentence applied against Amina Lawal by a sharia court in Nigeria for adultery, Dawud Noybee, a professor representing the Muslim Council of Britain, says things which makes one doubt the validity of sharia in a just society, one shouldn't wonder. Not even when he says things like this:
The sentence] is not wrong... I will defend that by referring to the Bible in John Chapter 8, verses 3 to 5: That Moses made it quite clear to the Jews that whoever committed that crime should be stoned to death, and... somebody who committed that crime was brought to Jesus and he never contested it.
[. . .]
Any Muslim that commits that offence [adultery] and is proven to have actually committed it according to the rules of the Sharia - that is four witnesses were there and they saw the act being done - you'll agree with me that this is not something that any society would accept.
Christians and Muslims and Jews believe that the will of God shall be done on Earth.
(To be fair to him, he said that Lawal shouldn't be executed if she was raped. How kind of him.)
With proponents of Noybee's ilk, is it any wonder that the United Kingdom decided not to legitimate sharia law?
Second, what is being proposed in Ontario is not sharia, even if its proponents have grandly called it so.
And Siddiqui doesn't think it a bit worrying that its proponents do identify it as sharia. No, that doesn't give any idea about their inclinations. When Muntaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims and founder of the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, talks about the sharia in Canada, we shouldn't be concerned. Not even when we see him say this:
The existence of sects with varying interpretations of Islamic law isn't a concern because the model to be used is a "Canadianized sharia," he says.
"It will be a watered-down sharia, not 100 per cent sharia. Only those provisions that agree with Canadian laws will be used. If there is a conflict between the two, Canadian law will prevail."
[. . .]
After speaking to a Muslim women's group in Edmonton this week, Ali was asked why women should go near a sharia arbitration when their rights are covered by Canadian courts. "To be a good Muslim you must," he told them.
No, no cause for concern.
They cannot impose sharia here. All they can offer is mediation in civil disputes between two people coming forward voluntarily. This is what churches and synagogues already do.
Muslim groups have no choice but to operate within the Canadian law.
(In fact, sharia enjoins Muslims to obey the law of the land where they live, so long as it lets them practise their religion, which is the case in Canada. The principle is based on sharia's emphasis on al-maslaha -- the common good.)
The funny thing is that the people proposing to set up sharia law in Ontario are saying that they want to fully implement sharia, that they don't believe that Muslim women have the right to opt out of sharia. Siddiqui is assuming that a choice exists for women that clearly doesn't exist.
And what happens if Canada doesn't allow the full exercise of sharia? Would people like Ali still think Canada allows Muslims to practice their religion if it denies status to the sharia?
The small Toronto group proposing the mediation service is only one of dozens representing Ontario's 352,000 Muslims. Nobody needs to utilize its services and other groups can set up their own. Women using them, as other mediation services, need to be made fully aware of their rights.
As the above quotes demonstrate, the Muslim (men) proposing the establishment of sharia don't believe that women have a right to opt out. If it's ever established, then the potential for serious problems exists. Margaret Wente wrote an article last month on the topic, interviewing Homa Arjomand, a feminist who fled the persecution of the (sharia-run) Islamic Republic in Iran for safety in Canada. Arjomand has found that many immigrants of Muslim background are threatened directly by sharia:
Ms. Arjomand's cellphone is constantly ringing -- with calls of support, or calls for help, or updates on various crises. A client of hers has just that day died of cancer, leaving behind a nine-year-old daughter. The husband was brutally abusive, and now the dead woman's family is terrified that he's going to take the daughter, who was born in Canada, and go back to Iran. Ms. Arjomand has been trying to get Children's Aid to intervene.
In the burgeoning Muslim communities around Toronto, it's customary to settle family disputes internally, by appealing to an imam or an older person in the family. "I have a client from Pakistan who works for a bank," Ms. Arjomand tells me. "She's educated. She used to give all her money to her husband. She had to beg him for money to buy a cup of coffee. Then she decided to keep $50 a month for herself, but he said no."
They took the matter to an uncle, who decreed that because the wife had not been obedient, her husband could stop sleeping with her. (This is a traditional penalty for disobedient wives.) He could also acquire a temporary wife to take care of his sexual needs, which he proceeded to do. Now the woman wants a separation. She's fighting for custody of the children, which, according to sharia, belong to the father.
Canada should accept that barbaric and oppressive legal system as valid? Not if I have anything to say about that.
What we cannot have is one law for Muslims and another for others. Either we have the 1991 Arbitration Act available to all, or to none.
That's a good point. Myself, I'd favour revoking the 1991 Arbitration Act myself, given how it produces demonstrably and massively unfair results for women in this particular case.
That's the Canadian way -- which is why the world looks up to us as a model nation.
Canadians nowadays in the early 21st century aren't a particularly philosophical sort--we're too much the epitome of First World post-modern consumerists to do that. What they are concerned with, though, is the idea that people should be treated equally under the law regardless of their differences. The implementation of sharia in Ontario, even for the limited purposes that its promoters say they want (for now, anyways), would be a rather massive violation of this basic principle. Canadians should oppose it, on the entirely justifiable grounds that all Canadians--regardless of their religious or ethnic background--should be treated as equals under the law.
I know that Siddiqui's arguing a particular point. It would just be nice if he'd concede that his opponents aren't either anti-Muslim bigots or weak-minded Muslims. Intellectual honesty is always nice in commentators.
