[BRIEF NOTE] Good news for human rights
Sep. 12th, 2005 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFrom Reuters:
It has been noted by The National Post, Canada's pro-pogrom national newspaper, that members of religious groups other than Islam will also find their courts, sanctioned as a way to reduce the demand on overstressed courts in the days of cutbacks in the early 1990s, banned.
Apart from demonstrating the oh-so-depressing willingness to transport the conflicts of the diasporic homeland that we Canadians have been familiar with since at least the Irish migration of the mid-19th century, Diamond also demonstrates a not-atypical willingness to believe that his side's courts are fair. No, really.
The redoutable Ikram Saeed, noted in the past for his argument that we should be indifferent towards the weak and the victimized, noted back in June 2004 that a successful arbitration law would force both Muslims and Jews to "think about the relationship between their religion and their personal lives a little more carefully." As it happens, secularism and civil rights aren't the preserves of Christians. Religious law has either been discarded or weakened to the point of utter irrelevancy in democratic societies since, it turns out, you really can't structure a pluralistic society based on divine dictums.
It's as insulting to argue that someone can't enjoy post-modernity because of their religion as it is to say so because of their region. I'm just fortunate that there aren't Prince Edward Islander fundamentalists with a long history of using threats and violence to force people to follow the party line. My congratulations to Dalton McGuinty for making the right decision, and protecting the weak from being victimized by the people who claim a right to be victimizers.
Ontario has reversed course on plans to let Muslims use Islamic sharia law to settle family disputes, and will now ban religious-based arbitration altogether, provincial officials said on Monday.
The province said it will scrap all religious-based dispute settlements on issues such as child custody and divorce, prompting elation from critics of the sharia proposals, and dismay from groups that have used religious arbitration in the past.
"I'm very excited, very happy," said Homa Arjamond, co-chair of the No Religious Arbitration Coalition. "It is a victory for women's rights, for children's rights, for human rights."
The coalition had argued that sharia -- a code of law based primarily on the Koran as well as the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad -- gives women and children fewer rights than men, and it had organized protest rallies in Toronto, in other Canadian cities and in Europe to push for a ban.
It has been noted by The National Post, Canada's pro-pogrom national newspaper, that members of religious groups other than Islam will also find their courts, sanctioned as a way to reduce the demand on overstressed courts in the days of cutbacks in the early 1990s, banned.
"Why destroy something that's working in this province?" asked Frank Diamond, executive vice-president of B'nai Brith Canada.
"Why would you penalize Judaism and Christianity?"
Apart from demonstrating the oh-so-depressing willingness to transport the conflicts of the diasporic homeland that we Canadians have been familiar with since at least the Irish migration of the mid-19th century, Diamond also demonstrates a not-atypical willingness to believe that his side's courts are fair. No, really.
The redoutable Ikram Saeed, noted in the past for his argument that we should be indifferent towards the weak and the victimized, noted back in June 2004 that a successful arbitration law would force both Muslims and Jews to "think about the relationship between their religion and their personal lives a little more carefully." As it happens, secularism and civil rights aren't the preserves of Christians. Religious law has either been discarded or weakened to the point of utter irrelevancy in democratic societies since, it turns out, you really can't structure a pluralistic society based on divine dictums.
It's as insulting to argue that someone can't enjoy post-modernity because of their religion as it is to say so because of their region. I'm just fortunate that there aren't Prince Edward Islander fundamentalists with a long history of using threats and violence to force people to follow the party line. My congratulations to Dalton McGuinty for making the right decision, and protecting the weak from being victimized by the people who claim a right to be victimizers.
