LONDON: Leading Muslim jurists yesterday welcomed comments by Britain’s chief justice supporting a role for Shariah in resolving disputes.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said in a speech on Thursday that there was no question of Islamic law replacing English law, but “there is no reason why Shariah principles, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution.”
Shaykh Faiz Siddiqi, a barrister and chairman of the governing council of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, said yesterday that critics of any use of Islamic law failed to recognize that both parties had to agree to any form of dispute resolution in Britain.
Shamim Qureshi, the presiding judge of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, said the application of Shariah could be useful in settling disputes about forced marriages, according to a statement released by the tribunal.
Qureshi, a judge in Wolverhampton Magistrates Court, is one of the few Muslims to serve as a judge in England.
The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, established last year, offers alternative resolution of family disputes, forced marriages, and disputes over debts, commercial matters and inheritance.
In his speech at the East London Muslim Center, Phillips said there is a widespread misunderstanding of Shariah in Britain.
“Part of the misconception about Shariah law is the belief that Shariah is only about mandating sanctions such as flogging, stoning, the cutting off of hand or death for those who fail to comply with the law. And the view of many of Shariah law is colored by violent extremists who invoke it, perversely, to justify terrorist atrocities such as suicide bombing, which I understand to be in conflict with Islamic principles,” Phillips said.
He said British media in particular had misunderstood a speech in February by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who also supported a role for Shariah, specifically suggesting a role in resolving disputes.
Yesterday, the country’s first Muslim government minister said Muslims in Britain felt like aliens in their own society and that they were targeted like “the Jews of Europe.”
International Development Minister Shahid Malik painted a bleak picture of the integration of Britain’s 1.8 million Muslims, three years after British Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people on London’s transport system.
The attacks triggered a debate on whether Britain’s policy of avoiding imposing a single British identity, and instead promoting a multicultural society, had led to segregation of ethnic minorities.
Malik, who has been the target of race attacks including a firebombing of his family car, said some media coverage “makes Muslims feel like aliens in their own country.”
“If you ask Muslims today what do they feel like, they feel like the Jews of Europe,” he told a documentary to be shown on Channel 4 television next week.
“I don’t mean to equate that with the Holocaust but in the way that it was legitimate almost — still is in some parts — to target Jews. Many Muslims would say that we feel the exact same way,” Malik said.
