rikberry31
We Are Tennessee
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You should be able to cite your claim or clarify it regarding Sharia law before continuing to mentally operate under that narrative, because it's probsbly not what you think it is.
It's an optional implementation in very few areas that generally handles internal church matters and in no way replaces laws of the state.
It's more akin to how the Mormon church tends to operate than anything else, and I assume you don't take issue with that.
Muslims are increasingly turning to Britain’s sharia courts, which are not part of UK law and operate as informal bodies issuing religious rulings on marriage
Britain has become the “western capital” for sharia courts with men able to end their marriages by saying “divorce” three times.
An investigation by The Times also discovered that polygamy is so normalised that an app for Muslims in England and Wales to create Islamic wills has a drop-down menu for men to say how many wives they have (between one and four). The app, approved by a sharia court, gives daughters half as much inheritance as sons.
The number of sharia courts, also known as councils, in Britain has grown to 85 since the first began operating in the country in 1982.
Muslims from across Europe and North America are increasingly turning to Britain’s sharia courts, which operate as informal bodies issuing religious rulings on marriage and family life.
About 100,000 Islamic marriages are believed to have been conducted in Britain, many of which are not officially registered with the civil authorities.
Sharia was defined, in an official review by Professor Mona Siddiqui, a theologian, as jurisprudence based on the opinions of jurists during the classical period of Islam — regarded as being from the time of Mohammed in the 7th century until the 13th.
Many aspects of sharia have been modified in most Muslim countries but in marriage and divorce the classical rulings are often observed.
Sharia courts, consisting of a panel of Islamic scholars who are almost always male, have the religious authority to end these marriages at the request of a wife if her husband is unwilling to grant a divorce.
One of the most prominent of such courts was founded by the radical preacher Haitham al-Haddad, whose teachings were branded misogynistic by Dame Sara Khan when she was counter-extremism tsar. Haddad was among the British scholars who visited the Taliban after they recaptured Afghanistan.
He said, in online lectures about why marriages fail in 2009: “A man should not be questioned why he hit his wife because this is something between them. Leave them alone. They can sort out their matters among themselves.”
Haddad told The Times he was not teaching that men should not be questioned about smacking wives, saying he was explaining the importance of preserving marriages.
Women described how men exploit religious texts to exert control over them. Hadiths, the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, are quoted to insist wives must agree to have sex with their husbands and to claim that women’s minds are deficient.
One woman was distressed when an elder suggested she should enter into a religiously sanctioned “pleasure marriage” which allows couples to have sex, then part.
Baroness Cox, a former nurse and academic and cross-bench member of the House of Lords, has tried to get a private members’ bill passed protecting women from religiously sanctioned discrimination under what she called the “rapidly developing alternative quasi-legal system” of sharia.
Theresa May as home secretary commissioned an independent review, chaired by Siddiqui, which suggested a government regulator so the councils could have a code of practice. The Conservative government refused, saying sharia law had no jurisdiction and that regulation might present the councils as an alternative to British law.
Nick Timothy, a Tory MP who as May’s chief of staff suggested the sharia review, called on the Equality and Human Rights Commission to investigate the councils. Sharia marriages “should be criminalised if they are conducted without the protections of an accompanying civil marriage”, he said.
The Muslim Women’s Network charity is taking the initiative to improve standards at Britain’s sharia councils after past efforts by politicians and the councils ran out of steam.
In 2025 the network will propose a code of conduct based on research by Rajnaara Akhtar, an associate professor at the University of Warwick. Women will be guided to councils applying the standards.
Akhtar said organisations would need to respect the Equality Act, be transparent about who made decisions and the principles applied, and to make known their costs and time frames. “Obviously it would be up to those bodies to sign up to it, it would be up to them to have a discussion about it,” she said.
Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society, said: “Our concern is the slide towards privatised justice and parallel legal systems in the UK undermining the principle of one law for all — and the negative impact this has on the rights of women and children.
“It should be remembered that sharia councils only exist because Muslim women need them to obtain a religious divorce. Muslim men do not need them because they can unilaterally divorce their wife.
“That’s why any regulation or accommodation of such a body would legitimise this inherently discriminatory outlook on divorce and gender relations.”
A government spokesman said: “Sharia law does not form any part of the law in England and Wales. And it is absolutely right that couples should marry into legally recognised marriages because that provides them with protections, security and support which they should have in the United Kingdom.
“Our manifesto set out that we will strengthen these rights for couples who live together but are not married.”


