The Labour Party government has argued that allowing Sharia courts to operate in the United Kingdom is a fundamental “British value” and has refused to distance itself from a broad stroke definition of so-called Islamophobia, which critics say would brand discussions around Muslim child rape grooming gangs as potentially illegally racist.
Pressed on Tuesday in the House of Commons by Reform UK’s Sarah Pochin as to whether the government supported the existence of Sharia courts in the UK, Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services, Sarah Sackman, unequivocally backed their right to operate.
The Labour MP for Finchley and Golders Green said: “Sharia law forms no part of the law of England and Wales but in common with Christian, Jewish, and other courts of faith where people choose to put themselves before those councils, that’s part of the religious tolerance that is an important British value.”
However, critics have noted that unlike local Jewish courts, most Sharia councils in the UK have refused to sign the Arbitration Act of 1996, meaning that there is little to no oversight on how they function or provide recourse to those subjected to their rulings.
According to The Telegraph, there are as many as 85 Sharia courts dotted across Britain. The councils, headed up by local Islamic men, often arbitrate divorces or other civil matters such as inheritance disputes.
Some have warned that they fundamentally undermine British family law by creating a parallel legal structure and perpetuate Islamic inequalities such as in the case of women or homosexuals.
One woman who gave testimony to a 2018 Home Office report claimed that the Imams on the Sharia court had attempted to force her to return to her violent and sexually abusive husband.
“These Imams just don’t listen – they try and force you back to your husband no matter what, and feel they have the right to disturb your life,” she said.
Southall Black Sisters, a domestic abuse treatment centre in Southall, England, also told the report that such courts are “often corrupt, primarily interested in making money and abusing their positions of power.”
The charity said that Sharia courts act as “money-making schemes” and often demand exorbitant fees, saying that some women are told that they need to pay their husbands thousands to obtain a Muslim divorce certificate from the council.
In addition to defending Sharia courts, the Labour government also backed the controversial definition of Islamophobia defined by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, which opponents have claimed would represent a “backdoor blasphemy law” if the Labour government officially adopts it as the party has already done.
The issue was raised on Tuesday by Conservative MP Nick Timothy, who noted that the APPG’s version of Islamophobia classified discussions surrounding mostly Pakistani Muslim child rape grooming gangs as “racist” as well as noting that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood engage in “entryism” to infiltrate government institutions, as has recently been admitted by a French government report.
Other examples of “classic Islamophobia” cited by the report included: “Muhammed being a paedophile, claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword or subjugating minority groups under their rule.”
Shabana Mahmood, who recently became Britain’s first female Muslim Home Secretary, refused to distance the government from the APPG definition and said that the definition was “seeking to give context to patterns of behaviour” but maintained that the government would not seek to downplay those involved in the grooming gangs and that the government would not impede on freedom of speech.
After mounting pressure, the government was forced into launching a full public inquiry into the scandal, and the instances of it being covered up in mainly Labour-run areas, after previously dismissing demands for an inquiry as “far-right” messaging.
The issue of so-called Islamophobia — a term coined by the Muslim Brotherhood — has been a major focus of the left-wing Labour Party as it seeks to maintain its longstanding support from Muslim communities in Britain. The party has been bleeding such support in recent years, however, with independent Muslim politicians running in races on an explicitly pro-Gaza platform.
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