Don't demonise sharia courts

According to the Civitas press release, MacEoin has researched the present report on sharia tribunals in the UK by: "Reproduc[ing] a range of fatwas issued by popular online fatwa sites, run out of or accessed through mosques in the UK, and in some cases … from UK Muslim schools," because, he claims, "It is extremely difficult to find out what goes on in these courts" and "these online fatwas can give a good indication of the rulings of sharia courts in Britain."

It might seem perfectly possible in our Wikipedia age to trawl through online fatwas and infer from them a summation of the operations of sharia tribunals, but it would hardly stand up to scrutiny as a piece of serious, reliable work. Nor would it accurately reflect what sharia tribunals mediate on and what sorts of mediated outcomes arise from their involvement.

.... Sharia councils deal mainly with marital disputes, with the most common referrals being from Muslim women who have approached the sharia councils to grant them an Islamic divorce (khul'a) because of the refusal of the husband to agree to do so. [Guardian CiF] Read more

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