Women face discrimination as a growing number of “one-man” Sharia councils pop up, an Islamic scholar has warned.
Khola Hasan, a scholar at the Islamic Sharia Council in east London, said that a number of new councils had sprung up, run from living rooms, the back of shops or even through the post.
Sharia councils offer advice and rulings on Islamic law. They mainly deal with religious divorce cases and most of their clients are women seeking to dissolve their Islamic marriage.
An independent review into Sharia councils last year raised concerns that the bodies “engage in practices which are discriminatory to women”, particularly because Islamic law grants men the right to divorce their wives by simply declaring the marriage to be over, but insists that wives must seek permission from a scholar to divorce her husband. [The Times (£)] Read more
