Muslim Heretics Conference

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, said he had taken advantage of a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996.

Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.

Siddiqi said: “We realised that under the Arbitration Act we can make rulings which can be enforced by county and high courts. The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals. This method is called alternative dispute resolution, which for Muslims is what the sharia courts are.”

The disclosure that Muslim courts have legal powers in Britain comes seven months after Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was pilloried for suggesting that the establishment of sharia in the future “seems unavoidable” in Britain.

In July, the head of the judiciary, the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, further stoked controversy when he said that sharia could be used to settle marital and financial disputes.

In fact, Muslim tribunal courts started passing sharia judgments in August 2007. They have dealt with more than 100 cases that range from Muslim divorce and inheritance to nuisance neighbours.

It has also emerged that tribunal courts have settled six cases of domestic violence between married couples, working in tandem with the police investigations.

Siddiqi said he expected the courts to handle a greater number of “smaller” criminal cases in coming years as more Muslim clients approach them. “All we are doing is regulating community affairs in these cases,” said Siddiqi, chairman of the governing council of the tribunal.

Jewish Beth Din courts operate under the same provision in the Arbitration Act and resolve civil cases, ranging from divorce to business disputes. They have existed in Britain for more than 100 years, and previously operated under a precursor to the act.

Politicians and church leaders expressed concerns that this could mark the beginnings of a “parallel legal system” based on sharia for some British Muslims.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so.”

Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “I think it’s appalling. I don’t think arbitration that is done by sharia should ever be endorsed or enforced by the British state.”

There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men.

Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.

The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.

In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations.

Siddiqi said that in the domestic violence cases, the advantage was that marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.

Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “The MCB supports these tribunals. If the Jewish courts are allowed to flourish, so must the sharia ones.”

Additional reporting: Helen Brooks

Revealed: UK’s first official sharia courts - Times Online

September 17, 2008 09:45 PM

The makers of a controversial DVD on Islamic extremism contend that they are not anti-Muslim.

Yet, the majority of the people they interviewed in their highly publicized, well-funded documentary “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West” include a who’s who of the most anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hatemongers in American political activism and journalism.

The documentary itself, made two years ago and re-released in this massive new publicity campaign, represents

less a portrayal of the threat of Islam against Americans and more the highly funded networking of radical Muslim bashers who wrap their hate-mongering against Muslims by exploiting terrorist selective tragedies, such as that of Sept. 11, 2001.

With the financial backing of an unknown “not for profit” group based in New York called The Clarion Fund, more than 28 million DVDs were distributed through more than 70 major newspapers mainly in contested states where Republican Presidential candidate John McCain must win in order to defeat Democrat Barack Obama.

The 60-minute documentary purports to expose the threat to Americans by Radical Islam and is an abbreviated version of the full length DVD which can be purchased for $14.95 on the misleading web site of the producers.

Many who have watched the DVD, and a review of the trailer on the maker’s web site along with a review of the “experts” the filmmakers relies on expose the film as just another, albeit expensive, consider the film anti-Muslim hate-mongering.

Just look at the “experts” the documentary makers relied on. The list is a virtual who’s who of the most bigoted and hateful Muslim bashers in American society. Daniel Pipes. Steve Emerson. Alan Dershowitz. Caroline Glick.

It relies on many interviews with Muslims and Arabs who have transformed their hatred of Palestinian rights into a cottage industry pandering to pro-Israel hate-mongering.

They include Nonie Darwish. Brigitte Gabriel. And Walid Shoebat.

Whenever you put these seven names together in one room, you can be sure that topic number one will be a constant stream of anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab hatred driven in part by pro-Israel strategies and a desire to assist extremist Christian religion fanatics who back Republican candidate John McCain.

A major hate-mongering campaign like this could not take place with just millions of dollars in funds. The cost of the distribution includes the production of the DVDs, and the purchasing of advertising space, oftentimes in the highest circulation editions such as the more popular Sunday newspapers. The cost of this campaign of hate involving dozens of the nation’s largest newspapers is astronomical.

My guess though is that these newspapers gave the distributors deep discounts to make the campaign more affordable, a discount that reflects the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab mind set of the mainstream American news media.

But more than that, the campaign of hatred must have the backing of mainstream American newspapers.

Representatives of many of the newspapers interviewed argued they will not engage in censorship, yet they do engage in censorship routinely.

These same newspapers routinely reject pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian op-ed voices from their editorial pages, censor comments excessively critical of Israel and Israel’s radical Christian evangelical fanatics.

The fact is that many of these same newspapers have in the past rejected advertising from pro-Arab groups that have harshly criticized Israel. And it goes without saying that if an Arab group had produced a similarly hateful DVD on Israel that simply stayed true to the facts of the brutality of Israel’s occupation, not one of these newspapers would approve of the distribution at all.

The makers targeted newspapers in many swing election states including in Florida, Philadelphia, and Colorado. Among the newspapers that approved the distribution of the hate-driven DVD include in Florida alone the Miami Herald, the Sun Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post. Distribution also included the New York Times.

It is absolutely a fact that there is an extremist element in the Muslim community that has resorted to violence. But, there is also an equally hateful and extremist element in the Jewish community and in the Christian community who engage in hate-mongering and even violence targeting Muslims and Arabs and that fund Israel’s brutal occupation in the West Bank.

The Clarion Fund describes itself as “a non-profit, non-partisan organization, created in 2007, with the important mission of educating Americans about national security issues. Clarion Fund produces and distributes documentary films, builds web site and educational materials, and assists in a wide variety of campus initiatives and grassroots efforts.”

They maintain a web site called “Radical Islam.”

Although the group pretends to seek to distinguish between moderate and extremist Muslims and Arabs, their advocates consistently engage in Muslim and Arab bashing and fiercely defend Israel against all charges of human rights abuses, excessive violence and state terrorism, and of undermining Middle East peace.

There is a threat from extremist Muslims, just as there is a threat from extremist Christians and extremist Jews who also embrace violence.

It’s admirable to fight against all forms of extremism. It’s transparently fake when the fight only focuses on the extremism of one religious group to cover and defend the extremism of another.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning journalist and radio talk show host in Chicago. He can be reached at www.theMediaOasis.com or by email at rayhanania@comcast.net.)

Arabisto.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush told a dinner honoring American Muslims that his administration has partnered with those practicing Islam around the world to promote tolerance and spread freedom to millions.

“We reject bigotry in all its forms,” the president said before sitting down for dinner Wednesday with about 110 guests in the White House State Dining Room.

During the past eight years, the Bush administration has held an Iftaar dinner, a meal served at the end of the day during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset.

Bush sat next to Kuwait’s prime minister, Sheik Nasser Al Mohammed Al Sabah, who will return to the White House on Friday for a meeting in the Oval Office.

This year’s event highlighted American Muslims who have made technological, artistic or innovative contributions to society. Bush singled out Maysam Ghovanloo, an immigrant from Iran who is a biomedical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is working on an invention to help people with disabilities operate a wheelchair or surf the Internet by moving their tongues.

“Stories like the professor’s remind us that one of the great strengths of our nation is its religious diversity,” Bush said. “Americans practice many different faiths. But we all share a belief in the right to worship freely.”

The guests, including members of Congress, military personnel and members of the U.S. diplomatic corps, sat at nearly a dozen tables, each adorned with four burning tapers and a bowl of flowers. The guests dined on eggplant soup and halibut with a pistachio crust.

The Associated Press: Bush hosts dinner for American Muslims