dictation's Diaryland Diary

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I don't get it. Can someone explain...

this?

Soon some Canadian women will experience unequal treatment under the law because politicians and members of the justice system plan to [bend to the political pressure of an organized group of fundamentalist Muslims and] permit the operation of Sharia - an archaic and barbaric system of law that is particularly punishing to women. (Note: Osama bin Laden imposed such rule in Afganistan prior to the "war on terror").

Here are a few examples of Sharia law:

1. Offensive, military jihad against non-Muslims is a communal, religious obligation;
2. A person who is ignorant about Islamic legal opinion must follow the legal opinion of a scholar;
3. The penalty for a Muslim apostate (someone who no longer believes in or no longer follows the tenets of Islam) is death;
4. A woman is only eligible to receive half the inheritance of a man;
5. Marriage may be forced on virgins by their father or father’s father;
6. A non-Arab man may not marry an Arab woman;
7. A woman must seek permission from her husband to leave the house;
8. A Muslim man cannot marry a woman who is a Zoroastrian, an idol worshipper, an apostate from Islam or a woman with one parent who is Jewish or Christian, with the other being Zoroastrian; a Muslim woman cannot marry anyone but a Muslim;
9. A free Muslim man may marry up to four women;
10. Retaliation is obligatory in most cases when someone is deliberately murdered except when a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, a Jew or a Christian kills a Muslim apostate or a father or mother kill their offspring;
11. Non-Muslim subjects (Ahl al-Dhimma) of a Muslim state are subject to a series of discriminatory laws – “dhimmitude”;
12. The penalty for fornication or sodomy is being stoned to death;
13. The penalty for an initial theft is amputation of the right hand. Subsequent thefts are penalized by further amputations of feet and hand;
14. A non-Muslim cannot testify against a Muslim in court; a person who is “without respectability” cannot give legal testimony; a woman’s legal testimony is only given half the legal weight of a man’s (and is only acceptable in cases involving property); to legally prove fornication or sodomy requires 4 male witnesses who actually saw the act;
15. The establishment and continuation of the Islamic Caliphate (by force, if necessary) is a communal obligation;
16. Sodomites and Lesbians must be killed;
17. Laughing too much is forbidden;
18. Musical instruments are unlawful;
19. Creating pictures of animate life is forbidden;
20. Female circumcision, which includes the excision of the clitoris, is obligatory;
21. Slavery is permitted;
22. People may be bribed to convert to Islam;
23. Beating a rebellious wife is permissible; and,
24. Lying is permissible in a time of war (or jihad)

I'm guessing gay marriage is a hot topic in the community wanting this system of law in Canada. Ho ho ho...no problem. We'll just execute the homosexuals and beat and/or stone to death women who look sideways at a man on the street.

Oh my, what are our elected officials and appointed bureaucrats thinking allowing an archaic system of law that enslaves women and treats human beings abominably.

Now we know that no Muslim woman will be stoned to death here - Canadian law is pretty strict about that - but we do know that many of these women are marginalized even as they live in our "free society." And you can bet that the permission of Sharia law here will further marginalize and terrorize them. (Oh yeah sure, as if a woman who is trapped by her culture - even as she lives here - is going to challenge an archaic punishment meted out by a panel of fundamentalist Koran interpreters and risk excommunication and ostracism in her community.)

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

The authorities reason that our legal system is already overtaxed with cases it can't handle because it lacks the funds. It's become apparent, especially over the past five years, that values and ethics we purport to hold dear are compromised and sacrificed when money is short. (Not that governments are mandated to run themselves or their departments efficiently. You wouldn't believe the amateurs running departments, the people who make it into middle management, particularly. Many of the ones I meet - with the exception of techies, but they don't form social policy I HOPE - have no meaningful and specific expertise. They appear to be generically modeled tools, graduates of public service training programs who may or may not have an undergraduate liberal arts degree. Kind of like non-specific MBAs. I've reached the point where I believe majority governments should be impermissable because in the last 30 years Canada has seen the increasing centralization of power - and corruption, these two seem to go hand in hand - at the very top. This is conveniently facilitated by a plethora of bland 'yes' men and women trained to promote the slogan of the day and encouraged not to think independently.

But there's also considerable religious pandering in our society. Example: The community of Bountiful, BC is fundamentalist Mormon. A cult. Just try and pay it a visit, you won't be allowed in (the leaders are too afraid the children might be influenced by outsiders). Pre-pubescent and pubescent girls are slave-traded between Utah and Bountiful to be married off to old polygamist assholes. Our respective gov'ts turn a blind eye to this. Women in Bountiful, like women in fundamentalist sections of Utah, have no rights, the kids are "home-schooled" and the multiple wives collect welfare illegally. Nothing is done about it.

The Canadian judiciary is also famous for it's patronizing treatment of aboriginal offenders, especially the ones who abuse women and children. Recently a Yukon chief was convicted of beating his ex-wife senseless, then raping her for two hours in a tar pit. Why did he do it? Because he saw her dating some guy and didn't like it. Because women are property. In front of the judge he fully admitted his crime but said he had no remorse. He told the judge he thought women deserved it. His punishment? A fucking healing circle. The women in that community screamed murder about that decision, but hey, the perp is a member of an oppressed minority. What's more he's a chief. The judge called him a "role model" for his tribe and felt it would "reflect badly" on the judiciary to impose a non Aboriginal punishment. (Never mind that in the old days, the aboriginal punishment for crimes of this nature was banishment from the tribe. No, now the healing circle is reserved for EVERYTHING.

The inappropriateness (and hypocrisy) is sickening. Aboriginals are treated as second class citizens, not only by the federal government but by band councils that live the high life - i.e. keep most of the federally transfered money and income generated from gambling and cigarette sales for themselves - and leave their people to rot in shacks that still have no indoor plumbing. WASPs compensate for economic racism by giving criminals in these communities a break. We're retarded. And now it seems, we're going to permit a bunch of Islamic fundamentalists to have an archaic Islamic legal system HERE.

What the hell defines Canada if it isn't our constitution, the advocacy of democracy, rights, freedoms, responsibilities, and equality under the law. Western industrialized countries aren't paragons of virtue by any means and our legal and judicial system and our systems of government aren't perfect but they're a hell of a stretch better than anything found in totalitarian states (be they communist, third-world capitalist, or non-secular). If we begin compromising at the level of our legal system what kind of society are we going to have? What is it that we stand for and promote when we talk about Canada? What message are we sending people around the world who want to move here? That oppression, as long as it's tied to religion, will be tolerated? Is this our idea of multi-culturalism?

Sign the international petition. Write to your MP, MPP and MLA, regardless of where you live. This should be UNACCEPTABLE.

Life under sharia, in Canada?

By MARGARET WENTE
Saturday, May 29, 2004 - Page A21 GLOBE AND MAIL

Homa Arjomand knows what it's like to live under sharia law. In Iran, she endured it until someone tipped her off that she was about to be arrested and imprisoned. Many of her activist friends had already been tried and executed. She, her husband and two small children (the youngest was barely one) escaped on a gruelling trip by horseback through the mountains. That was in 1989.

Today, she lives in a suburb northeast of Toronto. Her job is helping immigrant Muslim women in distress. And now she is battling the arrival of sharia law in Canada.

"We must separate religion from the state," she says emotionally. "We're living in Canada. We want Canadian secular law."

Sharia law in Canada? Yes. The province of Ontario has authorized the use of sharia law in civil arbitrations, if both parties consent. The arbitrations will deal with such matters as property, marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance. The arbitrators can be imams, Muslim elders or lawyers. In theory, their decisions aren't supposed to conflict with Canadian civil law. But because there is no third-party oversight, and no duty to report decisions, no outsider will ever know if they do. These decisions can be appealed to the regular courts. But for Muslim women, the pressures to abide by the precepts of sharia are overwhelming. To reject sharia is, quite simply, to be a bad Muslim.

Ms. Arjomand's cellphone is constantly ringing -- with calls of support, or calls for help, or updates on various crises. A client of hers has just that day died of cancer, leaving behind a nine-year-old daughter. The husband was brutally abusive, and now the dead woman's family is terrified that he's going to take the daughter, who was born in Canada, and go back to Iran. Ms. Arjomand has been trying to get Children's Aid to intervene.

In the burgeoning Muslim communities around Toronto, it's customary to settle family disputes internally, by appealing to an imam or an older person in the family. "I have a client from Pakistan who works for a bank," Ms. Arjomand tells me. "She's educated. She used to give all her money to her husband. She had to beg him for money to buy a cup of coffee. Then she decided to keep $50 a month for herself, but he said no."

They took the matter to an uncle, who decreed that because the wife had not been obedient, her husband could stop sleeping with her. (This is a traditional penalty for disobedient wives.) He could also acquire a temporary wife to take care of his sexual needs, which he proceeded to do. Now the woman wants a separation. She's fighting for custody of the children, which, according to sharia, belong to the father.

The law permitting a sharia court was passed in 1991, when Ontario sought to streamline the overloaded court system (and save money) by diverting certain civil cases to arbitration, including arbitration conducted on religious principles. Jewish courts have operated in the province this way for many years. "People can agree to resolve disputes in any way acceptable," said Brendan Crawley, a spokesman for the Ontario attorney-general. "If they decide to resolve disputes using principles of sharia and using an imam as an arbitrator, that is perfectly acceptable under the arbitration act."

Promoters of Islamic law in Canada have been working toward this goal for years. Last fall, they created the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, which has already chosen arbitrators who have undergone training in sharia and Canadian civil law. The driving force behind the court is a lawyer and scholar named Syed Mumtaz Ali, who was quoted last week saying "to be a good Muslim," all Muslims must use these sharia courts.

Many Muslims, including many women, are enthusiastic about giving Islamic law an official place in Canada, and they emphatically deny that it will harm women's interests. On the contrary. They insist that under Islam, a woman's rights are protected. "We follow the Islamic law, secure with a perfect sense of equality between the sexes," wrote Khansa Muhaseen and Nabila Haque in a letter to the Toronto Star, where the sharia debate has been raging fiercely.

Opponents of the new tribunals argue that the government's imprimatur will give sharia law even greater legitimacy. Sharia law is based on the Koran, which, according to Muslim belief, provides the divine rules for behaviour. What is called sharia varies widely (in Nigeria, for example, it has been invoked to justify death by stoning). The one common denominator is that it is strongly patriarchal.

Alia Hogben is president of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, a pro-faith group with members from every Muslim culture. But the council was never consulted about the new sharia courts, and it strongly opposes them.

"This is a very difficult position for us to be in because we are believing women," says Ms. Hogben. "But to apply Muslim family law in Canada is not appropriate." In Britain, she adds, the government has flatly rejected councils for sharia law.

Both Ms. Hogben and Ms. Arjomand -- the former an observant Muslim, the latter not -- are lobbying hard for Ontario to change the arbitration law.

(Ms. Arjomand has launched a petition, which you can find through a web search for "International Campaign Against Sharia Courts in Canada.")

When Ms. Hogben's family came to Canada 50 years ago, the Muslim population was tiny. In the 1970s, she and her husband started a tiny mosque in Toronto that they shared with Albanians and Bosnians. Today, Canada's Muslim population numbers more than 600,000, and many Muslims live in self-contained enclaves where there is little interaction with the outside world. Ms. Hogben welcomes the stronger sense of identity among Muslims now. But she warns that many of the new arrivals have brought with them a far more rigid version of Islam. "A lot of money is being poured into North America from very traditional groups from Saudi Arabia and Libya," she points out. These groups are not known for their tolerance of other versions of Islam, or for their progressive attitudes toward women.

Immigrant women are among the most vulnerable people in Canada. Many don't speak English, are poorly educated, and are isolated from the broader culture. They may live here for decades without learning the language, and stay utterly dependent on their families. They have no idea of their rights under Canadian law.

Both Ms. Hogben and Ms. Arjomand say that we are sacrificing these women on the altar of multiculturalism.

"This is an abuse of multiculturalism, says Ms. Hogben. "There is a lack of courage [on the part of governments], and also a fear of offending Muslim sensitivities."

"I chose to come to Canada because of multiculturalism," says Ms. Arjomand, who gave up a career in medical science to work with women who are victims of abuse. "But when I came here, I realized how much damage multiculturalism is doing to women. I'm against it strongly now. It has become a barrier to women's rights."

2:45 p.m. - 30 May 2004

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