Boreal

Getting Familiar with the Unfamiliar

"The Christian peer" is how Sudanese-born writer and commentator Nesrine Malik introduced Lady Caroline Cox in What is Lady Cox's bill really about?, in the May 20th, 2011 issue of The Guardian.

The Christian peer has a plan to reign in the Sharia tribunals who stray into areas outside their jurisdiction; a plan which does not sit well with Ms. Malik and, according to Ms. Malik, "has angered some Muslims."

According to Lady Cox, Sharia tribunals "are increasingly ruling on family and criminal cases, including child custody and domestic violence. Jurisdiction 'creep' had caused considerable suffering among women compelled to return to abusive husbands, or to give up children and property."

The Christian peer has introduced a bill, the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill, which will make it “an offence carrying a five-year jail sentence for anyone falsely claiming or implying that sharia courts or councils have legal jurisdiction over family or criminal law … and ban the sharia practice of giving woman's testimony only half the weight of men's.”

The Christian peer is quoted as saying that: "Equality under the law is a core value of British justice. My bill seeks to preserve that standard".

You would think that such a fundamental re-statement of a cornerstone principle of Western jurisprudence would have universal appeal in the country that gave the world the Magna Carta. You would be wrong.

Nesrine Malik would rather the baroness focus on “technical issues ... [and] how quasi-legal courts are being accommodated and incorporated into UK law in a way that accommodates both; discarding what is not compatible and allowing for what is permissible, albeit unfamiliar.”

It is focusing on technical issues as to how to accommodate an alien, misogynous sin-based jurisprudence into an egalitarian, secular Western legal tradition that has created the jurisdictional quagmire which has embolden Islam to go where it had no right.

Perhaps it is time that we get familiar with Ms. Malik's “unfamiliar” and start talking about Western values and how we can guard against them being further diluted by theocracy technocrats and their enablers, which are increasingly women; short-sighted stupid women who see nothing wrong in promoting a religion which considers them nothing more than chattel – a god's reward to men for the good things men do including the charity done to them for which they are ungrateful.

Narrated Ibn Abbas:

The Prophet said: "I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were ungrateful." It was asked, "Do they disbelieve in Allah?" (or are they ungrateful to Allah?) He replied, "They are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors and the good (charitable deeds) done to them.

Bukhari 1:2:28

Bernard Payeur