Jews, Muslims Vow to Fight for Tribunals
By BETH DUFF-BROWN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, September 14, 2005; 8:01 PM
TORONTO -- Jews and Muslims in Ontario pledged Wednesday to fight for faith-based tribunals to settle family disputes after its premier stunned their communities by announcing he would ban all religious arbitration in Canada's largest province.
Ontario had appeared well on its way to becoming the first Western jurisdiction to allow the use of Sharia _ a code of laws drawn largely from the Islamic holy book, the Quran _ to settle some Muslim family and civil disputes.
The province has allowed Catholic and Jewish tribunals to settle family law matters on a voluntary basis since the adoption of the Arbitration Act in 1991. The practice got little attention until some proponents of Sharia demanded the same rights.
Frank Dimant, executive vice president of B'nai Brith Canada, said Wednesday that Premier Dalton McGuinty's surprise announcement on Sunday to scrap the tribunals was unfair.
Dimant said B'nai Brith is considering a constitutional challenge if Ontario no longer recognizes rabbinical courts to grant divorces and monetary disputes.
"In the case of the rabbinical courts, they have functioned for hundreds of years in Ontario and there have been no issues, no complaints," said Dimant. "And now to merely outlaw them ... because of internal differences of opinion in the Muslim community is simply unfair."
Ontario's government had been reviewing a report by a former provincial attorney general which recommends Sharia arbitration be included under the Act.
On Sunday, McGuinty said religious arbitrations "threaten our common ground," and promised his Liberal Party government would soon introduce legislation to outlaw them in Ontario.
"Ontarians will always have the right to seek advice from anyone in matters of family law, including religious advice," he told The Canadian Press. "But no longer will religious arbitration be deciding matters of family law."
Opponents of Sharia were thrilled by McGuinty's decision.
"I think our voice got heard loud and clear," said Homa Arjomand, a women's rights activist who organized a series of anti-Sharia protests worldwide last Thursday.
Anti-Sharia critics have said the country's 750,000 Muslims come from different backgrounds and strains of Islam and that women are not treated equally under the system, which they say runs counter to the Charter of Rights and Freedom, Canada's bill of rights.
Under most interpretations of Islamic law, women cannot initiate divorce. The Quran allows for polygamy and Sharia often permits marriage of girls younger than most secular laws, as do some other religions and cultures.
Sharia supporters pledged to continue effort to win its legal approval.
"Sharia's values are, without a doubt, compatible with Canadian values of justice, respect and dignity for women," Katherine Bullock, a spokesperson for The Islamic Society of North America, told a news conference Wednesday
Bullock threatened legal action if the province did not update the Arbitration Act. "Contrary to what has been reported in the press, Sharia is not an ancient medieval law code that discriminates against women," she said.
Bullock condemned the treatment of women by the Taliban in Afghanistan but cautioned that Sharia should not be judged by rigid or extreme interpretations of Islamic law.
The McGuinty government for seven months had been sitting on the report by former Ontario Attorney-General Marion Boyd, which concluded that Muslims should have the same rights as other religions that use faith-based arbitration to settle family disputes.
Boyd concluded in her report that there was no evidence women were being discriminated against in faith-based arbitration by Jews and Catholics and recommended that the province's existing arbitration system be strengthened.
Her proposal called for the training and licensing of all arbitrators, a review of their decisions, and transparency of their verdicts so that others seeking arbitrators could see how they ruled.
The Toronto-based Canadian Islamic Congress accused opponents of Sharia of fear-mongering tactics to distort the nature of Sharia. They said Sharia was cheaper, faster and introduced a "healing factor into many family disputes."
"It is ignorance which has given Sharia a bad name, especially in the treatment of women," the organization said in a statement.
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On the Net:
No Sharia Movement: http://www.nosharia.com
Canadian Islamic Congress: http://www.canadianislamiccongress.com
B'nai Brith of Canada: http://www.bnaibrith.ca
© 2005 The Associated Press