As Canada gears up to permit its Muslim population to follow the Sharia in some areas of private life, Western civilization faces its first major ideological challenge since the Reformation paved the way for separation of Church and State four centuries ago. Canada has long prided itself on the success of its multicultural traditions, which have been fairly deeply ingrained in society especially since the end of the Second World War. It is therefore, inexplicable why, since the end of 2001, the country has embarked upon the dangerous path of permitting a section of its populace to breach the State-religion divide, while trying to retain its secular character.
Canada’s experience will no doubt have lessons for all Western nations with burgeoning Muslim populations. The country today has nearly 600,000 Muslims, and more than a hundred mosques, whose radical or moderate credentials have probably not been adequately monitored. As of now, a group called the Canadian Society of Muslims has set up the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, which will apply the Islamic legal code to property, inheritance, marriage and divorce disputes (The New York Times, 4 August 2004).
The Canadian Society of Muslims is acting under a 1991 Ontario provincial law which empowered religious authorities to arbitrate in civil matters if people approached them voluntarily. The aggrieved citizens retained the right to appeal against the decisions of the clergy in the regular Canadian courts. This law enabled the Jewish and Christian communities to settle mainly marital disputes without going through law courts. Thus, rabbis granted speedy religious divorces, clarified issues about kosher diets, and even helped settle business disputes. At the same time, Catholic couples in trouble managed to get their marriages annulled, and churches of different dominations settled issues of inappropriate behaviour of priests and other problems within the parishes.
Muslim leaders, however, are not content to avail of this provision to avoid expensive and prolonged litigation through normal courts. In fact, the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice is using this law as a platform to demand that imams be given the right to arbitrate on a wider range of issues. Mr. Syed Mumtaz Ali, 77, an Islamic lawyer who is the brains behind the Institute, contends that a Muslim must follow the Sharia in all respects. For instance, he feels that the Koranic injunctions that a son receives twice the inheritance that a daughter gets, and that men enjoy the automatic right to divorce while women do not, must be followed.
So far, the Muslim leaders have remained silent on the issue of criminal law, which is becoming controversial within Islamic nations, with some sections favouring implementation of Islamic laws on matters like adultery, public veiling of women, etc. Certainly, laws calling for the public stoning of alleged adulteresses or amputations would not be countenanced by the Canadian State. In fact, there is already some controversy in the country as many perceive the Sharia as bypassing, if not overruling, Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees equality to the sexes. Canadian family law specifically gives both sexes equal rights of inheritance and property acquired during a marriage.
Of course, Canadian citizens have the right to voluntarily relinquish their legal rights, but the courts are obliged to ensure that they have access to independent legal counsel before they take such a step. Many analysts believe that Muslim women will not truly enjoy their rights as they often live isolated from the larger society and are dependent upon their menfolk, who instruct them on what to do or say. Ms. Shahira Hafez of the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women said: “all these women from Pakistan, India and Afghanistan are kept isolated in their own communities, do not learn English and only deal with the outer society through their husband and their husband's family.” In such circumstances, any “voluntary” surrender of legal rights by Muslim women would be false.
Some Canadian Muslim women claim that the Sharia is already being applied in the country, albeit behind closed doors. They say the move to apply it openly in Ontario will set a dangerous precedent. Ms. Homa Arjomand, a counsellor for battered women, points out that in Canada, girls and boys are segregated in private Islamic elementary schools. Thereafter, the girls are forced into arranged marriages through the Sharia between the ages of thirteen to fifteen, to men more than twice their age. Naturally, such women cannot be said to enjoy free choice.
Responding to these legitimate concerns, the Ontario government has now appointed Ms. Marion Boyd, a former provincial cabinet member and women’s activist, to review the 1991 arbitration law, and perhaps suggest changes that will balance the conflicting claims of religion and secular rights. This was done in the past for Canadian Jewish women who found that the laws of religious divorce were weighted in favour of obstinate husbands.
Feminists are demanding laws that ensure that the Sharia arbitrators are screened and trained properly, so that Muslim women seeking arbitration for redressal of their grievances are made fully aware of their rights as Canadian citizens. They want statutory limits to the powers of the religious mediators, with sensitive matters such as child support, alimony and access to children in the event of divorce, taken out of the purview of such arbitration.
Already, realization is dawning in mainstream Canadian society that the concept of multiculturalism – a national melting pot with no official or dominant cultural identity – may sound good in theory, but there are real problems of coexistence when sharply distinctive communal identities take opposing stands on sensitive issues. A predominantly Judeao-Christian country, Canada is beginning to appreciate that all religions have differing worldviews and vastly differing value systems, all of which do not necessarily submit to the modern religion called rationalism or secularism.
Sahara Time, 28 August 2004