Sharia Law

Debate between Baroness Flather and Baroness Warsi

Thursday 11th December 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Warsi (Con)]

My Lords, I start by apologising for the fact that I may not sound completely coherent today. I am suffering from a migraine and not able to see my notes properly, so I am going to have to guess at what I was going to say. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, for calling this debate as it is an important subject to be discussed but I urge her to read back the speech that she just made in Hansard. I say that because it is important for us to work out what it is that we are debating here today. If we are debating a series of headlines which regularly appear in the Daily Mail about what may have happened around the country, then that is a completely different debate. Invariably, as we have found out, those newspapers are incredibly good at headlines but carry very little factually. I urge the noble Baroness to look at a fantastic programme made by Peter Oborne—

[Baroness Flather]

The noble Baroness says I am relying on headlines and newspaper reports. I am not. There is so much evidence which has been collected by various researchers and taken from women. These are their own stories and views; this is not about headlines. I am sorry, I cannot accept that. It is an easy-peasy way to put it down.

[Baroness Warsi]

I urge the noble Baroness to listen to an incredibly interesting programme by Peter Oborne, “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim”, where he unpicks some of these stories about takeovers in Birmingham, girls and boys at Leicester University, et cetera.

Let me take this back to what I think it is about: a distinction between Sharia and Sharia law. Sharia exists in the United Kingdom in our multicultural society. Noble Lords will be aware that only this year Britain announced to a loud fanfare that we had become the first western country in the world to issue sukuks—Islamic, Sharia-compliant bonds with which we raise funds to finance government, among other things. We announced that we would put in place Sharia-compliant student loans, start-up loans and home loans to ensure that the Muslim community could take full advantage of the opportunities this country has to offer. We have Sharia in the form of dietary requirements, with clear responsibilities in relation to halal and to shechita under Jewish law. We have very clear Sharia responsibilities in relation to births and deaths—for example, the way in which circumcisions are conducted in hospitals around this country in accordance with people’s religious rights. Sharia, like other religious practices, is therefore an everyday part of British life and has been for many years.

However, what I think we are debating today is whether we have Sharia law. As I am sure the Minister will answer, we do not. We have one system of law in England and Wales; it is English law, and that is paramount. Even within Sharia law as those discussions go—predominantly those discussions in the Daily Mail—there are two distinctions. There is a civil aspect and a criminal aspect. A criminal penal code has never been part of a discussion in the United Kingdom but civil practices have been, predominantly in domestic situations when marriages break down, and so-called Sharia councils have been set up as an alternative arbitration system for people to resolve their disputes.

The most important point that the noble Baroness makes is that all women in this country deserve the same protection, irrespective of their religion. The noble Baroness says that this is an abuse of the system. My argument would be that it is a failure of the system that Muslim women find themselves having to go before Sharia councils, because the mainstream system in the form of the civil courts does not allow them the support and protections that they deserve.

Dealing with it on that basis, we must look at what the mischief is. It is that Muslim women are not protected in the same way as other women when their marriages break down. There is a simple answer to that: recognise their marriage. That would deal with the mischief and meet all the concerns that the noble Baroness raises today. If I conduct a Muslim marriage with a Muslim man which is recognised under English law, I am afforded exactly the same protections as any other woman who conducts a marriage in this country. This means that when my marriage breaks down, I do not have to go to a Sharia council but to the civil courts. That option has been presented to both this Government and previous Governments. It is a simple amendment which can be made to allow for the recognition of such marriages. It would mean, effectively, that if any further religious marriage were conducted, the man would be charged with bigamy. Both would be legally recognised and we would therefore have the evidential basis on which to put a case of bigamy. That is what it boils down to.

If the Government can formally recognise a nikah in the way in which many government papers have submitted that it is possible to do, we will deal with this issue. If, despite having that civil protection, system and recognition, there is still a thirst out there for alternative dispute resolution, let us make sure that the alternative dispute resolution has a code of conduct, that there is a sense of training and education for people who take part in it and that it is properly monitored. Let us also make it clear that the alternative dispute resolution option is subject to English law. That is the way in which we can deal with this issue, without any reference to the plethora of other issues which are not part of this debate.