Question-is a Sharia divorce the one where the man says, “Thou art divorced” three times?
That’s just one form of Islamic religious divorce. A married person can also appeal to a religous court for a divorce. Grounds for divorce differ depending on the sex of the person seeking a divorce. Generally, a woman can only seek a divorce for one of three reasons: her husband is impotent/infertile, her husband is insance, or her husband is not (or is no longer) a Muslim. A man can seek a divorce for a much wider range or reasons.
I’ve heard of cases in which a Sharia court has had an uncooperative husband imprisoned in order to force him to grant his wife a divorce.
… any idea if Canada and Lebanon have an extradition treaty?
Please turn on your spellchecker. You misspelled “evil.”
There are some cases of sharia law being practiced in Canada. I personally think it should not be practiced at all, because the oppressive nature of the laws are in discord with Canada’s purported goal of equality and elimination of injustice based on sex, religion, etc. This divisive issue has the potential to cause a lot of trouble in the Muslim community and from that into the larger Canadian community. In the case of sharia law, I think religious tolerance should only go to the extent that it agrees with existing Canadian criminal and civil laws, and no further, with Canadian criminal and civil laws being the final word. To paraphrase an excellent quote from this site on this subject, women’s rights should not be sacrificed on the altar of multiculturalism.
I’ve seen numerous mentions in this thread that a Canadian civil divorce would not be recognized by the Muslim religious comminuty in Lebanon. The question I have is, would it be recognized by the civil government in Lebanon?
I’m getting a vibe that the two are one and the same, but no one has come out and asserted that.
Can we kindly stop this meme of Shari’a law being “allowed” or “recognized” in Canada? I have enough trouble with the ignorant conservatives around here beating me over the head with it every day, I don’t need ignorant American liberals joining in.
Read the article quoted by featherlou - it tells you exactly what the issue is. In this case, I’m definitely in favour of “allowing Shari’a Law”. All it does is give Muslims the same options for (mutually consential) civil arbitration available to Catholics and Jews, which, according to the conservatives, makes me a Taliban warlord. :rolleyes:
Where is Mr. Wonderful throughout this? Is he being sent back to Lebanon? Is he doing a substantial sentence in Canada? His whereabouts would be crucial in my decision making process if I was the wife.
Oh, come on with your semantic quibbling. The linked article itself talks about Ontario “authorizing” the use of Shariah law in arbitrations and the law “permitting” a Shariah court. We are not necessarily ignorant or – surprise! – even liberal to use similar words like “allow” and “recognized”. So maybe you’d like to consult a Thesaurus before bitching about the ignorant Americans.
It’s not clear to me at this point if Sharia law is being used in Ontario or not; from a different article, it sounds like Dalton McGuinty repealed the legislation that allowed all religious groups (including Catholics, Mennonites, and Jews) to arbitrate themselves.
Doing a little more research on this interesting topic, I came across this from another site:
The problem I have with the idea of Sharia law being used in Canada to resolve marital issues, divorces, child custody, etc. is that from all I’ve heard about it, Sharia law is quite patriarchal and not very fair to Canadian Muslim women. I do see how women should have the freedom to practice a religion that is oppressive to them, but as a Canadian woman, I absolutely hate to see women being systematically oppressed to the point where they embrace their oppression as the way it should be.
More confusing still is that what is called Shariah law, supposedly encoded in the Koran, is in fact enforced more as a local cultural standard. Wide variations exist, some include the stoning to death of unfaithful women, some for honour killings of sisters who have been victims of rape, the barbarism goes on and on.
There is such wide variation in how it’s applied, the only common denominator is that the women never seem to fair well. There are fair and just Shariah courts and, in more advanced, more educated, more liberal, Muslim societies they would seem to serve well. But that is the exception, sadly, not the norm.
It brings to mind this old adage;
Morality, is doing what is right, no matter what you’re told.
Religion, is doing what you’re told, no matter what is right.
Thanks for the lively input, I shall continue to resist this, at least I’ve lost the Grrr. 
Fair in what sense? The arbitration process is by definition initiated on the basis of mutual consent, if the woman feels the process to be unfair she is free to take it to the courts, or not enter into it in the first place ( I think arbitration is mandatory in Quebec prior to the courts, but I’m not sure of the specifics, and besides, it’s Quebec, who knows why they do ANYTHING there). It’s not as if the arbitrator can order anyone to break the law.
What the opponents are advocating is essentially denial of a faith based arbitration facility, something that Jews and Catholics have always had access to, to Muslims for no reason other than because they are Muslim. Fundamentally, I am against that, even if the ostensible goal is to protect some group that may or may not be disadvantaged by it.
Wouldn’t it be possible to have Canada pass a law to recognize Shariah divorce only? If we already recognize Shariah marriages as marriages without accepting the rest of the law, surely we could accept divorces as easily.
Seems a fairly simple solution to me.
I found this site which claims that if the spouses who want to end their relationship disagree on one of a certain number of issues, they may be required to attend an information session on mediation, after which they may decide to go on with the mediation process or to go before the courts. So no, it doesn’t appear to be mandatory.
As for allowing Sharia divorces in Quebec, I should mention that back in 2005, our National Assembly unanimously passed a motion opposing the use of Sharia law in Quebec. I don’t think our opinions have changed much since then, and in fact, we are right in the middle of an intense social debate over multiculturalism and over accommodating the needs and wants of people from minority cultural (i.e. religious) backgrounds over here, with Islam and its (real or perceived) patriarchal and misogynistic stance taking a fair bit of heat. (In fact, I’m amazed that I haven’t heard about this event elbows mentions before; this is just the perfect time for this to happen, from the viewpoint of the media of course.) If you survey Quebecers, you’ll find that a large majority are opposed to any use of Sharia law in the province, so it just won’t happen.
I must admit that I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, I believe that when you live here, you must accept some of our basic values (such as the equality of men and women, which Sharia law, in its traditional form, doesn’t seem to recognize), and that all of our citizens should be subject to the same law. On the other hand, voluntary arbitration is offered to some cultural groups (in some places in Canada, I’m not sure about Quebec and I’ll have to check), so why not offer it to Muslims too? Not offering them this possibility (if other groups have it) would be discriminatory, and this is, I believe, kawaiitentaclebeast’s argument. But this ignores the fact that “voluntary” arbitration isn’t always so when one person isn’t in fact equal to the other, and for this reason I believe we shouldn’t allow Sharia-based arbitration (and probably not any religious arbitration).
Edit: apparently the Quebec Civil Code forbids religious arbitration (from an article in Le Devoir on December 24, 2004). So there. I completely agree with this.
Giving a second glance at my article, it appears that while religious arbitration isn’t allowed in Quebec, what the Montreal Muslim Council wanted to introduce back in 2004 and 2005 was a type of religious mediation similar to the rabbinical tribunals that already exist and have for a long time. It appears that these rabbinical tribunals offer a process of mediation and also declare religious divorces, because the Jewish community requires the spouses to obtain both civil and religious divorces in order to get remarried (from Le Devoir, March 26, 2005). So I can see how having the same for Muslims would help the woman in elbows’s story: her problem is that her divorce will not be recognized by the Muslim community. But I’m not too sure how we could create a system that would recognize Sharia divorces without setting up a parallel system of justice. This is an interesting question.
From featherlou’s link:
When arbitration is used in relation to a divorce, how - if at all - does it affect the marital status of the couple? Here (U.S., Chicago area) couples can use arbitration to work out agreements regarding child custody, alimony, division of assets, and other consequences of divorce. However, the arbitration process doesn’t effect the divorce itself - the couple still has to petition the court and get a judge to sign the divorce decree.
It sounds like Islamic arbitration would enable a couple to work out a religously acceptable divorce agreement (e.g., mom has sole custody of kids under 8, wife retains ownership of any property she acquired before marriage), but they wouldn’t be divorced unless they went to court and obtained a civil divorce. So the woman in the OP would still be out of luck, because her husband doesn’t want to accede to a civil divorce at all.
I don’t think Canada recognizes Sharia marriages of Canadian citizens if there is no civil marriage with the Canadian marriage requirements met (marriage license, signature of two witnesses, official registered marriage document as produced by someone legally able to marry people in Canada). I don’t think you get an exemption from these requirements for religion.
kawaii, I’m not sure Catholics and Jews have access to government-sanctioned faith-based mediation any more, either. One of my previous links talks about how the Ontario government repealed the law that was allowing religious abitration for all religions, not just Muslims.
Maybe Sharia law is not unfair to the women involved; if they aren’t Canadianized at all, I guess Sharia law would be the only law they know, and they wouldn’t know or care that they have more human rights than they are being allowed, and if they are Canadianized, I hope the women involved know that they have equal rights and aren’t prevented from accessing those rights.
Glad you said it, I was going to post something along the same lines - the whole “Sharia Law” thing is much overblown (by way of background I’m from Ontario and by the standards of this Board I’m not very liberal, nor am I particularly sympathetic to Islam as a religion. But facts are facts.)
What actually happened is that some Muslims wished to establish an abitration system based on Sharia.
Now, at the time, anyone could establish an arbitration system based on anything they want, as long as it passed certain standards of fairness, was consentual, etc. as required by the Arbitration Act. Heck, someone could establish an arbitral system based on the collected wisdom of Mickey Mouse, so long as it passed the test and all parties agreed to it. Why not? “Arbitration” is just another way to solve disputes by contract, and we generally allow freedom of contract.
At the time, there were already in existence several arbitration systems based on specific faiths - Jews and Catholics, I understand. They had been operating for many years without much in the way of problems. Muslims wished to do the same.
Unfortunately, this instantly caused a shit-storm of epic proportions. People everywhere begain screaming that “Ontario is enacting Sharia Law!!!” as if Ontario judges were going to be handing out hand-choppings for stealing, or some such.
Well, the wishes of the ignorant prevailed and the idea was squashed - mind you, it would of course be manifestly unfair to forbid only Muslims from arbitrating in the way they wished, so all forms of faith-based arbitration were quashed.
Now, there are perfectly legitimate arguments as to why religious (or indeed any) arbitration should not be allowed in family law cases - because in some cultures, people aren’t considered of equal weight, and so the appearence of voluntary submission to arbitration may be a sham … but sadly, these were not the arguments which carried the day. In my opinion, the correct result may have been reached, but the reasons it was reached sucked.
The law in Ontario already has a way to deal with refusals to give religious divorce. Section 2 of the Ontario Family Law Act states as follows in relevant part:
In short, while Ontario courts have no jurisdiction to order someone to do something like getting a religious divorce, they can and will punish the heck out of you if you don’t do it.
Yeah you do. I was married (before I was divorced 
) in the Catholic Church. In lieu of getting a marriage licence, we had banns read, which is perfectly legal under Canadian law. So there is at least one precedent for making exception for religion and I’m sure there must be more.
Nitpick: Dont start off your complaint by talking about how multicultural you are, how nice the Muslims you know are, etc. It doesnt make you look less racist, and since this aspect of Shariah is evil bullshit (I dont know much about the other rules) no reasonable person would require a disclaimer about it anyway. Its not bigoted to want an underclass to be treated fairly.