Faith-based arbitration was already legal before the panic began

Evidence

In late November of 2003, Syed Mumtaz Ali, a retired lawyer, announced to the media that a new organization, the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, had been established. The organization planned to apply Islamic principles of family and inheritance law to resolve family law and inheritance disputes within the Muslim community in Canada, services he described as the application of Sharia law. (Sharia Law is not a codified set of laws but rather a framework for interpreting laws based on the Qu’ran and the Hadith.) The Arbitration Act already permitted the resolution of private disputes in this way and had done so for a decade, but Ali’s announcement created the impression that something had changed in law that now made it easier to apply Sharia. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 345 (#expands, via linked claim)

The eternal triangle of the imperilled Muslim woman, the ‘dangerous’ Muslim man, and the civilized European is fully in evidence in the context that is the topic of this chapter: Canadian feminist and state responses to the prospect of the introduction of Sharia law as an option for Muslims settling disputes in family law. In the French-speaking province of Quebec, faith-based legal options in the realm of family law have been rejected outright. In the English-speaking province of Ontario an option had long existed through the Arbitration Act that enabled individuals to hire third parties to privately adjudicate their conflicts using any agreed-upon rules or laws. This option was mostly used to settle commercial disputes, although Jewish groups had used it in matters of divorce. When a Muslim group proposed to use the Arbitration Act to settle disputes in the family-law arena using Islamic principles (which they described as the application of Sharia law), feminists expressed a vociferous opposition to faith-based arbitration. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 339 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A routine legal announcement triggered federal panic over unchanged law; Faith-based arbitration was already legal for a decade before the Sharia panic — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 345; Ontario’s Arbitration Act already permitted religious family-law arbitration before the Sharia controversy — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 339

Broader Connections

• Faith-based arbitration was already legal for a decade before the Sharia panic #expands (1.00) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 345
• Ontario’s Arbitration Act already permitted religious family-law arbitration before the Sharia controversy #expands (0.98) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 339