Rejecting faith-based arbitration outright squandered a chance to safeguard Muslim women

Evidence

Those advocating the use of Sharia garnered attention, which only grew as more feminists came on board to denounce them. Here we might consider strategy. Knowing that a full-scale moral panic is entirely likely given today’s geopolitics, did feminist groups sufficiently consider the conditions of communication as they immediately embraced the position of the secular over the religious? I wonder what would have been the outcome had Muslim feminists in particular, regardless of their own misgivings, expended more energy on the question, What is needed to safeguard faith-based arbitration for women? … In the end, however, the dangers posed by faith-based arbitration were considered too great to risk pursuing faith-based alternatives. This was perhaps a strategic error. It might have been possible to get more safeguards within the Arbitration Act to protect Muslim women who use it, or who are coerced into using it, although the government seemed unwilling to consider this option, as the Boyd report demonstrated. At the very least, the circulation of ideas about alternative ways to be Muslim might have tempered the production of the neoliberal subject as citizen. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 390

Categorization

• QUESTION: The counterfactual — what safeguards in the Arbitration Act might have been won — is worth investigating: the Boyd report and Ontario’s 2006 legislative response are traceable primary sources.
• XREF: Connects to the moral-panic framework developed in earlier chapters of this book on the racialization of Muslims.