Rights and wrongs of Sharia law

The accounting firm I'm with recently picked up a new client, whom I will call Mr. Jones. That's hardly a reason to put the flags out, we are an expanding practice and I hope we will continue to be so.

When a businessman changes accountants, his new accountants will write to his old accountants asking for certain information that will help the new accountants to understand the background to the business, so that they don't have to bother the business owner with loads of questions. As a general rule, they will get a response, eventually, from the old accountant to their questions. There may be a time delay depending on how complex matters are and how teed off the old accountant is at losing one of his clients. Normally, however, changing your adviser shouldn't be a problem.

When we wrote to Mr. Jones's old accountant, who I will call Mr. Smith, we got a letter stating that he objected to our acting for him. Why, we asked. Mr. Jones owes me money, he replied. That's no reason for objecting to our being his accountants, we said. You should simply ask Mr. Jones to pay his bill. Mr. Smith persisted in refusing to co-operate, so we reported him to his professional body. After much correspondence, we got some of the information we wanted, but it was about a year before we got enough clarity on what was going on to make sense of Mr. Jones's accounts. By then, they were late, and he had to pay fines to the Government.

It came out that Smith & Co. were reluctant to sue Mr. Jones for the unpaid bills. The principal of Smith & Co. was a very religious Christian who took the Bible absolutely literally, and it says in the Bible that you shouldn't go to court against your fellow Christians. The reference is the first letter of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 6, verses 1 to 11. Now, given that the early Christians were predominantly Jewish, I can explain just why the apostle said what he did. He envisaged that there would be church courts, like the Beth Din of the Jewish community, to which Christians would refer for resolution of disputes between church members. Given that Mr. Smith's church clearly doesn't have its own legal system or anything like it, all that Mr. Smith could do was to write increasingly intemperate letters to us and to all else involved about his continued refusal to hand over details to us of Mr. Jones. It doesn't strike me as a functional method of dealing with a dispute.

It is with the above in mind that we have to consider Sharia law. It would be much more straightforward, as well as less expensive, for faith communities to regulate themselves than it is for them to use the legal system of the State. It isn't anything new in human affairs either: in the early days of the Jewish community in India (approximately 400 C.E.) the decisions of Jewish Batei Din were automatically ratified by the ruling Maharajah. If a naughty member of the Jewish community refused to obey the Beth Din, the Maharajah would send his boys round to ensure compliance. It worked like a charm.

Today, there are Jewish women who are unable to remarry in accordance with the rules of the Jewish faith because their estranged husbands won't give them a divorce complying with Jewish religious law, and there appears very little that anyone can do to make them. If, however, it were the law of the land that all Jews have to do as our Beth Din says in matters of dispute, and that those who don't will face a criminal trial before the legal system of the U.K. for contempt of court, then even the most obstinate man may well see sense. The same principle could apply to Muslims, Hindus, or anyone else.

That is why I would be in favour of a law recognising religious courts of faith communities as being of competent jurisdiction for U.K. legal purposes on the following conditions:

1. Only civil cases could be tried before such courts, not criminal cases.

2. The rulings of such courts apply only within the faith community concerned.

3. The law of the land cannot be overruled by any decision of a religious court.

4. When any case is brought before a religious court, its decision is final and binding subject to judicial review if it can be proved that it acted dishonestly or in bad faith.

5. And finally: as a condition for being recognised as being of competent jurisdiction, the religious court has to comply with democratic principles. That would imply, on the basis of equality of the sexes, that women should be able to be appointed as judges.

I hope the above is close enough to what Dr. Rowan Williams had in mind. Women bishops, anyone?

My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.