UK: Sharia Councils learn from Jewish Beth Dins

The Islamic Sharia Council in London has held meetings with Jewish groups to learn about the Beth Din system as part of plans to develop a similar style of Muslim arbitration, TJ has learned.


Following the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks about allowing aspects of Sharia law in UK legislation, an advisor to the Islamic Sharia Council in Leyton told TJ this week that meetings have been held with the Three Faiths Forum and the Federation of Synagogue's Beth Din over the last two years aimed at learning lessons from the Jewish experience.

The advisor, Dr Usama Hasan, also Director of Muslim network the City Circle, said there is a lot to learn from the Jews.


He told TJ: "The issues are very similar. I am sure Muslims would be happy to learn from the Jewish experience, there is no point reinventing the wheel. The Beth Din system has operated for around 70 years, the Sharia Council only started in the 1980s, Jews are about 50 years ahead."


Hasan was part of a delegation which visited the Federation Beth Din in Hendon last year. He said: "We were shown around the courtroom and learned about the aspects of Jewish law."


Meetings have also been held with the Three Faiths Forum. Rabbi David Hulbert, Executive member of its East London branch, said: "They were interested in the way our Berth Din works as we have experience in this. We told them how synagogues are grouped together and accept the authority of a particular Beth Din.


"There is nothing stopping them doing this, they are free under the arbitration act to do it. They must organise themselves into groups of mosques and agree to abide by rulings of the Sharia council.


"They do not want to impose Sharia law on non-Muslims, they are just interested in regularisng marriage and divorce."


Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad, one of the judges at Leyton's Islamic Sharia Council, said the problem is that Sharia court decisions are not enforceable, "We need a few amendments in personal law. Currently if people don't like one decision they can go to another sharia court.


"If we were regularised decisions would be binding and we could solve more problems."


He criticised the hostile reaction to the Archibishop of Canterbury's remarks on Sharia Law, "People don't realise we already have aspects of Sharia Law in the UK such as dietary laws regarding Halal meat."


Source: Totally Jewish (English) h/t Islamophobia Watch

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

beith dins in israel:

in israel there is a conflict between beith din and civil courts. there is a very thin balance to be kept and there are some sad stories.
for example, if a married couple wants to break up, there is sort of a race to open a case. if the case is opened in beith din, it will have authority and if a case is opened in civilian court, the civilian court will have authority. the beith din is known to be biased towards men interest.
dont get me wrong. in 90% of the cases this duality works. but it very well depends on the judge's wisdom.