SEP. 13, 2005: SHARIA AVERTED
So here’s some good news: the Canadian province of Ontario has abandoned the idea of a sharia court. The idea originated, bizarrely enough, with a feminist lawyer named Marion Boyd. Boyd, a former provincial attorney general, is perhaps best known in Canada for her advocacy work on behalf of battered women. Since sharia permits (and in some versions, actively encourages) husbands to club their wives for disobedience, you might think that she would have proved resistant to the call of multiculturalism. But no. Asked last year to consider the question for the province, Boyd produced a report of exquisite political correctness, arguing that Ontario should make room for sharia courts in private arbitration.

There has been a certain amount of sensationalism about the sharia court idea, so some background might be helpful.

First, Canada for complicated historical reasons does not separate religion and state as strictly as the United States. The province of Ontario, for example, funds Catholic education all the way through high school; in Quebec, English-speaking schools are governed not by an English schoolboard but by a Protestant schoolboard.

Second, Ontario has permitted other religious groups--notably Orthodox Jews--to arbitrate family law and divorce matters according to religious law. It was not a completely crazy notion to add an Islamic court to the list.

Third, Canadian courts are so highly interventionist--and so dogmatically feminist--that it is not at all clear how retrograde a sharia court would ever really have been allowed to be. Under Boyd’s proposal, sharia arbitration verdicts could always be appealed to a regular court. It would have been interesting to see what happened the first time one of those courts got hold of an award that granted automatic custody of any boy over age 8 or any girl over age 13 to the father, as sharia dictates.

But then again, who knows what would have happened? If a feminist like Marion Boyd could succumb to the multi-culti bug, perhaps the feminists who staff Canada’s courts might also have succumbed. They have already ruled, for example, that Canadian Indians--and only Canadian Indians--can present “oral traditions” as evidence in disputes over landed property.

And if the courts did give way, Canada would have happened itself up to some potentially serious abuses. While most Canadian Muslims of course follow mild and moderate versions of their faith, it is true that radical pressure groups and seriously unpleasant imams play a large role in organized Islamic institutions in Canada. If they had gained control of the sharia arbitration body, Canadian law could have become complicit in some very disturbing outcomes.

Instead, a shock of outrage seems to have brought the province of Ontario--like the province of Quebec before it--to its senses. Probably the most powerful force against the sharia court were the organizations of Canadian Muslim women who argued that sharia was just what they had come to Canada to escape. It’s a crucial reminder that organized Muslim pressure groups in the West often speak for nobody but small bands of the alienated and radicalized--that most Western Muslims crave the same rights that inspire their fellow-citizens. Under pressure from all quarters, Premier Dalton McGuinty has announced that the sharia court idea has been shelved. The odds are good that it will never be heard from again. Every once in a while, the good guys do win.