Sharia Myths
by Gary Dale

myth: Other religions do faith-based family-law arbitrations.
fact: Only the Jewish Rabbinical Courts do, and they only handle a couple of cases each year.

myth: faith based arbitrations have been working well.
fact: In the only known study on the issue, Sally Armstrong found that Jewish women were generally ill-treated and unhappy with their experience with the Rabbinical Courts.

myth: Anti-sharia hysteria was generated because of islamophobia
fact: Actually, the fight against sharia courts was started and led by Muslims, many of whom have had personal experience with sharia and left their former countries to escape it. The only reason the Jewish Rabbinical Courts didn't generate the same response is that they hadn't required a new license to begin arbitrating family law cases. As such, few people were even aware of the limited number of family law arbitrations they did handle each year.

myth: no members of other religions are speaking out against their religious laws being used.
fact: Since only the Jews have been using religious arbitration, this only applies to them. Jews have overwhelmingly denounced the Rabbinical Courts for family law by not using them! Other Jews, and members of other religions, have joined the movement against religious tribunals for family law. Also, the Jews successfully petitioned the federal government in the 1990s to change the law to make it harder for religious arbitrations.

myth: Sharia is divine law.
fact: If it was divine, there would only be one version of it. Instead there are almost as many versions as there are Muslim communities. Moreover, it has evolved over time. The Sharia laws were developed by men and owe more to their cultures than to the Quran.

myth: Muslims who oppose sharia courts are not good Muslims.
fact: Canada exists as a multicultural nation because its civil institutions are secular. This provides the common ground that all cultures can meet on. Not only does the Quran not endorse sharia courts, the whole notion of such courts violates the letter and the spirit of the Quran. Engaging in debates over who is the better Muslim simply avoids dealing with the issue of what exactly does the Quran say on the subject.

myth: Muslims who oppose sharia courts are defaming Islam.
fact: A better case can be made that those who present an outdated and discriminatory legal code as a religious obligation of Islam are in fact doing the defaming.

myth: Sharia Law respects women's rights.
fact: Sharia Law gives women the rights that the men who developed it saw fit to give them. If applied correctly, it could be said to respect those rights, but as Dr. Kathryn Bullock of ISNA publicly admitted, no country has ever implemented it correctly. Moreover, the rights sharia gives women are neither the same as nor equivalent to those given to men. As such sharia is fundamentally incompatible with our Human Rights legislation.

myth: removing religious arbitrations is a violation of freedom of religion.
fact: Freedom of religion does not exempt anyone from the law. If it did, any crime could be committed under "freedom of religion". As long as all religions, including no religion, are treated equally there is no violation.