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CAIRO — More non-Muslim Britons are resorting to Shari`ah courts to find speedy justice instead of the long wrangling of regular courts, the Times reported on Tuesday, July 21.  

It cited the case of a non-Muslim who took his Muslim business partner to the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) last month to sort out a dispute over the profits of their car fleet company.

"[He] claimed that there had been an oral agreement between the pair," Freed Chedie, a spokesman for Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siqqiqi, a barrister who set up MAT in 2007, told the Times.

"The tribunal found that because of certain things the Muslim man did, that agreement had existed. The non-Muslim was awarded £48,000."

The case is one of many in which non-Muslims have resorted to the Shari`ah courts to secure their rights.

Some 5 percent of the cases MAT reviewed recently involved non-Muslims who came to resolve commercial disputes and other civil matters.

Chedie said the tribunal had adjudicated on at least 20 cases involving non-Muslims so far this year.

"We put weight on oral agreements, whereas the British courts do not," he explains.

MAT, which was established in 2007, runs Shari`ah courts that in addition to tackling Muslims personal affairs disputes also resolve commercial matters.

It already operates in London, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester and Nuneaton, Warwickshire.

Rulings issued by Shari`ah courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court, provided that both parties agree to that condition at the beginning of any hearing.

Shari`ah courts are mediation councils that deal with Muslims’ personal affairs, basically the issues of marriages, inheritance and endowment, which is known as the Muslim personal law.

They have been operating in Britain, home to some 2 million Muslims, for over two decades.

Growing

Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the umbrella Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), said people should be free to conduct arbitration under Shari`ah, provided that it did not infringe British law.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a Conservative Muslim peer in the House of Lords, agrees.

"There is no problem with that, as long as it is always subject to English law."

MAT plans to establish 10 more Shari`ah councils across Britain, which is likely to include councils in Leeds, Luton, Blackburn, Stoke and Glasgow.

Chedie said the plan would achieve national consensus over rulings because all the courts under the MAT would be consistent in their rulings.

"Shari`ah councils are already falling into line under us.

"We would train most of the imams so that a lady in Glasgow would receive the same form of service as a lady in London."

Chedie dismissed as totally ungrounded campaigns against Shari`ah courts, blaming them on people with "hysterical and inherent prejudice."

"It is only people at the right end of the political spectrum who are scaremongering."

Many figures, including Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, have recommended that British law recognize some aspects of Shari`ah to resolve Muslim civil matters.

Lord Chief Justice Nicholas Phillips, the most senior judge in England and Wales, has also suggested that Shari`ah could play a role in the legal system.

Source: http://www.islamonline.net