Sharia courts Bill will prevent women suffering

A Bill which will curb the power of Sharia courts deserves support because citizens have a “responsibility” to protect women from “unnecessary suffering”, a lawyer writing for The Independent website has said.
Charlotte Rachael Proudman said in the Independent’s Comment section, that Baroness Cox’s Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill should be backed.
It had its second reading in the House of Lords last week.
The aim of the Bill is to ensure women are treated fairly by applying the nation’s anti-discrimination laws to quasi-legal systems such as Sharia courts.

Plight

Miss Proudman highlighted the plight of many Muslim women who are unaware they are married according to religious law, but not national law. This means they have no legal protections.
She also highlighted the case of one lady who said a Sharia court pressurised her to drop police charges against her husband after he stabbed her, saying it was a matter to be dealt with “in our courts.”
In Baroness Cox’s Bill, any person who falsely claims to have the power to make legally binding decisions in Britain will be guilty of a criminal offence.

Responsibility

Miss Proudman said: “We cannot allow Baroness Cox to go it alone when we, as citizens of Britain, have a responsibility to ensure that women living in this country are protected from unnecessary suffering, by our laws.”
She added that our support of the Bill will mean more women are prevented from “falling prey to the patriarchal rulings of such courts”.

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Undermining British law: Lords debate sharia reform

Religious arbiters claiming full legal powers will face a five year prison sentence under a bill going before the House of Lords this morning.

Lady's Cox's arbitration and mediation services (equalities) bill targets anyone in a sharia or Jewish beth din court pretending they have legal jurisdiction.

"What the bill is seeking to do is address a rapidly increasing alternative quasi-legal systems which undermine the fundamental principal – one law for all," she told Radio 4's Today programme.
"I think it's unacceptable in this country that a woman should be coerced into not having a civil marriage, only a religious one.

"Her husband can use violence which is often condoned by a sharia council."

At the moment a sharia or beth din council can act as an arbitrator in civil cases such as business disputes or divorces, provided both parties are consenting.

But many legal experts and human rights activists are concerned some Muslim women may be coerced in to using the courts without understanding they have no authority in common law.

But many legal experts and human rights activists are concerned some Muslim women may be coerced in to using the courts without understanding they have no authority in common law.

The bill is not specific to sharia or beth din courts, and would apply to all arbitrators posing as legally binding judges.

The bill would, if passed by the Lords, have to go through the full committee stages in the upper house before being debated and voted on in the Commons, which is unlikely to happen until the New Year at the earliest.

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Taxi driver stabbed mum-to be to death just weeks after he took her as second wife

Cabbie murdered a mum-to-be weeks after taking her as a second wife in an Islamic marriage ceremony.

Saiba Khatoon was killed in a ferocious attack involving three knives at her home on Darlington Road, Rochdale. She was found in a pool of blood by her seven-year-old son, Faris, and died the next day, on her 27th birthday, after being repeatedly stabbed in the heart.

Siraj Arif, of Armstronghurst Close, Rochdale, is now beginning a life sentence after admitting her murder in a Manchester Crown Court hearing. He must serve 21 years before release can be considered.


The court heard that Saiba’s pregnancy had triggered a series of arguments between Arif and his wives and Saiba's family, climaxing in the killing.

His barrister, Anthony Hayden QC, told court that ‘remorseful’ Arif was ‘a man caught in two very complex relationships’ between traditional Nazia and Westernised Saiba.

“It’s plain that in the months leading up to this fateful day the defendant was under considerable pressure. On May 7, entirely out of character, he snapped", the defence lawyer added.

Saiba was 19 weeks pregnant when she was murdered by Arif, Kim Hollis QC, prosecuting, said.

The pair had been childhood sweethearts, but were both married to other people when they started having an affair in 2004.The relationship led to Saiba ending her happy marriage to a doctor, the father of her son Faris,

But Arif, who drove minicabs for Joe Baxie’s Taxis in Rochdale, remained with his wife and obtained his wife’s grudging consent to take Saiba as a second bride, allowable in Islamic law, last December.

On the day before the killing, Arif had a violent argument with his first wife Nazia about Saiba’s pregnancy.

The following day, Saiba’s sister confronted Nazia and upset her. The fatal argument between Arif and Saiba followed.

By midnight on May 7, less than two hours after a phone call to her mother about her forthcoming birthday, Saiba had been fatally attacked.

Faris raised the alarm, running out into the street screaming ‘my mum, my mum’. Her next-door neighbour found her dying of 15 stab wounds in the kitchen, with broken blades of knives used in the attack strewn about her.

Hours after the killing Arif twice rang police. In the first, garbled call, he said he had ‘stabbed somebody’, and that he would ‘be with you in an hour.’

In the second call, he said: “We had a fight yeah, she picked a knife up and told me she was going to kill my baby, either I’ll kill my baby or I’ll kill you and I ended up grabbing the knife and shoving it in her.”

He later told a pal at the taxi rank ‘I’m finished’. He was on his way to the police station when he was arrested.

In statement, Saiba’s sister, Sara Ali, said the family had been devastated by the loss of Saiba, who was the eldest of eight children.

“She was such a loving person; she did not deserve to die, especially in those circumstances. Our happy life has been turned upside down by one violent act. Faris was extremely close to his mum and was devastated by her death. We worry so much about how this has affected him and can only hope and pray he has the resilience to cope.”

Sentencing, Judge Michael Henshell said: “It was a merciless and sustained attack on a woman in her own home 18 to 19 weeks pregnant and whilst her seven-year-old was in the house. He certainly saw the awful aftermath in the kitchen before he ran and got help. What he saw, and the memory of it, will live with him for a considerable period if not the remainder of his life and he must grow up without his mother, who died in these awful circumstances. She must have suffered in the circumstances of the attack, given the time it took, and also with the knowledge that she was pregnant and that her son was in the house.”

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Human-right Scandal in gigantic proportion in the UK #NoSharia #UK

A part of Maryam Namazie's talk at a seminar in London School of Economy. In response to Islamic Society of LSE.

The terrifying world of child brides

Devastating images show girls young enough to be in pre-school who are married off to older men 

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Toronto mother of six drowned in her own blood after throat slit in honour killing, court hears

Randjida Khairi was stabbed five times in her chest and back. She had her throat cut, a wound so ugly and deep that it sliced through her neck muscles, voicebox and windpipe — stopping only at her spine.

She was stabbed with two different knives. She drowned in her own blood; a process a pathologist would later determine took between five and 10 minutes. Police discovered Ms. Khairi’s body lying on a bloody cot in her family home, a 16th floor apartment in the northwest corner of Toronto, otherwise all tidy and neat, with a kitchen full of pots.

The victim was the mother of six. The victim was married to her killer for 30 years.

On Wednesday, Peer Khairi, a silver-haired man and an Afghan immigrant, sat in the defendant’s box of a downtown Toronto courtroom following the proceedings through a Dari interpreter, fingering a parade of gruesome crime scene photographs of his dead wife, taken by police on March 18, 2008, and presented to the court as evidence.

The 65-year-old jabbed at some photos with his index finger, and turned others this way and that, uttering a few words to his lawyer, rubbing his chin with his hand. Mostly he sat with his legs crossed, tracing his left thumb across his fingertips.

These photographs are going to be very shocking to you

On the opposite side of the courtroom sat a 12-person jury consisting of four women and eight men. They represented a tapestry of ethnicities — of Canadians. Old and young, brown and white and black and all hues in between, contemplating the same images as the defendant while sitting in judgment of a case that marks the latest chapter in Canada’s ever-expanding book of alleged honour killing trials.

Mr. Khairi doesn’t dispute that he killed his wife. On that the Crown and the defence agree. At issue is how, precisely, her death occurred and what was going through her husband’s mind when he killed her. The accused has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.

The Crown has told the court that, as a new arrival to this country, Mr. Khairi struggled with Canadian ways, often fighting with his wife over how she allowed their children to dress, to become more Western — to drift from the “culture and the rules of their birth place.”

You may find them somewhat upsetting…

That place is Afghanistan, a patriarchal society where women, be they wives or teenagers or young girls, disobey their husbands, any man, really, at their own peril. This is not an over-simplification. This is a tragic fact.

“These photographs are going to be very shocking to you,” Justice Robert Clark warned jurors before the crime scene images made the rounds. “You may find them somewhat upsetting…”

He continued, saying how the photographs of the victim with her throat cut wide might make the jurors angry, but that they should try to consider them calmly and in conjunction with the rest of the evidence presented.
Ms. Khairi, the court was told, had been thinking of leaving her husband. She spoke to other people,

complete strangers in some cases, about her plans. Mr. Khairi told police upon his arrest that he felt disrespected, wronged by his children and betrayed by a wife who had turned against him. Now she is dead.

The trial resumes Thursday.

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