Shining a light on Sharia

The news that a Ministry of Justice attempt to research the working of Sharia law in the UK has failed because those responsible for the ‘courts’ would not co-operate is disappointing. But it is perhaps hardly surprising if Sharia councillors are a little wary of having their activities probed too deeply. In recent months, plenty of disturbing evidence has come to light, often from Muslim women themselves, regarding how Sharia courts deny British Muslim women their basic rights as UK citizens.

What is also depressingly predictable is that the Ministry of Justice appears to have very little stomach for doing anything about the issue. Taking it upon itself almost to act as the apologist for the Sharia administrators, the MoJ explained that “the councils are generally run on a volunteer basis, were short staffed and very busy, so there were practical difficulties in speaking with respondents”. So that’s all right then.

Leaving aside the question of how, if they are so poorly resourced, Sharia courts can possibly deliver equitable justice on complex issues, I do wonder if, say, a small business failed to file its tax return on the basis that they were ‘short staffed’, or simply couldn’t be bothered, they would be treated with similar compassion by HM Revenue & Customs. Probably not.

More pertinent, as the MoJ helpfully added, was the fact that “ respondents were wary of the stereotypical ways in which their organizations were represented in the media.” Well, if Sharia courts really are as appropriate as their supporters would have us believe, they’ve missed a golden opportunity set the record straight, have they not?

Pilgrimage to Karabakh

I’m just back from an 8 day, 75 mile walk through the magnificent mountain countryside of Nagorno-Karabakh in the southern Caucasus. I was with a group of more than 60 participants, including visitors from Burma, the US, Australia, France, South Africa and Germany, as well as from the UK.

Our pilgrimage took us across some strikingly beautiful countryside. ‘Nagorno’ means ‘mountainous’ and ‘Karabakh’ means ‘black garden’. There are upland meadows with masses of wild flowers, birds and other wildlife. The history of the country is equally rich. Armenia was the first nation in the world to formally adopt Christianity, and this is reflected in the wonderful churches and monasteries of the region, as well as in the ancient Armenian Apostolic Church itself. Our walk took us from Lachin in the west of Karabakh through to the famous 13th century Gandzasar monastery, which aptly means ‘hilltop treasure’ in Armenian.

It is always a great pleasure for me to visit this little country. My regular visits have two goals. The first is to visit the Rehabilitation Centre that HART supports in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. Here, great work takes place in the fields of physiotherapy, rehabilitation and the management of physical disabilities. It’s a tribute to the progress made that the Stepanakert centre has become an internationally recognized centre of excellence taking the latest techniques beyond the borders of Karabakh to Georgia, Azerbaijan, Abkhazia, Ossetia and Chechnya.

The second reason for my visits is to make more widely known the facts of the Karabakh/Azerbaijan conflict. There is now a fragile ceasefire, but it was not always so. In the early 1990s a full-scale war erupted when Azerbaijan attempted to violently drive out the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. The attempt failed, but Nagorno-Karabakh's future remains unresolved, with its independence unrecognized by the rest of the world. A solution to this injustice is long overdue.