Once we had a common law...

On of the country's leading legal figures, Baroness Butler-Schloss, head of the Family Division, has followed the Archbishop by advocating greater incorporation of Sharia Law into our legal system.

In a warning to judges to stop granting civil divorces to Muslim couples who are separating until the couples had been through a religious law, she was trying to protect women. Under Sharia law only men have the power to end marriages. The consequence was that unless the couple underwent a Sharia divorce, with its one-sidedness, the man could claim afterwards that they were still married, even if a civil divorce had been granted. The woman would then not be able to re-marry within the Muslim community. The man could, of course, add another wife under Sharia Law but would not be guilty of bigamy under civil law.

In fairness to the Baroness, an Act of 2002 has apparently already conceded the principle in the case of Jewish Law, and she was merely suggesting extending it to the Muslims.

One question was why it was granted to Jewish Law in the first place, and why not to Christian?
Roman Catholics after all do not recognise divorce, but they have not been granted this privilege.

The more important question is the failure to assert the common law principle, that all marriages however conducted must meet the requirements of the civil law and to be ended must meet the conditions of the same law. The problem exists for the Muslims only because of their discrimination against women, which ought to be illegal when once they become nationals here.

This all seems to stem from an alien politic which asserts that men have rights which women lack. Surely this is the way to treat the problem. If you live here, then national law is superior to sectarian law. The Human Rights Act doesn't hesitate to intervene in cases involving atheists or christians, why does it not act here?