Conclusion

Context matters. Looking at the context of women’s reality allows us to understand why women are turning to shari’a councils in the UK in the first place. They go to them because they want a religious divorce.

And so do consequences. They too matter. Again, and I will not tire of repeating this: The moment the state starts to situate rights within a group rights frame rather than an individual frame, the out­come will likely be segregation, inequality, and discrimination. The weakest will be left vulnerable, subject to abuse and discrimination. This is the main consequence of legal pluralism in its two forms: weak and strong.

A key consequence of introducing weak legal pluralism and with it Islamic law in Western legal systems will be a stratified citizenry, involving two types of women: Western women who can enjoy their rights based on the state’s laws, and migrant women who cannot. The system in the UK has in effect created these two types of citizens: one enjoys equality before the law and the other does not because of their religious identity. These women suffer from the double discrim­ination syndrome: in addition to gender discrimination they are also denied access to their legal rights. Indeed, this stratification will only further cement the walls around the closed parallel societies.

In addition, the system is, de facto, legitimising polygamous mar­riages, and facilitating child marriage and forced marriage. Most sig­nificantly for the cohesion and unity of society and the fight against extremism, it has continued to separate minority groups from their wider society and has given Islamists a free hand in reinforcing their social control over closed communities.

Throughout this chapter I have taken a position that defends the universality of human rights. Using the words of Frank La Rue, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, these universal hu­man rights are simply the ‘minimum standards for protection’⁵⁹ for every person in any society. They are the minimum that one should expect in any society. The struggles of men and women fighting for these universal rights in different societies of the globe testify to this fact.

I argue therefore that special treatments for specific groups and the introduction of religious laws will only undermine this very univer­sality and the protection granted by the international standards of human rights. I maintain that, rather than deliberating about whether human rights are universal or culturally determined, we should use a consequence-based approach to add needed substance to the discus­sion. We must bring in the human face of the suffering that results when human rights are violated - whether those are the rights of indi­viduals or a larger society.

Such an approach can illuminate the grave consequences of violat­ing human rights and make the case that doing so is by nature bad. Once we establish this fact, we will dare to make the moral judgment that these violations are wrong. It will also help us turn the discussion around. Rather than making frantic efforts to answer the question of whether human rights are universal, the question will be: why are these rights being violated in the first place?⁶⁰

A consequence-based approach to human rights reflects the idea that from a moral point of view what is most important is to ‘con­sider how one’s actions are likely to affect others’. After all, ‘It is the consequences of one’s actions, not the intentions behind them, which form the most relevant benchmark for measuring the moral worth of an action.’⁶¹ If we are to apply this approach in concrete steps to our subject matter, we should look at the consequences on two levels. On the individual level, what individual harm is being done to the girl or woman through the application of a parallel legal system (shari’a law)? And on the societal level, what are the general negative consequences for society of segregating groups and creating what Amartya Sen called the monoculturalism of closed communities?

Once we understand the consequences of the parallel religious le­gal orders in the UK and of efforts to introduce group and identity politics and policies based on difference, we see the need for specific policy recommendations.