Recommendation 2: Awareness Campaigns
The second key recommendation focused on promoting cultural change within Muslim communities so that communities acknowledge women’s rights in civil law, especially in areas of marriage and divorce.
This includes awareness campaigns, educational programmes and other similar measures to be put in place to educate and inform women of their rights and responsibilities, including the need to highlight the legal protection civilly registered marriages provide.Alongside this, there was a strong emphasis on the need to ensure that sharia councils operate within the law and comply with best practice, non-discriminatory processes and existing regulatory structures. The Inquiry report states, ‘In particular, a clear message must be sent that an arbitration that applies sharia law in respect of financial remedies and/or child arrangements would fall foul of the Arbitration Act and its underlying protection.’12
For many scholars, the question of personal autonomy and choice underpins debates on the recognition of religious councils and tribunals in Britain. The debates fall largely within two spectrums of scholarly work. The first can be described broadly as orientalist discourses which accord Muslim women little if any agency and personal choice as members of Muslim families and communities, and the second points to the fact that all debates on equality and free choice are circumscribed by questions of religious and cultural ‘difference’. The extent to which free choice is therefore expressed can simply be one based on personal and strategic decision-making in the face of conflicting and competing demands.13
Thus, the language of choice, commitment and faith as described by the religious scholars fits in neatly with the discourse of belonging to a wider Muslim community (Umma) and the importance attached to the development and formation of a local Muslim community identity. So, what are the experiences of Muslim women using religious mechanisms of dispute resolution in matters of divorce? Do religious tribunals promote patriarchy and gender inequality?
In her chapter Elham Manea engages closely with the concept of legal pluralism as a contested subject of research.
The presence of different groups of immigrants has raised the question of whether they should be treated differently according to their religious or original national laws. At the heart of the discourses taking place currently on legal pluralism lays the question of how to balance equality and difference. While her critique of the theoretical framing produces important insights into her original fieldwork, presenting the context and consequences of the application of Islamic Law in the UK Sharia Councils and Muslim Arbitration Councils engages closely with the Inquiry findings and limitations of its recommendations. Naheed Ghauri’s chapter expressly questions the use of religious tribunals and women’s experience of domestic abuse, oppression and inequality. While variations in the situations of women emerge, the focus on power imbalances and gender inequalities in mediation demonstrates a lack of safeguards and the presence of power imbalances between parties.