Using Islamic Legal Principles and Terms of Alternative Dispute Resolution

As an institution for Muslims in the UK, mat uses Islamic legal principles and at the same time claims to adhere to the framework of English law in order to legitimise the procedures on offer.

Similarly, Ian Edge considers the, “recognition of such [i.e. religious] prac­tices by the state and [...] their inclusion within laws promulgated by the state’^[50] as the only option for the use of Islamic law in the UK, whereas any form of legal pluralism was not acceptable. He states that by facilitating the use of Islamic law - the Arbitration Act 1996 speaks about, “the law chosen by the parties [i.e. to a dispute] as applicable to the substance of the dispute, or [.] such other considerations as are agreed by them or determined by the tribunal’^{[51] [52] [53] - “English law already incorporates aspects of Islamic law into state law.”5° Therefore, Edge does not see English and Islamic law as two parallel systems existing in the UK separately, but as a hierarchy, in which the law of the land grants individuals the possibility to deviate from its rules in a specified area of law and to adhere to a different set of norms instead.}

Disputants approaching the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal have made their choice to contact a “Muslim” institution and thus most likely expect a solution that is in accordance with Islamic principles. In fact they can ask for mat to apply the principles of their favoured school of law. Siddiqi says they can take the four Sunni schools as well as the Jafari school of law into account, with the Hanafi school being the prevalent one if no other was chosen and for Non- Muslims.5⁴ At the same time he mentions that rather than drawing upon “the actual letter”, i.e. drawing on the sources of Islamic law, scholars at mat would “look at the principles, the spirit of the law”.55 He states that “everything in Islamic commercial law is based on common sense and fairness and sharing’^⁶ and highlights that principles of moral value like the ineffectiveness of unethi­cal clauses such as usury are what distinguishes an Islamic ruling from the de­cision an English judge would take.5⁷ Other than that, he claims, there were no main differences in finding solutions in any of the law systems, whether it is Islamic or English law, as they were all in fact basically the rules of natu­ral justice.5⁸

The procedures for the various cases received and handled by mat carry English terms rather than classical Arabic ones. mat uses different mecha­nisms of alternative dispute resolution (adr) according to the nature of each case.