Universal Justice?

In the West, its taken as normal, that in principle we have one set of secular laws for all of us to live under ....

Alternative Legal Systems
Opposed By Many In UK

.... regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, education or wealth.

Of course in practice, rich people can afford better lawyers, and so may get a better outcome, but that's not guaranteed. We also have an arbitration service with an alternative arbitration service for Jewish people, The Beth Din which is a Jewish authority, which offers agreeing members of the Jewish communities two separate services – civil arbitration (limited to civil proceedings only such as contracts), and religious rulings. Family law (divorce, alimony, child access and maintenance etc), and all criminal matters are outside their remit and are strictly British civil court matters. 

Sharia Demands Made By Extremists

However, the idea of a universal legal code is not accepted by all groups ... Muslims have tried to lobby for Sharia laws and councils in non Muslim countries, even though it would present clear dangers of both the abuse of women's rights, and highlight their lack of integration/separateness. Even so these courts have popped up in the UK and elsewhere since the 1980's under the guise of charities, who only deal with Islamic Nikah marriage ceremony rather than civil marriage contracts ... but unofficially they may well be operating as an alternative to the UK legal system.

Southall Black Sisters pressure group, calls the Sharia councils patriarchal and regressive and wants them shut down. They are firm in their opposition stating that religion and family law are too dangerous a mix to allow sharia councils to continue to operate. “Religion inherently discriminates against women,” stresses director Pragna Patel. "You cannot access justice if the people who are violating your rights are dispensing it.” The Muslim women who use these councils often do so to avoid being “treated as outcasts” by conservative communities, who view divorce as shameful.

Worldwide, the idea of a universal law code (especially a secular unbiased one), has not necessarily transferred in to practice in many places. Much of the problem is trying to accommodate religions. For instance India has a long way to go, as it considers once more the idea of having a Uniform Civil Code or UCC over the entire country. Currently it has different personal civil codes for each of its states, religions and ethnicities. 

So for example, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), told the Indian Law Commission that a common child adoption law cannot be allowed. On the 21st of May 2022 the AIMPLB said that closed adoption is prohibited in Islam, since there is a possibility of sexual relations between an adopted son and the adopting mother, or an adopted son with a biological daughter. AIMPLB member Kamal Faruqui, who was in the meeting, said that “We could consider some reasonable changes to our personal laws suggested by the Commission, as long as they are not in conflict with Islam. However, if any changes suggested are antithetical to the fundamental tenets of Islam, like allowing adoption, they wouldn’t be acceptable to the board."

Faruqui said that Islam allows, for providing for an orphan, " .... but they cannot stay with you as a family unit after they hit puberty as  .... all relations are ordained by Allah. Physical intimacy with a person with whom nikah and sexual relations are possible, is not permissible. So an adopted son cannot live in the same house as the mother or a biological daughter. What if a 60-year-old man has a young wife and they adopt a son, who soon grows up? What will his relationship with the mother be?” 

Islam also prohibits inheritance rights or giving one’s name to an ‘adopted’ (sponsored) child who must keep their original given names. Not all Muslims agree with this interpretation, but as the majority of conservative Mullahs do, then this is their official stance on the subject.

Similarly female inheritance rights are a subject of differences as although according to Islam, a daughter is entitled to a property share of her parents/fathers estate, its only half that of any brothers. This provision of the Muslim personal law is currently being challenged in the Delhi high court. Mr Faruqui had an answer for this as well. “In Islam, we do not have the concept of a kanyadan … The daughter continues to be the responsibility of her father even after marriage, so she gets a share in the property. However, her primary responsibility rests with her husband, so all her needs are looked after by him.” .... so that's that dealt with then, even though this is contrary to an Indian federal law of 2005, that amended the Hindu personal law and allowing daughters to have an equal share of inherited property as sons. This Islamic system is also contrary to UK, US and Western equality laws.

There was also the issue of child marriage — which is currently not prohibited in Islam — Faruqui said the AIMPLB may be receptive to some of the changes suggested by the Law Commission. However, he says that a blanket ban on child marriage may not be a good idea, since it should be allowed under some ‘extreme conditions’ if the [girl?] child has attained puberty. What these extreme circumstances would be he didn't clarify as there are none.

Then finally there is the matter of Talaq divorces ... In India, under Muslim personal laws, a man could divorce a woman by uttering the word 'Talaq' three times. This practise is banned in 22 Muslim countries, including Pakistan and Bangladesh, and declared unconstitutional by the High Court in India in 2017, but amongst Muslims, it continued, with some 574 cases reported after the ruling. The Indian parliament finally outlawed it in 2019 .... but many Muslims objected to its being outlawed, this despite the fact that the Triple Talaq divorce has no mention in Sharia Islamic law, or the Quran, and although it appears to be an invention by some Muslim men, it has existed for many centuries.

But other Indians have issues as well. Indian law denies alimony to a wife "living in adultery"  .... Justice S Nagamuthu of the Madras high court in southern India recently ruled that a woman divorced for being 'adulterous' could not claim maintenance from her ex-husband. The primary reason was that as it was accepted that the woman, identified as Kanimozhi in court documents, was adulterous, she was clearly not entitled to any maintenance from her ex-husband. 

So far, so uncontroversial (in Indian eyes ~ and perhaps in many western eyes), but he then added that to claim alimony, a woman must maintain "discipline" - in other words, remain celibate - even after her divorce. If she then resumes a sex life, then her rights to alimony cease, and that she should claim maintenance from the man she is committing adultery with. The woman concerned, was too poor to hire a good lawyer .... its also very likely that the adultery charge against this woman was not actually provable, but that she didn't know how to challenge the allegation.

Section 125 of the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which deals with alimony, spells out clearly the three circumstances in which a "wife" is not entitled to maintenance:

1. If she is living in adultery.
2. If she deserts her husband without giving any sufficient reason.
3. If they are living separately by mutual consent.

Not unsurprisingly women's rights activists have described the ruling as appalling, and 'obviously patriarchal' and simply sexist views by the judge, as they impose a lifetime punishment on women for divorcing (although I guess they consider that the idea of men supporting an ex-wife for life is OK, and apparently not a lifetime punishment 😉) ...

Faced with all the religious and patriarchal views in India, it seems that the uniform civil code has a long way to go, to get universal acceptance.