Posted on 09/09/2005 6:29:22 AM PDT by Clive
TORONTO (CP) - Angry demonstrators likened the premier of Ontario to Afghanistan's extremist Taliban leaders Thursday as they urged Dalton McGuinty to dismiss the idea of allowing the use of Shariah law to settle family disputes.
About 300 people gathered outside the Ontario legislature for a protest billed as a global campaign to discourage the province from becoming the first Western jurisdiction to permit the use of religious rules critics consider an affront to human rights.
Speaker after speaker told the crowd McGuinty was naive to suggest that women's rights would not be trampled if Ontario allowed the controversial Shariah principles to be used to settle Muslim divorces, custody fights and inheritance disputes.
"These words are not coming from Ayatollahs (or) from Taliban leaders," Iranian refugee Mahmoud Ahmandi told the crowd.
"It's coming from the leader of Ontario's government; shame on you," he said as the protesters chanted "shame, shame."
That sentiment was echoed by Homa Arjomand, who helped to co-ordinate a series of protests Thursday across Canada and Europe comprised of members of 100 different women's and human rights groups.
"Either he (McGuinty) is naive, or he thinks people are stupid," Arjomand said. "Mr. McGuinty, don't tell me that all these 100 organizations are all a bunch of man-hating criminals who do nothing but make a fuss over an imaginary threat."
Amanda Dale of the YWCA warned McGuinty there would be a political price to pay if his government agrees to include Shariah law in the province's Arbitration Act, as recommended in a report last year by former attorney general Marion Boyd.
"I have one very important message for the premier of Ontario: we know the women's vote got you in," Dale said. "It can also get you out."
Ontario's flirtations with Shariah had critics across Canada and around the world standing up in protest.
In Montreal, about 100 people turned out in the rain to protest against the use of Shariah law in Ontario. Quebec has passed a law against the use of Muslim tribunals in the province.
Elahe Chokrai-Machouf, head of the Association of Iranian Women in Montreal, said Shariah law hurts the rights of women.
"We came here with the hope of living in a free and democratic and secular country," Chokrai-Machouf said.
Similar rallies were scheduled for Ottawa and Victoria, and Arjomand said smaller protests were held earlier Thursday in London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dusseldorf, Germany, where about 25 protesters picketed outside the Canadian consulate.
Since December, the Liberal government has been sitting on Boyd's report, which recommends that the province allow and regulate Shariah religious arbitrations in much the same way it does existing Catholic and Jewish tribunals.
Earlier this week, McGuinty said Attorney General Michael Bryant was still reviewing the report on Shariah and would make his recommendations at some point in the future.
Bryant's office issued a statement promising "there will be no binding family arbitration in Ontario that uses a set of rules or laws that discriminate against women."
Not everyone at the protest in Toronto was there to oppose Shariah, however.
Mubin Shaikh of the Canadian Muslim organization Nasjid-el-no was verbally attacked by some women at the rally as he tried to dispel what he called the many myths being propagated about Shariah, which he supports.
"It is partly racism, because you can see from the comments that people were making, like, 'Go back to where you come from,"' said Shaikh. "Well, I'm from here."
Shaikh said the behaviour of Islamic extremists with rigid interpretations of Shariah should not be considered mainstream views in the Muslim community.
Arjomand, meanwhile, said several women who were treated unfairly under Shariah law were afraid to appear at Thursday's rallies because of possible recriminations, which she warned could halt future attempts to stop Shariah from being adopted in Ontario.
"If anything happened to these women, the campaign would be ended," she said. "The fear among these communities would be so high, that no one would come out and talk."
"This is a clear message to Mr. McGuinty that we are organizing ourselves internationally," said Arjomand. "We women, and all human rights organizations, realize this is an attack and it's happening globally, and we have to fight it globally."
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So some Canadians do have a clue!
Shariah does not agree with Civil Law.
Jewish and Canon Law do not conflict.
Sharia is seen as superior in all respects to the host countries system. The problem is this:
If Sharia is applied for family law, that is fine. But,
Sharia is also a system of laws that apply to criminal and civil cases.
That, conflicts. It is not merely a body of law for family disputes.
A few of us do.
So it begins.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I said it before, and I'll say it again. Appeasing islamists DOES NOT WORK!!!!
Have the morons in government there actually studied Sharia law enough to make the determination that it will not be in conflict with anything in the Canadian civil/criminal code?
Allahu Akbar, eh.
They gonna shoot and chop off heads in Canduh? I'll fish elsewhere, thank you.
I actually attended a community based meeting last night after the protest and heard Homa Arjomand, Coordinator of the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada. They run a website www.nosharia.com with more information and she was particularly passionate about the view that there should be 'no faith based arbitration allowed period'. It was quite an interesting and lively discussion - in particular the answer to a 'non-muslim questioner' in the Q and A who asked simply 'what's the big deal if this is all about the internal dispute resolution/arbitration mechanism of the group's members'? That is actually at the heart of the whole thing because one assumes that if one is willing to join a group, they then should willingly comply with the group's rules - the option is always open to leave. In this case, the fall back position is that if the issue at hand falls under provincial/federal law, that applicable law would have to supersede anything that would be rendered by the sharia court. The same is true regardless of whether one is talking about any other 'group' including dispute resolution/arbitration processes that exist in organizations such as the Roman Catholics. My guess is that the bigger issue is that the women simply don't trust their own faith even though they are quick to point out that there is supposedly no connection whatever between Muslim faith and sharia court. This is quite an interesting issue because of broader implications to any group or am I missing something here?
This is happening right next door to us, but will soon be coming to places like Michigan (or did it already while I was blinking?)! RESIST!!
This is GROUND ZERO...
Any court in America will enforce a decision by two private parties to have their dispute resolved in accordance with Sharia law (so long as such enforcement does not violate American law).
Private parties have a lot of leeway when deciding how their private disputes will be settled.
That is the case in the US. Many Freepers on these threads are surprised to find out that private parties in the US are free to have their disputes settled using any system of law they desire, including Sharia.
Sharia is coming. The Liberla MPP's don't want to lose the radical muslim vote. The feminists will stay on the plantation so there is nothing to lose.
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