The House of Lords today drew stark attention to the conflict between sharia and UK law, calling the Islamic legal code “wholly incompatible” with human rights legislation. The remarks came as the Lords considered the case of a woman who, if she was sent back to Lebanon, would be obliged under sharia law to hand over custody of her 12-year-old son to a man who beat her, threw her off a balcony and, on one occasion, attempted to strangle her. The woman was seeking asylum in the UK to avoid the provisions of sharia law that give fathers or other male family members the exclusive custody of children over seven. In the most high-profile UK criticism of the family law provisions of sharia law so far, the Lords stated that these provisions breached the mother’s rights to family life and the right against discrimination and were severely disruptive to the child. The comments followed months of debate over the appropriateness of incorporating sharia courts into the UK’s legal system. Such a move has been advocated by figures including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Lord Phillips, the new senior law lord. The minister for community cohesion, Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, said recently that sharia courts risked entrenching unequal bargaining power between the sexes. Afua Hirsch reports.
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