CR spoke with CBC about women's rights

Olave Snelling

In March, the Christian Broadcasting Council held their annual Symposium in the House of Lords on 'Islamist Resurgence: Shari'a and freedom'. CBC's Vice President Baroness Cox chaired the meeting and spoke on matters arising out of her Private Members Bill on Gender Equality and Shari'a. With a second reading due in May or June, Cross Rhythms caught up with CBC CEO Olave Snelling to find out more.

Sarah J: Just give us a quick overview of what your organisation is about.

Olave: Christian Broadcasting Council is about lifting up the name of Jesus in the media. That's a simplification of it. It started in 1983 in the House of Lords and has kept going ever since. It was more of a lobbying organisation in the beginning, because there was so little overtly Christian broadcasting in Britain. There was the BBC and that was fairly limited in its expression of a pulsating Christian faith, so obviously things have changed enormously since then and CBC has gone on as strongly as ever.

We do various things; we pray for people in the media; we receive prayer requests from many different broadcasters including those who are working in the BBC. Another aspect of it is our award system whereby we congratulate and encourage all those who are working in all aspects of the media, producing programming with entirely Christian content. Another aspect of it is the work that we do in the House of Lords. Every year we have a CBC symposium in the House of Lords, where we take an issue that is high in the public profile and we go at it in a Christian manner giving a Christian reflection on whatever the subject is and we work with Christian media people throughout the country. That's really what we are about.

Sarah J: Presenting a case to the House of Lords is that about challenging government about key issues within society and ensuring that Christian values can remain?

Olave: That's true in the sense that we choose speakers very carefully. Our speakers are high profile in the country and they are speaking from a Christian perspective into an issue and therefore in that sense that is challenging Government, yes. In the most recent symposium that we had, Baroness Cox who is our President put forward a Private Members' Bill. It had its first reading and is having its second reading in May/June. Therefore we're dealing with a piece of possible legislation and giving it a wider airing as much as we possibly can so that people can understand all the complexities and the arguments.

Sarah J: Tell me about the essence of what Baroness Cox said.

Olave: The background to this particular bill - it's called the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality Bill) - she put it forward and she feels very strongly about it, because as you know she is a great defender and champion against injustice.

In this country Muslim women are told very often that they should take their case and grievances to the Shari'a court. What Baroness Cox is trying to do is to make people understand that what we have in this country is almost parallel legal systems running. There is Shari'a law and our law. When we get to the point where a Muslim woman wants to bring a case, very often she is cowered into accepting to go to a Shari'a court where she might not get anything like the justice that she would get in a British court.

We had an example, this is a quote from the Director of IKWRO, which is the Iranian and Kurdish woman's rights organisation, she says, 'We have endless stories of women who have no option but to submit to the rulings of the Shari'a courts. Such councils also misrepresent themselves as courts of legal authority. That is what Baroness Cox argues and the women remain ignorant of their true rights under English or UK law'.

There's another quote from somebody called Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the Secular Society. It's interesting that a Secular Society is just as interested as Christians are about what is happening. He says this country is sleep walking into a de facto Shari'a parallel system, particularly disadvantaging the vulnerable.

Technically Shari'a is not enforceable in Britain, but in reality it holds sway in certain communities in breach of human rights. The rights of women are not being protected by Shari'a law. Enormous injustices are perpetrated.

Sarah J: Can you give me some examples of the differences?

Olave: In a case at Nuneaton the Shari'a court adjudicated on an inheritance dispute between three sisters and two brothers and in accordance with Shari'a law principles the men were giving double the inheritance of the women.

Another example happened in 2007. Radio 4 was told that a stabbing case was decided upon by an unofficial Somali court sitting in South East London. The killer's son told the police it would be settled out of court. A Shari'a hearing was allegedly held with the elders deciding that the assailant should compensate the victim. It's nothing like the full force of the law; in other words somebody was killed; all that happened was that the assailant compensates the victim. That's not the full force of the law at all and it's very difficult for women.

Baroness Cox, in our meeting, tried to give as many examples so that we could understand that a woman who has been raped, if she took that case to a Shari'a court all that would happen is that she would be told that she would have to find and bring to the court four male Muslim witnesses to back up her case, or not, as the case may be. Then what happens is she is then condemned and convicted and ghastly things can happen to her, because she has brought shame on the community. She has committed adultery or fornication or whatever you want to call it, instead of her being the victim.

In another case there was a dispute over an inheritance. A Muslim woman could not appear in court, so she had to appeal to her nearest male relative, which happened to be a seventeen year old in Jordan in order to come before the court because she can't do it herself.

These kinds of things multiplied by a thousand times over are what are happening and it's very difficult. Women come into a situation where they are extremely intimidated and come off by far the worse, particularly in the area of domestic abuse. Under our law we would want the victim to be protected from intimidation. There are all kinds of things and so that is what the bill is about, trying to say that Muslim women should come under the protection of English law.

Sarah J: So does that mean that Baroness Cox is advocating the idea that Shari'a courts need to be closed down in the UK?

Olave: What she's trying to do is to point out that there are two parallel legal systems operating and that for those who fall under the jurisdiction of a Shari'a court and can't get access to an English court, the outcome is very often detrimental. What she's putting to the Houses of Parliament is that a variety of Muslim bodies called by different names, are portraying themselves as being able to make legally binding decisions for members of the Muslim community and sometimes the Arbitration Act is used to support this claim. The reality is that under UK law, such bodies simply cannot decide the family and criminal law matters that they give the impression of adjudicating on. It's a difficult problem. Decisions that are being made, they don't stack up when you apply the stringencies of the UK law; for example the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal admitted overseeing six cases of domestic violence apparently working in tandem with police investigation. In each case the women who had been abused withdrew their complaints from the police, although the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal judges suggested that the husband take out the management clause, on advice from Muslim elders, with no further punishment. This is in cases where women have been severely beaten up.

Sarah J: Whereas under the UK legislation it would be an act of grievous bodily harm?

Olave: That's right. It gets more complicated actually the deeper you go, because for example a woman married under Shari'a law might not be legally married under UK law and in cases where something has happened and had to come before the court, the UK law would say, can you show us that you have been legally married under Shari'a law and this has proved incredibly difficult. In many cases, women have to go back to their homeland to find a marriage certificate, which they never find and so they can't bring evidence that they are legally married to a UK court.

Sarah J: And obviously if you can demonstrate that you are legally married that gives you certain rights to assets and things like that?

Olave: Yes. It gets terribly complicated and any breakdown in the marriage, the woman is seen as betraying the community and very often she would find herself severely abused, if not killed, which is very drastic indeed. It's a really seriously difficult problem.

I'm so full of admiration for Baroness Cox personally and others, who are supporting her and say, look guys we've got to do something about this. We've got to make sure that Muslim women have recourse to the law of the country in which they are living; not to come under the jurisdiction of a Shari'a court, which is what would be the natural course of events; but then their chance of getting justice gets more remote.

Sarah J: If people want to find out more about this and they want to be involved with championing the cause of making sure that women have equal rights in legislation how can they do that?

Olave: They can get in touch with CBC. We've got an email which is info@cbc.org.uk. They can look up on our website www.cbc.org.uk and they can get on to Baroness Cox's website and her organisation is called HART, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust.

The next big thing is going to be the second reading which will be May/June and we want to be very active in that and get our people who are communicators, filmmakers and broadcasters to really pick this strand up and run with it because the more publicity it gets the better it is.