I’ve been mixing it up at the Corner over the merits of the anti-Sharia movement. In addition to the replies I’ve received there from Andrew Bostom, David French, Andrew McCarthy, and David Yerushalmi, I’ve received another reply from David Goldman, a former editor here at First Things.
Goldman faults me for failing to speak out about the problem of Muslim wife-beating. The Quranically legitimated threat of violence in Muslim households, he says, renders any domestic arrangement contracted under Sharia compulsive of necessity—and so morally repugnant.
In addition to this theological critique, Goldman suggests that Muslim women here in the US suffer a notably high rate of domestic abuse:
The president of the North American Council for Muslim Women, Sharifa Alkhateeb, estimated in a 1998 study that physical violence occurred in about 10% of Muslim marriages in the United States.
But a report from the Center for Disease Control cited by the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault suggests that, if anything, this is a notably low rate of domestic abuse:
Two surveys of married couples in the United States conducted in the 1970s and 1980s found that some kind of violence between spouses had occurred during the previous year in 16 percent of the homes surveyed. In addition, 28 percent of couples surveyed reported marital violence at some point in their marriages. Researchers have found comparable rates of domestic violence in numerous other nations, including Canada and New Zealand.
Whatever the merits of Goldman’s readings of the Islamic theory of authority in the household, the actual situation among American Muslims is not near so dire as he suggests. This is the danger inherent in strong theoretical readings: they sometimes miss the facts on the ground.
But even if the situation in the Muslim community were as Goldman says it is, it still wouldn’t alter our opinion of anti-Sharia laws. We have a duty to enact and enforce just laws to protect women, but those will be laws against domestic violence and spousal rape, not against Sharia. Muslim legal theory can insist on whatever it wants, but such insistence will be hollow so long as we enforce existing American law—which we emphatically must do.
June 18th, 2012 | 10:47 am
Don’t most states consider marriages that are the product of compulsion to be void because only a voluntary choice to marry is availing? In which case, are we to believe that no Muslims are validly married?
June 18th, 2012 | 11:21 am
In Islam women and men both to marry according to their choice. Marraige by force is not permitted. If there are any forcelful marraiges it is only because of the cuture of those countries. Please do not mix religion and culture, as these are two cpmpletely seperate things.
June 18th, 2012 | 11:22 am
I don’t think you should expect accurate reporting about Muslim domestic abuse.
June 18th, 2012 | 11:34 am
@Sally, are you implying that Muslims never marry of their free will? In fact, the consent of both the male and female is an absolute necessity in order for a Islamic marriage to be valid. Additionally, did you know that in most interpretations of Shariah-law even a small visible mark on a woman’s body renders whatever physical action her husband took against her forbidden and therefore subject to legal punishment. If you look at laws regarding domestic violence in this country you will note that the severity of the violence determines whether or not the woman can prosecute her husband for physical abuse. A woman who says her husband smacked her, yet has no physical evidence to substantiate this claim has no legal recourse. Thus, what you see permitted in Islam as “wife beating” is really no different than what is legally permitted in the US.
Shariah courts of the Ottoman empire also enforced the same three step process for reconciliation (verbally admonish, cease marital relations, and then use mild physical force) on men who denied their wives the rights they were entitled to. There is much more to this Quranic injunction than can be gleaned from a mere superficial reading and the general interpretation accepted by Muslims is that this verse is meant to prevent spousal abuse, not promote it. Any form of physical correction used on the husband or wife is meant to be a last resort to reconcile and in the event that it doesn’t work then the couple is to separate. Not suspend one another in a perpetual state of violence.
June 18th, 2012 | 11:38 am
VQ: It’s an estimate, not a report.
June 18th, 2012 | 11:47 am
But even if there is more physical violence in a Muslim marriage, what does this have to do with passing laws to forbid courts from considering Sharia? Two business men enter a contract with terms from Sharia and the contract becomes disputed. How does preventing a court from considering the businessmen’s choice of law help women who are facing domestic violence?
Or to take an example from marriage, a husband and wife upon divorce have a dispute about a delayed dowery term in the marriage contract. Under these new state laws, the court cannot consider the Sharia terms governing this dispute.
In most people’s minds “Sharia” has no meaning other than violent images from abroad. Of course we all oppose such actions. But passing laws to prevent Muslims from going about their daily affairs in accordance with such mundane matters as how to eat, pray, marry, divorce, write a will, conduct business, etc. does nothing to prevent violence either abroad or here. We already have laws against violence, and no Muslims are exempt from them.
June 18th, 2012 | 12:14 pm
I read David Goldman’s article and it was very disappointing. Here’s his main point regarding why we need anti-Sharia laws:
“To the extent that local courts may turn a blind eye to Muslim domestic violence on the spurious grounds of cultural relativism, legislatures have an interest in directing that the dilution of individual rights under American law is unacceptable.”
But he offers no evidence that any US court is doing this. Many cultures accept wife abuse, and the courts don’t tolerate it. Then he offers a catch-22 that he knows ahead of time that no Muslim can nakedly accept: He says that he will oppose anti-Sharia laws once a single Muslim leader publicly abjures a passage in the Koran telling men to hit their wives to correct them.
He knows that no one will take him up on his offer because abjuring this passage in the Koran would be apostasy for Muslims, who believe every word in the book comes from the mouth of God.
I don’t believe that “failing to abjure” this passage means that all Muslim men hit their wives — there are all kinds of ways of finessing the meaning of the words, but they can’t come out and say they are wrong. It’d be like a Catholic being required to say that the Eucharist is not the Body of Christ sometimes in order for them to have civil rights. They’re not going to do it.
Look – if a Muslim guy hits his wife, he gets the same treatment in our courts as a Jewish or Christian guy. These anti-Sharia laws don’t make a whit of difference about it, and Goldman knows it.
There is not a single argument in his article that even defends the anti-Sharia laws — he’s just disappointed in Robby George for refusing to help come up with a “better anti-Sharia law” that would be constitutional and would address some un-disclosed problem that our current laws aren’t addressing (which he fails to even articulate or identify).
I really have lost respect for Goldman on this one. I used to think he was a sensible critic, but this article makes me think he’s just a demagogue.
June 18th, 2012 | 12:20 pm
“@Sally, are you implying that Muslims never marry of their free will? In fact, the consent of both the male and female is an absolute necessity in order for a Islamic marriage to be valid.”
Sunnishine: It was Goldman who was suggesting this, I was just pointing out the ramifications of his overblown rhetoric. My comment was meant to respond to the article above, which says: Goldman complains about “the problem of Muslim wife-beating. The Quranically legitimated threat of violence in Muslim households, he says, renders any domestic arrangement contracted under Sharia compulsive of necessity—and so morally repugnant.”
My point was that if this is so (which I don’t agree with) then not only are Muslim marriages “morally repugnant” but also legally void. Goldman’s point is surely wrong, that was the point of my post.
June 18th, 2012 | 12:50 pm
Sally Rogers
You make some excellent points, but, as I have said before, the difficulties associated with such laws apply, not only to contracts, but to questions of personal status and succession.
Consider the case of two Algerian citizens, who go through a form of marriage in Algeria and subsequently come to reside, or acquire property, in the United States. Suppose an American court is called on to adjudicate on the validity of that marriage. Hitherto, every court in the civilised world would apply their personal law, the law of Algeria, which happens to be Sharia Law. Is it seriously suggested this question should be decided by the laws of Arizona or Tennessee?
Again, by the law of all nations, succession to movables, wherever situated, is governed by the personal law of the deceased, the law of his or her citizenship or domicile at the time of death. Suppose the deceased is the national of a country, where Sharia is the law of the land and ownss US assets, say a bank account, Treasury bonds and other investments. What law, if not Sharia, is to govern the ranking of creditors or of beneficiaries?
Similar questions can arise around the validity of wills, the age of majority, legitimacy, guardianship, divorce and others too numerous to mention.
Of course, no court is required to enforce foreign laws that conflict with their own concepts of public order, but that should be applied only to particular cases and not to a whole system of jurisprudence.
June 18th, 2012 | 1:30 pm
ah, but are we comparing apples to oranges? Note that the Muslim rate cites “physical violence” — unfortunately necessary because some advocates talk about “violence” when referring to emotional abuse. What acts were classified as violent under either definition?
The questions asked are also important. If you ask a man whether his wife has abused him, you will, overwhelmingly, be told “No.” If you get down to the nitty-gritty and ask whether she’s punched him, or slapped him, or what have you, you discover that women are as likely to batter their husbands as vice versa.
June 18th, 2012 | 1:42 pm
Michael PS — If it was not clear from my comments, I oppose the anti-sharia laws. They are un-workable and un-necessary and are the product of (sometimes well-intentioned) fears about terrible cultural practices in Muslim-majority nations. Unless we become a Muslim-super-majority nation, these practices will not be legally sanctioned in the United States.
It is extremely unlikely that we will suddenly be overrun by hundreds of millions of Muslims, which are the kinds of numbers that would be necessary to amend our constitution to permit Sharia to govern our country. But if it were the case that say 80% of our population was suddenly Muslim, then they would surely have the authority under Article V of the Constitution to amend it, and no “anti-Sharia” law in Oklahoma would avail us.
June 18th, 2012 | 6:52 pm
I went over and read the comments on the NRO site and I cannot believe how completely incoherent they are. The people who want the anti-sharia laws display the most shocking kinds of arguments about what it is they think these laws are going to do and why they are necessary. They seem absolutely certain that we are facing a dire threat, but what is that threat?
From what I can tell, the chief fear is that “liberal judges” will start issuing judgments that will somehow lead us to all be judged under Sharia laws. They point to a single case in New Jersey in which a judge made a pretty obvious legal mistake which was easily and swiftly corrected by the appeals court. Out of the hundreds of thousands of decisions issued by our courts every year, the fact that there was only this one decision that they can point to seems to pretty much confirm that Judges are not churning out Sharia judgments. Why liberal American judges would wish to establish Sharia as the law of the land is also never explained.
The other fear is that legislators will start enacting “sharia” provisions into law. We’d have to see quite a huge increase in either Muslim conversions or immigration to make this happen. But even still, these laws if they were ever passed would also have to pass muster under the US Constitution.
Let’s say, for instance, that a state passes a law requiring that those guilty of adultery must be stoned to death, as some claim Sharia requires. We have a federal constitution with the 8th amendment – it doesn’t allow “cruel and unusual punishment,” and it’s also been interpreted to ban capital punishment for crimes that don’t involve homicide. So in that sense, the US Constitution already “bans” this aspect of Sharia.
I have really tried to find a single coherent case in favor of these anti-Sharia laws, or an example of a problem that the anti-Sharia laws would fix. I find many of the sharia-justified practices in Muslim countries to be absolutely abhorrent — but we already have laws to prevent such practices.
The more I read from anti-sharia advocates, the less convincing is their case. The hysteria around this issue is more frightening than any of the scenarios they point to as signs of “creeping sharia” in the United States.
June 19th, 2012 | 3:44 am
Sally Rogers
In France, the courts have had to address the question of marriages that are actually or potentially polygamous by the law under which they were contracted and where the parties, or one of them has subsequently settled in France and, perhaps, acquired French nationality. Some of these marriages were governed by Sharia; others by African customary law.
The tendency has been to recognise maintenance and succession rights arising from such marriages. Of course, plural marriage by French citizens or on French soil are void, under the Code Civil.
The question has been ignored by the legislature and the jurists (la doctrine), so, at the moment it is governed by “La jurisprudence” (the practice of the courts)
June 19th, 2012 | 9:09 pm
My comment was meant to respond to the article above, which says: Goldman complains about “the problem of Muslim wife-beating. The Quranically legitimated threat of violence in Muslim households, he says, renders any domestic arrangement contracted under Sharia compulsive of necessity—and so morally repugnant.”
It is important to note that there appears to be a difference in kind between Muslim domestic violence as opposed to the domestic violence familiar to the US outside of Islam.
Specifically: Muslims – males and females both, in at least some cases – seem to accept that using brutal, even fatal, violence, is an acceptable way of disciplining one’s family and keeping order in one’s household.
The only possible solution to that is stigmatizing anyone who holds such views, and stigmatizing anyone who sympathizes with such views. Families, networks, and communities within our nation that support this behavior must be shamed until they realize they have a choice: they can live within our norms, or they can embrace this barbaric practice, but they can’t have it both ways: if they refuse to repudiate the practice of men harming and even murdering wives and daughters, they lose all the social benefits that are normally associated with membership within a community.
We have no problem shaming, stigmatizing, and ostracizing fascists, violent white supremacists and other bigots who advocate for what is unacceptable, so why shouldn’t we demand the same for those who support domestic violence that results in the horrific murders of women and children?
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact