11-30-03
There was an interesting story in the Canadian press recently. It seems that some in the Muslim community there have every intention of instituting insane Sharia style laws to govern its own community within Canada itself. They seem to feel it perfectly reasonable to ignore an entire country's laws and custom and institute one not only foreign to their adopted country's sensibilities but one wholly antithetical to them.
A convention of Muslim leaders has "elected" a 30 man council called a Darul-Qada intended to be called the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice (Canada). It has been called "the latest step in a long struggle to have Islamic law recognized in Canada", by the Law Times News.
Judy Van Rhijn of the Law Times News wrote that this was important because "Muslims must resolve all their commercial and personal disputes according to its (the Sharia) tenets." She also quoted a former Pakistani federal minister who assured the reader ..."of the effectiveness of arbitration in cost and time compared to the great mental agony and spiritual distress caused families if matters drag on or are heavily publicized through court proceedings." Leading the reader, I suppose, to assume that western laws are so terribly detrimental to the fragile Muslim community!
But according to jihadwatch.com "Sharia is also a comprehensive system of societal laws, including ones that mandate the institutionalized subjugation of non-Muslims (dhimmitude) and the waging of jihad against them. Many Muslims believe that once a Muslim community becomes a majority in any nation, Sharia must be instituted there. Has Canada just taken the first step?"
Jihadwatch also reported that secular Canadian courts may have no jurisdiction in matters handled by the Darul-Qada. They report, "once an arbitrator decides cases, it is final and binding. The parties can go to the local secular Canadian court asking that it be enforced. The court has no discretion in the matter."
If this is true and the Canadian courts have but to enforce the decisions handed down by this new "court" than this is truly a first step in the destruction of the Canadian Court system. The Canadians will have allowed their laws to be replaced by the whim or tradition from the homelands of any immigrant community that lands there.
It will be interesting to see what response the Canadian authorities have to this story. But given the constant politically correct direction the Canadian government has drifted, chances are they will ignore it and hope it just goes away. This will, in turn, empower the Muslim community to further strive to institute the barbaric Sharia laws in Canada and the Canadian government will find it hard to shut them down if they ignore them for too long.
By Warner Todd Huston
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