Defining the limits of exceptionalism

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: state by providing an alternative arena in which disputes can be settled. As Maurits Berger, a Dutch specialist on Islam and the law, points out, most English-speaking countries have a tradition of dealing with family law through arbitration—voluntary procedures to whose outcome the parties are bound. (Things are different in continental Europe, where the nearest equivalent is non-binding mediation services.)

The Canadian province of Ontario is the clearest case of an English-speaking place where fear of Islam made religious arbitration untenable. An uproar began in 2003 when Syed Mumtaz Ali, a retired Ontario lawyer, said he was setting up a sharia court to settle family law disputes for Muslims. Such arrangements were allowed by the province’s 1991 Arbitration Act and could carry the force of law.

The proposal caused an instant backlash, right across the religious and political spectrum; many Muslim groups were opposed too. Marion Boyd, a retired attorney-general, investigated the matter and initially recommended that the Arbitration Act should continue to allow disputes to be adjudicated by religious bodies—subject to stricter regulation by the state. But that turned out not to be good enough for Ontarians who were nervous of sharia. In September 2005 the province’s premier, Dalton McGuinty, decided to prohibit all settlement of family matters based on religious principles under the Arbitration Act. Religious arbitrators could still offer services in the settlement of disputes, but their rulings would not have legal effect or be enforceable by the courts. The province’s laws were duly changed.

The political background to these moves is no secret: a general wariness of Islam prompted not only by the September 2001 terrorist attacks, but also by NATO’s war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, in which scores of Canadian soldiers have died. Moves to establish sharia tribunals, be they ever so voluntary, aroused “quite a lot of anti-

Muslim feelings”, says Alia Hogben of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (which opposed the tribunals). “It allowed people to say, here they come, they are going to ask for more and more.” Apart from a general fear of theocracy, says Jeffrey Reitz, a professor at the University of Toronto, Canadians were nervous that “some of the progress that’s been made with gender equality might be lost if we begin to accommodate various group that have less concern...”