Ethnic minority groups declared a recent High Court ruling a ‘landmark’ earlier this month, introducing as it does the legal precedent that civil actions can be decide not within the British court system, but in religious courts under the direction of the minority groups themselves.
The relevant case involved an Orthodox Jewish couple in their twenties, who had a religious wedding in 2006 and first lived in Israel, before returning to London for their first child to be born.
The couple were hoping to move to Toronto in Canada, but their marriage broke down in 2009 after the birth of their second child and disputes over access to the children led the father to begin court proceedings.
The father brought the court proceedings under the Hague Convention on child abduction, but before the case arrived in London the dispute was referred to a senior rabbi at the Beth Din of America in Manhattan, New York.
The judge, Mr Justice Baker, was asked to allow this and he decided it would be better for the dispute to be heard in a Beth Din because it would be in line with the couple’s beliefs – and with laws in England and Wales.
“The parties devout beliefs had been respected,” the judge said.
“The outcome was in keeping with English law, whilst achieved by a process rooted in Jewish culture to which the families belong.”
While Mr Justice Baker did add that the Beth Din ruling cannot in isolation be considered legally binding, his actions in accepting the Beth Din ruling have created a precedent that potentially paves the way for future efforts by ethnic minority groups to have the proceedings of their religious courts regarded as ‘comparable’ to the proceedings of the Crown Court, and eventually to be considered equally binding on any parties involved.
That this ruling is the ‘thin end of the wedge’ in this respect is exemplified by the way in which both Jewish and Islamic groups have welcomed this development.
The Jewish Chronicle described the case as ‘landmark’ and spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain told the Times: “If it leads to the eventual acceptance of Sharia court divorces, then Muslims will be very encouraged.”
This is of course yet another development in which the primacy of the British people and our long established legal system is being threatened and undermined by political pressure exerted by organised minority groups and if nothing is done to counter this threat, the day may soon come when British people will find themselves standing in the dock before a bench composed of Rabbis or Muslim clerics.
By Max Musson © 2013
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