Comment the RC are still at it in Poland. See 1993 Concordat

The most contentious points of the concordat in the public controversy over it in Poland were the obligation for the state to provide Catholic religious education in public schools if requested and the “concordat marriage” provison which calls for changes in Polish marital law to deny those married under Canon Law the right to seek a civil divorce.
Text on:

http://www.concordatwatch.eu

Article 10

1. From the moment of solemnisation, matrimony according to Canon Law shall be subject to such effects as a marriage contracted according to Polish law, if

(i) between the spouses there exist no impediments according to Polish law
(ii) upon the solemnisation of marriage the persons concerned make a joint expression of will to such effect and
(iii) the solemnisation of marriage has been registered in civil registers and notice has been served at the State Civil Registry within five days from the solemnisation of the marriage; this time limit may be prolonged, should it not have been observed due to force majeure, until such time as the situation is resolved.

2. Preparation for the celebration of marriage according to Canon Law shall involve instructing the spouses on the indissolubility of Canon Law marriage and on the legal provisions of Polish law concerning the effects of marriage.

3. It is within the exclusive competence of ecclesiastical authorities to make a judgement as to the validity of Canon Law marriage, as well as any other grounds laid down by Canon Law.

4. Passing judgements on matrimonial cases within within the limits of Polish legislation falls within the exclusive competence of State civil courts.

5. The question of notification of ajudication referred to in Subsections (ii) and (iii) may be subject to proceedings in accordance with Article 27.

6. With a view to making the current Article practicable, changes which need to be made to Polish law shall be made to Polish legislation.

Historically, Islam was at its most benign when it was most thoroughly dissolved into a rich surrounding non-Muslim culture. The glories of the Abbasid era, for instance, happened when the overwhelming majority of people living within the Caliphate were non-Muslims. It was the existing Roman Christian, Persian and Jewish dhimmi culture which civilized the Muslim Arabs – just as it was the existing Chinese culture which civilized the descendants of Genghis Khan. Until the discovery of oil, the Arabian gulf – the one place where purist Islam was never tempered – was always considered a barbarous backwater, even by Arabs.

And there were always times when “back to basics” Islam and the example of Muhammad would return with a vengeance. These were always bad times for non-Muslims. I urge you to read more about the Islamic conquests of India, especially the actions of Mahmud of Ghazni and Timur The Great. The Indian historian K.S. Lal has estimated that these Muslim conquests killed around 80 million Hindus.

The fundamental problem with Islam is Muhammad. Consider the Buddha, Jesus, Guru Nanak, Joseph Smith and even L. Ron Hubbard. However much you may dislike any of these religious figures, there is simply no comparison with Muhammad. Muhammad’s personal body count, as recorded in the Hadith and Sunnah, runs into the hundreds, and maybe thousands. He particularly relished decapitation. The people who decapitated Daniel Pearl were directly imitating the example of their religion’s founder. The specific reason Saudi Arabia refuses to permit any religion but Sunni Islam is because, on his deathbed, Muhammad called on his followers to ethnically cleanse the entire Arabian peninsula of all non-Muslims.

Christians have done terrible things throughout history. You are absolutely right about this. But they always knew such actions directly contradicted the personal example of Christianity’s founder, who refused to kill anyone. Las Casas, for instance, sought to end the violence of the Conquistadors by directly appealing to the example of Jesus. Contrast this with Timur, who specifically justified his decapitation of 100,000 Hindus by quoting the example of Muhammad.

“Everyone should make a will before they die. It isnt the responsibility of the government to be equitable with your estate. What if I had a child who was a college grad and the other a drug abuser?”

The state only gets involved if you’re an idiot who hasn’t made a will. Gedditt!!!

Everyone should make a will before they die. It isnt the responsibility of the government to be equitable with your estate. What if I had a child who was a college grad and the other a drug abuser?

If the odds are stacked against both parents what sense does it make to make the mother the primary custodian? Its been my expirience that while children need both their parents, as they get older a father becomes more essential.

Also its a lot easier for a father to remarry with children then it is for a mother. Step mothers can better intergrate into a family with existing children than a step father. Men are often less willing to marry a woman with children, especially teenaged children.

Best regards,
Gail S

Old Labour

You are quite right and the senior legal establishment are four square behind incorporating Sharia (always always mispronounced by every fucking one of the pious lecturers on multi-culturalism its Sha-reeah not Sha-ree-ah ie rhymes with ‘tarier’ (more viscous) rather than Maria (mother of God) as a mark of commitment to diversity and multi-culturalism.

Its weird but true and I must post on this but I have rather a lot on at the moment, not to say supporting secular lawyers.

A couple of points there is extensive knowledge of what happens when Sharia exists in parallel (from the most informal to the most rigid of legal formulations) with other legal systems.

Almost every country with a significant or dominant muslim population has had or now has some combination of a dual.

But although the utterly moncultural legal plenipotentiaries are willing to re-engineer the whole enlightenment legacy for the idea of a dispensation to a population to be placated they are not prepared to study other legal systems where all the answers already lie.

Significantly not one country in the World has a legal system that reflects faithully any of the schools of jurisprudence that constitute Sharia.

Iran has a civil and criminal code ‘influenced by Sharia’.

Saudi Arabia has the closest to a pure Sharia system in that Jurists can overule on grounds of piousness (yes this will ve a novel form of legal judgement that can overide mere evidence or testimony and trump any victim ‘impact statement’).

Of course Saudi Arabia being a monarchy and a nation state (not a community of the Umma ruled by wise jurists) still has royal executive legislative powers that can make any law they want.

So the end result in all of these countries is conflict of jurisdictions, judgements and rights of appeal vs parallel track legal hearings.

Worse these same legal elites claim, most disengenuously, that there will be no conflict because English law will remain supreme and undiluted, other than by recognising the contractual arrangements of people who wish voluntarily to be bound by their own agrteements.

This is hogwash, if English law is to reign supreme how could it unless tested by conflict, challenge and litigation.

In answer to Chris C and Dave W and the libertarian asocial tendencies of the English Common law, it is only possible to make private agreements of a contractual nature, with an agreement to be bound by a private system of arbitration to the extent that they do not contravene English law in procedural or substantive matters.

Thus for instance we have certain rules of evidence and other procedures that grant a fair and free due process before a competent tribunal.

Lower level tribunals (eg Transport, Employment and of course Muslim arbitration tribunals) must comply with rules of natural justice (the right to put ones case) the lower standards of evidence and the inquisitorial nature of tribunals mean that there must be avenues of appeal up the hierachy of courts if necessary all the way to the top until one gets a final judgement.

Consent to an agreement is not sufficient legal protection in many cases.

In negligence law, despite being made to sign waver forms before bungee jumping, you cannot consent to negligently caused severe injury or death, and those liable cannot exclude themselves from the reach of law by agreement, if they didn’t tie you on then they are negligent.

Consent is also a mess in English law in relation to power and sexual relationships.

The Lords have ruled that a wife can consent to being branded by her husband as a form of personal adornment, but a man can not have his scrotum nailed to a coffe table by another man.

Similarly while senior judges dislike european human rights law, believing the liberatrian, laissez faire licence of English law to be superior, and seek to protect the rights of private clubs and associations to set their own rules and discriminate in selection and exclusion, even they have had to recognise that clubs can’t keep (even willing) slaves in their basements or deny scholarships to women.

George

The issue of Beth din and divorce has been endlessley debated here (search the archives) but in short (not denying the positive and progressive applications of the law in practice) yes the courts will uphold and enforce, or rather deny a remedy dependent upon, a decision of a beth din.

As far as I understand it a man who has previously formally and religiously bindingly agreed to grant his wife a get or a religious divorce, but who then reneges on this agreement choosing to get a secular divorce and a secular remarriage (this is reasonably common and is devastating for the woman who cannot religiously re-marry contrary to a promise) may be denmied (at the discretion of the Judge) a decree nisi, pending his fulfillment of a promise to give a get (that sounds weird).

So in a very small and non harmfull way beth din judgements can be enfoced by the secular courts.

I think and have argued that thisis a serious problem not in and of itself but because of the precedent which is manipulated by islamists who want something quite different.

I think that this is a problem and there are other solutions (as in a Canadian supreme court ruling) that avoid the situation where a secular judge is required to rule on and find binding a decision by a wholly different kind of religious tribunal.

But for ANYONE WHO WANTS A SHORT ROUTE INTO UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEMS FOR A MULTI-CULTURALdemocracy of insituting even a limited domestic or personal jurisdiction for Sharia or religious law;

Google Shah Bano and you find the Indian supreme court decision that caused fractures in the constitution of India and communal tensions.

The Muslim domestic law based on Sharia was actuallintroduced by the Raj in the 1930’s ostensibly to placate Muslim demands.

Many secular Indians have argued that this in fact drove a permanent wedge between the communities making a unified greater India impossible and forever putting the goal of a unfifed indian civil code out of reach

The Law has to apply in the case of intestacy, and ensure that the interests of all dependants are equitably dealt with.

You can make a will, and in general, it will be enforced in law. (I would expect that if you disinherit a dependant juvenile, the courts would have a duty to intervene on the child’s behalf.)

But if you haven’t made a will, the rules of intestacy must be applied to your estate.

Incidentally, your other comment about custodial parents doesn’t stack up. Fathers with full time jobs and careers, who wind up with custody of their children, are going to face the same difficulties as Mothers. Care of young children tends not to be compatible with the career that turned the Father into a good earner in the first place. That job often has to go. And there are precious few part time jobs for menfolk. The problem isn’t just single mothers. Single parent families always have a tough time.

“Under the Divorce (Religious Marriages) Act 2002, a person whose spouse is refusing to give/accept a Get can apply to the Court handling the civil divorce, for an Order preventing the Court making a Decree Absolute until such time as a Get has been given/accepted.”

If I’m reading this correctly, a person with grounds for a civil divorce cannot be denied this if the other party refuses to give/accept a Get. What it prevents is someone (presumably less pious/dependent on community approval) divorcing civilly and vindictively preventing their legal ex-spouse (presumably more pious/dependent on community approval) from remarrying religiously, which seems fair enough.

It’s a complex area!