"It saves time and hassle for the court, and it shows that both parties are willing to compromise and reach some sort of agreement."
In some cases, women have no trouble obtaining a divorce in civil court but run into unforeseen difficulties when they approach Muslim scholars to seal it with their blessing.
A few weeks ago, a Somali woman whose husband had been wounded and subsequently disappeared during the turmoil in her homeland several years ago approached the Sharia council in North London. She was accompanied by her neighbor, who had been helping her care for her children, and had offered to marry her if she obtained an Islamic divorce in addition to her civil divorce.
Instead of the expected rubber stamp, the couple got a tongue lashing.
"How do you allow a man who is not your husband to interfere with your life? He's proposing to marry you while you're already married? How come, sister?" Haddad asked.
"Because I haven't seen my husband in eight years," said the woman, looking confused and a little panicky.
"And you, brother," Haddad said, turning to the man, "do you allow this for any one of your relatives, that she is married, and while she is married, you allow someone to interfere?"
"I didn't interfere with her, and Allah knows I didn't interfere," the man said.
The judges told the woman to find a Somali cleric, who might be able to help her prove her husband is dead, or had abandoned her. Should that happen, they said, she could have her divorce, and marry whom she pleased.
--
Government officials have raised no objections to the councils, which first emerged in 1982 in Birmingham, because they operate in cooperation with British civil law, and British courts still issue all necessary legal decrees. Those who advocate granting some official status to the councils' deliberations, as the archbishop of Canterbury seemed to suggest, point out that Jews in Britain operate religious courts whose rulings, when all parties voluntarily participate, are recognized under civil law as a form of binding arbitration.
"Almost everything, Muslims living in Britain, or other societies that traditionally have not been Muslim societies, can arrange for themselves. They can arrange to have food slaughtered in halal fashion. They can set up Islamic financial instruments. They can build mosques. The one key area where there's a vacuum regards the access of women to divorce," said John R. Bowen, professor of anthropology at Missouri's Washington University, explaining the need for the Sharia councils.
