Shari’ah Councils in Britain

Abstract

This chapter considers the emergence of Shari’ah councils that act as family dispute resolution mechanisms within Muslim communities in Britain. Theories of legal pluralism traditionally posit a non-state law that arises from the community that is opposed to the systems of the state and its law. In this chapter the concepts of ‘interlegality ’and ‘multicultural interlegality’ are used to reveal that the legal field in Britain is composed of not a single state law versus non-state law but a plurality of laws that combine to structure the legality of the field. For example, writing on Muslim family law points to the emergence of parallel legal systems operating in Britain where state law may assume its singular dominance in the lives of Muslim disputants but the actual lived reality of law places greater primacy on the authority of religious legal principles. If this lived socio-legal reality is recognized then the ways in which these non-state processes affect social and legal change in matters of family law raise crucial questions about equality, rights and citizenship and in doing so also reveals competing claims and contestations over the meaning, practice and recognition of religious personal law systems within minority Muslim communities. This chapter therefore examines discussions on the role of community-based adjudicatory systems of dispute resolution in the light of contemporary discussions about individual and community rights, justice and common citizenship.