On the one hand, I’m in favor of people working out their disputes using systems everyone involved agrees to. Even if it’s a religious system; so long as it doesn’t suck up government resources, people can flip coins, toss sticks, having boxing matches, read tea leaves or even fight duels for all I care.
On the other hand, weirdo bizarre arbitration systems – especially those that are culturally or religiously motivated – tend to use peer pressure or outright brainwashing or worse to get people to go along with them. And that’s where I have a problem with Sharia.
Like this:
Islington girls forced into marriage at the age of nine
The Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) claim that at least 30 girls in the borough were forced into marriage in 2010. … IKWRO, which made headlines last month when they revealed there had been almost 3,000 “honour-based” violence cases in 2010, has shown the Tribune records which revealed at least three 11-year-old girls and two nine-year-olds had been forced into marriage with older men within Islington.
Islington, for those not in the know, is in *Britain,* not Kuwait or Sudan or Arabia or some such horrible place.
I’m all in favor of freedom of religion, not matter what wacky-ass thing people choose to believe. But at some point a religion ceases to be a “religion” so much as a “cult.” Forcing children into sexual relations got the FLDS whackos raided and their leader tossed into the hoosegow; no less would be appropriate in this case. With the added perk of wholesale deportations. Those that get married to children, and those who set up the marriages and those who perform the marriages… well, such people do not belong even in a nation of yobs and chavs.