The Evening Standard
The Law Society was accused of ‘promoting’ shari’a law on March 25, after issuing guidance on wills that comply with the Islamic system.
The advice for solicitors in England and Wales covers shari’a-based wills, which discriminate against women. Under shari’a, male heirs ‘in most cases receive double the amount inherited by a female heir of the same class’, the guidance says. It adds that non-Muslims ‘may not inherit at all’, ‘only Muslim marriages are recognised’ and adopted children should be ‘excluded’ from wills.
Campaigner Peter Tatchell said the Law Society ‘should withdraw its guidelines shari’a assisting or promoting law in the UK’. The Sunday Telegraph called the guidance a ‘worrying development’, as it said in an editorial, ‘promoting shari’a is part of the radicals’ anti-integration agenda’.
Baroness Cox, who is leading efforts to curb problems caused by shari’a courts in Britain, said the advice ‘would make the suffragettes turn in their graves’.
The argument was made in some sectors of the press that at present anyone can disinherit a person in their will, and apportion money according to any given whim and so this was a step that no-one needed to worry about. However, a secular legal group criticised the Law Society for ‘wading into theology’, and said the guidance ‘normalises, legitimises and sanitises’ shari’a law and it is therefore this public statement of apparent support of shari’a law that is at the heart of the problem with the statement by the Law Society.
The Law Society released the practice note for solicitors in March, saying: ‘This is the first time guidance has been published for solicitors to assist them with the intricacies
shari’a of succession rules’. Its president defended the advice, saying it was wrong to see the guidance as promoting shari’a law.
However, Baroness Cox said: ‘To have an organisation such as The Law Society seeming to promote or encourage a policy which is inherently gender discriminatory in a way which will have very serious implications for women and possibly for children is a matter of deep concern. Everyone has freedom to make their own will and everyone has freedom to let those wills reflect their religious beliefs’.
Barry Sheerman, MP for Huddersfield, called for MPs to consider the issue of shari’a law through the select committee system. ‘This should be dragged out into the open and be discussed’, he commented.
