{"id":664,"date":"2004-12-20T23:21:59","date_gmt":"2004-12-21T03:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2004\/12\/20\/this-is-depressing-a-sad-milestone-fo"},"modified":"2007-02-05T20:48:40","modified_gmt":"2007-02-06T00:48:40","slug":"this-is-depressing-a-sad-milestone-for-women-in-canada-going-backwa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2004\/12\/20\/this-is-depressing-a-sad-milestone-for-women-in-canada-going-backwa\/","title":{"rendered":"This is depressing: a sad milestone for women in Canada — going backwards into the dark ages"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> The Toronto Star reports that Marion Boyd, a former Ontario attorney general, concluded an official report endorsing a form of Sharia law in Ontario. See today’s TO Star article here<\/a>. Boyd is being criticised by a number of progressive Muslims, who accuse her of “naivete” and of caving in to pressure from right-wing Muslim groups. Boyd does a lot of talking around Sharia, saying that the Ontario recommendation is not exactly<\/em> Sharia law, but simply a recognition of “Muslim religious principles within Canadian law.” I can’t see this as anything but a defeat for women and for progressive men, however. As Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress<\/a> puts it in the TOStar article:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat exactly are these Muslim principles?\u201d asked Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor her (Boyd) to come here and lecture Muslims as to what Muslim family law is, and Sharia is, is despicable and racist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fatah said most Muslims in Ontario want to be treated as equal citizens. Proponents of Sharia in Canada are not concerned about settling family law disputes, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are concerned at bringing justification for introducing Sharia, and legitimizing it in Pakistan, in Iran (and) in Saudi Arabia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has been listening . . .to the Muslim fundamentalists . . .that this was not about Sharia.\u201d <\/em> [More…<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The report supposedly calls for “safeguards” to prevent women from being bullied into religious-based arbitration vs. real legal counsel and representation, but Boyd’s critics attack her on this front, too:<\/p>\n

Her critics say Boyd undermined those protections by also allowing people to waive their right to legal advice before they agree to arbitration instead of going to court to settle a dispute.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to sound the alarm on a recommendation that poor women should be allowed to waive their fundamental right to an independent legal opinion,\u201d said Marilou McPhedran, legal counsel to the Canadian Council of Muslim Women<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarion Boyd today has given legitimacy and credibility to the right-wing racists who fundamentally are against equal rights for men and women.\u201d <\/em> [More…<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope that progressive Muslims<\/a> in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, along with voices from the Canadian Council of Muslim Women<\/a>, can convince the Ontario government to ditch Boyd’s recommendations. Fatah noted that this will immediately enter the rightwing Islamist propaganda mill: \u201cTomorrow in Tehran, in Jeddah, in Pakistan, in Kabul, in Sudan, every newspaper will say that Sharia has been approved by Canada,\u201d predicted Fatah.<\/em> I find it frightening that equal rights and representation before the law could, in a modern democracy, be undermined in favour of medieval, misogynist “religious” exemptions. What happened? Women really are the niggers of the world<\/a>, aren’t they… Some men make her “paint her face and dance”<\/em>, but some others make her put bags over her head and body. Same f*ng difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Toronto Star reports that Marion Boyd, a former Ontario attorney general, concluded an official report endorsing a form of Sharia law in Ontario. See today’s TO Star article here. Boyd is being criticised by a number of progressive Muslims, who accuse her of “naivete” and of caving in to pressure from right-wing Muslim groups. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}