To think this absolutely is homophobic

[HuntIdeas]

Muslim families have successfully argued for Birmingham primary schools to stop the No Outsiders programme

"Morally we do not accept homosexuality as a valid sexual relationship to have. It's not about being homophobic... that's like saying, if you don't believe in Islam, you're Islamophobic."

AIBU to think:

1. This absolutely is a homophobic thing to say
2. There are plenty of places in the world where you would get stoned for stating you didn’t believe in Islam!

Hopefully this link works: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-47613578

breeze You must know that many women never get a legal marriage and only an Islamic marriage. And that the courts officially recognise the ruling of sharia courts in regards to divorce? Either you do not know as much as you think, or you are being disingenous.

And I am not interested in what some Islamic scholar says should happen. What I care about is what is actually happening.
So for example a woman with kids who was beaten up and raped by her husband begging the sharia courts for a divorce, and being told to try again at her marriage. Women being granted far less in a divorce than the UK courts would have given them.

It is a parallel legal structure and should be banned. The only reason it is not is that the right do not care about Muslim women, and the left are too busy being liberal their brains drop out.

And the decisions in Sharia courts can never be fair to women because they are based on inherently misogynistic principles. Such as that women's testimony is worth half of that of a man, that men can divorce through triple talek and women have to go to a sharia court for a divorce, that women are responsible for upholding the honour of the family, etc bloody etc.
You can not make an unequal system equal by changing who sits in the sharia court.

practitioners in (Sharia) courts will be known to the authorities and a working relationship would be established which allows for communication about any concerns or misunderstandings

breeze I'm wondering, since Sharia has no legal status in the UK, just how realistic is it that members will be "known to the authorities" on more than a casual, anecdotal sort of basis? I could be wrong, but I'm not aware that they have to register in any way or that there's any oversight of their activities - indeed, I wonder just how welcome any such input would be, given of some of the concerns highlighted in the Casey Review

I see others have articulated some of the perceived issues better than me, but in the interests of protecting women there have been calls for muslim couples to be obliged to register their marriage on a civil basis at the same time the Nikah takes place. Frankly I'm glad nobody's suggested they should only have a civil wedding, but maybe a tandem arrangement like this could be a way forward?

I've also been reading Mona Siddiqui's review on the application of sharia, and to be fair there are a number of examples of good practice. Unfortunately, among those of bad practice are the following, all of which perhaps suggest that discouraging the use of sharia councils (they seem to refer this to courts) may be no bad thing:

Inconsistency across council decisions and processes
No safeguarding policies or the recognition of the need for them
No clear signposting to the legal options available for civil divorce
Adopting civil legal terms inappropriately, leading to confusion re legality of decisions
Very few women as panel members
Recently arrived panel members, lacking language + understanding of UK society
Varying and conflicting interpretations of Islamic law - possible inconsistencies again

"Actually, a considerable number of trans ideologists share the objectively homophobic belief that exclusive same sex attraction is bigoted, and that lesbians have no rights to organise for themselves without males. No "can be portrayed as" or "bit of spin" needed. Here are some examples."

Believing that certain people are 'naturally capable' of enjoying relationships/sex of particular kinds, but prejudice/bigotry/social conditioning etc gets in the way, is only "phobia" if you do not share the belief.

If Riley, as one example on your link, had suggested that there are people out there who are 'naturally capable' of relationships/sex with members of the same sex but prejudice/social conditioning gets in the way, no-one would call her heterophobic. Because then they would agree.

I mean we know that this sort of thing happens. Well, maybe not quite so much nowadays as historically , but you can stil get people to this day for hom this applies. People who are naturally bi/homosexual but 'in the closet'. And saying that is not heterophobic.

Anyway, my point still stands that 'some people who are trans say X' is not the same as 'transgendrism says X'.

If Riley, as one example on your link, had suggested that there are people out there who are 'naturally capable' of relationships/sex with members of the same sex

It cuts both ways, though doesn't it. So yes it's just as rapey and coercive to pressure straight men to have sex with males as it is for males to pressure homosexual women. The thing is that arguably lesbians (those homoSEXual human females) are more vulnerable to this peer pressure due to the nature of the LGBT community and its centring of trans people (MTF)

Not being disingenuous claire, I may well be wrong on that point. The only woman I know who has actually been to a sharia court told me that when she later had to go to court due to some issues about her husband’s immigration status, the court wouldn’t recognise it, so I assumed that was the case for all UK courts. However that particular court was an immigration tribunal so perhaps they were not used to dealing with sharia whereas the UK courts who deal with divorce would recognise sharia rulings.
I have heard that a lot of people have Nikah without registering it with the council but that doesn’t usually happen with people from my background so I don’t know why that is.
Btw I’m not claiming to have in-depth knowledge of the system as it’s currently operating. It may be that improvements are needed. I’m just trying to argue in a general way why I feel that at least having access to such courts is important for Muslims.
I will come back to your other points later on.

"It cuts both ways, though doesn't it. So yes it's just as rapey and coercive to pressure straight men to have sex with males as it is for males to pressure homosexual women."

It is wrong to pressure or coerce anyone. Even if you are correct and your friend Jane is actually bisexual or homosexual in orientation (but is in the closet about it), it would still be wrong to try to make them date or sleep with other females.

But then you are not doing this just by having a general discussion about the phenomena of people rejecting the same sex due to prejudice/social conditioning of a heteronormative society etc etc.

Similar holds for someone just making general comments about the phenomena of people rejecting trans due to prejudices/conditioning og cissexist society.

And in neither case are they necessarily being any type of phobic.

Similar holds for someone just making general comments about the phenomena of people rejecting trans due to prejudices/conditioning og cissexist society.

No they aren't doing that, they are disallowing the possibility of exclusive same sex attraction as a reasonable unbigoted thing for people to feel. Which is homophobia as being homosexual is about being attracted to the same sex, which is a biological matter. Such unconvincing sophistry you peddle.

And if coercive homosexuality was a structural thing, and heterosexual people faced oppression for their sexuality, there would indeed be such a thing as "heterophobia".

reshkigal So people cannot talk about a phenomena
which potentially could be true, because someone once created a concept. gave it a definition, and if the proposed idea was true this means that the concept would not exist in quite the same way as the abstract definition of it. And that would just be so phobic. And I am the one meant to be engaging in sophistry.

Look, just because someone creates a definition that says 'a homosexual is...' or 'a heterosexual is...' this does not mean reality has to reorganise itself to fit the definitions. And besides which, there are lesbians who date trans women, straight men who date trans women, straight women who date trans men, and every other combination.

Still, I like the idea of reality being homophobic. Because if it was true that everyone was 'naturally capable' but barr some, the rest let prejudice and conditioning get in the way, well the truth is being phobic.

And besides which, there are lesbians who date trans women, straight men who date trans women, straight women who date trans men, and every other combination.

They're all bisexual. That's what bisexual means. Attracted to both sexes.

And I am the one meant to be engaging in sophistry.

Yep.

Claire the only point I was making was that I think whoever is running a court dealing regularly with women’s issues has to be someone who combines good Islamic knowledge with a commitment to finding effective ways to address the mistreatment of women. It may well be that in some of these courts a change in leadership or in direction is needed.
I think that there is a focus on reconciliation in cases of marital dispute in our religion, and that’s a good thing. But obviously there is a limit to it and there are some situations where you have to recognise that divorce is the way forward and obviously if women are experiencing the kind of abuse you describe it will fall into that category.
The thing is we are not going to agree on Sharia law in principle because you see the terms ‘fair’ and ‘equal’ as identical whereas for us they are different concepts which doesn’t mean there is no equality at all, just not in every situation.
I think that those who care about Muslim women should take their religious beliefs into account, and not assume that they can solve all of their problems by forcing them to adopt the same solutions that non-Muslim women would use.

Btw I know it’s not the main point but it is a misconception that a man has to give triple talaq. One talaq is enough but it will be a revocable divorce (i.e. the couple can get back together in the future) whereas the third talaq will be irrevocable. There’s a difference of opinion about whether triple talaq can be given on a single occasion.
Btw it’s just occurred to me that even in the UK laws they don’t have full equality between men and women in every situation, what about maternity rights compared to paternity rights? In that situation it’s accepted that men and women have different needs.

Puzzled I had another answer all prepared in my mind but I took a look at that Casey review you mentioned and- wow. It makes for grim reading and very worrying. I’ve obviously been quite naive about the extent of the issues in some places in the UK. Before I get accused of being disingenuous, the reason being that in my area we don’t seem to have these problems to anything like the same extent. We have local councillors etc. In and out of Islamic schools on a relatively regular basis, lots of non-Muslims visiting the main mosque, various agencies doing inspections in the local Islamic schools, nurseries and giving some positive reports, generally positive attitude on the part of the local council in principle to the possibility of a state-funded Islamic school etc.
So I assumed that the sharia courts (or councils, as they seem to be called officially) were working within a broadly similar context. I’m really surprised that the authorities are accepting official arbitration from some of these councils without really seeming to be aware of what principles they’re working to, and I’m confused as to how the current situation has come about.
After reading the report I almost feel that the issue of Sharia courts possibly being banned or not is almost a secondary issue. What seems to me to be the most urgent thing is the seemingly almost complete breakdown of trust between Muslim communities and the authorities in some areas because that affects everything from schooling to safeguarding to marriage.

With regards to the issue of registering a civil marriage at the same time as the nikah, in my area there is already something like that. There are some imams who are registered with the council to perform marriages in a similar way to ministers in the church. So you can book an appointment to get married in the mosque or Islamic centre, then you go to the council to let them know you want to get married on such and such a date etc. and a couple of weeks later they give you a form to take with you on the day, and when you go for your nikah everyone signs the form and then you take it to the council and they issue you with an official marriage certificate mentioning the name of the imam and the mosque. I think that would be a good system, what do you think?
When I got married we wanted to do that but for various reasons it didn’t happen so we went for nikah contract in a mosque which is not registered with the council for marriage then we went to the registrar separately. To be honest I didn’t find it a great experience as although the lady who did the actual ceremony was lovely, there was another lady who was really quite patronising in her attitude and every time I mentioned the Islamic marriage contract she kept saying ‘but it’s not a marriage it’s just a blessing’ which was unnecessary as we were already there to get the official civil marriage. So I would be more in favour of using the system where imams are officially registered. But the problem is, I don’t know why in some areas there are so many people Not getting their marriages registered, I don’t know what the reasons are behind that.

Yes, men and women 'have different needs' in regards to maternity because women are the ones giving birth. That can't really be applied to women not having the same rights in regards to inheritance or divorce or how much her testimony counts as a witness.

It's sexism pure and simple.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-47742085

Back to the actual topic.

Sorry for posting so much but I’m really worried about that Casey report now. Stayed awake last night thinking about it. I’m really worried for the future of Muslims in the UK. How are these issues going to be solved if at all. I need to read the report again more thoroughly but I feel the approach is really problematic. Obviously there are Muslims in some areas being aggressive and confrontational in their approach to the authorities and that is clearly wrong. However I also think that building trust and relationships is a two way thing and if authorities take a rigid and disapproving approach as it comes across in the report it can make things worse and make people less likely to engage. As I say in my area non-Muslims working with Muslims in a professional capacity are usually quite positive and we seem to have generally good community cohesion.

If by trust you mean ignoring homophobia and allowing a few to dictate re a much needed element of the education curriculum you're on a hiding to nothing. Not going to happen,nor should it.

Exactly, women are the ones giving birth and they’re also the ones going through pregnancy, post partum recovery and breastfeeding, with all the tiredness and possible health complications that can bring, whereas men are not physically affected in any way. So how can women be expected to take on the same role in terms of providing financially?
That’s not an argument against women working or running a business by the way. I know loads of Muslim women who work. I just don’t think you should force her into equal financial responsibility when doing so will disadvantage her in comparison to the man.

That link has already been posted turisas. The thread has gone beyond discussion of this specific issue to include more general issues. If this forum was more actively moderated it would probably have been split into two different threads by now, one focusing on the protests and another for more general discussion of Muslims’ integration in society and the differences in their attitude on various issues.

And how does that justify men holding all the power in obtaining a divorce?

And if that link has already been posted it's because is relevant. People are feeling attracted and vulnerable because a group is people have some bizarre issue about their children being read a story book about two mums.

In other news, their now stoning gay people to death in Brunei. What a wonderful world we live in.

What has power got to do with it? The point is that the woman herself, unless she is not very knowledgeable about these things, is not going to regard a divorce given by a UK civil court as being sufficient to end her Islamic marriage, which is part of the challenge of trying to integrate the UK system and the Islamic system when it comes to marriage and divorce. Islam is not the only religion that has a difference with the mainstream on these issues. The report mentioned a similar issue in the Orthodox Jewish community and also Catholics who get a civil divorce can face problems in their community as it seems they don’t believe in divorce at all.
A lot of people are feeling vulnerable right now because there has been a recent shift from having a multicultural live and let live approach to a focus on shared values. Which is why I feel it would be better for authorities to be clear on what exactly is required of people in terms of the law and the guidelines relating to institutions, rather than pressuring them to change their values.

I know Im hoping my son doesn’t see it. Note George Clooney has asked for a boycott re businesses that benefit Brunei.

And Muslims are integrated into society successfully all over the UK. It is a minority trying to push extremism and homophobia. Clearly needs to be stopped before it spreads any further.