LONDON: The popular perception of sharia law is one of brutal punishments carried out by hardline states. But, as Dan Bell discovers, the backstreets of Britain are full of Islamic courts ruling on everything from banking and alcopops to forced marriage and divorce

In the back room of a converted corner shop in east London, Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed is trying to save another marriage. He stretches across his desk and gently holds the hand of a young man with five o'clock shadow, whose eyes are red and swollen from crying. For more than an hour the man has been pleading with Sayeed to ask his ex-wife to give him a second chance.

And for more than an hour, Sayeed has been quietly telling him that if his ex-wife does not want him back, there is nothing he can do. As the fraught meeting continues next door, one of Sayeed's colleagues at the Islamic Sharia Council in Leyton explains with a shrug, “He has come to us to ask for help, but if the woman is adamant and she doesn't want to reunite, what can we do?”

The image of a Muslim man pleading with his imam for a second chance with his wife, only to be told that it is his wife’s decision, is not what most people would expect from a sharia court. But his case is typical of hundreds every year dealt with by a group of scholars who provide judgments on sharia law for Muslims across the country.

Sharia law has not only become synonymous with brutal punishments meted out by hardline Islamic states; it has also come to be seen as a source of oppression within Muslim communities across Europe. The holy Quran has been used to justify forced marriages, honour killings and even the call to holy war by fundamentalist clerics such as Abu Hamza.

But sharia also has another face. Islamic law is a code for living that governs every aspect of life, from which food is halal, to donations to the poor and the proper way to dress. The Muslims who consult the Sharia Council are not asking for permission to stone adulterous wives, or chop off the hands of thieves, but simply for day-to-day guidance on living in accordance with their faith.

“The only thing we want sharia to mean here is when it comes to their religious belief, their marriages, their divorces, their right to prayer,” says Mushtaq Bux, until recently general manager at the Leyton council. “That is what we mean by sharia, nothing else.”

The council, which has no legal authority, issues fatwas (religious edicts) from two rooms that resemble a hard-up solicitors’ practice, tucked away on a quiet terraced street of small family homes with roses in the front gardens. It considers everything from inheritance settlements and whether property deals comply with Islamic laws against accruing interest, to the proper time to start Ramazan (in a country that is always overcast, how can you rely on the first sighting of the crescent moon?) and whether a soft drink that advertises itself as a non-alcoholic alcopop can actually be allowed to call itself alcohol-free. In one email, a woman who is losing her hair asked if Muslim women are allowed to wear wigs.

But the overwhelming majority of cases are to do with divorce – 95 per cent of the roughly 7,000 cases the council has dealt with since opening its doors in 1982 _ and, specifically, with releasing women from bad or forced marriages.

When he worked at the Leyton council, Bux used to get about 40 letters and emails a day from women asking for divorces. “People don’t understand the scale of the epidemic,” he says.

The flood of applications stems from husbands’ misuse of Islamic laws on marriage. Under Islamic law, a man is allowed to have up to four wives and has the primary right to call for divorce. As a result, it is possible for a husband to leave his wife and remarry, refuse to give his first wife a divorce, and still consider himself living in accordance with his faith.

In the eyes of the Muslim community, his first wife is still married, and because women are only allowed one husband at a time, she is stranded. “She is left hanging in midair,” says Najma Ebrahim, a coordinator with the Muslim Women's Helpline, which receives 2,000 calls a year, 70 to 80 per cent of which are from women with marital problems. And with divorce comes stigma from the community. “To them, the woman is a failure: she couldn’t keep her husband.”

The council writes to the husband on behalf of the wife - a process known as Khula - and asks him to grant his wife Talaq (divorce). If he does not agree, or refuses to respond, after three months the council aims to issue a divorce.

Ebrahim says the council is providing a vital service. “It's very important for [the wife’s] self, for her healing,” she says. “Her faith - her fate - is important to her, so when she goes to the council and gets that decision, at least for her she knows she is not doing something wrong.”

Suhaib Hasan, the secretary of the council, puts it more bluntly. “If she remarries without taking the divorce, she would be an outcast in society,” he says. “This is why she has to have an authority where she can get the solution of her problems.”

When Razia, 40, left her home in Manchester for rural Pakistan two years ago, she thought she was just going to visit her family. But when she got there she found herself under intense pressure to marry a man 10 years her junior. After weeks of emotional blackmail by her aunt and her aunt’s family, eventually she gave in.

She explains how she was ground down by her family and disorientated by being thousands of miles from home. “I did tell them I’m not over here to get married, but they weren’t taking no for an answer,” she says. “When you are over there with your family, family wins.”

She quickly realised the marriage was really about obtaining a visa for her new husband. “They just wanted to get it over and done with, thinking he’d get the visa straight away,” she says. “I have had no contact from him since he found out it was not a quick process.”

As soon as she got back, she set about trying to get a divorce, but as a Muslim, she not only needed a civil divorce but an Islamic one as well. She felt the Sharia Council was the only forum which could help.

The council says her case is typical, and Sayeed, 55, president of the council, is furious that sharia law is used to justify forced marriages like Razia’s. He says that forced marriage is an ingrained cultural tradition, but it is not sanctioned under sharia. It is a `tribal or traditional interpretation of Islam’, he says.

“Not incorrect interpretation of sharia - no interpretation of sharia.”

"In every situation our motto is: reconciliation first. So we try to reconcile, but in cases where a marriage was enforced on a girl against her wishes, against her own opinion, we don’t want to negotiate. What we do is, we try to make their guardians, their parents, understand the Islamic position, and also we tell them what is the position of British law on marriage.”

Sayeed tells them that they `will also be guilty of [breaking] heavenly laws - that is how we try to convince the parents’. Does it work? “Not all the time. We are human and working in human society. Not all the time; most of the time, yes.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service

To be continued