The following article illustrates how the holders of fanatical ideology are incapable of seeing it mirrored in another. They are quick to spot the evils of relativism only when it threatens their own ideology.

One Law for All, is a UK organisation formed to combat the call for Sharia law to be practised in tandem with British law in the UK. I recently attended a speech in London by its spokesperson Ann Marie Waters. The main topic of the talk was centred on how Sharia deals with family law according to Ms Waters. She pointed out that when a Moslem marriage ends the fathers most often gain custody of the children. Further, if the mother has an accusation against the father then she must have a credible witness to corroborate her accusation as her word stands for little within the system.  As you can imagine, I began to experience Dé jà vu.
It was clear to me that if Ms Waters were correct, then Shiria law in practice was based on misogyny and when juxtaposed with my experience and that of many other men I quickly came to the conclusion that our system was based equally on misandry.  Ms Waters qualified the difference, between the UK and Sharia systems in custody disputes, being the statement, ‘best interests of the child’ principle, spelt out in the  Children Act 1989. I agree, this looks very nice on paper but many men experience this as clever bit of feminist ‘woo woo’ legislation which interpreted into reality means ‘what’s good for mommy is good for child.’ This argument is usually put forward by lawyer for child, most of whom hold the same view as Ms Waters.

Ms Waters emphases the point that what Shiria law states and what happens in reality are two different things. I looked at the  islamic perspective on child custody after divorce site and was pleasantly surprised how fair it all looks. Particulary the absence of a biased lawyer for child. However, I agree with Ms Waters in that there is a big difference between law and the practice or outcome of law.  
 
In the Q&A time I challenged Ms Waters that UK law in custody matters did not appear to be any more ‘just’ than Sharia law. It did not take me long to discover that Ann Marie is an ardent third wave feminist.  Her response was that children need to have as little disturbance as possible in their day to day routine and therefore if they had normally been residing with mother then the status quo should be maintained. Whilst it is true that there is the issue of attachment theory to be considered, it is not a black and white issue and I could write several pages on studies that show most children attach to both mother and father regardless of the time spent.

 
In 2011 the head of the family court in New Zealand spoke at a Family Court Conference in Florida and proudly announced that the NZ system (similar to the UK ‘best interests of the child’ principle)  was working well and quoted the statistics of a falling number of men applying to the court for 50% joint care of their children. Typical of a bureaucrat, he never considered to explore why this was the case. If he had anonymously phoned a few solicitors and stated he was a separated father that wanted to apply for joint shared care he would have been advised (by the honest ones) that the chances of success were low and the price for applying was high. Few can afford an attempt at passing through the eye of this needle hence the neccesity of a default 50/50 where possible in shared care.
 
The lack of critical thinking behind all aspects of Sharia Law makes me shudder should it ever have control over our lives because I, and my child, have experienced anguish and injury as a result of the same narrow bigoted law in our so called enlightened western family legal system.
 
Without doubt Sharia Law is to be condemned for its barbaric practice and treatment of both men and women, off-shore as well as in the UK, but let’s be clear, based on what I heard from Ms Waters ‘One Law For All’ are actually fighting for ‘One Law for All Women’ and should title the organisation as such.

B Norton
SW London