Abstract
This chapter discusses some salient features of the private international law framework applicable in Britain and compares it with that of the European civil law countries where different assumptions apply. It then provides a brief overview of the South Asian comparative backdrop against which some questions which come up in British and other European legal systems can be set, including the basic feature of personal laws which is the norm in South Asia but exceptional for Europe. It discusses the how South Asians in Europe have formed communities that result from immigration over several decades, including how that has conditioned the types of private international law questions raised and how recent developments associated with Muslims question previously favoured models of multiculturalism. Lastly, there is a focus on how the development of unofficial sharia fora in the UK, within a larger comparative context, is complicating and potentially undermining the existing model of private international law.
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Notes
- 1.
Mathias Rohe, Muslim Minorities and the Law in Europe: Chances and Challenges (Global Media Publications, 2007).
- 2.
Elisa Giunchi (ed), Muslim Family Law in Western Courts (Routledge, 2014); Rubya Mehdi, Werner Menski and Jørgen S. Nielsen (eds), Interpreting Divorce Laws in Islam (DJØF Publishing 2012); Rubya Mehdi and Jørgen S. Nielsen (eds), Embedding Mahr (Islamic dower) in the European Legal System (DJØF Publishing 2011); Prakash Shah, Marie-Claire Foblets and Mathias Rohe (eds), Family, Religion and Law: Cultural Encounters in Europe (Ashgate 2014).
- 3.
Prakash Shah, ‘Transnational Family Relations in Migration Contexts: British Variations on European Themes’ in Satvinder Juss (ed), The Ashgate Research Companion to Migration Law, Theory and Policy (Ashgate 2013).
- 4.
For example, Prakash Shah, ‘Attitudes to Polygamy in English Law’ (2003) 52 ICLQ 359.
- 5.
For example, see Shamil Bank of Bahrain EC v Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (No. 1) [2004] 1 WLR 1784.
- 6.
Werner F. Menski, Hindu Law: Beyond Tradition and Modernity (Oxford University Press 2003).
- 7.
John R. Bowen and Mathias Rohe, ‘Juridical Framings of Muslims and Islam in France and Germany’ in John R. Bowen, Christophe Bertossi, Jan Willem Duyvendak, Mona Lena Krook (eds), European States and their Muslim Citizens: The Impact of Institutions on Perceptions and Boundaries (CUP 2013) 143.
- 8.
David Pearl and Werner Menski, Muslim Family Law (3rd edn, Sweet & Maxwell, 1998).
- 9.
Werner F. Menski, ‘Life and Law: Advocacy and Expert Witnessing in the UK’ in Livia Holden (ed), Cultural Expertise and Litigation: Patterns, Conflicts, Narratives (Routledge 2011).
- 10.
Mathias Rohe, ‘Family and the Law in Europe: Bringing Together Secular Legal Orders and Religious Norms and Needs’ in Prakash Shah, Marie-Claire Foblets and Mathias Rohe, Family, Religion and Law: Cultural Encounters in Europe (Ashgate 2014) 63–64.
- 11.
Ibid., 64.
- 12.
John Griffiths, ‘What is legal pluralism?’ (1986) 24 Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 1.
- 13.
Pearl and Menski (n 8); Werner F. Menski, ‘Muslim law in Britain’ (2001) 62 Journal of Asian and African Studies 127.
- 14.
Gillian Douglas, ‘Who Regulates Marriage? The Case of Religious Marriage and Divorce’ in Russell Sandberg (ed), Religion and Legal Pluralism (Ashgate 2015) 61–64.
- 15.
Konstantinos Tsitselikis, Old and New Islam in Greece: From Historical Minorities to Immigrant Newcomers (Brill 2012).
- 16.
Werner Menski, Comparative Law in a Global Context: The Legal Systems of Asia and Africa (2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2006) 25–81.
- 17.
Menski (n 16) 252, Mathias Rohe, Islamic Law in Past and Present (Brill 2015) 401–402.
- 18.
Pearl and Menski (n 8) 48, Nausheen Ahmed, ‘Family Law in Pakistan: Using the Secular to Influence the Religious’ in Elisa Giunchi (ed), Adjudicating Family Law in Muslim Courts (Routledge, 2014).
- 19.
Menski (n 6) 187n, 210n, 292–293n.
- 20.
[2011] EWHC 2132 (Fam).
- 21.
Pearl and Menski (n 8) 45–46; Sylvia Vatuk, ‘The Application of Muslim Personal Law in India: A System of Legal Pluralism in Action’ in Elisa Giunchi (ed), Adjudicating Family Law in Muslim Courts (Routledge, 2014) 52–53; Rohe (n 17) 398–407.
- 22.
Satvinder S Juss, Discretion and Deviation in the Administration of Immigration Control (Sweet & Maxwell, 1997).
- 23.
Steven Vertovec and Susanne Wessendorf, The Multiculturalism Backlash: European Discourses, Policies and Practices (Routledge, 2010), Claire L. Adida, David D. Laitin and Marie-Anne Valfort, Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-heritage Societies (Harvard University Press, 2016).
- 24.
Muslim Council of Britain, British Muslims in Numbers: A Demographic, Socio-economic and Health profile of Muslims in Britain drawing on the 2011 Census (MCB, January 2015). http://www.mcb.org.uk/muslimstatistics/, accessed 16 January 2016.
- 25.
Helena Wray, ‘Moulding the Migrant Family’ (2009) 29(4) Legal Studies 592; Prakash Shah, ‘Trans-jurisdictional Marriage and Family Reunification for Refugees in the United Kingdom’ (2010) 9(2) İstanbul Kültür Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Dergisi 94–100.
- 26.
Ralph Grillo, Muslim Families, Politics and the Law: A Legal Industry in Multicultural Britain (Ashgate 2015) 59–91.
- 27.
Anika Liversage and Mikkel Rytter, ‘A Cousin Marriage Equals a Forced Marriage: Transnational Marriages between Closely Related Spouses in Denmark’ in Alison Shaw and Aviad Raz (eds), Cousin Marriages: Between Tradition, Genetic Risk and Cultural Change (Berghahn 2015).
- 28.
Khola Hasan, ‘The Medical and Social Costs of Consanguineous Marriages among British Mirpuris’ (2009) 29(3) South Asia Research 275.
- 29.
Julie Macfarlane, Islamic Divorce in North America: A Shari'a Path in a Secular Society (Oxford University Press, 2012), Anna C. Korteweg and Jennifer A. Selby, Debating Sharia: Islam, Gender Politics, and Family Law Arbitration (University of Toronto Press, 2012).
- 30.
Grillo (n 24) 18–19.
- 31.
Pearl and Menski (n 8) 45n; Vatuk (n 21) 50–53; Rohe (n 17) 391–396.
- 32.
A.I.R. 1985 S.C. 945.
- 33.
See Rohe (n 17) 365–366.
- 34.
Ibid. 394.
- 35.
‘Muslim personal law founded on Quran, SC can’t question it: Jamiat’ Times of India, February 6, 2016.
- 36.
Grillo (n 24) 41–47.
- 37.
Chief Adjudication Officer v Kirpal Kaur Bath [2000] 1 FLR 8 CA; Gandhi v Patel [2002] 1 FLR 603.
- 38.
Douglas (n 14); Grillo (n 24) 41–47.
- 39.
Prakash Shah, ‘Shari‘a in the West: Colonial Consciousness in a Context of Normative Competition’ in Elisa Giunchi (ed), Muslim Family Law in Western Courts (Routledge, 2014) 16–17, 20.
- 40.
Harroudj v France, Application no. 43631/09.
- 41.
S (A Child) [2007] EWCA Civ 54, remarks of Wall J at paras. 11 and 42 referring to the White Paper of 2000.
- 42.
Prakash Shah, ‘Transnational Hindu law Adoptions: Recognition and Treatment in Britain’ (2009) 5(2) International Journal of Law in Context 107.
- 43.
Werner F. Menski, ‘Life and Law: Advocacy and Expert Witnessing in the UK’ in Livia Holden (ed), Cultural Expertise and Litigation: Patterns, Conflicts, Narratives (Routledge 2011).
- 44.
Rohe (n 1) 19, 90.
- 45.
Bhatti v Bhatti [2009] EWHC 3506 (Ch), concerning Ahmadi transnational arbitration through their own system.
- 46.
Jivraj v Hashwani [2011] UKSC 40, concerning Shia Ismaili litigation and designed to ensure a safe playing field in the UK for their Conciliation and Arbitration Boards.
- 47.
Alison Shaw, ‘Kinship, Cultural Preference and Immigration: Consanguineous Marriage among British Pakistanis’ (2001) 7 Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 315.
- 48.
Prakash Shah, ‘In Pursuit of the Pagans: Muslim Law in the English Context’ (2013) Vol. 45(1) Journal of Legal Pluralism 58.
- 49.
Samia Bano, Muslim Women and Shari'ah Councils: Transcending the Boundaries of Community and Law (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) expresses this tension well.
- 50.
John Bowen, ‘How Could English Courts Recognize Shariah?’ (2011) 7 Univ. of St. Thomas LJ 411, discussing Uddin v Choudhury [2009] EWCA Civ 1205.
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Shah, P. (2017). South Asian Legal Systems and Families in Foreign Courts: The British Case. In: Garimella, S., Jolly, S. (eds) Private International Law. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3458-9_1
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