Sorry, didn't see your post earlier. It is from an article in a French magazine- actually published a couple of years ago, but re-posted by a friend the other day. The magazine is called 'Femme Actuelle'. In short, as the Courts had to cut their budget drastically, and as the majortiy of cases was about conjugal violence, they just 'cancelled the law' - simple! :

La loi punissant les violences domestiques vient d’être abrogée à Topeka, capitale du Kansas. La raison ? Un conflit de responsabilités entre le Comté (administration d’Etat) et la ville.
A l’origine, une coupe budgétaire de 10% vient amoindrir le budget du Comté. Une situation récurrente et commune à de nombreux Etats du pays, conséquence d’une crise qui s’infiltre dans les enveloppes des gouvernements locaux.
Problème, comment compenser ces pertes de budget ? Le procureur a la réponse : la moitié des plaintes traitées par le tribunal sont des cas de violence conjugale. Il suffit donc de les placer sous la responsabilité de la ville de Topeka. Et c’est là que ça coince. Dan Stanley, actuel maire de la ville de Topeka n’est pas en mesure de traiter ces cas « Nous n’avons pas assez de procureurs, de tribunaux, ni de personnels pour prendre soudainement en charge ces victimes », déclare-t-il dans le journal local.
La solution est ensuite purement politique : la ville décide de décriminaliser les violences domestiques pour obliger le Comté à en reprendre la responsabilité. A 7 voix contre 3, mardi dernier, la loi était purement et simplement supprimée. Aujourd'hui, la seule peine risquée en cas de violence conjugale est donc...l'impunité.
Depuis le début du conflit, trente personnes ont été arrêtées pour des cas de violences domestiques. Toutes ont été libérées, faute de pouvoir comparaître. Pour l’instant, aucun arrangement entre les deux parties n’a été trouvé.
En France, 156 femmes meurent sous les coups de leur conjoint chaque année. Le gouvernement a décidé de faire de la lutte contre la violence conjugale une priorité nationale. En juillet 2010, le harcèlement moral était reconnu comme un délit.

Don't you mean criminal law?

From my understanding criminal law is the law where the state prosecutes you. This includes things like murder. You cannot reach an amicable agreement but must go the route of the law.

Then there is civil law which is about disputes between equals. In these cases you can reach an agreement outside of the courts and the courts don't care. So for example if you steal something and the victim says its OK, then it stops there. Even if the police have got involved.

So I would say Sharia may be an alternative to civil law (assuming both parties agree) but cannot be an alternative to criminal law.

Don't think so, it must be prosecuted once reported. You can't report a theft and then withdraw because you changed your mind. Only exception I think if the culprit is part of the family, but don't hang me up on this part.

From the Kanton Bern, FAQ on prosecution:
Difference between "Strafanzeige" (report an incident) and "Privatklage" (sue someone):
"Die Privatklage kann jederzeit zurückgezogen werden. Der Rückzug ist definitiv." When you sue somebody you can always cancel that, but there's no such remark about the Strafanzeige thus in can't be withdrawn (except in certain cases such as theft within the family).

Civil law is what I meant, as I say equal under civil law, not talking about murder or rape or robbery, more like who's tree is growing over who's fence. There are also serious matters in civil cases that should not be dealt with by Sharia. This whole issue, was an issue in Britain about 15 years ago, and Sharia is being used in some parts of Britain for minor disputes in the Muslim community.

The wikis on Sharia are extensive and beyond my will to read them in depth. Some of you are very knowledgable in the matter, some of you more curious, but to me it spells trouble. Who is the judge here? Do they go to law school? Same law schools as the rest of us?

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia_law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia

If a bunch of people want to sit in a back room and play at being a tribunal, by all means let them. As long as they're all in it volunatrily and nobdy is being forced or coerced or bullied. If it contributes to peace in the community by de-escalating conflicts, all the better.

However, should there be a conflict with regular law, then regular law should overrule in all cases.

If you play soccer or basketball, you play by the rules of the game. If you join a hobby club, you abide by the statutes of that club. Some clubs even have tribunals to deal with people who break the rules. Is this underming the law of the land? No, because it is volunatry and you can always walk away if you disagree, even if the consequnec of that are that you can't play soccer any more or can't fly your model plane on their grounds.

I'ts called Stammtish around here- or the Masonic Lodge (one of the many reasons why many C/Kantons are asking for appartenance to such by Judges and Police should be disclosed- but they are resisting VERY hard. Wonder why )

I do not see how you could have Sharia as an "additive law" to secular law?


How do you run two different sets of laws in parallel?
If secular law always takes priority then what is the role of Sharia law; what is left for application of Sharia?

Interesting post; probably also applies to the other thread about DSI.

Block on boycotts of Israeli goods now introduced here

Seems the UK Government has recognised that the main impact of boycotts of Israeli goods was to move Palestinians from relatively well paid jobs into unemployment. (Sodastream is a good example where 300 Palestinians were boycotted into joblessness).
Presumably this was contrary to the aims of the boycott supporters who wanted to improve the life of Palestinians?
Or did the boycotter's really want to drive the Palestinians into desperation and fruitless but bloody riots?

Thanks - I found a version of that story from 2011 or so. In the States, criminal laws as dealt with at the state level. The State of Kansas did not repeal domestic abuse as a crime. It seems be an administrative matter. Some municipality got into a fight with the surrounding county about paying for jail cells or some such.

If any one of these Kansaser , just thinking of beating my wife , they have to deal with me first . Fecken Sugar beat farmers

It's about a hubby beating his wife, not any random woman.

Interesting, the ISIS staff list has been leaked by a disgruntled recruit... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-HR-forms.html

Could lead to some significant arrests and progress.

If this report is correct than it will be an enormous coup for the anti-terrorist forces.
Who would have thought that ISIS kept such detailed records?

In the same article it is said that ISIS is now managed by ex-soldiers from Saddam's army. Could well be true, ISIs is certainly well managed.
I always thought the biggest mistake the US made in Iraq was to disband the army. They should have kept them in place, paid them well and given them work to do rebuilding the country.
Firing trained soldiers then leaving them unpaid and unemployed was always a recipe for disaster.

It is essentially, no more than a glorified arbitration service, with no actual power. People love to pretend it is an entirely different system of law, but its actually pretty bland. The two parties come together, and some intermediaries try and find common ground which pleases everybody.

Yes.

That is, essentially, all it is. I've never come across a sharia tribunal which has conflicted with the law. Since the tribunal has no actual legal power, it wouldn't actually be able to enforce anything anyway. Its usually just a bunch of old people sitting around a table and trying to settle a minor dispute.

The role is to handle the inconsequential stuff that the justice system doesn't need to be clogged up with. Theres no benefit to getting a magistrate involved when its something that can be handled by the local community - that was the whole idea behind them. Free up resources in the justice system to deal with real crime, rather than piddling disputes between individuals that dont need the full justice system to handle.

It was always managed by ex-saddam forces.

As you say, one of the biggest contributing factors to ISIS was the disbanding of saddams army. All of a sudden, there were hundreds of thousands of soldiers with no soldiering to do. They should have been used to aid the rebuilding effort, or to maintain order of some sort, rather then being thrown out without so much as confiscating their weapons. Stupidity on a scale rarely seen in history.

Wrong. Sharia and Muslim Law are two different things. Sharia is more accurately defined as islamic jurisprudence.

The rules by which Muslims live are much bigger than Sharia - Sharia only covers jurisprudence, and is actually fairly limited in telling people how to live their lives.

And actually, the Sufis are a minority of the global muslim population. Quite a small minority, since they are only prevalent in the middle east, which itself is less than a quarter of the global muslim population.

Sharia itself is pretty secular - it makes no measure of the religion of the offender/victim. It is, actually, a secular jurisprudence system, for a non-secular people.

No it isn't. Sharia is Islamic jurisprudence, not Islamic law.
For example:
Sharia does not actually forbid murder. It only proscribes the punishment for it.
The actual legal forbidding of murder murder is unrelated to Sharia.

There is not a strictly codified uniform set of laws that can be called Sharia. It is more like a system of practices, based on the Quran, Hadith and centuries of debate, interpretation and precedent.

Correct - it is very open to interpretation. Sometimes it can be interpreted very rigidly, but it can also be interpreted in very different, yet equally applicable and valid ways.

Sharia penalties tend to be much worse, actually. The penalty for theft is up to and including the loss of your hand. I bet most thieves would prefer deportation than that.

In the case of South Africa and the Apartheid boycots, this is what an organizer told me.

I argued that if you hurt the South African economy, the first to suffer will be the blacks who lose their jobs.

The organizer said, yes, that's the idea. we want them to get really angry and so push them from their present lethargy and acceptance into civil disobedience.

So this type of boycotts are in the eyes of some indeed about making the poor even poorer in the belief that that will encourage an uprising.

If you really believe that it means you have a peculiar understanding of "secular".