Can Non-Muslim Courts Bring Legal Change in Sharia Laws?

Abstract

The transformative and regulatory accommodation model addresses practical challenges to accommodate religious laws and courts in the secular and democratic regimes. There is a strong evidence against the jurisdictional competition between secular and religious courts under defined conditions. There is no concern regarding the Shariah courts in the non-Muslim democracies, as majority of the country’s ethno-religious groups control the civil and rabbinical courts. In this regard, there is a need to mitigate the negative impact of Muslim Family Laws (MFLs) by the civil courts in non-Muslim majority countries because MFLs imply certain disabilities and limitations upon the displayed rights of women and children. To address these issues, the present study aims to discuss the possibilities and challenges faced by the multicultural and pluri-legal accommodations by focusing on the Islamic law and institutions within the non-Muslim democracies. The results have shown that the reformation of rules and procedures internalize certain principles and discourses due to increased compliance of religious courts with the high court rulings. Increase in the number of Muslim judges on civil courts would help to overcome lack of legitimacy in the perspectives of the Muslim minority that is the main reason of shortcomings of both ex post and ex ante oversight mechanisms.