Shari'a Courts and Councils in the West

To discuss the way Shariʿa is perceived and practised in Western countries, this chapter covers the debates with regards to its more official application in Shariʿa courts and councils in the area of family law first in Western countries in general, and then in four specific Anglophone countries: the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada. These four countries are all English-speaking Common Law jurisdictions and have similar approaches to family law adjudications. All four have developed alternate dispute resolution (ADR) requirements of mediation or arbitration into their family dissolution processes with the aim of reducing workloads in the civil courts. One of the main issues with regards to these councils, as this chapter covers, is based on gender issues among Muslim women. The chapter then ends with a discussion of the lack of presence of a Habermasian type of dialogue on Shariʿa in the public sphere despite these countries being post-secular societies.