UK Court: Sharia Marriages Not Valid Under English Law
by Soeren Kern, Gatestone Institute:
The Court of Appeal, the second-highest court in England and Wales after the Supreme Court, has ruled that the Islamic marriage contract, known as nikah in Arabic, is not valid under English law.
The landmark ruling has far-reaching implications. On the one hand, the decision strikes a blow against efforts to enshrine this aspect of Sharia law into the British legal system. On the other hand, it leaves potentially thousands of Muslim women in Britain without legal recourse in the case of divorce.
The case involves an estranged couple, Nasreen Akhter and Mohammed Shabaz Khan, both of Pakistani heritage, who took part in a nikah ceremony officiated by an imam in front of 150 guests at a restaurant in London in December 1998.
In November 2016, Akhter, a 48-year-old attorney, filed for a divorce, allegedly because Khan wanted to take a second wife. Khan, a 48-year-old property developer, tried to block Akhter’s divorce application on the basis that they were not legally married under English law. Khan said that they were married “under Sharia law only” and sued to prevent Akhtar from claiming money or property from him in the same way a legally married spouse could.
Akhter said that the couple, who have four children, intended to follow the nikah with a civil marriage ceremony that would be compliant with English law. No civil ceremony ever took place, however, because, according to Akhter, Khan refused.
On July 31, 2018, the London-based Family Division of the High Court ruled that the nikah fell within the scope of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, which establishes three categories of marriage: valid, void and non-marriage. Valid marriages may be ended by a decree of divorce; void marriages may be ended by a decree of nullity; non-marriages cannot be legally ended because legally the marriage never existed.
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