It feels a little as if BBC journalists are getting themselves into trouble every other week at the moment. As news emerges that new BBC chief Tony Hall will appear before MPs to discuss why they allowed a Panorama journalist to use a university field trip as cover for an exposé on North Korea, it's little wonder that the broadcaster's flagship investigative journalism programme has stuck with a far easier target this week.
Shari'a law, and the enforcement thereof, is a headline-writer's dream, playing as it does into our fears of the "other". Broadly meaning "the way", Shari'a is the body of Islamic law, religion and ethics which governs the conduct of many of the world's Muslims. Jane Corbin's investigation was prompted by concerns that the UK's growing number of Shari'a councils have been holding themselves out to be legal authorities, particularly in cases of marriage and divorce, and that women in abusive marriages are being badly treated by them.
Shari'a courts may be low-hanging fruit for Panorama, but their treatment of women needs reporting
It's a charge that the Islamic Shari'a Council in Leyton, East London, strongly denies. "We are not here just to issue divorces - we try to mediate first," an elder tells Corbin (pictured below). The problem, as is made clear from Crown Prosecution Service guidelines, is that mediation - a form of alternative dispute resolution which relies on the consent of both parties - is hardly appropriate in cases that involve domestic violence or forced marriage.
Charlotte Proudman, a barrister who specialises in Shari'a divorce cases where women have been mistreated, sets out some of the ways in which the system is rigged in favour of men. Women seeking a Shari'a divorce must produce two male witnesses, she says, and can be forced to pay a £400 fee to begin divorce proceedings while men may not have to pay anything. Worse, these councils have been interfering in issues of childcare and of residency - something which, having no legal authority, they are not allowed to do.
The programme opens with secret footage of a weeping woman told to return to her husband for a month of negotiations. She has, she explains, been trying to get a divorce for a year. This woman does not have a UK civil marriage, making Shari'a divorce her only option. Later Farah, who was easily granted a civil divorce, talks about her 10-year battle to get a Shari'a divorce from a council which has insisted that she regularly takes her daughter at her own expense to visit her ex-husband in Pakistan as part of the settlement.
Later, the programme sends in an actress to pose as a woman seeking a Shari'a divorce. She claims that her husband beats her, and is asked, "How severely?" The advice of the council is only to go to the police as a last resort, and to ask her husband what she is doing wrong so that she can "correct her behaviour".
Corbin also speaks to Baroness Cox, who is bringing a Private Members' Bill in the House of Lords making it a criminal offence for Shari'a councils to hold themselves out as courts. "In a democracy, you can't have a parallel legal system," she says. Particularly not one which, as one of the programme's interviewed women says, regularly "violates the codes of Islam by treating me differently for being a woman".
