Honestly an 800 man police operation resulting in one serious charge is pretty ridiculous, not like the guy was some mastermind, sure killing a person is never to be treated lightly, but if it wasn't for the magic of the T word I doubt there would have been 8 cops let alone 800. If you had evidence against him it honestly does not take that much man power to make an arrest.
And no, if you are in law enforcement honestly the standards should be higher, letting police act unchecked is how you get stuff like Ferguson.
It will also loosen the criteria for authorities to be granted control orders and search warrants, and give officers working on special operations immunity from prosecution providing they do not cause death, serious injury or commit a sexual offence.
I feel safer already!
That seems odd.
That's odd right?
This is literally power to beat suspects, or anyone really, and then force them through the courts to prove they were seriously injured (meaning no unless you turn up in a wheelchair, since drag it out long enough and you'll look better and better)
For the purposes of common law, serious injury means any of the following: permanent serious impairment or loss of a body function. permanent serious disfigurement. permanent severe mental or permanent severe behavioural disturbance or disorder.
That's just google though.
I'd imagine even if it was torture without physical injury that the person would suffer mental or behavioural disturbance. But, it's harder to prove and depending on the judge the courts can be extremely unsympathetic to mental problems.
Regrettably for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift. There may be more restrictions on some, so that there can be more protection for others.
Regrettably for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift. There may be more restrictions on some, so that there can be more protection for others.
Oh fuck the fuck right off, Tony. How long until we can vote him out again?
Every time I think they couldn't be any more blatant, they say shit like this. While I was confident they'd be thrown out on their asses before, I can't help but feel this Tough on Terrorism crap will get them over the line come the next election.
Every time I think they couldn't be any more blatant, they say shit like this. While I was confident they'd be thrown out on their asses before, I can't help but feel this Tough on Terrorism crap will get them over the line come the next election.
We're fucked.
I'm not so sure. I haven't spoken to anyone in person who doesn't see this "terrorism" crap for exactly what it is. That said, I don't know anyone in person who has a single good thing to say about Tony Abbott, but he somehow managed to get himself elected anyway...
If facebook is any indication, people are eating that shit up though.
There's a facebook page for Jacqui Lambie's racist screw up regarding her inability to define sharia law, and it's just filled with people leaping to her defense because them sharia's are coming to behead us.
Also back when the threat level was first raised, they conducted radio interviews with people at footy games talking about how it's great that the government is taking the tough stance and that they feel much safer now.
Ugh.
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Oh yeah, I'm not denying that it's going to happily spur on a whole bunch of bigotry and racism. But let's face it: that's every political issue in Australia.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited September 2014
It's hard to say re: bigotry. I mean, Australian society pretty much stratifies into a few different categories and the way that the pollies talk about Asylum seeker policy reflects this:
There's a racist and uncritical lower stratum who think that the appropriate asylum seeker policy can be summarised as "target practice" - it never ceases to amaze me how often this comes up, nor that almost exactly the same phrasing is used. They care about stopping the boats, they care not one whit about immigration or the human tragedy of it all. They are also quite likely to be bigoted and racist.
And so the politicians tread the fine line of harsh policy (but not harsh enough!) while disguising it in humanitarian concern ("We just want to stop the people smugglers who get people killed! We're saving lives, really!") so as not to offend the thin sliver in the middle that would be offended by overt bigotry or other bad optics but nonetheless have some objection to refugee intake.
You've almost certainly got the same thing at play here - there are bigots who will reliably support anything of this nature against non-white citizens or foreigners, and the swinging middle band who are susceptible to fear based politics.
I'm not so sure. I haven't spoken to anyone in person who doesn't see this "terrorism" crap for exactly what it is. That said, I don't know anyone in person who has a single good thing to say about Tony Abbott, but he somehow managed to get himself elected anyway...
So is Australia actually threatened by attacks by extremist or is it just bigotry
There was a threat. By one person.
So yeah, the latter.
It's not bigotry. It's the liberals needing a fear-based issue for an election.
And probably a decent amount of internally getting carried away with how desperately under threat they feel.
It's not the Liberals I'm referring to (FWIW I agree it's a calculated message rather than bigotry on their part). It's the shitheels using the 'threat' tarted up by the media and the Liberals as an excuse to shit on muslims, who I've no doubt the LNP are well aware of and give no shits about stopping aside from some mealy-mouthed statements inbetween stoking more fear.
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited September 2014
People reacted without thought to the shenanigans of the Labor Party.
Now they're realising what they have done.
I hope a lot of them realise how stupid that was.
I didn't vote for the idiot. I could see his bad news a mile away. You have to be blind not to see it.
There's a large section of the basically middle class, upper middle class whites in Australia that are really quite unthinkingly bigoted and in some cases just plain harmfully ignorant, leading them to make stupid decisions about this kind of thing. I saw some pretty ugly statistics when we studied racism in australia.
Enough that this doesn't shock me at all. It's been a problem for a while.
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Regrettably for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift. There may be more restrictions on some, so that there can be more protection for others.
We must never surrender to terror because we love freedom and they hate us for our freedoms! Now let us restrict our freedoms out of fear. No, don't ask us to restrict any freedoms for the vastly more common deaths like deaths as a result of domestic violence.
Worth noting that after kicking around the idea of barring Russia from the G20 meeting in Australia while the Big Topic was MH17's downing, the government suddenly now claims that it's not in its power to do so. Chickenshits.
If facebook is any indication, people are eating that shit up though.
There's a facebook page for Jacqui Lambie's racist screw up regarding her inability to define sharia law, and it's just filled with people leaping to her defense because them sharia's are coming to behead us.
Also back when the threat level was first raised, they conducted radio interviews with people at footy games talking about how it's great that the government is taking the tough stance and that they feel much safer now.
Ugh.
I tend to agree with the bigots on Sharia law. That shit can get fucked. We have our own justice system here, it may not be perfect but it is a lot better than their crap.
The issue is only some parts of Sharia law. Most of it perfectly harmless.
For example, my mum claims our laws in New Zealand are based off of the bible. And that's probably partly true. But it isn't really true and hopefully never will be because there is some messed up laws in there. I would proably go so far as to say that there are zero people in the entire world who actually follow all the laws in the bible. Because, seriously, some of the them are messed up. Does that stop people being Christians or Jews? No, they recognise the bad laws for what they are and do not follow them. And anyone who thinks the bad laws are actually good can't follow them anyway, because most of the bad laws rely on a society that follows them.
And that's the same for most Muslims. They follow the laws of the country that they live in and also follow the personal laws that relate to them. It tends to be in the tribal regions with no real governance that the bad bits of Sharia law are followed. And no country has implemented all of it. If only because it would be impossible to do so.
Although, while we are agreeing with bigots, I do think it worrying that some people have gone to Syria to join the rebels. Not many, just two or three from NZ (and I assume some went from Australia), but it's potentially real ties to terrorist groups.
Not that things seem to be doing so well over there, some of the young guys who left from Britain had their passports revoked. Now they're disillusioned with the cause, they spent most of their time fighting other rival rebel groups (insert Life of Brian Judean People's Front vs People's Front of Judea clip). But they might be let back in as a anti-ISIS propaganda move.
If facebook is any indication, people are eating that shit up though.
There's a facebook page for Jacqui Lambie's racist screw up regarding her inability to define sharia law, and it's just filled with people leaping to her defense because them sharia's are coming to behead us.
Also back when the threat level was first raised, they conducted radio interviews with people at footy games talking about how it's great that the government is taking the tough stance and that they feel much safer now.
Ugh.
I tend to agree with the bigots on Sharia law. That shit can get fucked. We have our own justice system here, it may not be perfect but it is a lot better than their crap.
Do you know how sharia law works in australian muslims, how it actually affects their day to day lives?
Tip: if you've seen it on the news, you probably don't.
So why would you agree with a bigot about something when you don't really know the details?
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
People reacted without thought to the shenanigans of the Labor Party.
Now they're realising what they have done.
I hope a lot of them realise how stupid that was.
They don't realise.
At best they might think the LNP isn't doing a good job but they wouldn't hesitate to do the exact same thing again and would reserve their vitriol for the ALP.
If facebook is any indication, people are eating that shit up though.
There's a facebook page for Jacqui Lambie's racist screw up regarding her inability to define sharia law, and it's just filled with people leaping to her defense because them sharia's are coming to behead us.
Also back when the threat level was first raised, they conducted radio interviews with people at footy games talking about how it's great that the government is taking the tough stance and that they feel much safer now.
Ugh.
I tend to agree with the bigots on Sharia law. That shit can get fucked. We have our own justice system here, it may not be perfect but it is a lot better than their crap.
How do you feel about Jewish Halachic law being used in Australia to to resolve civil and personal disputes between consenting parties?
Tony Abbott has recorded a six-point bounce in his personal approval rating after a fortnight dominated by terrorism and security issues, the latest Newspoll survey shows.
The proportion of Newspoll respondents who were satisfied with the prime minister’s performance rose six points to 41%, the highest level since November last year, while dissatisfaction declined two points to 52%.
This leaves Abbott with a net satisfaction score of minus 11.
The results, published in the Australian on Tuesday, indicated the Coalition government’s primary vote had risen two points in the previous fortnight to 41%, Labor’s had fallen one point to 34%, and support for the Greens had declined three points to 11%.
These figures would equate to 51% support for the Labor opposition and 49% for the Coalition after the distribution of preferences.
The phone-based survey of 1,152 voters was taken from Friday to Sunday, immediately after Thursday’s large counter-terrorism raids in Sydney and Brisbane, and about a week after the domestic alert level was increased from medium to high.
Newspoll does have the issue of being land line phones only, so it skews heavily to the older population, but still, a bounce is a bounce.
Would be interested to see what a more representative poll says though.
A little late here, but whether Sharia law is good or bad is completely fucking irrelevant to anything given we already have a legal system here and have precisely zero plans of dumping it in favor of Sharia any time soon. So to a non-Muslim, "Sharia law" should be a complete non-issue as it has zero chance of ever affecting them in any way!
A sweeping suppression order will prevent reporting of controversial preventive detention orders used in last week’s counter-terrorism operations indefinitely. A non-publication order preventing disclosure of any information about the use of the lock-up powers means details of the order will remain secret until a New South Wales supreme court judge rules otherwise.
The judge’s ruling is so broad that a supreme court spokesman says even his name cannot be reported.
NSW police, Australian federal police and Asio officers took part in major operations across NSW and Queensland last Thursday. There were 15 people detained in the raids. One man was charged with a terrorism offence and another man was charged with an offence related to possessing a firearm. On Friday the Australian federal police revealed they had obtained preventive detention orders for three men before the counter-terrorism raids, in the first instance the anti-terrorism powers have been used since the Howard government introduced them over a decade ago. But what amounts to an order that indefinitely prohibits reporting on the details of the orders, and even the reasons supporting them, will remain in place until a further order is made by the supreme court.
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
sigh
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Heard interviews with moderate Muslims today. Most notably a dude from CAIR (I think that's it, centre for Australian Islamic Relations, some sort of backronym of similar ilk). Gotta say, not really doing anyone any favours. Referring to the "schizophrenic" nature of the moderate Islamic community in Australia (which is to say despite being relatively more laid back, a good chunk are at least neutral toward IS and Auatralians joining them,and a fair chunk explicitly supporting them). Even this dude, at the end of the interview didn't come out and say "IS is terrible and supporting them is wrong" - though he may have said the first part earlier in the interview, he was very hesitant to criticise any moderate, Australian Muslims.
But this simply goes back to the issues raised by Sam Harris and Hitch so many years ago - "moderate" religion is a nonsense term (and often, nonsense practice even within the religious framework of which they are ostensibly a part) and everyone, Muslims in particular, are too hesitant to criticise their more radical fellows (because all too often it involves sawing off the very branch upon which they sit).
If facebook is any indication, people are eating that shit up though.
There's a facebook page for Jacqui Lambie's racist screw up regarding her inability to define sharia law, and it's just filled with people leaping to her defense because them sharia's are coming to behead us.
Also back when the threat level was first raised, they conducted radio interviews with people at footy games talking about how it's great that the government is taking the tough stance and that they feel much safer now.
Ugh.
I tend to agree with the bigots on Sharia law. That shit can get fucked. We have our own justice system here, it may not be perfect but it is a lot better than their crap.
How do you feel about Jewish Halachic law being used in Australia to to resolve civil and personal disputes between consenting parties?
First, I'll admit that I know jack diddly squat about either Halachic or Sharia law in theory or practice, in Australia or outside.
My only questions would be all those ones you ask when the word "consent" emerges, especially in close proximity to cultural rights, individual rights, and close personal and family relationships. Then you add in the other complications of whether and/or how our legal system should enforce or invalidate such agreements and...well it can get complicated real fast.
For instance, there's a tough jurisprudential question around whether our criminal courts should consider the enactment of regional aboriginal tribal punishment as a mitigating factor when sentencing. An example of a tribal punishment, IIRC, is a spearing through the thigh as punishment for a murder - and then the murderer is theoretically accepted back into the community. There are good policy reasons on both sides of the argument.
On the negative side, to begin with, it's something our legal system considers to be cruel and unusual punishment. And considering that as a mitigating factor in sentencing equates to condoning the commission of another offence. It also effectively imposes two punishments for the same crime, which is a massive no-no in our own system. There's also policing questions: Should we punish the punishers - because, consent or no, stabbing another person is still illegal. If not, how do we know the injured party consented, and wasn't just guilted/cajoled/threatened into agreeing to the spearing or other punishment? How do we ensure the spearing is done relatively safely so we don't have further injury or death from infection or simply a wayward stab. Maybe we send in some kind of officials to view the whole process and ensure everything is hunky-dory. But wait, that's even MORE tacit acceptance of a practice that we wouldn't accept in any other community. And besides, isn't requiring consent perhaps imposing our own cultural and legal notions on another culture? So wait, we're tolerating another culture and its legal system, but only to a certain point? So how much cultural imperialism is too much?
But on the other hand...it seems to work. Tribal punishment is apparently preferable for these communities to lengthy prison sentences that cut off indidenous Australians - especially young males - from their communities and perhaps further criminalise them. Mitigating their sentence in this way would help. Plus apparently there's a very cathartic "one and done" element to their system of punishment, and jail to them seems cruel and unusual in its own way - why lock someone up in a concrete box far from their community when we just jab a little spear in the thigh and then all's forgiven? Plus, if we don't spear them, we can't begin to forgive them for what they're done. It's just the done thing. So please just look the other way while we do it and then knock time off their sentence.
Anyway, that's what I remember from my old Crim Law lectures 4 years ago, and I don't want to give anyone the idea that I'm an expert. IANAL and all that. The point I'm trying to make isn't about tribal punishment in regional indigenous communities. It's that allowing two sets of laws to operate in one place can complicate things and offend one or both groups. Hell, I'm not even saying Sharia Law can't work in Australia, just that certain elements might have to give when they rub up against our own legal system.
Anyway, all of this is written without any understanding of sharia, so if it isn't relevant please take this an interesting post about aboriginal tribal punishment in our legal system.
The issue is only some parts of Sharia law. Most of it perfectly harmless.
For example, my mum claims our laws in New Zealand are based off of the bible. And that's probably partly true. But it isn't really true and hopefully never will be because there is some messed up laws in there. I would proably go so far as to say that there are zero people in the entire world who actually follow all the laws in the bible. Because, seriously, some of the them are messed up. Does that stop people being Christians or Jews? No, they recognise the bad laws for what they are and do not follow them. And anyone who thinks the bad laws are actually good can't follow them anyway, because most of the bad laws rely on a society that follows them.
And that's the same for most Muslims. They follow the laws of the country that they live in and also follow the personal laws that relate to them. It tends to be in the tribal regions with no real governance that the bad bits of Sharia law are followed. And no country has implemented all of it. If only because it would be impossible to do so.
Well...it's a little different from that if it's the same as the UK, in which it's kind of like Judge Judy (or the corporate one that was sneaking into a lot of EULAs and contracts relatively recently in the States). You're agreeing to a legally binding contract to accept the ruling of a third party, I kind of see the point where there's a ton of pressure to agree to these and that in the kind of cases that are going to come under Sharia law rather than a Government court, that at the very least you need to make sure you've got suitable oversight. Though in the case of Sharia, the existence of finacial versions like Islamic banking would lead me to assume that there's a fairly extensive framework in place (though I could just as easily see the civil side being a little more overlooked and left to less legally focused clerics, given that regular church matters could almost be considered a specialty in family law).
Literal Sharia law is extremely incompatible with Australian law, and indeed even it's way of life and moral code.
For those who don't really understand what it is I will try and explain.
It is a more than just law, it is taught that this is how we must live. It is a moral code, a legal code, a way to arbitrate disputes. It is everything. It gets more complicated in that it varies as to whether hadith is included - these are sources outside the Qur'an on how the prophet lived and can be very hotly debated.
So how are they incompatible? There are many examples, I will give a couple that very much upset members in my community.
The Prophet ordered a man who had been drinking to be beaten by all present in the house. This opposes Australian law and moral code, as drinking is acceptable and is part of many normal social functions. It is my understanding that you can not consent to violence committed against you, and drinking is not against any Australian law.
The Prophet also said that if your wife disrespects you remind her of the teaching of God, then ignore her, then in bed hit her. Domestic violence is very much an issue in my community, a fact I am ashamed of. When I was younger I too believed this was acceptable, as it was the way I was raised. Upon venturing beyond into the wider Australian community I learned to my shame my poor beliefs. This site helped as well, as here men and women interact at a equal level and this is good, but in the past I have made posts of which I am ashamed, which are rude towards women, but I believe in owning my past and my mistakes.
Then there is the death penalty for the apostate, which is used to describe one who did, but no longer follows the way of the Prophet. The murderer who commits the deed is forgiven and is to be celebrated. This is how many groups justify attacking other groups of Muslims, as they follow a different way so they are apostates. It is still murder.
Finally, non-Muslims are seen as lesser under Sharia law. They must follow this law or be subject to justice. An example of which is displaying or eating pork around Muslims.
Obviously I have chosen more extreme examples, but these are all straight from the Qur'an which more hardline groups choose to implement as written.
Moderates are afraid to speak out publicly, as there are hardliners in the community who take offence and see it as disrespect leading them to take aggressive actions.
IS style Sharia law as the law is a completely different beast than the 'religious ombudsman' style that's actually practiced in western countries. That's partly why it exists, it's how to proceed in an 'Islamic way' as possible within the framework of the national law - divorces, nieghbourly and business disputes etc rather than the more serious religious crimes. Clearly an Apostate is not going to sign up to abide by a Sharia court's decision and even if forced not only would they have grounds to appeal the decision in a national court as an invalid contract - the Islamic court wouldn't want to hear it anyway as there's nothing they can do about it.
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And no, if you are in law enforcement honestly the standards should be higher, letting police act unchecked is how you get stuff like Ferguson.
This is literally power to beat suspects, or anyone really, and then force them through the courts to prove they were seriously injured (meaning no unless you turn up in a wheelchair, since drag it out long enough and you'll look better and better)
That's just google though.
I'd imagine even if it was torture without physical injury that the person would suffer mental or behavioural disturbance. But, it's harder to prove and depending on the judge the courts can be extremely unsympathetic to mental problems.
Oh fuck the fuck right off, Tony. How long until we can vote him out again?
We're fucked.
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I'm not so sure. I haven't spoken to anyone in person who doesn't see this "terrorism" crap for exactly what it is. That said, I don't know anyone in person who has a single good thing to say about Tony Abbott, but he somehow managed to get himself elected anyway...
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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_Zealand_police_raids
There was a threat. By one person.
So yeah, the latter.
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It's not bigotry. It's the liberals needing a fear-based issue for an election.
And probably a decent amount of internally getting carried away with how desperately under threat they feel.
There's a facebook page for Jacqui Lambie's racist screw up regarding her inability to define sharia law, and it's just filled with people leaping to her defense because them sharia's are coming to behead us.
Also back when the threat level was first raised, they conducted radio interviews with people at footy games talking about how it's great that the government is taking the tough stance and that they feel much safer now.
Ugh.
Please shoot me a PM if you add me so I know to add you back.
There's a racist and uncritical lower stratum who think that the appropriate asylum seeker policy can be summarised as "target practice" - it never ceases to amaze me how often this comes up, nor that almost exactly the same phrasing is used. They care about stopping the boats, they care not one whit about immigration or the human tragedy of it all. They are also quite likely to be bigoted and racist.
And so the politicians tread the fine line of harsh policy (but not harsh enough!) while disguising it in humanitarian concern ("We just want to stop the people smugglers who get people killed! We're saving lives, really!") so as not to offend the thin sliver in the middle that would be offended by overt bigotry or other bad optics but nonetheless have some objection to refugee intake.
You've almost certainly got the same thing at play here - there are bigots who will reliably support anything of this nature against non-white citizens or foreigners, and the swinging middle band who are susceptible to fear based politics.
For what it's worth.
http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5824-morgan-poll-federal-voting-intention-september-22-2014-201409220753
That's a (short term) comforting thing to see at least. And for shocking fact of the day.
It's not the Liberals I'm referring to (FWIW I agree it's a calculated message rather than bigotry on their part). It's the shitheels using the 'threat' tarted up by the media and the Liberals as an excuse to shit on muslims, who I've no doubt the LNP are well aware of and give no shits about stopping aside from some mealy-mouthed statements inbetween stoking more fear.
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Now they're realising what they have done.
I hope a lot of them realise how stupid that was.
I didn't vote for the idiot. I could see his bad news a mile away. You have to be blind not to see it.
There's a large section of the basically middle class, upper middle class whites in Australia that are really quite unthinkingly bigoted and in some cases just plain harmfully ignorant, leading them to make stupid decisions about this kind of thing. I saw some pretty ugly statistics when we studied racism in australia.
Enough that this doesn't shock me at all. It's been a problem for a while.
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I tend to agree with the bigots on Sharia law. That shit can get fucked. We have our own justice system here, it may not be perfect but it is a lot better than their crap.
For example, my mum claims our laws in New Zealand are based off of the bible. And that's probably partly true. But it isn't really true and hopefully never will be because there is some messed up laws in there. I would proably go so far as to say that there are zero people in the entire world who actually follow all the laws in the bible. Because, seriously, some of the them are messed up. Does that stop people being Christians or Jews? No, they recognise the bad laws for what they are and do not follow them. And anyone who thinks the bad laws are actually good can't follow them anyway, because most of the bad laws rely on a society that follows them.
And that's the same for most Muslims. They follow the laws of the country that they live in and also follow the personal laws that relate to them. It tends to be in the tribal regions with no real governance that the bad bits of Sharia law are followed. And no country has implemented all of it. If only because it would be impossible to do so.
Not that things seem to be doing so well over there, some of the young guys who left from Britain had their passports revoked. Now they're disillusioned with the cause, they spent most of their time fighting other rival rebel groups (insert Life of Brian Judean People's Front vs People's Front of Judea clip). But they might be let back in as a anti-ISIS propaganda move.
Anyone know why ISIS is now IS? I prefer ISIS.
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
Do you know how sharia law works in australian muslims, how it actually affects their day to day lives?
Tip: if you've seen it on the news, you probably don't.
So why would you agree with a bigot about something when you don't really know the details?
They don't realise.
At best they might think the LNP isn't doing a good job but they wouldn't hesitate to do the exact same thing again and would reserve their vitriol for the ALP.
How do you feel about Jewish Halachic law being used in Australia to to resolve civil and personal disputes between consenting parties?
Newspoll does have the issue of being land line phones only, so it skews heavily to the older population, but still, a bounce is a bounce.
Would be interested to see what a more representative poll says though.
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But this simply goes back to the issues raised by Sam Harris and Hitch so many years ago - "moderate" religion is a nonsense term (and often, nonsense practice even within the religious framework of which they are ostensibly a part) and everyone, Muslims in particular, are too hesitant to criticise their more radical fellows (because all too often it involves sawing off the very branch upon which they sit).
First, I'll admit that I know jack diddly squat about either Halachic or Sharia law in theory or practice, in Australia or outside.
My only questions would be all those ones you ask when the word "consent" emerges, especially in close proximity to cultural rights, individual rights, and close personal and family relationships. Then you add in the other complications of whether and/or how our legal system should enforce or invalidate such agreements and...well it can get complicated real fast.
For instance, there's a tough jurisprudential question around whether our criminal courts should consider the enactment of regional aboriginal tribal punishment as a mitigating factor when sentencing. An example of a tribal punishment, IIRC, is a spearing through the thigh as punishment for a murder - and then the murderer is theoretically accepted back into the community. There are good policy reasons on both sides of the argument.
On the negative side, to begin with, it's something our legal system considers to be cruel and unusual punishment. And considering that as a mitigating factor in sentencing equates to condoning the commission of another offence. It also effectively imposes two punishments for the same crime, which is a massive no-no in our own system. There's also policing questions: Should we punish the punishers - because, consent or no, stabbing another person is still illegal. If not, how do we know the injured party consented, and wasn't just guilted/cajoled/threatened into agreeing to the spearing or other punishment? How do we ensure the spearing is done relatively safely so we don't have further injury or death from infection or simply a wayward stab. Maybe we send in some kind of officials to view the whole process and ensure everything is hunky-dory. But wait, that's even MORE tacit acceptance of a practice that we wouldn't accept in any other community. And besides, isn't requiring consent perhaps imposing our own cultural and legal notions on another culture? So wait, we're tolerating another culture and its legal system, but only to a certain point? So how much cultural imperialism is too much?
But on the other hand...it seems to work. Tribal punishment is apparently preferable for these communities to lengthy prison sentences that cut off indidenous Australians - especially young males - from their communities and perhaps further criminalise them. Mitigating their sentence in this way would help. Plus apparently there's a very cathartic "one and done" element to their system of punishment, and jail to them seems cruel and unusual in its own way - why lock someone up in a concrete box far from their community when we just jab a little spear in the thigh and then all's forgiven? Plus, if we don't spear them, we can't begin to forgive them for what they're done. It's just the done thing. So please just look the other way while we do it and then knock time off their sentence.
Anyway, that's what I remember from my old Crim Law lectures 4 years ago, and I don't want to give anyone the idea that I'm an expert. IANAL and all that. The point I'm trying to make isn't about tribal punishment in regional indigenous communities. It's that allowing two sets of laws to operate in one place can complicate things and offend one or both groups. Hell, I'm not even saying Sharia Law can't work in Australia, just that certain elements might have to give when they rub up against our own legal system.
Anyway, all of this is written without any understanding of sharia, so if it isn't relevant please take this an interesting post about aboriginal tribal punishment in our legal system.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Well...it's a little different from that if it's the same as the UK, in which it's kind of like Judge Judy (or the corporate one that was sneaking into a lot of EULAs and contracts relatively recently in the States). You're agreeing to a legally binding contract to accept the ruling of a third party, I kind of see the point where there's a ton of pressure to agree to these and that in the kind of cases that are going to come under Sharia law rather than a Government court, that at the very least you need to make sure you've got suitable oversight. Though in the case of Sharia, the existence of finacial versions like Islamic banking would lead me to assume that there's a fairly extensive framework in place (though I could just as easily see the civil side being a little more overlooked and left to less legally focused clerics, given that regular church matters could almost be considered a specialty in family law).
For those who don't really understand what it is I will try and explain.
It is a more than just law, it is taught that this is how we must live. It is a moral code, a legal code, a way to arbitrate disputes. It is everything. It gets more complicated in that it varies as to whether hadith is included - these are sources outside the Qur'an on how the prophet lived and can be very hotly debated.
So how are they incompatible? There are many examples, I will give a couple that very much upset members in my community.
The Prophet ordered a man who had been drinking to be beaten by all present in the house. This opposes Australian law and moral code, as drinking is acceptable and is part of many normal social functions. It is my understanding that you can not consent to violence committed against you, and drinking is not against any Australian law.
The Prophet also said that if your wife disrespects you remind her of the teaching of God, then ignore her, then in bed hit her. Domestic violence is very much an issue in my community, a fact I am ashamed of. When I was younger I too believed this was acceptable, as it was the way I was raised. Upon venturing beyond into the wider Australian community I learned to my shame my poor beliefs. This site helped as well, as here men and women interact at a equal level and this is good, but in the past I have made posts of which I am ashamed, which are rude towards women, but I believe in owning my past and my mistakes.
Then there is the death penalty for the apostate, which is used to describe one who did, but no longer follows the way of the Prophet. The murderer who commits the deed is forgiven and is to be celebrated. This is how many groups justify attacking other groups of Muslims, as they follow a different way so they are apostates. It is still murder.
Finally, non-Muslims are seen as lesser under Sharia law. They must follow this law or be subject to justice. An example of which is displaying or eating pork around Muslims.
Obviously I have chosen more extreme examples, but these are all straight from the Qur'an which more hardline groups choose to implement as written.
Moderates are afraid to speak out publicly, as there are hardliners in the community who take offence and see it as disrespect leading them to take aggressive actions.