Sharia courts in Britain 'lock women into marital captivity and do not officially report domestic violence' says academic

Sharia courts operating in the UK are treating women as second-class citizens, a damning report has revealed.

The secretive Islamic tribunals, working mainly from mosques, settle financial and family disputes according to religious principles.

But the parallel justice system runs against the law of the land and is condemning British Muslim women to ‘marital captivity’ while failing to protect them from domestic violence, an independent study found.

In one controversial case, a sharia court refused to intervene even though a woman said her husband was denying her a divorce unless she gave him £10,000.

In another instance, a woman who claimed to be married to an abusive husband was told by a laughing judge: ‘Why did you marry such a person?’

Under Islamic law, men only need to say ‘I divorce you’ three times to separate from their wives while women need the sanction of clerics.

According to the report, a judge at an East London court told a couple who had already obtained a civil divorce that the paper counted for nothing.

It said the judge – known as a qadi – told the couple: ‘Secular judge does not do religious divorces. We have Islam. Secular courts do not have Islamic laws. Can a kaffir [non-Muslim] come in and judge Islamic matters?’

The report was written by Machteld Zee, a Dutch academic who was granted unprecedented access to Islamic divorce hearings in London and Birmingham.

She concluded: ’There are, in fact, two separate legal orders functioning [in the UK], of which one currently operates in the “shadow of the law”.’

Judges in the courts were ‘upholding the theory and practice of the strong hold men have over women’, she added.

Her findings will reignite the debate about the rise of sharia law, the legal system derived from the Koran and the rulings of Islamic scholars, which are known as fatwas.

It provides a code for living – including prayers, fasting and donating to the poor – but is also notorious for laying down extreme punishments such as cutting off a hand or death by stoning for adultery.