On religious arbitration

The media's coverage of the Sharia law issue in particular and religious arbitration in general is a tragic failure of semantics.

The real issue was that people who aren't trained to interpret Ontario law were being permitted to make legally binding arbitration decisions. It didn't actually have anything to do with religion, except for the fact that some of the people providing arbitration happened to be religious leaders who were doing it in accordance with their interpretation of their religion.

And now that it's been rescinded, the media is bumbling again by making it sound like people are no longer permitted to get disputes mediated by their religious leaders. That is utterly ridiculous. You can get your dispute mediated by your religious leader, the same way you can get it mediated by your grandmother or your boss or your garbageman. You go to the religious leader, say "Bob and I are having a disagreement. Can you help us work this out?" And some religions might have formal method for doing this, which is their prerogative. The only difference is it's not legally binding. So you and Bob can agree between the two of you to go with whatever the religious leader decides, you just can't sue each other for breach of contract after. If you do want it to be legally binding, you have to get a legal contract drawn up by a lawyer or someone else who is trained in interpreting law, and then it will be legally binding unless it is unlawful in the first place.