Many years ago, a friend of mine was a family court judge in northeastern New Jersey. She found that a disproportionately large part of her docket was domestic violence cases from immigrant communities, in which husbands and fathers reacted with beatings to their wives and daughters behaving like American women instead of as they would have in the old country.

Bottom line is, the demand to enforce sharia law in Western countries -- or rather not to have the state interfere with its enforcement by private groups -- is a demand that the civil law not interfere in the power that Muslim men exercise over what they are pleased to regard as "their" women. Much of the supposed Muslim grievance against European values is that Muslim women, who see the freedom available to them in Western countries, refuse to submit, and the secular state offers them the same protection against male coercion and violence that it offers to any woman.

It is outrageous to suggest that because of her religion a resident of the UK should forfeit the protection the law offers to all women with respect to marriage, divorce, child custody and maintenance.

There also is the practical problem of enforcing any law when multiple, contradictory "laws" can apply at the same time. (And taking it to its logical conclusion, to avoid discrimination you would basically have to allow any group or even individual to set their own laws.)

A few years ago, the Mexican government gave in to pressure from human rights groups to allow some of the native tribes to govern themselves independently. It sounded like a good idea, but they've run into one big problem: Many of these tribes went with their old custom of not allowing either women or the old to vote. Now, a few are speaking out, asking for the right to vote just as everyone else in Mexico can--and just as they themselves could until recently. And, amazingly, the human rights groups have been slow to take up their cause because of their previous position that the tribes should be allowed to do what they want. Apparently, stopping them from discriminating would be a sort of discrimination in itself. <link>

This issue tends to put me in mind of the experience of the Amish in the U.S. In short, they're a group of religious separatists, who reject most trappings of modern life in part to demonstrate that separateness and in part to remain functionally independent from society. In central Pennsylvania, where I grew up, they're seen as variously quaint, harmless, or mildly irritating, depending on how frequently you end up stuck behind a horse-drawn buggy on your morning commute. But they've also historically had religious exemptions from laws governing child labor (Amish kids need to work on the farm with the folks) and school attendance (Amish kids graduate for good after eighth grade). It's generally understood that this is OK because the Amish are quaint and harmless, and after all, Amish teenagers technically have the right to leave the community once they're eighteen. But I do wonder, how easy is it to leave a life like that when you've only got an eighth-grade education, and you've never used a computer?

On a visit to Lancaster County about 15 years ago, I was told by a local Mennonite that it was not uncommon for young single Amish men to keep a pickup truck hidden in a shed somewhere and to sow a few wild oats outside the community. Some time in their mid 20s, they would be told by their elders that it was time to make a definite decision -- settle in or get out. The pattern was different for women, who tended to marry in their late teens, and for whom any decision to live outside would be irrevocable. In any event, the only sanction was ostracism of those who wouldn't conform.

I don't know how reliable my source was, though he sounded plausible.