Greek Supreme Court places sharia law above civil law

[Decypher]

Greek Supreme Court places sharia law above civil law

http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2013/ ... -civil-law


The last will and testament of a Muslim man, which was prepared according to Greek civil law, has been annulled in the Greek Supreme Court because it is not compliant with sharia law.

Demeter Simeonidou, who was Muslim and lived in Thrace, wanted to leave all his assets to his wife. He prepared his will with this in mind under Greek law. But the will was challenged by Mr Simoenidou's sister who claimed that under Islamic law of succession, a Muslim does not have the right to make a public will and his assets must be distributed in accordance with sharia.

The Supreme Court's decision overturns the rights of Greek minority Muslims in Thrace to prepare wills under Greek civil law, a right which they have enjoyed since 1946.

It is thought the decision will affect thousands of Muslims who have drawn up wills under the civil law, all of which may be invalid under the Supreme Court's ruling.

Previously only family law fell under the jurisdiction of Islamic muftis in Greece, but that was changed after sharia courts were condemned by the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights as being discriminatory against women.

[DrZoidberg]

But has this anything to do with new laws? Or is this a remnant of the time when Greece was Muslim? 1458 to 1821.

If I recall correctly the Ottomans built the current Greek legal system from scratch, and this is still the system in effect?

[Toto]

This is a little misleading. The decision was based on an international treaty and the Greek constitution, which recognizes the legal autonomy of the Turkish residents of an area of western Thrace that had at one point declared independence, and then occupied by Bulgaria and France until transferred to Greece by an international treaty.

Religious freedom in Greece

. . . Unique to the Muslim population of Thrace is a 1923 treaty that allows the Muslims of Thrace to maintain their own schools and judicial system. Muslims in Thrace are permitted to apply Sharia law and the rulings of the local Muftis are often upheld in Greek courts.

That treaty is the Treaty of Lausanne, which ended the territorial conflicts after World War I and established the modern borders of Greece and Turkey.

This Muslim is being treated as a foreign national - Muslims in Thrace would have been considered Turkish. But per Wikipedia

In response to the declaration of independence of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983, the Greek government adopted a policy of referring to the Turkish community as Greek Muslims or Hellene Muslims, and does not recognise a separate Turkish minority in Western Thrace. Nevertheless, the fundamental rights of this community are enshrined in the Greek constitution and the Treaty of Lausanne.

[Barbarian]

[quote=""Toto""]This is a little misleading. The decision was based on an international treaty and the Greek constitution, which recognizes the legal autonomy of the Turkish residents of an area of western Thrace that had at one point declared independence, and then occupied by Bulgaria and France until transferred to Greece by an international treaty.

Religious freedom in Greece

. . . Unique to the Muslim population of Thrace is a 1923 treaty that allows the Muslims of Thrace to maintain their own schools and judicial system. Muslims in Thrace are permitted to apply Sharia law and the rulings of the local Muftis are often upheld in Greek courts.

That treaty is the Treaty of Lausanne, which ended the territorial conflicts after World War I and established the modern borders of Greece and Turkey.

This Muslim is being treated as a foreign national - Muslims in Thrace would have been considered Turkish. But per Wikipedia

In response to the declaration of independence of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983, the Greek government adopted a policy of referring to the Turkish community as Greek Muslims or Hellene Muslims, and does not recognise a separate Turkish minority in Western Thrace. Nevertheless, the fundamental rights of this community are enshrined in the Greek constitution and the Treaty of Lausanne.

[/QUOTE]I'm a bit confused here. The treaty says Muslims are allowed to apply Sharia law, while in the case at hand a Muslim has to comply with Sharia law. Does not compute.

[Sheshbazzar]

If the local Muslim Sharia judges are given preeminent legal authority in the settlement of such cases, this Muslim man's expressed personal preferences are a matter of small consequence. Sharia rendered decisions would over-rule any such desires.
Sharia law can at times treat Muslim men just as shitty as it does Muslim women.

[DrZoidberg]

[quote=""Barbarian""]I'm a bit confused here. The treaty says Muslims are allowed to apply Sharia law, while in the case at hand a Muslim has to comply with Sharia law. Does not compute.[/quote]

I remember a similar debate regarding Sharia laws being allowed to be followed in the UK as well. The debate was wholly about whether it was right or not for UK Muslims to be allowed to follow a different set of laws. But at no point was that what UK Muslims were asking for. What they wanted was for Sharia laws fit on top of local laws and to be opt in.

I do not see what the problem is here? I like being healthy and fit, so I follow the law of nutrition and do not eat cakes, and I don't smoke. I don't see what the difference is? I'm never going to support a law intended to prevent religious people from following their religion if there's no harm.

[Keith&Co.]

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]I do not see what the problem is here? I like being healthy and fit, so I follow the law of nutrition and do not eat cakes, and I don't smoke.[/quote]What if you HAD to?
What if a waiter thought you were of Jewish or Arabic heritage and wouldn't sell you a side of bacon that you asked for?
What if a waitress thought you sounded Mormon and wouldn't pour you a coffee that you asked for?
What if someone else got to decide if you were ethnic enough, and which rules you needed to follow, even if you weren't THAT into your ethnicity?

This guy made a decision to write a will. Obviously he's not sticking to sharia law. Here, that would be a freedom, to choose whether or not to observe.
The court decided that he's muslim, therefore he's going to obey sharia.

The problem is the difference between allowed to and forced to.

[DrZoidberg]

[quote=""Keith&Co.""]

I do not see what the problem is here? I like being healthy and fit, so I follow the law of nutrition and do not eat cakes, and I don't smoke.

What if you HAD to?

What if a waiter thought you were of Jewish or Arabic heritage and wouldn't sell you a side of bacon that you asked for?
What if a waitress thought you sounded Mormon and wouldn't pour you a coffee that you asked for?
What if someone else got to decide if you were ethnic enough, and which rules you needed to follow, even if you weren't THAT into your ethnicity?

This guy made a decision to write a will. Obviously he's not sticking to sharia law. Here, that would be a freedom, to choose whether or not to observe.
The court decided that he's muslim, therefore he's going to obey sharia.

The problem is the difference between allowed to and forced to.[/QUOTE]

Greece has a modern rule of law. So at some point some sort of contradictory paperwork would have had to be signed for this to go anywhere.

I'm guessing here. But to me it looks like the problem here is that this man didn't realise that as a Muslim the Sharia laws applied to him? I'm pretty sure that simply being a Muslim is not enough. He also needs to have been registered legally with some Mosque or Muslim organisation where he's signed paperwork giving the Muftis legal power. I assume... otherwise the whole case would most likely be thrown out.

His mistake here was to not retract the legal power he had given to the Muftis. He had signed two dotted lines that were mutually exclusive. What the supreme court did was decide which of the contracts he had entered into had precedence. In most countries (except Sweden btw) religious freedom trumps secular law.

Lessons learned: read contracts more carefully if you're a Greek Muslim.

[DrZoidberg]

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2011/08 ... k-muslims/

Aparently, this problem will go away by itself. Reforms have been made and in the future whenever there's a conflict between a religious contract and a secular one, the secular one wins.

edit:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/361916

And according to this Thracian Muslims actually CAN chose to follow Muslim law and NOT secular law. So that would invalidate most of what I said. And would make it quite unique. But this man would still have had to sign some paperwork placing him under Islamic law. But according to the prior article Greece is now scrapping this system.

[Minimalist]

[quote=""Sheshbazzar""]If the local Muslim Sharia judges are given preeminent legal authority in the settlement of such cases, this Muslim man's expressed personal preferences are a matter of small consequence. Sharia rendered decisions would over-rule any such desires.
Sharia law can at times treat Muslim men just as shitty as it does Muslim women.[/quote]

Well, yeah...except he's dead which sort of leaves him out of it.