Islamic Sharia Council subservient to the English law." In an April 2013 report, the BBC's "Panorama" asked whether the Islamic Sharia Council was "failing vulnerable women and mothers" by requiring women seeking divorce to give back their marriage dowry (or "mahr"). The question of "khula" divorce often turns on the dower: if the woman is seeking the divorce, she has to return the dower to the man, or else the divorce cannot proceed. Since in traditional Islamic society, men are traditionally the bank account holders and women are traditionally homemakers, the woman has no purchase, and cannot obtain a loan in order to
Ban on sharia law submit cases to Islamic arbitration panels were (according to Ali) not “good Muslims.” In 2005, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty stated, "There will be no sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians." This referred to McGuinty's plan to rescind the 1991 Arbitration Act, which made arbitration decisions according to religious laws enforceable in Ontario courts. Opposing Ali were "anti-tribunal" forces of "politically savvy women’s groups, some of them composed of Muslim women", who feared women’s equality rights being violated. In 2006, the province of Ontario banned arbitration of