I neglected to write about this last week, more out of being overworked than sheer laziness (notice how late I’m posting nowadays?). But this is pretty important given the level of controversy surrounding it, and considering how “multi-cultural” Canada is. They rejected the idea of allowing sharia tribunals, and then went a step further and banned all religious tribunals.

TORONTO (Reuters) – Ontario has reversed course on plans to let Muslims use Islamic sharia law to settle family disputes, and will now ban religious-based arbitration altogether, provincial officials said on Monday.

The province said it will scrap all religious-based dispute settlements on issues such as child custody and divorce, prompting elation from critics of the sharia proposals, and dismay from groups that have used religious arbitration in the past.

“I’m very excited, very happy,” said Homa Arjamond, co-chair of the No Religious Arbitration Coalition. “It is a victory for women’s rights, for children’s rights, for human rights.”

The coalition had argued that sharia — a code of law based primarily on the Koran as well as the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad — gives women and children fewer rights than men, and it had organized protest rallies in Toronto, in other Canadian cities and in Europe to push for a ban.

Ontario and other Canadian provinces have long allowed the use of arbitrators in civil disputes to help reduce the backlog in the courts, and Ontario allowed religious-based settlements on some family issues under its 1991 Arbitration Act.

A report commissioned by the provincial government last year backed the idea of also allowing the use of sharia in such arbitration, providing both parties agreed, and provided limits and oversight mechanisms were also put in place.

Accepting these recommendations would have made Ontario one of the first jurisdictions outside the Muslim world to allow sharia.

The government considered the report’s recommendations for several months, and decided this weekend that there would be “one law for all Ontarians,” a spokesman for premier Dalton McGuinty said, confirming comments McGuinty made on Sunday.

Most of the public pressure against the consideration was led by women who, probably rightfully, believe that women will receive unfair treatment in an Islamic court. Jewish leaders are now steaming mad because for all this time they’ve been using tribunals to settle family disputes, and because now they won’t be able to.

Some people are calling it a big blow to multi-culturalism in Canada, but I couldn’t disagree more. By allowing different sects of society to operate under different standards of the law, it fragments and isolates these sects from one another though they remain part of the same country. Keeping them all equal under the law doesn’t defeat multi-culturalism, it enhances the nation’s diversity.