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Shariah Courts in America
We’re sleepwalking toward Britain’s outcome, or worse
Peter McIlvenna | The Washington Times | December 1, 2025
They are not coming. They are already here.
Across the United States, Islamic arbitration bodies quietly handle hundreds of family law cases each year — marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance — behind closed doors, with no transcripts, no appeals and no public oversight. All-male panels apply traditional Shariah rules to 21st-century American women and children.
The Islamic Tribunal of Dallas was founded in 2014 as a “volunteer mediation service.” By 2024, it was deciding roughly 300 cases annually in mosque back rooms and law offices. The panel of three or four male scholars, trained at institutions such as Al-Azhar and Omdurman, openly follows rules in which a woman’s testimony is worth half a man’s in financial and inheritance matters. Women report being pressured to accept religious divorces that strip them of their mahr (dowry) and leave them financially devastated.
Last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched a full investigation, calling it a “rival court system” that has no place in America. It was the first time a prominent U.S. official said publicly what critics had warned about for years.
The North American Islamic Trust [ [link removed] ] owns title to 300 to 325 U.S. mosques, more than 11% of the U.S. total. When disputes arise inside those mosques — divorces, estates, leadership fights — local trust-affiliated imams become the de facto judges. There is no signed arbitration agreement, no neutral venue, no American lawyer reviewing decisions for compliance with U.S. law. Daughters routinely receive half the inheritance of their brothers, as prescribed in Surah An-Nisa. Wives are told that taking the case to a “kafir” (“infidel”) court is forbidden.
The real enforcement is social ostracism: loss of your family, your children’s place in the community, your entire support network. Because these rulings stay outside the Federal Arbitration Act, secular courts hardly ever see the paperwork — or the victims.
The Ismaili Conciliation and Arbitration Board was established in 1986 by the Aga Khan. It has a written constitution, trained mediators (some Western-educated lawyers) and public commitments to gender equality. Yet proceedings remain strictly confidential, rulings are never published, and former members, especially women in transnational marriages, describe being steered toward settlements far weaker than any U.S. family court would allow. The pressure is polite but relentless: Accept less or risk exile from the tight-knit global Ismaili community you were born into.
In 1982, Britain permitted its first Shariah council as a gesture of multicultural respect. Today, at least 85 such councils handle hundreds of cases yearly. More than 90% of cases are brought by women trapped in unregistered religious marriages who speak little English and fear their families. Inside the councils, they are told to return to abusive husbands, forfeit dowries or accept that their testimony is worth half that of a man.
A 2018 Home Office review finally acknowledged that these bodies operate as a parallel legal system, subjecting thousands of British women to medieval rules. Successive governments ignored the problem for decades; now, they are scrambling to regain control.
America is following the same script, only faster. Legal Muslim immigration to the U.S. has exceeded 100,000 annually for more than a decade, supplemented by illegal crossings and asylum claims. Every new mosque and enclave strengthens the infrastructure for private Islamic justice. The same soothing arguments that paralyzed Britain — “It’s voluntary” and “Secular courts are always available” — are repeated here by academics and interfaith groups.
Texas is the only state sounding the alarm this year. The rest of the country is sleepwalking toward the British outcome, or worse. Once entire neighborhoods effectively live under a parallel legal order that treats women as second-class citizens, reversing it peacefully becomes nearly impossible.
This is not fearmongering; it is pattern recognition. Britain waited 40 years and ended up with 85 Shariah councils. America has the same ingredients, faster demographic change and even less political will to act.
The parallel system is already growing. The only question left is whether we still have the courage to stop it before “voluntary” becomes permanent.
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