Is It Feasible To Establish A "Sharia Court" In Australia? How Will It Work?

For Muslims living in non-Muslim majority states, professing their religion is one thing and having religious freedom and their religious law and institution being legally recognized is quite another. While the former may be legally guaranteed, the mere mention let alone debateon the latter seems to spark outrage amongst the non-Muslim local and international communities. The absence of such recognition in those countries leaves the minority Muslims with their endless struggle and fight to have their religious rights and obligations legally enforced according to the demand of their religion. This paper attempts to analyze this issue and its implications in the context of Australia, being a secular multi-cultural country with a rising Muslim population. The main question to be addressed is "is it feasible to establish a Sharia court in Australia and how will it work?" This inquiry is further confined to the relevance of the system in tackling Muslim personal and family laws as opposed to the overall spectrum of Sharia. The investigation will cover a number of angles namely the feasibilities and challenges from the legal, political, social and economic perspectives of the country. It will then proceed to explore the alternative legal means that could be considered by the Muslims in Australia in lieu of a Sharia court system. This paper will conclude that the idea of having a Sharia court could not federally materialize under the present constitutional law in Australia. At the state level, various impediments against the thought exist from the legal, social, political and economic perspectives. Except for voluntary contractual agreements on settlement of disputes between Muslim subjects, it seems that the alternatives explored are also bound to be thwarted by similar obstacles.