Fran­cis Joseph

A Mus­lim woman, wear­ing a bur­ka, has the same priv­i­leges as any­one else to serve as a ju­ror in the High Court of T&T.

Un­der the Ju­ry Act, a woman wear­ing a bur­ka (a form of dress worn by a cer­tain sec­tor of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty) can­not be dis­qual­i­fied from sit­ting as a ju­ror be­cause of her at­tire. Jus­tice Joan Charles, pre­sid­ing in the Port-of-Spain High Court, de­liv­ered a 25-page judg­ment yes­ter­day in which she ruled the court had no ju­ris­dic­tion or au­thor­i­ty of its own mo­tion, or up­on any oth­er ba­sis, to dis­qual­i­fy a per­son from serv­ing as a ju­ror on the sole ba­sis that the in­di­vid­ual was wear­ing a bur­ka. The judg­ment was de­liv­ered more than two years af­ter a ju­ror, wear­ing a bur­ka, raised eye­brows when she turned up to serve as a ju­ry in the Port-of-Spain Third Crim­i­nal Court. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion and the Unit­ed Is­lam­ic League got in­volved in the mat­ter. Dur­ing De­cem­ber 2007, a fe­male ju­ror, wear­ing a bur­ka, in­di­cat­ed her will­ing­ness and avail­abil­i­ty to serve as a ju­ror. On the first day, the court's at­ten­tion was di­rect­ed to the form of her at­tire. The woman was cov­ered from head to toe in a vo­lu­mi­nous black robe. Her head and face were cov­ered, save for a slit in the area of her eyes.

The woman was not se­lect­ed that day but af­ter the oth­er po­ten­tial ju­rors left she was asked to re­main. The court con­duct­ed an in­quiry. The court's ini­tial con­cern, ac­cord­ing to the judge, was that the is­sue need­ed to be ad­dressed since, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, the ju­ror may have been se­lect­ed dur­ing the course of the month, where­upon the is­sue of her face be­ing cov­ered would have to be con­front­ed. The ju­ror was asked whether she would re­move her head dress so the court and coun­sel could see her face. The ju­ror re­spond­ed that while she had no dif­fi­cul­ty show­ing her face to the court or any fe­male, she could not show her face to men. The court then di­rect­ed that the ju­ror show her face to a fe­male mar­shall and fe­male po­lice of­fi­cer for the pur­pose of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. She ad­mit­ted that she was an is­lam­ic schol­ar, a grad­u­ate of the Dar Ul Uloom and was af­fil­i­at­ed with the Masjid-ul-Mut­tageen, of Munroe Road, Cunu­pia. She al­so stat­ed that un­der the tenets of her be­lief, it was her choice as to whether she wore the hi­jab or the bur­ka and she chose the bur­ka.

The court then in­vit­ed writ­ten sub­mis­sions from var­i­ous par­ties on the is­sue of whether a ju­ror at­tired in the man­ner as that ju­ror should be al­lowed to sit on the ju­ry. Christo­pher Hamel-Smith, SC ap­peared for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al; Fyard Ho­sein, SC, for the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion; Ravi Ra­j­coomar for the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and Farid Scoon for the Unit­ed Is­lam­ic League.