Who needs a Sharia divorce court in Australia?

Yes, yes, I know it's been a while but I've been flat out like a lizard drinking.

I'm finishing up my office job this week and taking 8 months extended leave to finish my PhD so naturally everyone wants everything yesterday.

I've been in this job for 5 years and, while I'm relieved that I can finally only focus on one thing, I must say I'm feeling a bit sad about going. I'm in a fairly senior position in Government with fairly close access to the head of state. What's been good about this is that I'm often the one who gets to brief the head of state about issues like this little beauty:

Muslim leaders call for Sharia divorce court

Now the last time this little issue raised its ugly head in 2005 I wrote a four page briefing on why it's all a load of crappola and advised the pollies not to touch it with a barge pole.
You see the real issue behind all of this hoo ha is that some charming men are using the fact that they were married under Sharia as a reason to deny a divorce to their wives while they happily go about life rooting like rabbits, marrying 2 or more (the more the merrier) and living a horny over-sexed, testosterone laden life in full control of all their monetary (and other- albeit probably quite small and useless) assets.
So the women, (because they are incapable of thinking for themselves), believing that they need to have a Sharia divorce because they have a Sharia marraige, either don't file for a divorce through the courts (where they can also be granted half of everything) or else agree to go to a Muslim country in order to obtain a Sharia divorce.
Even where the women have attained a legal divorce through the Australian courts, some still do not feel that they are "properly divorced".

And that's the crux of it- THEY DO NOT FEEL DIVORCED- nothing at all to do with actual divorced status or legal rights or anything remotely logical!

I have personal experience here. I can't tell you the number of times my ex tried to pull the whole "well you can get a legal divorce if you like but you will still be 'ala zemetti' because we were married in Egypt under Sharia" thing on me- and, sad to say, he almost had me there for a while.
That is until I discovered and became involved with a group of Progressive/ Modernist Muslims who do not believe that Sharia is a Quranic edict, that none of Sharia is found in the Quaran and that many Sharia laws practiced in certain Muslim countries actually violate Quranic edicts.

The real issue then is not the need for a Sharia divorce court- it's the need for a CHANGE OF THINKING and a realisation that Sharia is not the solution for everything (it is infact quite the opposite).

And that is precisely what I'll be advising this time around.

But what happens when I leave this place?
I don't want to think about it!