Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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Dispute resolution within religious communities summons up an image of all male rabbis or imams ruling on civil disputes, applying religious laws or doctrines developed more than a millennium ago.

Gradually, though, the study of archive materials, mainly found in the books of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Congregation in London, are revealing a very different picture: lay resolution by communal leaders of disputes between congregants on the basis of what they thought was fair and reasonable or just sensible, not Jewish law.

Yes, the Mahamad—a council of elders— were men but we are talking about the period between 1656 and 1868 when female judges were unknown in the United Kingdom. These people were not necessarily deeply religiously observant or learned. At least by the standards of the day, they could not be described as extremists in any sense.