CHRLA is greatly alarmed by
the Cairo Court of Appeals ruling of June 14, 1995, which ordered the divorce of
Nasr Hamed Abu-Zeid (the Cairo University professor) from his wife, Dr. Ibthal
Younis, on the grounds that he was an apostate because of the opinions contained
in his published research.
The argumentation of the
ruling raises problems related to freedom of thought, religious interpretation
and belief, and the privacy of family relationships.
Throughout the world, and particularly in Third World
countries, feminists have been sounding the alarm about the rise of religious
and political fundamentalism. Historically, fundamentalism has always been a
move to strengthen patriarchal authority and maintain the "moral order" of
society. Patriarchy, understood as the relations of domination and subordination
that pervade human gender relations, takes different forms in different
historical periods depending on the prevailing material
conditions.
In the West, Islam has come to
epitomize the worse kind of oppression of women, usually symbolized by the veil,
polygyny, and more recently, by stoning.
The Muslim's Women's Research and Action Front considers the appointment of a
committee to examine Muslim Personal Law in the light of reform as a positive
step in the socio-legal and cultural upliftment of the community.
MWRAF as a group of committed and concerned Muslim women wishes to suggest a basis
for reforms, though we would like to reiterate the fact that our framework is
within the Qur'an and Sharia and the proposed changes would in effect be
implementation of not only the letter of the law but also the spirit of the law-
in other words the essence of the Qur'an
When Kuwait's emir decreed women should have the vote, the freewheeling Parliament -- a rare symbol of democratic ideals in the Persian Gulf -- used its constitutional powers to overrule him.
Ayesha Imam and BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights honoured for their work against the discriminatory application of the new Sharia laws in Nigeria's Northern States.
Ayesha Imam et BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights recevront le Prix pour leur opposition à l'application des nouvelles lois pénales de la charia dans les Etats du nord du Nigéria.
A three-day Southeast Asia Regional Meeting on ‘Islam, Politics and Women: What Identities? Whose Interests’ was held from 26 – 28 October 2002 in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.
