Kerryn Williams

On December 29, the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) adopted an order placing family law under the jurisdiction of Islamic sharia law, overriding the family laws which have been in place under the civil code since 1959.

Under the previous system, marriage, divorce and family issues were resolved in a civil court, child marriages were outlawed, and women had legal protection from child custody and property inheritance disputes favouring males. Under the new laws, Muslim and Christian clergy will have final say over such matters.

In mid-January hundreds of Iraqi women demonstrated on the streets and organised protest meetings against the order. Kurdish lawyer Amira Hassan Abdullah, who addressed a January 15 protest, told the Washington Post: ``This will send us home and shut the door, just like what happened to women in Afghanistan... Iraqi women will accept it over their dead bodies.''

The January 16 Washington Post reported that retired female judge Zakia Ismael Hakki said: “This new law will send Iraqi families back to the Middle Ages. It will allow men to have four or five or six wives. It will take away children from their mothers. It will allow anyone who calls himself a cleric to open an Islamic court in his house and decide about who can marry and divorce and have rights. We have to stop it.”

From Green Left Weekly, January 28, 2004.
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