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'Historic step': Greek PM hails change to limit power of sharia law Greece's Muslim minority hails change to limit power of sharia law
(1 day later)
Greece’s Muslim minority will be able to resolve family disputes before Greek courts rather than under Islamic sharia law after the parliament on Tuesday changed a century-old legacy. Members of Greece’s Muslim minority have hailed new legislation that will enable citizens to sidestep sharia law in family disputes, but says the measure fails to go far enough in Europe’s only country where Islamic jurists still hold sway.
The prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, immediately called the vote an “historic step” as it “extended equality before the law to all Greeks”. In a move described as a “historic step” by the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, the leftist-led government announced on Tuesday that members of Greece’s 120,000-strong Muslim community would be able to seek recourse in Greek courts in divorce, child custody and inheritance matters rather than take their case to Islamic jurists – a century-old legacy of legislation drafted with the collapse of the Ottoman empire.
The legislation will allow Muslim litigants to go before a Greek court for divorce, child custody and inheritance matters, rather than appealing to Islamic jurists known as muftis – a system that rights groups say frequently discriminates against women. Human rights groups have long said the laws discriminate against women.
The issue has its origins in the period after the first world war, and treaties between Greece and Turkey that followed the collapse of the Ottoman empire. But while welcomed, Muslim MPs said the new law had not “fully abolished” sharia courts in the sole EU member state where they had been compulsory.
The 1920 treaty of Sevres and the 1923 treaty of Lausanne stipulated that Islamic customs and Islamic religious law would apply to thousands of Muslims who suddenly became Greek citizens. “There is no doubt this is an important step and a positive one that will open the way to further freedom for our community,” MP Mustafa Mustafa told the Guardian. “But I would have liked it to be fully abolished. No other EU country has sharia.”
Greece’s roughly 110,000-strong Muslim minority mainly lives in Thrace, a poor, rural region in the north-east bordering Turkey. A member of Tsipras’ Syriza party, Mustafa said leftists had been campaigning for state-appointed muftis “to be religious leaders and not jurists” since the collapse of military rule in Greece in 1974.
The parliament’s move comes as the European Court of Human Rights is expected to rule this year on a complaint brought against Greece by a 67-year-old widow, Hatijah Molla Salli, who is locked in an inheritance dispute with her late husband’s sisters. Islamic court hearings, in accordance with laws first drafted in 1914, have until now been presided over by a single Muslim cleric. Under the new law Muslims will have the right to opt for a Greek court although Islamic jurists will still be available upon request.
When Salli appealed to Greek secular justice, she initially won her case. But the Greek supreme court in 2013 ruled that only a mufti had the power to resolve Muslim inheritance rights. “That is why it is a half measure,” said law professor Yannis Ktistakis, speaking from Komotini in Thrace, where Greece’s Muslim minority mainly resides. “We have a situation where laws drafted in 1914 still apply ... this new legislation doesn’t go far enough as it still gives muftis (Muslim legal experts) the right to intervene.”
“The government is only acting to prevent condemnation by the court, which, as everyone knows, is inevitable,” Salli’s lawyer Yannis Ktistakis said in November. Inequities associated with sharia were highlighted when Hatijah Molla Salli, a 67-year-old widow locked in an inheritance dispute with her late husband’s sisters, took the case to the European court of human rights after Greece’s supreme court overturned an earlier court verdict in her favour. The tribunal is expected to cast its ruling in June.
At the time, Tsipras said: “As a European Union nation, this does not bestow honour upon us.” “The government knows that the ruling will not be in its favour and is only acting to prevent condemnation by the court,” said Ktistakis, Salli’s lawyer. “This is a political move. The laws governing sharia should be abolished altogether.”
The issue is complicated by still-tense relations between traditional rivals Greece and Turkey. The new legislation, passed with overwhelming support, has been seen as long overdue. The education and religious affairs minister, Constantine Gavroglou, praised its passage as “not just a technical adjustment [but] a very important day for parliament. Sharia, he said, had stemmed “from policies that were hostile toward the minority and sought to create second-class citizens”.
Ankara takes a close interest in the Muslim community – which it sees as Turkish, although it also includes Pomaks and Roma – and frequently complains on its behalf to Athens, which considers it interference in Greece’s domestic affairs. Greece’s Muslim minority is embraced by Turkey and is often the cause for tensions between the two Nato rivals. Previous government had hesitated to change the law for fear of further straining ties.
Athens admits that the Islam preached by the Thrace muftis is generally more moderate than the teachings of more hardline imams elsewhere in Europe.