Egyptian woman fights unequal Islamic inheritance laws

CAIRO (AP) — One Egyptian woman is taking on the country’s inheritance laws that mean female heirs inherit half that of men.

Since her father’s death last year, Huda Nasrallah, a Christian, has stood before three different judges to demand an equal share of the property left to her two brothers by their father. Yet courts have twice issued rulings against her, basing them on Islamic inheritance laws that favour male heirs.

Nasrallah, a 40-year-old Christian human rights lawyer, is now challenging the rulings in a higher court.

A final verdict is expected to be handed down later this month. She has formulated her case around Christian doctrine which dictates that heirs, regardless of their sex, receive equal shares.

“It is not really about inheritance, my father did not leave us millions of Egyptian pounds,” she said.

“I have the right to ask to be treated equally as my brothers.”

Calls for equal inheritance rights began to reverberate across the Arab world after the Tunisian government had proposed a bill to this effect last year. Muslim feminists hailed the bill.

But there has been a blacklash from elsewhere in the Arab world.

Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the highest Sunni religious institution in the Muslim world, vehemently dismissed the proposal as contradictory to Islamic law and destabilising to Muslim societies.

But there is hope that Tunisia could have broken the taboo on the topic for the region.

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