Parliament asked to refuse fatwa against freedoms

The Yemen Women’s Union (YWU) on Sunday demanded that the Parliament condemn a recent religious fatwa banning women from political participation and from running for parliamentary seats.

“We want the Parliament to condemn explicitly such a fatwa because it represents an assault on personal and public freedoms,” Ramziah al-Eryani, chairperson of the YWU told the Yemen Observer.

Al-Eryani said that a meeting with the speaker of the Parliament and with a number of MP’s was scheduled on Sunday to discuss this issue, but it was postponed because of the speaker’s other commitments.

The meeting with the Parliament is going to be held this week, as we agreed today, said al-Eryani. “We want to tell them that this is completely against democracy, against human rights, against civil society, against the multiparty system,” she added.

The fatwa, issued by a number of religious scholars on 16 July, says it is haram (forbidden) for women to be members of the Parliament.

The fatwa was considered as a strong attack on a controversial proposal made by President Ali Abdullah Saleh to allocate 15 percent of the parliament seats for women in the upcoming parliamentary elections on April 2009.

“This fatwa is against Islam, against the equality between men and women that is enshrined by the Qur’an,” al-Eryani said.

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