Greece Scraps Compulsory Shariah for Muslim Minority

ATHENS — Greece has handed a regulation to restrict the powers of Islamic courts in a northern area that’s house to about one hundred,000 Muslims, proscribing the appliance of spiritual regulation within the nation and giving Muslims the choice to take civil instances to Greek courts.

Lawmakers from all Greek events besides the far-proper Golden Daybreak voted on Tuesday in favor of the regulation, which Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras described as a “historic step” that “broadens and deepens equality earlier than the regulation to all Greeks.”

The laws was handed a month after the European Court of Human Rights examined an appeal filed by a Muslim lady in Komotini, Greece, of a case involving the appliance of Shariah, the Islamic authorized code, over an inheritance dispute. A ruling in that case is predicted this yr.

Shariah has been utilized within the northern area, Thrace, for almost a century, the results of worldwide treaties signed after World Warfare I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which led to inhabitants actions between Greece and Turkey, and affecting the rights of minorities. The treaties stipulated that Islamic regulation and customized would apply to the hundreds of Muslims in Greece.

Though many Muslims in Thrace are Turkish-talking, the Greek authorities object to the time period “Turkish minority” — a phrase Ankara often makes use of — amid rising considerations that Turkey has territorial designs within the area, mainly over islands within the Aegean.

Thrace is the one place in Greece the place the Islamic courts function, and Muslims who stay there have been required to take household disputes — together with divorce, baby custody and inheritance issues — to Islamic clerics referred to as muftis who, rights teams declare, typically discriminate towards ladies. The brand new regulation provides them the choice of going to a Greek courtroom as an alternative.

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