Iraq’s Legal Crisis Through the Lens of Its Personal Status Law

Anne Harper is a JD student and pro-bono scholar at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

On 21 January 2025, Iraq’s legislature adopted a law that will highly likely subject Iraqi women and girls to human rights violations, based entirely on internal regulations developed by the religious sect to which they belong. Specifically, the legislation amended the 1959 Personal Status Law (PSL) to expand the authority of religious sects within Iraq to develop their own family (personal status) laws based on their interpretations of Sharia law.

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Conversion for Convenience: Manipulating Personal Law Status in Religious Legal Systems

Akif Tahiiev is a post-doctoral research fellow at Goethe University Frankfurt.

In some countries, legal systems are deeply shaped by religious doctrines, especially in areas concerning personal status, such as marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance. Under these frameworks, individuals belonging to different religious communities are often governed by distinct sets of laws. Although they may possess equal citizenship in theory, the legal rights, responsibilities, and protections afforded them in personal and familial matters can differ significantly depending on their religious affiliation.

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Sharia Court Adjudication: Gendered Perspective

Kyriaki Topidi is head of Cluster on Culture and Diversity/senior researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI, Germany).

Background: Application of Sharia in Greece

The intensified presence of Muslim groups in Western Europe resulting from recent migration has largely overshadowed reflection, in both political and research terms, on legal pluralist scenarios involving historical Muslim minorities in European countries. In Western Thrace, at the northeastern tip of Greece bordering Turkey, Muslim groups have enjoyed special legal status connected to the legacies of the Ottoman Empire, captured in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.[1] State-endorsed Muslim autonomy in Greece has entailed, in particular, government-appointed muftis with (until 2018 legislative amendments) compulsory jurisdiction in certain family matters.

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