Egypt debates customary marriage, polygamy
The Egyptian Catholic Church recently announced that it needs to further study the unified personal status law proposals, at a time when customary marriage and polygamy remain under debate for Muslims.
CAIRO — Following repeated complaints by many Muslims on the rights of women in the current personal status law, and the daily impact of the absence of a clear law regulating divorce among Christians, the Egyptian parliament was hoping to issue, or at least to start discussions in May-June, of new personal status laws for Muslims and Christians — but these hopes were in vain.
After a breakthrough seemed to be looming in the debate of a unified personal status law for non-Muslims in Egypt, things went back to square one when the Egyptian Catholic Church announced June 14 that it needed to study these proposals further despite its approval thereof in April.
