From Reuters:Kuwait's top court has decided that two women lawmakers are not required to wear an Islamic head cover, the official KUNA news agency reported on Wednesday.
An Islamist voter had sought to force parliament members Aseel al-Awadhi and Rola Dashti to cover the heads, citing the Islamic holy book the Koran. Several male MPs had also protested.
"This is not just a victory for myself and my colleague Rola, but a victory for the constitution. Wearing the veil or not does not have an effect on our performance and dedication to serving citizens who elected us," Awadhi told Reuters.
Women in the Gulf Arab state are not obliged by law to wear head covers although many do. The case was based on an article in election laws that say women candidates and voters should abide by Islam in general terms.
Women in Kuwait, the only Gulf Arab state with a parliament that has full legislative powers, won the right to vote and run in public elections in 2005 but women entered parliament through ballots only this year.
From Gulf Daily News:Kuwaiti women will now be able to obtain their own passports and travel without the prior consent of their husbands following a ruling yesterday.
The constitutional court abrogated an article in the 1962 passports law that prevented a woman from getting her own passport without her husband's prior approval. The court said that the article was in violation of a number of provisions in the constitution which guarantee personal freedom and gender equality. The decision came after a Kuwaiti woman complained that her husband had refused to give her and their three children their passports and other personal identification documents so he could prevent them from leaving the country.
From Associated Press:Kuwaiti female lawmaker Rula Dashti on Sunday submitted an amendment to the Gulf state electoral law that aims to scrap a requirement that women must comply with Islamic Sharia law guidelines.
The guidelines were introduced four years ago when parliament voted to grant women full political rights but added a precondition that both women voters and candidates must comply with regulations dictated by Sharia law.
The law does not explain the nature of the regulations, but last week the emirate's Fatwa Department ruled that under Islamic law, it is an obligation for Muslim women to wear the hijab head cover.
Although the fatwa, or religious edict, was general in nature and did not specifically refer to Kuwait's election law, it triggered conflicting reactions from Islamist and liberal lawmakers and activists.
Islamist lawmakers called on female MPs and a minister to comply with the ruling while liberal and female legislators stressed the fatwa is not binding since it did not come from the constitutional court.
"The fatwa is not binding to the Kuwaiti society. The only reference for us is the constitution," issued in 1962, she told AFP.
From Nisreen Zahreddine @ Kuwait Times:MP Maasouma Al-Mubarak recently gave a speech at the British Business Forum's annual gathering, which was hosted by the British Embassy. MP Al-Mubarak touched on the history of Kuwait and the role of the United Kingdom in designing the borders between Kuwait and Iraq.
The parliamentarian said that in 1913, the British helped Kuwait separate from Iraq by signing a treaty with the Ottoman Empire that considered Kuwait a part of Iraq.
In 1932, Al-Mubarak continued, a second treaty was signed to design borders between Kuwait and Iraq. The MP then briefed the audience about women's history in Kuwait. She discussed several obstacles facing women's progress in Kuwaiti society, such as a backward mentality and limited employment opportunities in addition to all the norms and traditions that see the role of women to be limited to the house and raising children. She added that women were forced to pay the high price of social customs and traditions that control the society.
From the Wall Street Journal:As Kuwaitis prepared to go to the polls Saturday to elect a new parliament, the third in three years, Aseel al Awadhi geared up for a round of last-minute campaigning.
Ms. Al Awadhi has become a political celebrity in Kuwait, with polls showing she has a good chance of becoming the first female to be elected to Kuwait's 50-seat parliament.
Women were given the right to vote and run for office in 2005. So far, they haven't been able to win a seat in this conservative Muslim society.
But this year, 19 women are running, out of 280 candidates, for Kuwait's 50 seats.
From The Australian:"The appointment of two Kuwaiti women ministers breached the constitution and the law because they do not wear the hijab headscarf, a panel in Kuwait's conservative parliament ruled today."The committee unanimously decided that appointing the two ministers in the cabinet violated article 82 of the constitution and article one of the election law for failing to abide by Islamic regulations," Ali al-Hajeri MP, spokesman for the Legal and Legislative Committee, said.The four members of the seven-person panel who attended the meeting are all Islamists or tribals. The remaining three are liberal-leaning MPs.The two female members of government - Education Minister Nuriya al-Sebih and state minister for housing and administrative development Mudhi al-Humoud - were appointed to the cabinet following the May 17 general elections.If the panel's decision is approved by parliament, MPs can either call on the prime minister to dismiss the two ministers or take a more serious action of grilling the two women as a prelude to voting them out of office.At its first meeting on June 1, parliament, which is dominated by Islamists and tribal conservatives, voted to refer the case of the two ministers to the committee to establish if they broke the law.As cabinet members took the oath on that day, nine Islamist and tribal MPs walked out of parliament in protest at the two women's failure to wear the Islamic headscarf.The oil-rich Gulf emirate's election law requires women to "abide by Islamic regulations while voting or contesting the elections".Kuwaiti women were granted political rights in May 2005. Fifty-four female candidates contested the last two general elections but none was elected.As well as its 50 elected members, the Kuwaiti parliament also comprises 15 cabinet ministers."
