Sharia Law, Traditional Justice and Violence against Women: Lessons from Sudan

There has been a great deal written about the relationship between sharia law and international human rights law, particularly with regards to the treatment of women.  The tensions between sharia law and international law norms of equality and non-discrimination have been well documented, and the possibilities for interpreting sharia law in a manner that accords with international human rights law have been insightfully explored by scholars of human rights and Islamic law. It has been shown that Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance, justice and equality.  It has been said that the Qur’anic passages describing the role of women should be understood in the context in which they were written, which was a time in history in which women were seen as vastly inferior to men in almost every society throughout the world, particularly in the Arabian peninsula.  Read in this context, it is argued, Islam must be seen as an advocate for gender equality, and should thus be interpreted as standing for gender equality today. This paper argues that, while this may indeed be the preferred interpretation of Islam, this is of little assistance to women in countries such as Sudan whose national legislation enshrines and enforces the most discriminatory aspects of sharia law.