The Sharia law and its implications on an Islamic state foreign policy : the issues of women's rights

Abstract

The dissertation discusses the subject of Sharia Law, which is used in many Islamic states mostly in their domestic issues, such as family laws and penal codes. It focuses on women's human rights as the implementation of the Sharia affects mainly their lives. This study wants to show that when it comes to the ratification of an international convention dealing with the promotion and protection of women's rights, the Islamic states make reservations on the basis of the Shari a. The dissertation would like to question whether the Sharia has implications on the general tends ofislamic states foreign policies or whether the Sharia is only used when it comes to the ratification of conventions dealing with women's rights. Many of the Islamic states that use the Sharia in their domestic policies are generally oil producing countries and economic and strategic partners of the Western world. The question that I would like to put forward is whether the issue of women's rights interferes in the foreign relations of these countries due to the human rights and democratic rhetoric of the W estem bloc. The purpose of the dissertation is also to raise an awareness of the injustices and discrimination that many women in the Islamic world are still suffering. Even though the international community issued several conventions and declarations to promote and protect women's rights; it is not doing as much as it could to provide women in these countries with their full rights. Islam also grants women their rights and has gender equality rhetoric. However, the patriarchal societies in the Islamic states use a strict interpretation of the Sharia, in order to suppress and treat women as second class citizens.