Egyptian Woman Uses Christian Doctrine to Fight Unequal Islamic Inheritance Laws

Huda Nasrallah, a 40-year-old human rights lawyer in Egypt who is also a Coptic Christian, has faced three judges to tackle the Islamic law of the country that dictates that women only inherit half of what males inherit. She is arguing that she should be entitled to the exact same share of her father’s estate as her brothers (all of which are on her side), and she is using Christian doctrine to do so. Two prior judges have ruled against her, citing Islamic law that favor men and using it as their justification in their decisions.

Their father, a former state clerk, passed away in December of last year, leaving a 4-story apartment in a lower income neighborhood of Cairo as well as a bank deposit. The siblings filed a request for inheritance at a local court, and Nasrallah invoked a church-sanctioned Coptic bylaw that calls for equal distribution of inheritance. A final verdict is expected to be handed down later this month.

A 2016 ruling from a Cairo court favored a Coptic woman who also challenged Islamic inheritance laws, but recent cases and the sentiment in the nation does not bode well for the minority believer. Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the highest Sunni religious institution in the Muslim world, vehemently dismissed the proposal that called for equal inheritance rights. He claimed that it was contradictory to Islamic law and destabilizing to Muslim societies, fearing that if the state offers equal property rights to Christian women that Muslim women will demand the same.

See Caleb Parke, Egyptian Woman Uses Christian Doctrine to Fight Unequal Islamic Inheritance Laws, Fox News, November 15, 2019.