Progressive imam receives death threats
A proposed new family law in Mali would mean that husbands and wives owe each other “loyalty and protection” rather than women owing their husbands obedience. Women would receive greater inheritance rights and the minimum age for girls to marry in most circumstances would be raised to 18. But the law is not easy to defend in practice and one imam who spoke in its favour has been hounded and threatened with death.
An imam in Mali is living in fear after backing a new family law which no longer obliges wives to obey their husbands, angering Muslim groups.
He has received threatening phone calls and local Muslim leaders have tried to dismiss him.
The new law is currently being given a second reading in parliament after Mali’s president refused to sign it because of the Muslim protests.
More than 90% of Mali’s population is Muslim.
In April, the imam of Kati, 15km (9 miles) north-west of the capital, Bamako, wrote a letter to Mali’s High Islamic Council stating he saw nothing in the new family law which infringed the country’s social values, much less Islam, the BBC’s Martin Vogl in Mali says.
