Egypt: Statement by the Muslim Brotherhood about The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

In the name of God the Merciful

Statement of the Muslim Brotherhood about The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which violates all principles of the Islamic Sharia and the Islamic community.

 The Commission on the Status of Women holds a conference in the period from the 4th to the 15th of March 2013 to approve a document titled (The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), a deceptive headline that includes items collide with the principles of Islam and its basic unanimous elements of Quran and Sunnah, destroy Islamic ethics, and seek to demolish the institution of the family, which the Egyptian constitution confirmed it is the building block of the society, and hence achieve the dismantling of the community, and end to the last step of the intellectual and cultural invasion, and eliminate the privacy that preserve elements of Islamic societies and its cohesion.

 It is enough to give a closer reading at these items to realize what is meant to us, and these items are:

1. Grant girls their complete sexual freedom, as well as the freedom to choose their sex and the freedom to choose their sex partners (i.e., choose to have a normal sexual relationship or atypical) with rising the age of marriage.

2. Provide contraception for adolescent girls and train them on how to use it with the legalization of abortion to abort undesirable pregnancy under the name of sexual and reproduction rights.

3. Equality between an adulterous and a wife, and equality between adultery children (outside of marriage children) and legitimate sons in all rights.

4. Granting homosexuals all their rights, protection and respect, and grant protection for women in prostitution.

5. Grant wives all the right to sue their husbands with charges of rape or harassment, and the competent authorities should grant same penalties similar to raping or harassing a stranger. 

6. Equality in inheritance. 

7. Replace guardianship with partnership, and fully share the roles within the family between men and women such as: spending, child care, home affairs.

8. Equal access to the marriage legislations such as: Stop polygamy, Iddah, mandate, and the dowry, and stop obligatory spending of man on the family, and to allow Muslim women to marry a non-Muslim and others.

9. Withdraw the authority of divorce from husbands and authorize it to judiciary and share property after divorce. 

10. Cancel the obligatory authorization of the husband in: travel, work or going out or use contraception.

 These are the destructive means of the institution of the family and community that calls for the return of the first medieval period.

 The Muslim Brotherhood call upon rulers of Islamic countries and Foreign Ministers and their representatives in the United Nations to reject this document, and also we invite this organization to live up to the level of the pure family relations prescribed by Islam.

 Also Muslim Brotherhood calls al-Azhar to act according to its leading role and to condemn this document and declare the position of Islam towards its articles, as it is the reference for Muslims.

 As well we call other Islamic groups and associations to take a decisive stand against this document and the like.

 We also call for women’s organizations to adhere to their religion and the morals of their communities and the elements of our social life and not to be seduced by the deceptive, misleading and destructive calls for urbanization.

 The Muslim Brotherhood

 Cairo: 13 March 2013

*The statement is translated from Arabic.