Muslim woman breaks religious ceiling in Egypt

Map of Egypt. Courtesy CIA World Factbook, US Government.Western media overlooked what many women perceive as a historic bombshell in Egypt. In September, Amal Soliman, a 32-year-old Egyptian woman who holds a Master's degree in Islamic Sharia law, broke into what has until now been an exclusively males-only club—she became the Muslim world's first mazouna, or female marriage registrar. Farah El Alfy, writing for Al Jazeera-English, interviewed Soliman about her battle to break through a religious ceiling no other female had shattered.

Soliman told Al Jazeera when she first applied, she was laughed at. She confronted many theocratic challenges throughout the approval process, saying she had to compete “[w]ith 10 other candidates, all men, but none of them held post-graduate degrees in Sharia law like I did.” The whole process took a year.

At one point, Soliman contacted the National Council for Women. Then a journalist for a leading Egyptian newspaper Al Akhbar took up her cause.

Soliman said the victory wasn’t just for her—“I'm happy not just for me; I had always wanted to show the world Egypt's developments with regards to women rights and gender equality.” She told Al Jazeera, "Legally, there is no reason why a woman can't do the job, and the Mufti (Islamic scholar and interpreter of Islamic law) said it was religiously acceptable as it is only an administrative position."

Now as a mazouna, Soliman will preside over a wedding (or divorce) ceremonies, recite verses from the Quran and sign the official marriage certificates. She presided over her first wedding in late October.

Soliman’s victory has already spurred change in another country. In November the United Arab Emirates appointed Fatima Saeed Obeid Al Awani a mazouna in the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department.

While such victories may seem quaint to Western society, they are groundbreaking in theocratic countries.

Comments about the article at Al Jazeera were largely positive, but there were a few dissenters. Andul Basir, commenting from Afghanistan, said, “This is really a beg [sic] shame for a woman to be a marriage registrar and is entirely prohibited in Islam.” But the majority of commenters agreed with Ismail Patel who wrote from the U.S., “The way the Islamic world is at the moment it needs both men and women to work together for the benefits of all! Islam has enough slack for both to work together!”