Yesterday, Friday , the preacher of the Abu Hanifa Mosque in the Adhamiyah district of Baghdad, Abdul Wahab Al-Samarra’i , called for discussing issues related to the Personal Status Law after the selection of the new parliament speaker, demanding the existence of a code for the Sunnis and the community that guarantees their legal privacy .
The Iraqi Parliament elected Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani as its Speaker on Thursday evening , after nearly a full year of political deadlock and failure more than three times to resolve the issue .
Al-Samarrai said in the Friday prayer sermon, “After choosing the new parliament speaker, there are a number of issues that we will put before him, including the personal status law. He asked: Why do some people seek to impose one approach? (..) It is not permissible to force anyone to follow another doctrine .”
Al-Samarra’i believed that a person is free to choose his sect, whether he is Shafi’i, Hanafi, Hanbali, or Maliki, noting that the Shiite brothers chose what represents their personal status, and they are free to do so, so why do some insist on keeping the Sunnis without a clear identity in this law? ”
He explained that the current law “does not represent a specific doctrine, but rather combines multiple opinions, and scientific institutions, the Iraqi Fiqh Council, and scholars (..) have agreed on the necessity of having a special code that preserves the traditions and rulings of the Sunnis .”
The preacher of Abu Hanifa Mosque added that “the current law is called the Personal Status Law, and every person should have the freedom to choose his sect and traditions, and to worship as he sees fit,” adding: “We are talking about a religious issue, not just a political one, and it is related to the desire of the Sunnis to document their traditions and rulings within a legal framework .”
At the end of his sermon, Al-Samarrai called on the government, parliament and political blocs to seriously consider these issues to achieve stability, considering that the continuation of pressures and repeated targeting of any component will hinder the stability of the country and prevent it from recovering and living in peace, according to his expression .
At the end of last October, the Iraqi Jurisprudence Council and the Sunni Endowment Office announced their rejection of the current amendment to the Personal Status Law, stressing that there is no justification for replacing the law with two separate codes, Shiite and Sunni .
The amendment to the Personal Status Law sparked widespread controversy within Iraqi society, between those who opposed and supported it, so the Iraqi government decided to discuss all the comments raised about it through the “Supreme Council for Women’s Affairs.”
