In June 2008, the 1938 Personal Status Regulations for the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt were amended to limit the grounds for divorce to adultery and change of religion. This revision followed a ruling of the State Council requiring Pope Shenouda III, the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, to grant a divorced Orthodox Copt a license to remarry. The amendments ended a long-standing conflict between the Egyptian national courts and the Coptic Orthodox Church regarding the effects of judicial divorce: prior to the revision, thousands of couples divorced before the courts were considered by the Church to be still married. However, by restricting the possibilities for Orthodox Copts to obtain a divorce, the 2008 amendments may lead to an increase in conversions to other religious faiths to escape application of the revised 1938 regulations. In this essay, I analyze the 2008 amendments, the State Council ruling, landmark decisions of the Court of Cassation, comments by legal scholars and articles in newspapers, in an effort to assess the current status of divorce and remarriage among Orthodox Copts in Egypt and the problems generated by the application of conflicts rules between non-Muslim personal status laws in case of inter-religious marriages. At the end of the essay, I mention developments that took place in June 2010 after the release of a new ruling by the State Council.

If the legal status of women wishing to end an unhappy marriage has undoubtedly improved through the codification process of personal status law in Egypt in the twentieth century, it still remains very unequal in comparison to the privileges enjoyed by men in that field. Moreover, the practical effects of these legal reforms can be questioned. This chapter will study marriage breakups in Egypt through both legal and sociological approaches. Legal texts governing family law will first be examined to expose the different ways marriage can be broken up and how the reforms were legitimated by reference to sharî'a principles. Then the various obstacles that impede the effective implementation of these reforms will be exposed, to stress that the study of law should capture the language of law in action and not only of law in books.

No abstract

Distribution électronique Cairn.info pour L'Harmattan. © L'Harmattan. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays.La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.

No abstract