Women, Islamists and the Military Regime in Somalia: The Reform of the Family Law and its Repercussions Introduction

The military regime that came to power in Somalia in 1969 launched the new Family Law on January 11, 1975. With this law, the President declared that the Qur’anic verses on inheritance were outdated and would not have any legal power in the new socialist Somalia. This pronouncement caught the Somali public by surprise, since it overtly contradicted historically practiced Islamic Shari’a law. Though public reaction was timid and cautious because of the ruthless and repressive nature of the regime, a small number of Islamic scholars did have the courage to criticize the Family Law from the pulpit of one of the mosques. Panicking, the regime unleashed its security apparatus and detained these Islamic scholars and their sympathizers. On January 23, 1975, the military regime executed 10 of the Islamic scholars while incarcerating hundreds more. The military regime’s discourse when enacting the new Family Law held that it was seeking to modernize the society through socialist transformation, making the genders ‘equal comrades’. As they argued, socialist reform would be deficient unless women were librated from the bonds of culture and religion in a revolutionary legal reform. Against this, the Islamic scholars focused their discursive defence of the last and most sacred domain of the Islamic Shari’a – the family – from the pervasive secularism of the military regime.Continued