PARIS (AP) — The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Greece violated a prohibition on discrimination by applying Islamic religious law to an inheritance dispute among members of the country’s Muslim minority.
The court ruled Wednesday that Greece had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by applying Sharia law in the case, under which a Muslim Greek man’s will bequeathing all he owned to his wife was deemed invalid after it was challenged by his sisters.
The man’s widow, Chatitze Molla Sali, appealed to the European court in 2014, having lost three quarters of her inheritance.
This January, the Greek parliament limited the powers of Islamic courts operating in northeastern Greece, home to a 100,000-strong Muslim minority. Legislation concerning minorities was based on international treaties following the Ottoman Empire’s collapse.
