Algiers Friday Sermon by Sheik Kamel Nour: We Have No Need for Women's Rights

In a recent Friday sermon in Algiers, Sheik Kamel Nour complained that human rights organization were trying "to strip the father's authority from women," enabling women to choose who they would marry. "What we have in the Quran and in the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad makes any talk about human rights unnecessary," said Nour in the March 6 sermon, delivered at the Abdellatif Soltani Mosque in Algiers and posted on the Internet.

Following are excerpts:

Sheik Kamel Nour: Those human rights people say that we should allow a woman to choose and marry whoever she wants, without any restriction or any regard for religion. They do not want women to be married off by their fathers. They strive for women to get married on their own accord. In this country and many others, they have tried to strip the father's authority from women.

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These are the notions of the secularists, and of advocates of women's liberation and of equality between men and women.

Oh believers, we have our shari'a and have no need for human rights organizations. What we have in the Quran and in the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad makes any talk about human rights unnecessary.

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Oh believers, these notions do not go hand in hand with our religion. There can be no real [gender] equality, neither according to reason nor according to our customs. It does not exist even among them, so why do they advocate it in other countries?

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