KUWAIT CITY (IslamOnline) - A Kuwaiti court rejected on Tuesday a request by women rights advocates granting women in the Arab emirate the right to vote in parliamentary elections.
The Kuwaiti Constitutional Court, the country's highest judicial authority, decided against an appeal by Adnan Issa, a Kuwaiti man lobbying for women rights, and his lawyer Kawther al-Gawan, a leading female Islamist lawyer, to allow women the right to cast electoral ballots.
Islamists in Kuwait have often been accused by the secular camp of trying to limit the space of personal freedom in the oil-rich Gulf state.
There was no immediate explanation for the verdict.
Kuwait has been gripped by controversy and the source of contradictory messages from different camps over the issue after a 50-seat parliament, highly influenced by Islamists, turned down a proposal by the country's Emir to allow women the right to vote.
Advocates of the proposal argue that several other Muslim countries have long given women the right to vote, and that Kuwait, the Gulf's most "Westernized" country, has taken a negative line that would be viewed as such internationally.
Kuwaiti women are generally considered among the most liberated in the Gulf region, as they drive cars, wear Western clothes and travel outside the country without their father's or husband's approval.
Kuwait's 1962 constitution says that both men and women are equal. But an all-male parliament, in seeming direct opposition to the constitutional edict, has adopted laws barring women from voting.
Several women rights groups were angered by the ruling and said that it was a setback in their struggle to win equal political rights with men.
They reportedly vowed to continue the battle and said they would file further cases.
