Human Rights Issues Arising from the Implementation of Sharia Law on the Minority of Western Thrace—ECtHR Molla Sali v. Greece, Application No. 20452/14, 19 December 2018

The Molla Sali case, recently heard by the ECtHR, concerns the compatibility of the implementation of Sharia in the family and personal relations of the Muslims of Western Thrace, who remained within the boundaries of the Greek State after the exchange of populations under the Treaty of Lausanne, to the ECHR. The applicant, a Greek national of the Muslim minority of Western Thrace, complained that she could not be beneficiary by testament of her deceased husband’s estate, member of the same minority, since, according to the position of the Court of Cassation, due to a series of international agreements and relevant domestic norms, the law of succession applicable to her case was the Islamic Law that prohibits the testament, instead of the civil law. However, the ECtHR found that the applicant was victim of a violation of article 14 of the ECHR in conjunction with article 1 of Protocol no 1. In this case, the ECtHR considered for the first time the question of the compatibility of a religious community’s separate legal status with the ECHR. The rationale behind the decision is within the framework of the core principles of the Court’s case law on the limits of the autonomy of religious communities and acknowledgement of minority rights. The Court, based on the main line of arguments which constitute the corpus of its jurisprudence on religious and minority issues, ruled that the separate legal status of the Muslim minority cannot justify divergences from the application of the General Law, to the extent that such divergences violate the Greek citizens’ rights enshrined in the Constitution and the ECHR and it condemned Greece on the basis of “discrimination by association”.