KUWAIT CITY - A senior Kuwaiti liberal MP said on Wednesday that his life was threatened after he proposed amendments to two laws that enforce the segregation of the sexes at universities.
Ali Al Rashed issued a statement calling on the interior ministry to apprehend the ‘terrorist’ who threatened him in a telephone call late on Tuesday.
Kuwait’s parliament, controlled by Islamists and conservatives, passed a law in 1996 stipulating that male and female students at Kuwait University and other higher education institutions be completely separated.
It also passed another law in 2000 extending the ban on co-education to private universities.
Rashed and two other liberal MPs on Tuesday filed a bill calling for the two laws to be amended in order to allow co-education, saying that the segregation laws had a strong negative impact on students.
The three lawmakers also argued that Islamic Sharia law does not ban the mixing of the sexes because men and women can mix freely in markets, shopping malls and in workplaces.
Parliament speaker Jassem Al Khorafi strongly condemned the threat against Rashed and urged the interior ministry to try to apprehend the culprit.
The Gulf state of Kuwait is a conservative country, but unlike neighbouring Saudi Arabia it does not impose a strict dress code on women who are allowed the full freedom to drive, work and travel.
Kuwaiti women also have full political rights.
(AFP)
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