Islamic Sharia Council subservient to the English law." In an April 2013 report, the BBC's "Panorama" asked whether the Islamic Sharia Council was "failing vulnerable women and mothers" by requiring women seeking divorce to give back their marriage dowry (or "mahr"). The question of "khula" divorce often turns on the dower: if the woman is seeking the divorce, she has to return the dower to the man, or else the divorce cannot proceed. Since in traditional Islamic society, men are traditionally the bank account holders and women are traditionally homemakers, the woman has no purchase, and cannot obtain a loan in order to
Application of Islamic law by country Law 59 of 1953 (amended by Law 34 of 1975) is essentially a codified Islamic law. The Code of Personal Status is applied to Muslims by Sharia courts. In Sharia courts, a woman's testimony is worth only half of a man's. The government is declared to be secular in the constitution. However converting a Muslim is a crime. In Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani and Songkhla provinces, Islamic law is allowed for settling family and inheritance issues under a 1946 law. The remaining provinces of Thailand have a civil law system with common law influences. As part of Atatürk's Reforms, sharia was