Since it was enacted from 1957 to 1958, the Personal Status Code or Mudawwana has become a complex and passionate subject of debate in which ideological, nationalistic and identity-based factors converge, revolving around the place which the shari‘a should hold within the law governing Moroccans’ private lives. Both the discreet legal reform of 1993 and the new Family Law passed in 2004 were the result of changes in Moroccan society and its family model, though all such changes were made amid passionate ideological debates between the supporters of egalitarian legislation governing men and women, based on national and international role models which defend human rights and gender equality, and the advocates of a legal system more grounded in Islamic legal instruments, to establish a more «complementary» relationship between the two sexes.
Family Code, Morocco, personal status, personal status, Mudawwana, shari‘a.