This Convention has 154 members at present and has the...

This Convention has 154 members at present and has the second place after Convention on Rights of Children in respect to number of Member States among the international treaties on human rights.[^4] The ideal of the Convention is to achieve a society throughout the world in which men and women have equal rights, a society in which traditions, habits, beliefs and value systems of the past and the present are questioned and new forms of egalitarianism are established based on the new thought.

The exercise of its principles requires the following of the policies, programs and legislations at national level. To what degree this idea is per se practical deserves due contemplation. While the United Nations Organisation believes that this Convention is the most important binding document for elimination of discrimination against women, the large number of reservations of the Member States are also very important.

Although many discussions are brought up on the validity of such reservations, the conditional acceptance of approximately 49 Member States, some of which have objected to major basic principles of the Convention ^5 , has challenged its complete execution.

While different countries, even the western countries have adopted various reservations, the reservations of Islamic countries have gained more attention and have become an important issue both for the United Nations and for the Islamic States as well.

Reservations of Islamic countries toward this Convention which have mainly conditioned their execution to their conformity based upon Islamic rules ( Shari’ah ) have led to this belief that Islamic principles are an obstacle in eliminating discrimination against women and therefore terms such as Islamic Tradition and Islamic Restrictions are brought up without offering a clear definition or a proper understanding of them.

They examine the status of Muslim women in the light of Western values, claiming that Muslim women are under suppression and slavery. Also by statistical analyses and through comparing the results with their own data and without any consideration due to the differences in cultural environments and legal institutions relating to women such as marriage, and inheritance, they claim that women’s legal system does not exist only in Islam.

Based on the same data, they refer to the advancement of Western women and the backwardness of Muslim women and prescribe Western patterns for the amelioration of their condition.