Cherie Booth Blair said Jewish divorce law requiring a get is “intimately tied” to abuse of women.
In a speech in London last week, the wife of Britain’ s former prime minister and current Quartet Middle East peace envoy, Tony Blair, cited the traditional Jewish practice requiring a woman to obtain a “get” writ of divorce from her husband as an example of how religion is used to deny women’s rights.
Booth Blair, a human rights attorney, said that “proclaimed adherence to a specific religion or system of belief or culture is intimately tied to women’s continuing discrimination and abuse.”
She highlightied Orthodox Jewish practices under which a woman cannot divorce without her husband’s consent as well as new laws in Egypt that give men and women different rights in a divorce.
She also cited the Muslim veil, questioning whether a woman could fully express her rights as an individual with her face covered.
