On Aims, Means, and Unintended Consequences: The Case of Molla Sali

Abstract

This contribution speaks to this Special Issue’s guiding question of how the approach to freedom of religion and minority protection can be combined to foster the protection of religious communities and their members by examining a particular European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case that provokes a contrasting question: ‘What happens when provisions for religious minority protection lead to the violation rather than protection of members’ rights?’ That case is Molla Sali v. Greece (2018), in which the ECtHR addressed the claim of a member of a Muslim minority community whose membership in that community subjected her—involuntarily—to the authority of sharia law over inheritance matters. The case serves as a foundation from which to explore the ECtHR’s engagements with the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, an exploration which helps bring to the fore the problems around the concept of ‘voluntary’ opting into identification with a minority identity when the latter entails some form of disadvantage. Women, in particular, due to family and peer pressures, are vulnerable to such disadvantage in contexts such as that from which the case of Molla Sali arises. Thus, the case invites discussion of various ways in which individual and group rights may come into conflict and considers minority rights specifically in relation to other human rights.