Sudanese Islamist leader said Friday in an interview that Muslim women should be free to marry Christian or Jewish men, defying the consensus among conventional Muslim jurists.
Hassan Turabi said that he came to this conclusion after hearing of a married American woman who wanted to convert to Islam but was told she must seek a divorce and possibly lose custody of her children.
"I could not find in the Quran or the Sunna a single word preventing a Muslim woman from marrying a Christian or Jew" he said.
"So I came to the opinion that they should let her convert and prove her faith. Often she would bring to Islam her husband and those around him and so on," he added.
Mr. Turabi made similar remarks at a meeting in Khartoum earlier this month but his detailed explanation in Asharq Al Awsat will reach a much wider audience.
A professor of Islamic studies at Cairo University, Abdul Sabour Shahin was quoted in the Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm as saying Turabi's opinion was nonsense.
"What Turabi is doing is obvious intellectual confusion. I would have thought he was above that. It's as if he were taking the side of the enemies of Islam," Shahin said.
Turabi said he was not speaking only about married women who want to convert to Islam but about all Muslim women. But it is especially relevant to Muslims living as minorities, he said.
"We must let Muslim minorities living with Christians and Jews... marry their daughters to Christians and Jews and perhaps these daughters, through their marital relationship, will bring Christians and Jews to Islam or preserve their own religion," he said.
