TUNIS: A Tunisian court is today discussing the case of a Christian Tunisian woman, who converted to Islam in 1955 but was prevented from being buried in a Muslim graveyard, the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat reported.
The woman s family was surprised last week when the municipality of Sfax ordered that the mother be buried in the non-Muslim graveyard, because her surname was not Arabic.
I was stunned. her neighbors all saw she practiced the religious rituals meticulously ever since she converted to Islam, Sasi Bin Younis, the woman s son-in-law told the paper.
If the court will not authorize her burial in the Muslim graveyard, representatives of the church in Sfax might see it as a problem to bury in their graveyard a woman who converted, said the family s lawyer, Suheil A-Suleimi. The woman, whose name was not published, was born in 1918 to Christian parents. When she was 37 she decided to convert. The ceremony was performed by the local mufti, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mahiri.
Twenty-five years later she married a Muslim man. Her family says the marriage certificate proves she was a Muslim.
Approximately 560,000 Christians are living in Tunisia, a north-African nation with a population of over 10 million people. -The Media Line
