The Lebanese Democratic Women’s Gathering (RDFL) organized a demonstration yesterday at the Martyrs’ Square in Beirut under the slogan, “beware women’s anger” in protest against the discriminatory laws governing personal status. Scores of women raised their voices demanding an end to intervention of sects and the enactment of a unified personal status law that guarantees equality and protection for women from the violence of all religious courts. Women of various sects, participating in the sit-in, shared a history of suffering from the oppressive rule of their respective religious courts and of relentless pressure by their husbands and spiritual judges in matters of custody, alimony, inheritance, procrastination in divorce verdicts, and visitation rights among others. Demonstrators carried banners which read, ‘Our religious courts, Discriminatory laws’, ‘Feminist revolution against religious courts’, ‘For a civil law that protects me, not rulings that discard me’. The head of RDFL, Leila Mrouweh, said on the occasion: “As women, and just as being women, we are equally handled under the gavel of macho violence and patriarchal discrimination. As if we are destined to remain under the influence of clerics in a complete abandonment by the state and slackness to protect us or ensure our rights and the rights of our children. There are many example of this slack attitude, seen in the incidences of child marriage justified under the name of religion, and the discarded draft bills on harassment in the workplace and the right of women in full citizenship or in conferring nationality to their children, etc. (Al Akhbar, August 1, 2019)