Egypt's parliament has passed a law allocating a quota of 64 seats in the lower house to women, in what a minister said on Monday was aimed at promoting their role in society. The new law adopted on Sunday will give women more than 12 percent of the seats in an expanded parliament after the next election due in 2010, Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Mufid Shehab said.

A member of the People’s Assembly (PA) filed a request to annul the law that permits khol’, or a women’s right to divorce.

Nine years after its introduction, the law is once again the subject of debate with Independent MP Mohamed Al-Omdah arguing that it contradicts with Islamic teachings.

On Thursday, Al-Omdah asked the PA, to change Article 20 of the personal status law that allows women to divorce their husbands, provided that they pay back their dowries (mahr) and other presents.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s first women’s division, the Muslim Sisters Group, was created in 1932. Since then, women activists have been at the forefront of the social and political struggle of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt, which seeks to establish a democratic political system in the country with an Islamic frame of reference. Women activists advocating for an Islamic political system through the Brotherhood believe that Islam brought justice to women.