DHAKA, Dec 23 (AFP) - Prime Minister Khaleda Zia called Tuesday for Bangladesh's 600,000 Muslim clerics to work to improve the status of women.
"We hope that the imams (clerics) would play a wider role in turning our people into human resources in (the) real sense in light of the teachings of the holy Koran," she told a clerics' conference, as quoted by the official BSS news agency.
Zia, whose ruling coalition includes Islamists, said clerics should use their Friday sermons in Bangladesh's 200,000 mosques to encourage girls' education and other matters of importance to women.
Many Bangladeshi woman are "still deprived of their legitimate rights even at the family level because of ignorance and personal lust and interest," Zia said.
The conference, sponsored jointly by the religious affairs ministry and the UN Population Fund, aims to train clerics on the rights of women and children and on reproductive health issues including the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Bangladesh, with around 130 million people, is the third largest Muslim-majority country. Both the prime minister and main opposition leader are women.
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