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Afghanistan's parliament has failed to pass a law banning violence against women. But what to do next is even dividing women members of Afghanistan's National Assembly. It's a law that many of the women elected to Afghanistan's National Assembly have dedicated their lives to - the only legislation in this country protecting Afghan women against domestic violence. It's called the "Elimination of Violence Against Women" law, or "EVAW", enacted by presidential decree in 2009, but never approved by the Assembly. On Saturday the assembly's religious conservatives - all of them men - attacked the law as anti-Islamic. "The Koran says the father is to decide whether or not his daughter is fit for marriage!" said MP Dari, "Are women's shelters really a place for girls to redeem their honor?" Women MPs have been divided over the issue for weeks. Presidential candidate Fawzia Koofi wants to put the law to a vote. Other MPs and female activists fear the Assembly is likely to change parts of the law that forbid the marriage of girls younger than 16 and limiting the number of wives men can have to two. The EVAW law has brought justice to female victims like 15-year-old Sahar Gul after she was badly treated by her husband's family. But even assembly members who support the law avoided drawing attention to it, thinking it would do more damage than good. "Myself and a group of people avoided to come to media, because this law was beautiful for women but so fragile. We didn't want to get that much attention that the attention could destroy it," said MP Farkhunda Naderi. Conservative MPs could not prevent the law from passing, but they could pressure President Hamid Karzai into scrapping his original decree, or a new president could do that. Afghanistan will hold presidential elections in 2014. The constitution prevents Karzai from running again. Fawzia Koofi says she has put the law on the agenda with that ticking clock in mind. "It is not a law, it is a decree," Farkhunda Naderi said. "We need to make it a law because we don't know what will happen in 2014." The 69 women sitting in parliament have never been so divided. In fact, President Karzai warned them that if the law didn't go through, it wouldn't be because of conservative MPs, but because of their own infighting. If the law fails to pass, many Afghan women are likely to suffer. According to the UN, 300 Afghan women died from domestic violence and so-called "honor killings" last year alone. One thing Afghanistan's women MPs agree on is that 300 is too many.