This important study offers a conceptual analysis of gender and human rights under Islamic law, state law and international law, and extends this analysis to a specific examination of the nature of women's rights in the Islamic tradition. It explores the disparity between the theoretical perspective on women's rights and its applications to Muslim jurisdictions, determined by elements of cultural practices, socio-economic realities and political expediences, and uses the example of Pakistan to demonstrate the divergence between the theory and practice of Islamic law in these jurisdictions. It discusses the concept of an emerging 'operative' Islamic law, which includes principles of Islamic law, secular codes and popular custom and usage.
Religion plays a pivotal role in the way women are treated around the world, socially and legally. This book discusses three Islamic human rights approaches: secular, non-compatible, reconciliatory (compatible), and proposes a contextual interpretive approach. It is argued that the current gender discriminatory statutory Islamic laws in Islamic jurisdictions, based on the decontextualised interpretation of the Koran, can be reformed through "Ijtihad": independent individual reasoning. It is claimed that the original intention of the Koran was to protect the rights of women and raise their status in society, not to relegate them to subordination. This Koranic intention and spirit may be recaptured through the proposed contextual interpretation which in fact means using an Islamic (or insider) strategy to achieve gender equality in Muslim states and greater compatibility with international human rights law. It discusses the negative impact of the so-called statutory Islamic laws of Pakistan on the enjoyment of women's human rights and robustly challenges their Koranic foundation. While supporting the international human rights regime, this book highlights the challenges to its universality: feminism and cultural relativism. To achieve universal application, genuine voices from different cultures and groups must be accommodated. It is argued that the women's human rights regime does not cover all issues of concern to women and has a weak implementation mechanism. The book argues for effective implementation procedures to turn women's human rights into reality.
The relationship between Islamic law and international human rights law has been the subject of considerable, and heated, debate in recent years. The usual starting point has been to test one system by the standards of the other, asking is Islamic law 'compatible' with international human rights standards, or vice versa. This approach quickly ends in acrimony and accusations of misunderstanding. By overlaying one set of norms on another we overlook the deeply contextual nature of how legal rules operate in a society, and meaningful comparison and discussion is impossible. In this volume, leading experts in Islamic law and international human rights law attempt to deepen the understanding of human rights and Islam, paving the way for a more meaningful debate. Focusing on central areas of controversy, such as freedom of speech and religion, gender equality, and minority rights, the authors examine the contextual nature of how Islamic law and international human rights law are legitimately formed, interpreted, and applied within a community. They examine how these fundamental interests are recognized and protected within the law, and what restrictions are placed on the freedoms associated with them. By examining how each system recognizes and limits fundamental freedoms, this volume clears the ground for exploring the relationship between Islamic law and international human rights law on a sounder footing. In doing so it offers a challenging and distinctive contribution to the literature on the subject, and will be an invaluable reference for students, academics, and policy-makers engaged in the legal and religious debates surrounding Islam and the West.
Human rights law and the legal protection of women from violence are still fairly new concepts. As a result, substantial discrepancies exist between what is decided in the halls of the United Nations and what women experience on a daily basis in their communities. Human Rights and Gender Violence is an ambitious study that investigates the tensions between global law and local justice. As an observer of UN diplomatic negotiations as well as the workings of grassroots feminist organizations in several countries, Sally Engle Merry offers an insider's perspective on how human rights law holds authorities accountable for the protection of citizens even while reinforcing and expanding state power. Providing legal and anthropological perspectives, Merry contends that human rights law must be framed in local terms to be accepted and effective in altering existing social hierarchies. Gender violence in particular, she argues, is rooted in deep cultural and religious beliefs, so change is often vehemently resisted by the communities perpetrating the acts of aggression. A much-needed exploration of how local cultures appropriate and enact international human rights law, this book will be of enormous value to students of gender studies and anthropology alike.
Mona Samadi examines the sources of gender differences within the Islamic tradition, with particular focus on guardianship, and describes the opportunities and challenges for advancing the legal status of women.
Dante is one of the towering figures of medieval European literature. Yet many riddles and questions about him persist. By re-reading Dante with an open mind, Barbara Reynolds made remarkable discoveries and unlocked previously hidden secrets about this greatest of Florentine poets. A fundamental enigma has tantalised readers of the 'Commedia' for seven centuries. Who was the leader prophesied by Virgil and Beatrice to bring peace to the world? Many attempts have been made to identify him, but none has seemed conclusive - until now. As well as proposing a solution to the famous prophecies, this lively, engaging and elegantly-written biography contains a provocative new idea in virtually every chapter. Dr Reynolds' research indicates that Dante smoked cannabis to reach new heights of creativity. That Beatrice, Dante's great love, was not who most scholars think she was. That Dante was a talented public speaker, who created a quite new form of poetic art, holding audiences spellbound. Above all, Reynolds views Dante as one of the greatest spin-doctors of Western civilization. His aim was not to preach an interesting parable about punishments for sin and rewards for virtue. It was to use poetry to change the politics of the age, and unite Europe around the secular authority of an Emperor. To promote this idea, which dominated his writings from his exile onwards, Dante combined it with a dramatic presentation of the Christian belief in Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Vividly told in the first person, with a colour and immediacy derived from the pop art of street narrators - now made to seem respectable by its use of classical predecessors like Virgil - this extraordinary journey through the three realms was always profoundly political in intent. Dante here comes alive as never before: irate, opinionated, settling scores - a man of mutifaceted gifts and extraordinary genius, whose role as an interpreter of world history makes him more than ever relevant to the new millennium.
Investigating minority and indigenous women’s rights in Muslim-majority states, this book critically examines the human rights regime within international law. Based on extensive and diverse ethnographic research on Amazigh women in Morocco, the book unpacks and challenges generally accepted notions of rights and equality. Significantly, and controversially, the book challenges the supposedly ‘emancipatory’ power vested in the human rights project; arguing that rights-based discourses are sites of contestation for different groups that use them to assert their agency in society. More specifically, it shows how the very conditions that make minority and indigenous women instrumental to the preservation of their culture may condemn them to a position of subalternity. In response, and engaging the notion and meaning of Islamic feminism, the book proposes that feminism should be interpreted and contextualised locally in order to be effective and inclusive, and so in order for the human rights project to fully realise its potential to empower the marginalised and make space for their voices to be heard. Providing a detailed, empirically based, analysis of rights in action, this book will be of relevance to scholars, students and practitioners in human rights policy and practice, in international law, minorities’ and indigenous peoples’ rights, gender studies, and Middle Eastern and North African Studies.
Gender and Islam in Africa examines ways in which women in Africa are interpreting traditional Islamic concepts in order to empower themselves and their societies. African women, it argues, have promoted the ideals and practices of equality, human rights, and democracy within the framework of Islamic thought, challenging conventional conceptualizations of the religion as gender-constricted and patriarchal. The contributors come from the fields of history, anthropology, linguistics, gender studies, religious studies, and law. Their depictions of African women's interpreting and reinterpreting of Islam go back into the nineteenth century and up to today, including analyses of how cultural media such as popular song and film can communicate new gender roles in terms of sexuality and direct examinations of religious and religiously based family law and efforts to reform them.
