Whilst other works exist which examine the Islamic law of personal status, this is the first to set out in a single volume the laws relating to marriage and divorce in the Arab states, both codified and uncodified, in a manner which will enable the reader to look up the provisions of the law in specific areas and, where required, to compare the positions of the laws of different countries.
In both the West and throughout the Muslim world, Islamic family law is a highly and hotly debated topic. In the Muslim World, the discussions at the heart of these debates are often primarily concerned with the extent to which classical Islamic family law should be implemented in the national legal system, and the impact this has on society. Family Law in Islam highlights these discussions by looking at public debates and legal practice. Using a range of contemporary examples, from polygamy to informal marriage (zawaj 'urfi), and from divorce with mutual agreement (khul') to judicial divorce (tatliq), this wide-ranging and penetrating volume explores the impact of Islamic law on individuals, families and society alike from Morocco to Egypt and from Syria to Iran. It thus contains material of vital importance for researchers of Islamic Law, Politics and Society in the Middle East and North Africa."
High rates of divorce, often taken to be a modern and western phenomenon, were also typical of medieval Islamic societies. By pitting these high rates of divorce against the Islamic ideal of marriage,Yossef Rapoport radically challenges usual assumptions about the legal inferiority of Muslim women and their economic dependence on men. He argues that marriages in late medieval Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem had little in common with the patriarchal models advocated by jurists and moralists. The transmission of dowries, women's access to waged labour, and the strict separation of property between spouses made divorce easy and normative, initiated by wives as often as by their husbands. This carefully researched work of social history is interwoven with intimate accounts of individual medieval lives, making for a truly compelling read. It will be of interest to scholars of all disciplines concerned with the history of women and gender in Islam.
With the resurgence of Islam as a social and political force, debates over family law reveal the struggle between the forces of traditionalism and modernism. The disparate tendencies within so-called Islamic fundamentalism have in commmon the desire to re-institute Shari'a law, which they regard as the last bastion of the Islamic ideal of social relations. Yet very little is known of the ways in which the Shari'a actually operates in today's Muslim societies. Mir-Hosseini focuses on the dynamics of marriage and its breakdown, as well as the way in which litigants manipulate the law in order to resolve marital disputes and child custody cases. Taking an inter-disciplinaryand approach which straddles law, anthropology, sociology and women's studies, Mir-Hosseini shows how women may turn even the most patriarchal elements of Islamic law to their advantage and achieve their personal marital aims.
The eighteen essays in this volume cover a wide range of material and reevaluate women's studies and Middle Eastern studies, Muslim women and the Shari'a courts, the Ottoman household, Dhimmi communities, children and family law, morality, and violence.
Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century shows the wide range of Muslim experiences in marital disputes and in seeking Islamic divorces. For Muslims, having the ability to divorce in accordance with Islamic law is of paramount importance. However, Muslim experiences of divorce practice differ tremendously. The chapters in this volume discuss Islamic divorce from West Africa to Southeast Asia, and each story explores aspects of the everyday realities of disputing and divorcing Muslim couples face in the twenty-first century. The book’s cross-cultural and comparative look at Islamic divorce indicates that Muslim divorces are impacted by global religious discourses on Islamic authority, authenticity, and gender; by global patterns of and approaches to secularity; and by global economic inequalities and attendant patterns of urbanization and migration. Studying divorce as a mode of Islamic law in practice shows us that the Islamic legal tradition is flexible, malleable, and context-dependent.
A remarkable research accomplishment. Ali leads us through three strands of early Islamic jurisprudence with careful attention to the nuances and details of the arguments.
In "Islamic Family Law in a Changing World," Abdullahi A. An-Na'im explores the practice of the Shari'a, commonly known as Islamic Family Law. An-Na'im shows that the practical application of Shari'a principles is often modified by theological differences of interpretation, a country's particular customary practices, and state policy and law.
Policy-makers and the public are increasingly attentive to the role of shari'a in the everyday lives of Western Muslims, with negative associations and public fears growing among their non-Muslim neighbors in the United States and Canada. The most common way North American Muslims relate to shari'a is in their observance of Muslim marriage and divorce rituals; recourse to traditional Islamic marriage and, to a lesser extent, divorce is widespread. Julie Macfarlane has conducted hundreds of interviews with Muslim couples, as well as with religious and community leaders and family conflict professionals. Her book describes how Muslim marriage and divorce processes are used in North America, and what they mean to those who embrace them as a part of their religious and cultural identity. The picture that emerges is of an idiosyncratic private ordering system that reflects a wide range of attitudes towards contemporary family values and changes in gender roles. Some women describe pervasive assumptions about restrictions on their role in the family system, as well as pressure to accept these values and to stay married. Others of both genders describe the gradual modernization of Islamic family traditions - and the subsequent emergence of a Western shari'a--but a continuing commitment to the rituals of Muslim marriage and divorce in their private lives. Readers will be challenged to consider how the secular state should respond in order to find a balance between state commitment to universal norms and formal equality, and the protection of religious freedom expressed in private religious and cultural practices.
