Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-cnmwb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T22:34:42.693Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

17 - Women, family and the law: the Muslim personal status law debate in Arab states

from PART III - POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THOUGHT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

Robert W. Hefner
Affiliation:
Boston University
Get access

Summary

Introduction

In the late twentieth century, a combination of geopolitical developments focused particular attention on ‘the Islamic sharīʿa’ and specifically on its role as an identity and legitimacy signifier for opposition movements in and the governments of Muslim majority states. Positivist approaches to legislative power concentrated on the statutory expression of rules in different areas of state law. After varying periods of independent statehood, a number of post-colonial states promulgated instruments of statutory law presented as reintroducing the rules and sanctions of Islamic criminal law into penal systems otherwise largely based on colonial legislation. Systems of Islamic banking and Islamic finance developed apace. Constitutional arguments focused on the various formulations through which ‘the sharīʿa’ or ‘the principles of the sharīʿa’ are or should be established as a source (or the source) of statutory legislation. In different Muslim majority states, courts became a site for contestation of different perceptions of the requirements of the sharīʿa and the extent to which statutory laws and the state-appointed judiciary would defend or concede to these different invocations of ‘Islamic law’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdo, Nahla, ‘Muslim family law: Articulating gender, class and the state’, International Review of Comparative Public Policy, 9 (1997).Google Scholar
Abu Zahra, Muhammad, Al-Aḥwāl al-shakhsīya, Cairo, 1957.Google Scholar
Abu-Odeh, Lama, ‘Modernizing Muslim family law: The case of Egypt’, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 37 (2004).Google Scholar
Abu-Odeh, Lama, ‘Egyptian feminism: Trapped in the identity debate’, in Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck and Stowasser, Barbara Freyer (eds.), Islamic law and the challenge of modernity, Walnut Creek, 2004.Google Scholar
Abu-Odeh, Lama, ‘Modern family law, 1800–present. Arab states’, Encyclopedia of women and Islamic cultures, 6 vols. Leiden and Boston, 2003–7, vol. II.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Leila, Women and gender in Islam: Historical roots of a modern debate, New Haven, 1992.Google Scholar
al-Haq, , Al-Marʾa wa’l-ʿadāla wa’l-qānūn, Ramallah, 1995.Google Scholar
al-Sawi, Muhammad Ahmad (ed.), Al-Ḥiṣạd: ʿAmān ʿalā al-khulʿ, Cairo, 2003.Google Scholar
al-Sharif, Muhammad al-Habib, Majallat al-ahwal al-shakhsiyya; jumaʿ wa taʿliq, Soussa 1997.Google Scholar
Amina, Chemais, Al-Marʾa wa’l-ṭalāq (Cairo, 1994)Google Scholar
An-Naiʿm, Abdullahi Ahmed (ed.), Islamic family law in a changing world: A global resource book, London, 2002.Google Scholar
Anderson, NormanLaw reform in the Muslim world, London, 1976.Google Scholar
Arabi, Oussama, ‘The dawning of the third millennium on sharīʿa: Egypt’s law no. 1 of 2000, or women may divorce at will’, Arab Law Quarterly, 16, 1 (2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Badran, Margot, Feminists, Islam and nation: Gender and the making of modern Egypt, Princeton, 1995.Google Scholar
Bennoune, Karima, ‘Between betrayal and betrayal: Fundamentalism, family law and feminist struggle in Algeria’, Arab Studies Quarterly, 17 (1995).Google Scholar
Benyahya, Muhammad (ed.), Al-Mudawwana al-jadida li-al-usra, Rabat, 2004.Google Scholar
Buskens, Léon, ‘Islamic commentaries and French codes: The confrontation and accommodation of two forms of textualization of family law in Morocco’, in Driesen, Hank (ed.), The politics of ethnographic reading and writing: Confrontations of western and indigenous views, Fort Lauderdale, 1993.Google Scholar
Buskens, Léon, Islamitisch rechten en familiebetrekkingen in Morokko, Amsterdam, 1999.Google Scholar
Buskens, Léon, ‘Recent debates on family law reform in Morocco: Islamic law as politics in an emerging public sphere’, Islamic Law and Society, 10, 1 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chamari, Alya Chérif, La femme et la loi en Tunisie, Casablanca 1991.Google Scholar
Charrad, Mounira, States and women’s rights: The making of postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, Berkeley, 2001.Google Scholar
Chekir, Hafidha, Le statut des femmes entre les texts et les résistances: Le cas de la Tunisie, Tunis 2000.Google Scholar
Chemais, Amina, ‘Obstacles to divorce for Muslim women in Egypt’, in Hoodfar, Homa (ed.), Shifting boundaries in marriage and divorce in Muslim communities, Grabels, 1996.Google Scholar
Coulson, Noel, and Hinchcliffe, Doreen, ‘Women and law reform in contemporary Islam’, in Beck, Lois and Keddie, Nikki (eds.), Women in the Muslim world, Cambridge, MA, 1978.Google Scholar
Cuno, Kenneth, ‘Sharīʿa court regulations in late nineteenth-century Egypt: The effect on marital relations’, paper to the Symposium on Family, Gender and Law, University of Illinois, 2004.Google Scholar
Daoud, Zakya, ‘En marge de la conférence mondiale des femmes de Pékin: La stratégie des feministes maghrébines’, Monde Arabe, Maghreb-Machrek, 150 (1995).Google Scholar
Dennerlein, BettinaChanging conceptions of marriage in Algerian personal status law’, in Khare, R. S. (ed.), Perspectives on Islamic law, justice and society, Lanham, 1999.Google Scholar
Dupret, Baudouin, ‘Legal pluralism, normative plurality and the Arab world’, in Dupret, Baudouin, Berger, Maurits and al-Zwaini, Laila (eds.), Legal pluralism in the Arab world, The Hague, 1999.Google Scholar
El Alami, Dawoud, and Hinchcliffe, Doreen, Islamic marriage and divorce laws of the Arab world, London, 1996.Google Scholar
El-Cheikh, Nadia, ‘The 1998 proposed civil marriage law in Lebanon: The reaction of the Muslim communities’, Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, 5 (1998–9).Google Scholar
Esposito, John L., and DeLong-Bas, Natana J., Women in Muslim family law, 2nd edn, Syracuse, 2001.Google Scholar
Fahmi, Hoda, Divorcer en Égypte: Étude de l’application des lois du statut personnel, Cairo, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fawzi, Essam, ‘Muslim personal status law in Egypt: The current situation and possibilities of reform through internal initiatives’, in Welchman, Lynn (ed.), Women’s rights and Islamic family law: Perspectives on reform, London, 2004.Google Scholar
Hammami, Rema, and Johnson, Penny, ‘Equality with a difference: Gender and citizenship in transitional Palestine’, Social Politics (Fall 1999).Google Scholar
Hatem, Mervat, ‘Economic and political liberalisation in Egypt and the demise of state feminism’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 24 (1992).Google Scholar
Hélie-Lucas, Marie-Aimée, ‘The preferential symbol for Islamic identity: Women in Muslim personal status laws’, in Moghadam, Valentine M. (ed.), Identity politics and women: Cultural reassertions and feminisms in international perspective, Boulder, 1994.Google Scholar
Hijab, Nadia, Womanpower: The Arab debate on women at work, Cambridge 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoodfar, Homa, ‘Circumventing legal limitation: Mahr and marriage negotiation in Egyptian low-income communities’, in Hoodfar, Homa (ed.), Shifting boundaries in marriage and divorce in Muslim communities, Grabels, 1996.Google Scholar
Jad, Islah, ‘The NGOization of the Arab women’s movements’, Review of Women’s Studies, 2 (2004).Google Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz, ‘Bargaining with patriarchy’, Gender and Society, 2, 3 (1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz, ‘Introduction’, in Kandiyoti, Deniz (ed), Women, Islam and the state, Philadelphia, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Layish, Aharon, Women and Islamic law in a non-Muslim state, Jerusalem, 1975.Google Scholar
Lynn, Welchman, Women and Muslim family laws in Arab states (Amsterdam, 2007)Google Scholar
Mahmood, Tahir, Statutes of personal law in Islamic countries – history, texts and analysis, 2nd edn, New Delhi, 1995.Google Scholar
Mallat, Chibli, ‘Shi’ism and Sunnism in Iraq: Revisiting the codes’, in Mallat, Chibli and Connors, Jane (eds.), Islamic family law, London, 1990.Google Scholar
Mayer, Ann Elizabeth, ‘Internationalizing the conversation on Arab women’s rights: Arab countries face the CEDAW Committee’, in Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck and Stowasser, Barbara Freyer (eds.), Islamic law and the challenge of modernity, Walnut Creek, 2004.Google Scholar
Messick, Brinkley, The calligraphic state: Textual domination and history in a Muslim society, Berkeley, 1993.Google Scholar
Mir-Hosseini, Ziba, Marriage on trial: A study of Islamic family law, London, 2000.Google Scholar
Molyneux, Maxine, ‘Women’s rights and political contingency: The case of Yemen, 1990–1994’, Middle East Journal, 49, 3 (1995).Google Scholar
Moors, Annalies, ‘Debating Islamic family law: Legal texts and social practices’, in Meriwether, Margaret C. and Tucker, Judith E. (eds.), A social history of gender in the modern Muslim Middle East, Boulder, 1999.Google Scholar
Moors, Annalies, ‘Public debates on family law reform: Participants, positions and styles of argumentation in the 1990s’, Islamic Law and Society, 10, 1 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moors, Annalies, Women, property and Islam: Palestinian experiences 1920–1990, Cambridge, 1995.Google Scholar
Moosa, Ebrahim, ‘The poetics and politics of law after empire: Reading women’s rights in the contestation of law’, UCLA Journal of Near Eastern Law, 1 (2001–2).Google Scholar
Najjar, Fawzi, ‘Egypt’s laws of personal status’, Arab Studies Quarterly, 10 (1988).Google Scholar
Nasir, Jamal J., The Islamic law of personal status, 2nd edn, London, 1990.Google Scholar
Rahman, Fazlur, ‘A survey of the modernization of Muslim family law’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 11 (1980).Google Scholar
Shaham, Ron, Family and the courts in modern Egypt: A study based on decisions by the sharīʿa court 1900–1955, Leiden, 1997.Google Scholar
Shaham, Ron, ‘State, feminists and islamists – The debate over stipulations in marriage contracts in Egypt’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 62 (1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shehada, Nahda, ‘Women’s experience in the sharīʿa court of Gaza City: The multiple meanings of maintenance’, Review of Women’s Studies, 2 (2004).Google Scholar
Singerman, Diane, ‘Rewriting divorce in Egypt: Reclaiming Islam, legal activism and coalition politics’, in Hefner, Robert W. (ed.), Remaking Muslim politics: Pluralism, contestation, democratization, Princeton and Oxford, 2005.Google Scholar
Sonbol, Amira El Azhary, ‘Muslim women and legal reform: The case of Jordan and women’s work’, in Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck and Stowasser, Barbara Freyer (eds.), Islamic law and the challenges of modernity, Walnut Creek, 2004, pp. 213–32.Google Scholar
Sonbol, Amira El Azhary, ‘Taʿa and modern legal reform: A rereading’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 9, 3 (1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sonbol, Amira El Azhary (ed.), Women, the family, and divorce laws in Islamic history, Syracuse, 1996.Google Scholar
Stowasser, Barbara Freyer, and Abul-Magd, Zeinab, ‘Tahlil marriage in sharīʿa, legal codes, and the contemporary fatwa literature’, in Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck and Stowasser, Barbara Freyer (eds.), Islamic law and the challenges of modernity, Walnut Creek, 2004, pp. 161–81.Google Scholar
Tadrus, Marlene, ‘Qānūn al-khulʿ fī’l-ṣahāfa al-miṣrīya’, in al-Sawi, Muhammad Ahmad (ed.), Al-Ḥiṣạd: ʿAmān ʿalā al-khulʿ, Cairo, 2003, pp. 83–100.Google Scholar
Tucker, Judith, In the house of the law: Gender and Islamic law in Syria and Palestine, 17th–18th centuries, Berkeley, 1998.Google Scholar
Tucker, Judith, ‘Revisiting reform: Women and the Ottoman Law of Family Rights, 1917’, Arab Studies Journal, 1 (1996).Google Scholar
Welchman, Lynn, Women and Muslim family laws in Arab states: An overview of contemporary textual development and advocacy, Amsterdam, 2007.Google Scholar
Welchman, Lynn, Beyond the code: Muslim family law and the sharʿia judiciary in the Palestinian West Bank, The Hague, 2000.Google Scholar
Welchman, Lynn, ‘In the interim: Civil society, the sharʿī judiciary and Palestinian personal status law in the transitional period’, Islamic Law and Society, 10, 1 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Welchman, Lynn (ed.), Women’s rights and Islamic family law: Perspectives on reform, London, 2004.Google Scholar
White, Elizabeth H., ‘Legal reform as an indicator of women’s status in Muslim nations’, in Beck, Lois and Keddie, Nikki (eds.), Women in the Muslim world, Cambridge, MA, 1978, pp. 52–68.Google Scholar
,Women Living under Muslim Laws, Knowing our rights: Women, family, laws and customs in the Muslim world, Lahore, 2003.
Wurth, Anna, ‘Mobilising Islam and custom against statutory reform: Bayt al-ṭāʿa in Yemen’, in Dupret, Baudouin and Burgat, François (eds.), Le shaykh et le procureur: Systèmes coutumiers et pratiques juridiques au Yémen et en Égypte, CEDEJ, Egypte/Monde Arabe no. 1–3 série, Cairo, 2005, pp. 289–308.Google Scholar
Wurth, Anna, Al-Sharīʿa fi Bāb al-Yaman: Recht, Richter und Rechtspraxis an der familien-rechtlicher Kammer des Gerichtes Sud-Sanaa 1983–1995, Berlin, 2000.Google Scholar
Wurth, Anna, ‘Stalled reform: Family law in post-unification Yemen’, Islamic Law and Society, 10, 1 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wynn, Lisa, ‘Marriage contracts and women’s rights in Saudi Arabia’, in Hoodfar, Homa (ed.), Shifting boundaries in marriage and divorce in Muslim communities, Grabels, 1996, pp. 106–20.Google Scholar
Zulficar, Mona, and al-Sadda, Hoda, ‘Hawl mashrūʿ taṭawwir namūdhij ʿaqd al-zawāj’, Hagar, 3–4 (1996).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×