The debates examined in the previous chapter have taken place within the terms of Islamic jurisprudence, turning on how one may rethink fiqh in historical terms. Discussions about fiqh take place in a larger framework, however, one that concerns the very legitimacy of state involvement in Islamic affairs. Upon what authority do state-empowered actors make pronouncements about Islamic law? What role should state institutions play in regulating the life of the family, or the conduct of religious affairs?

If disputes over dividing and transmitting property fuel debates about adat and Islam in villages and towns (and in the courts called on to resolve these disputes), it is marriage and divorce that loom large in national-level debates about the role of the state in Islamic affairs. In the remaining chapters of this book we add those issues to the matters of inheritance and property division that have occupied us so far. The two sets of issues have different sorts of practical implications, ideological resonances, and legal ramifications. Inheritance and property divisions raise issues about equality and fairness across generations and among members of the same generation: what kind of contracts should be honored in transmitting wealth, what inequalities are proper and which are not, which set of norms ought to be relied on? These issues usually arise within a community, among relatives.

Marriage and divorce invoke a different temporality, that of the portion of the life-cycle stretching from marriage through divorce and death.