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Welchman Lynn. Women's Rights and Islamic Family Law: Perspectives on Reform. Zed Books,2004. � 328 p.. 2004

The present book is the outcome of two related research projects led by Professor Abdullahi A. An-Na'im at the School of Law, Emory University, and funded by the Ford Foundation. Both projects deploy the notion of cultural transformation to promote human rights in African and Islamic societies. The first explores this notion in theoret�ical terms and then focuses on issues of women and land in Africa from customary, religious and statutory rights perspectives, with a view to linking research to advocacy, for securing the rights of women to own or control land as a vital economic resource. The second project is a global study of Islamic family law, including some country studies and thematic studies, from a human rights perspective.

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Acknowledgements

Part I Muslim Personal Status Law in Egypt: the Current Situation and Possibilities of Reform through Internal Initiatives

Essam Fawzy

ONE Social context

DURING the past few decades, there has been a wealth of publications and writings on personal status problems and the relevant laws implemented in Egypt,

Workforce participation

Returning to reality

Domestic violence against women

TWO Personal status law in Egypt: an historical overview

Between heritage and modernization

Personal status law: residual sources and jurisdiction

Regulating the Muslim family in Egypt: the development of personal status law

Regulation on the organization of shari'a courts issued in accordance with Law Decree no. 78 of 1931

Law no. 44 of 1979: an aborted effort

Law no. 100 of 1985: amending certain rulings on personal status

Problems in practice

THREE Understanding the law: Egyptian family and social attitudes (results of the field study)

Ideal marriage age

The right of the young woman to choose her life partner

Marriage and marriage arrangements

Factors affecting the level of dower

The purpose of shabka and dower

The position on polygyny

The husband's responsibilities

The wife's work outside the home

Physical punishment of the wife

Reasons for divorce

FOUR Law no. 1 of 2000: a new personal status law and a limited step on the path to reform

� THIS chapter begins with a consideration of Law no. ι of 2000, the most recent attempt to tackle the legislative gaps and violations of the wife�s rights that characterized previous laws.

The legislative process

Reaction of the shar'i establishment: scholars and religious tendencies

The Islamic Studies Academy (Majma, al-buhuth al-islamiyya)

The parliamentary debate

Political parties and the law

Critical articles of Law no. 1 of 2000 as promulgated

Loopholes in the law

Results of the field survey: the opinions of the elite

Results of the field study: the opinions of the general public

FIVE General conclusions

Proposals for development of the law

Administrative reforms proposed by members of the judiciary

Recommendations made by civil society activists

Concluding comments

Part Il Islamic Law and the Transition to Palestinian Statehood: Constraints and Opportunities for Legal Reform

Edited by Penny Johnson and Lynn Welchman

SIX Legal context: shari,a courts and Muslim family law in the transitional period

Lynn Welchman

� THE turbulent political history of Palestine (here the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip and EastJerusalem) has produced a particular heterogeneity of laws and jurisdictions since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Shari'a courts: jurisdiction and laws

Ages of marriage and custody

Post-divorce maintenance

Judicial divorce

The Oslo peace process: law and transition

Shar'i institutions in the transitional period23

Shar'i establishment positioning on personal status law

SEVEN Palestinian interim governance: state legitimation, legal reform and the shari'a

Penny Johnson

� WHAT were the constraints and opportunities for legal reform of shαri'α-based personal status law posed by the establishment of an interim Palestinian Authority (1g94-2000)?

Interim inequalities and features of the transition

State security, 're-masculinization' and civil society

Islamist opposition and shari'a 'red lines'

Uneasy allies: the Authority, women's movement and donors

Source of authority, shari'a and legitimacy

EIGHT Attitudes towards legal reform of personal status law in Palestine

Rema Hammami

� INASMUCH as state-sponsored reform of Islamic family law can be understood as part of nation- and state-building projects (Kandiyoti 1991), mobilizations by social groups for legal reform are also eminently political.

Attitudes towards religion

Religious values and secular politics

Support for women's rights

Attitudes towards shari'a law

The shari'a family law survey

Reform of personal status law

NINE Agents for reform: the women's movement, social politics and family law reform

Penny Johnson

� THIS chapter examines the strategies of the Palestinian women�s movement, particularly its equality strategy, in the post-Oslo period.

Pre-Oslo agents of political mobilization

The Oslo transition: advocacy and protest

The equality strategy

The 1994 Women's Charter

The model parliament

Maintenance and inheritance: a conflict between rights and needs?

Strategies in the model parliament46

Challenging the parliament's standing

Islamist discourses

Human rights and Western agendas

Defending the model parliament: defending democracy or the state?

Final session: affirmation of democracy, gender agendas subsumed

Towards a new family law: developments and strategies after the model parliament

Divisions and compromises in the women's movement

Democratic families, democratic society

Sources and issues for a new family law

Pluralistic elements of a new family law

Conclusions: strategies and issues for action

APPENDIX Case history: Diya between shari,a and customary law

Fadwa al-Labadi

� ON 2i October 1999,a boy working in a factory producing cigarette lighters in the southern West Bank town of Hebron dropped a box of lighter fluid he was carrying to a second-storey workroom (Al-Ayyam, 23 October 1999).

Limits of male maintenance: females as breadwinners

Government and public law

Customary law: lives at half value?

Diya between shari'a and customary law

Was justice served?

Notes to Part Il

Part III No Altars: a Survey of Islamic Family Law in the United States

Asifa Quraishi and Najeeba Syeed WliIIer

TEN Islamic family law in American Muslim hands

Authority figures

ELEVEN The Muslim family in the USA: law in practice

Solemnizing the union

Terms of the contract

Within the marriage

Dissolution of American Muslim marriages

Deliberately opting out of US default rules

TWELVE Islamic family law in US courts

� WE now turn to the question of how Muslim marriages have fared in the US courts.61

The validity of Muslim marriages

The enforceability of specific marriage contract provisions

The validity of Muslim divorces

THIRTEEN Future trends and predictions

FOURTEEN Conclusion

Part IV Domestic Violence and Sharita∖ a Comparative Study of Muslim Societies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia

Lisa Haijar

FIFTEEN Domestic violence and shari'a

Section 1. Gender (in)equality, women's rights and the problem of domestic violence

Section 2. A framework for comparative analysis

Section 3. Aims and methods of this study

Section 4. The problem of domestic violence

Section 5. Shari'a and domestic violence

Section 6. Internationalizing the struggle against domestic violence

Section 7. Cultures of resistance, or saying 'No' to universalism

Section 9. Shari a, the state and domestic violence

Section 10. Conclusion

Notes to Part IV

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