Conclusion

For many liberal scholars the practice of religious personal systems of law raises the paradox of what Shachar refers to as ‘multicultural vul­nerability’, namely the dilemma of protecting individual choice and personal autonomy with group and community rights.

Clearly, when the state awards jurisdictional powers to the group in the family law arena, it enhances the group’s autonomy. At the same time, this re-allocation of legal authority from the state to the group may also expose certain individuals within the group to systemic and sanctioned in-group rights violations.⁵⁴

Such concerns also mirror current debates over the establishment of ‘Sharia courts’ in Britain and the accommodation of plural sys­tems of family law. Some form of accommodation will include a shift of dispute resolution from the public to the private sphere and this raises serious concerns on how power is then effectively reconfigured from the state to the family and community. From such a perspective the differential treatment of women in the process of marriage and divorce can lead to a conflict between equality and autonomy and the conflicting interests of the protection of family, culture and religion as enshrined by the norms and values of Sharia Councils and the MAT.

As to the question of gender parity as a model of governance and reform it provides an important starting point for Muslim women to explore ways in which their use is based upon choice, gender equality and justice. As Anitha and Gill (2009: 168) point out:

Women exercise their agency in complex and often contradictory ways, as they assess the options that are open to them, weigh the costs and benefits of their actions, and seek to balance their often competing needs with the expectations and desires.

Furthermore, the process of ‘reform’ within communities is often a long and fractured one, contextual and dependent upon multiple variables including state support and subsidy. Narratives from Muslim women using religious mechanisms of dispute resolution reveal both the stra­tegic and the complex use of these bodies. In the case of Muslim legal pluralism we can then see in evidence different forms of mobilizations with underlying cultural and religious meanings which interact, con­flict and re-order themselves according to the different communities in which they are located and state law, and vice versa. We see also that the decision-making processes produce an internal legal structure - a process of mixing-up, overlapping and often in conflict. The applica­tion of gender parity can also mean conflicts, meanings of equality and community recognition, or legitimacy of various legal and social domains that mix up notions of law and decision-making.

Notes

1 See SamA Bano, Muslim Womewawd Slaifal Cowweils; Tiawscewdiwg the Bouwdaries of Commuwity awd Law (Palgrave MacMillan 2012); John Bowen, OwBritisl Islam. Relig iow,Law awd Everyday Traetieeiw Sharia Couweils (Princeton University Press 2016).

2 See Marie Ashe and Anne Helie, ‘Realities of Religico-Legalism: Reli­gious Courts and Women’s Rights in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States’ (2014) 20 U.Cal.-Davis Jourwal of Iwterwatiowal Law & Policy 139, 142.

Ibid 143.

See John Eekelaar and Maclean M (eds) Lawyers and Mediators. The Brave ‰v WoiId of Services for Separated Families (,Hart Publishing 2016).

See Tariq Modood, ‘Part One Accommodating Religions: Multicultural­ism’s New Fault Line’ (2013) 34(1) Critical Social Policy 121.

Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Harvard Univer­sity Press 2013) 6.

Pragna Patel, ‘Faith in the State? Asian Women’s Struggles for Human Rights inthe UK’ (,2008) 16(,1) FeministLegal Studies 9, 25,

See Russell Sandberg, Gillian Douglas, Norman Doe, Sophie Gilliat-Ray and Asma Khan, ‘Britain’s Religious Tribunals: “Joint Governance” in Practice’ (2012) 33(2) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 263; Farah Ahmed, ‘Personal Autonomy and the Option of Religious Law’ (2010) 24(2) InternationalJournalofLauyPolicyand theFamily 222, See Modood (n 5).

There is a wide body of scholarship that examines the nature and prac­tice of Islamophobia. Problems on definition exist. See Salman Sayyid andAbdooIKarim Vakilfels), Thinking through IsIamaphobia-, Gτ!oL^c^I Perspectives (Hurst Press 2009).

See Saba Mahmood, ‘Secularism, Hermeneutics, Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation’ (2006) 18(2) Public Culture 323.

Siee TaIaI Asad, FoundationsoftheSelaiChristianitIsInModer- nity (Stanford University 2003).

Ohver Roy, HoIy Ignorance-, When Religion and C^^Il^^ι^e Part Ways (Columbia University Press 2010).

Siee SaIman Sayyid, Recalling the CaIiphate-, Decolonisation and the World Order (Hurst Press 2014).

Ibid 32.

Ibid 4.

See Muslim Council of Britain at www.mcb.org.uk.

See Muslim Women’s network at www.mwnuk.co.uk.

See Muslim Arbitration Tribunal at www.mat.org.uk.

Blanca Rodriguez-Ruiz and Ruth Rubio-Marin, ‘Constitutional Justifi­cation of Parity Democracy’ (2009) 60 (5) Alabama Law Review 1171.

Anne Phillips, Multiculturalism without Culture (Princeton University Press 2007).

Ayelet Shachar, ‘Privatizing Diversity: A Cautionary Tale from Religious Arbitration in Family Law’ (2008) 9(2) Theoretical Inquiries in Law 573.

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish the Birth of the Prison (Penguin 1979) 35.

See Sayyid (n 14) 3.

See Michael Karayanni, ‘The Acute Multicultural Entrapment of the Palestinian-Arab Religious Minorities in Israel and the Feeble Measures Required to Relieve It’ in Robert Provost (ed), Mapping the Legal Bound- ariesofBelonging, ReligionandMulticuIturaIismfromIsraeItoCanada (Oxford University Press 2014).

See Klaus A Ziegert, ‘Systems Theory and Qualitative Socio-Legal Re­search’ in Reza Banakar and Max Travers (eds) Theory and Method in Socio-Legal Research (Hart Publishing 2005).

See John Eekelaar, ‘Law and Community Practices’ in John Eekelaar and Mavis Maclean (eds) Managing Family Justice in Diverse Societies (Hart Publishing 2013).

Ibid 16.

SeeMaLethaMalitk', Miinority Legal Systems in the H K; WiulticuIturaIismi, Minorities and the Law (British Academy Policy Papers 2012) 12.

Ibid 65.

Ptakh Shah, FamiiIy;, ReIigionand Law. Cultural Encounters in E^^t^c^p^e (Routledge 2014) 49.

Ibid 52.

See Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen and Christian Moe (eds) Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law; Justice and Ethics in the IsIamic LegaI Tradition (I.B. Tauris 2015).

See Ruth Rubio-Marin, ‘A New European Parity-Democracy Sex Equality Model and Why It Won’t Fly in the United States’ (2012) 60(1) The American JournaI of Comparative Law 99.

Stee Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora; Contesting Identities (Routledge 1993) 89.

Ibid 93.

See Gayatri Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of CuIture (Macmillan 1988).

See Rubio-Marin (n 40) 105.

See Rosemary Hunter and Sharon Cowan (eds) Choice and Consent: FeministEngagements with Law and Subjectivity (,Routledge 2007).

SeeMartan Roberts, MediationinFamilyDisputesiPrincipIesof Practice (Ashgate 2008).

See Eekelaar (n 33) 45.

See Mavis Maclean, Making Law for FamiIies (Hart Publishing 2000) 67.

Ibid.

Ashe and Helle (n 2) 151.

See Beverley Baines, ‘Must Feminists Identify as Secular Citizens? Les­sons from Ontario’ in Linda C. McClain and Joanna L. Grossman (eds) Gender Equality, Dimensions of W(^m^t^^^,s E^q^c^I Cititenship (,Carn- bridge University Press 2009).

Ashe and Helle (n 2) 152.

Ashe and Helle (n 2) 156.

Eekelaar (n 33).

See Shachar (n 22) 573.

Ibid 580.

Ibid.

Eekelaar (n 33) 32.

Stee ElhamManea, Women andShari’a Law; The Impact ofLegaI PI^i^c^I- ism in the UK (I.B. Tauris 2016).

Shachar (n 22) 98.

See Sundari Anitha and Aisha Gill, ‘Coercion, Consent and the Forced Marrtage Debate’ (,2009) 17(2) Ft^m^∙^^∙^st LegaI Studies 165.

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