Introduction

§ THE family unit has long served as an organizing system for both social and legal regimes. The mechanisms to contract a marriage, raise one’s children, or dissolve a family are now basic elements of any well-developed legal framework.

Muslims in the United States are in a complex position when it comes to applying family law, because they are governed by two sets of relevant rules, one religious and the other secular: Islamic law governs the family relations of those Muslims who want to validate before God their most intimate relations, while, simultaneously. United States law binds them through simple territorial sover­eignty.¹ Considering their religious identities important enough not to sacrifice at any secular altar, many Muslim couples are asserting their Islamic legal rights in American family courts and, as a result, the law surrounding Muslim marriages is becoming an important and complicated part of the US legal landscape.

Part III surveys the application and perception of Islamic family law in the United States, and the impact of living in this intersection of legal authority on Muslim families and communities. In the first chapter, ‘Islamic Family Law in American Muslim Hands’, we address the intellectual and social discourse of US Muslims on Islamic family law topics, paying special attention to key issues of concern and debate and providing a brief overview of the sources of information available. In the following chapter, ‘The Muslim Family in the USA: Law in Practice’, we examine the practices of Muslims in conducting their marital lives in the USA, leading to a review in Chapter 12 of court cases involving Muslim marriage and divorce litigation in the United States, drawing general conclusions where possible with regard to the attitudes of US courts. The final chapter puts this study in broader context by addressing the theoretical roots of the current US Muslim experience. Special attention is given to uniquely US-based efforts to interpret and apply Islamic norms and values in everyday lives. Looking at both academic and grassroots work, this review also points the reader in the direction of future trends and goals, including potential community-based efforts to address Islamic family law issues not satisfactorily resolved in formal American court­rooms.

This section will stand out from the overall project (surveying global Islamic family law and directed by Abdullahi An-Na'im) of which it is a part, because it deals with Muslims as a minority population in a non-Muslim state, presenting findings about the use of Islamic family law in places where it is not officially enforced by the state. The reader should thus keep in mind that most family issues involving Islamic law in this minority' population are handled informally through internal mechanisms (family, community leaders, close friends, etc.), because Islamic law per se is not enforceable by state authority in the USA. Some cases do rise to the level of formal litigation in US courts, as will be seen, but the cases discussed in Chapter 12 may be unrepresentative of all applications of Muslim family law even within the formal court system, and are most probably not representative of applications of Islamic family law in the country as a whole. Neveitheless, despite its limitations in terms of space and scope, this study aims to provide the reader with a basic overview of how Muslims in the USA discuss topics of Islamic family law, the way it impacts on their lives directly, how the judicial system addresses its Muslim minority in these most intimate family issues, and, ultimately, what might be expected in the future from this unique community.²