Recommendation 1: Legislative Change

The first key recommendation was amendments to be made to the Marriage Act 1949 and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. The changes are recommended to ensure that civil marriages are con­ducted before or at the same time as the Islamic marriage ceremony, bringing Islamic marriage in line with Christian and Jewish marriage in the eyes of the law.

It is interesting to note that the past few years have seen a marked interest in the nature and practice of Muslim marriages in the UK taking place within Muslim communities, with a large body of schol­arship exploring the nature of transnational marriage, arranged marriage practices and strategies to combat the practice of forced marriage. This scholarship has also been accompanied by empirical research detailing the practice of Muslim family law in the UK and the emergence of religious councils such as sharia councils and reli­gious tribunals such as the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal. The privi­leging of marriage raises important questions over the ways in which minority ethnic groups practice marriage and divorce, how different forms of marriage practices maybe accepted or recognized in English law today and what kind of change is taking place within South Asian Muslim families. Family law scholars have debated the formalities of marriage in English law and analysed over its form and function in ever diverse and multicultural contexts. Marriage today in England and Wales is regulated by the Marriage Act 1949 and the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Act 1986 which provide for who can marry, where they can marry and at what time. In December 2015, the Law Commission produced a preliminary paper entitled Getting Married. A Scoping Paper^w to consider whether the current law provides a fair and coherent legal framework for enabling people to marry, and to identify areas of the law that might benefit from reform.

The linking of Islamic marriage to civil marriage ensures that a greater number of women will have the full protection afforded to them in family law and the right to a civil divorce, lessening the need to attend and simplifying the decision process of sharia councils. In her chapter, Rebecca Probert examines the question of reform within marriage that focuses on the laws of English marriage but one via a historical lens. She takes a ‘long view of religious-only marriages’, demonstrating that such marriages are not a modern phenomenon, nor one confined to any single religious group, but have recurred over time within different communities. Lhe chapter shows that many of the earliest Muslim marriages in England and Wales were located within the legal framework, either by being combined with a le­gally binding ceremony, or, later, by being conducted in a registered mosque. It concludes by reflecting on how the same narratives and explanations have recurred in relation to different religious groups at different times.