This book focuses on Islamic family law as interpreted and applied by judges in Europe, Australia and North America. It uses court transcriptions and observations to discuss how the most contentious marriage-related issues - consent and age of spouses, dower, polygamy, and divorce - are adjudicated. The solutions proposed by different legal systems are reviewed , and some broader questions are addressed: how Islamic principles are harmonized with norms based on gender equality, how parties bargain strategically in and out of court, and how Muslim diasporas align their Islamic worldview with a Western normative narrative.

In the West, we tend to think of Islamic law as an arcane and rigid legal system, bound by formulaic texts yet suffused by unfettered discretion. While judges may indeed refer to passages in the classical texts or have recourse to their own orientations, images of binding doctrine and unbounded choice do not reflect the full reality of the Islamic law in its everyday practice. Whether in the Arabic-speaking world, the Muslim portions of South and Southeast Asia, or the countries to which many Muslims have migrated, Islamic law works is readily misunderstood if the local cultures in which it is embedded are not taken into account. With Islam and the Rule of Justice, Lawrence Rosen analyzes a number of these misperceptions. Drawing on specific cases, he explores the application of Islamic law to the treatment of women (who win most of their cases), the relations between Muslims and Jews (which frequently involve close personal and financial ties), and the structure of widespread corruption (which played a key role in prompting the Arab Spring). From these case studie the role of informal mechanisms in the resolution of local disputes. The author also provides a close reading of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was charged in an American court with helping to carry out the 9/11 attacks, using insights into how Islamic justice works to explain the defendant’s actions during the trial. The book closes with an examination of how Islamic cultural concepts may come to bear on the constitutional structure and legal reforms many Muslim countries have been undertaking.

A number of Arab states have recently either codified Muslim family law for the first time, or have issued amendments or new laws which significantly impact the statutory rights of women as wives, mothers and daughters. In Women and Muslim Family Laws in Arab States Lynn Welchman examines women's rights in Muslim family laws in Arab states across the Middle East while also surveying the public debates surrounding the issues. The author considers these new laws alongside older statutes to comment on the patterns and dynamics of change both in the texts of the laws, and in the processes through by which they are drafted and issued. She draws on original legal texts and explanatory statements as well as on extensive secondary literature particular to certain states for an insight into practice, and on; interventions by women's rights organizations and other parties to the debate in the press and in advocacy materials. The discussions are set in the contemporary global context that 'internationalises' the domestic and regional debates.The book considers laws in states from the Gulf to North Africa in regard to their approaches to issues of codification processes and issues of and of registration, capacity and guardianship in marriage, polygyny, the marital relationship, divorce and child custody. -- Publisher description.

A longitudinal history of Islamic child custody law, challenging Euro-American exceptionalism to reveal developments that considered the best interests of the child.

The first eleven essays in this collection analyze the application of Islamic law in family law cases in Qadi courts in the Maghrib between 1100 and 1500 CE. Based on preserved legal documents and the expert opinions of Muslim jurists (Muftis), they demonstrate that the jurists placed high value on reasoned thought and were sensitive to the manner in which law, society, and culture interacted. The final essay shows how the treatment of family endowments by colonial regimes in Algeria and India at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries shaped, or misshaped, the modern western scholarly understanding of Islamic law.

This book describes and analyses the notion of Mahr, the Muslim custom whereby the groom has to give a gift to the bride in consideration of the marriage. It explores how Western courts, specifically in Canada, the United States, France, and Germany, have approached and interpreted Mahr. Although the outcomes of the cases provide an illustrative framework for the book, the focus is broader than simply the adjudicative endeavours. The work explores the concept of liberalism, which purportedly champions individuals and individual choice concurrently with freedom and equality. Tensions between and among these concepts, however, inevitably arise. The acknowledgment and exploration of these intertwined tensions forms an important underpinning for the book. Through the analysis of case law from these four countries, this study suggests that transplanting Mahr from Islamic law into a Western courtroom cannot be undone: it immediately becomes rooted in the countries' legal, historical, political, and social backgrounds and flourishes (or fails) in diverse and unexpected ways. Rather than being the concept described by classical Islamic jurists, Mahr is interpreted according to wildly varied legal constructs and concepts such as multiculturalism, fairness, public policy, and gender equality. Moreover, Islamic law travels with a multiplicity of voices, and it is this complex hybridity (a fragmented and disjointed Mahr) which will be mediated through Western law. Returning to the overarching concept of liberalism, the book proposes that distributive consequences rather than recognition occupy central place in the evaluation of the legal options available to Muslim women upon divorce.