view

“DO NOT BETRAY GOD OR YOUR PEOPLE”: NEGOTIATING WOMEN’S RIGHTS UNDER MUSLIM FAMILY LAWS IN ISRAEL AND INDIA

“DO NOT BETRAY GOD OR YOUR PEOPLE”: NEGOTIATING WOMEN’S RIGHTS UNDER MUSLIM FAMILY LAWS IN ISRAEL AND INDIA

Click here to read the article

Abstract: Reforming Muslim family laws in countries where Muslims live as minorities has been a challenging task for the proponents of reform. Those who demand reform in such minority settings — ie, women’s rights groups — often fi nd themselves in a precarious position. They are often accused of putting their gendered interest before the community’s needs and aspirations and of allegedly collaborating with the majority institutions and actors in destroying the culture and identity of their own communities. In the face of such blatant accusations and attacks, women’s rights group were forced to innovate nuanced strategies to advance their individual and familial rights under religious laws while ensuring authenticity of their messages and securing the trust of their ethno-religious communities. Against this backdrop, this article will look at the case of state-enforced Muslim family laws in Israel and India, analyse the impact of these laws on women’s rights and freedoms and provide further insight into the ways in which Muslim women have overcome the aforementioned socio-political and ideological challenges and contested and reformed religious family laws particularly pertaining to postnuptial maintenance (nafaqa).

Keywords: Israel; India; shariʿa; Muslim family law; reform; women’s rights; marriage; divorce; maintenance; alimony

Click here to read the article

View PDF file

View PDF file

View PDF file

View PDF file

Login/Register

Submissions

JICL welcomes full length articles (generally not exceeding 13,000 words inclusive of footnotes), shorter contributions in the form of notes and comments (generally not exceeding 8,000 words inclusive of footnotes) and book review articles of not more than 6,000 words.

We accept contributions for consideration on an exclusive submission basis. When submitting an article please certify that it is an unpublished article (that is, it has not been previously published in substantially similar form or with substantially similar content) and that it is not under consideration by any other journal.

To facilitate anonymous review, please give the names of authors and their short biographical information and acknowledgments in a separate page.

Authors retain copyright in the words used, but upon submission of material for publication, grant Sweet & Maxwell a licence to publish the submission in print and/or digital formats. Sweet & Maxwell retains copyright in the design, format and layout of all material published in JICL.

Once submissions are published, authors are entitled to one copy of the issue, 10 offprint copies and a PDF version of the submission.

Authors who send articles published in JICL to other publishers or media must include a reference to the publication of the article by JICL and Sweet & Maxwell.

Contributions and book reviews should be submitted in Microsoft Word format by way of email attachment to Professor Anton Cooray at Anton.cooray.1@city.ac.uk.

Style Guide

Authors should follow the OSCOLA citation system (http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/publications/oscola.php), except that we prefer authors to use indenting sparingly.

JICL uses the following heading levels: Main headings are in bold and preceded by a Roman numeral; second-level headings are in bold and italics and preceded by an uppercase alphabet; third-level headings are preceded by an Arabic numeral; and fourth-level headings are in italics and preceded by a lowercase alphabet.