Women Judges in the Muslim World

Women Judges in the Muslim World
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2017-03-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004342206

Women Judges in the Muslim World: A Comparative Study of Discourse and Practice offers a socio-legal account of public debates and judicial practices surrounding the performance of women as judges in eight Muslim-majority countries.

Sharia Transformations

Sharia Transformations
Author: Michael G. Peletz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2020-03-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520974476

Few symbols in today’s world are as laden and fraught as sharia—an Arabic-origin term referring to the straight path, the path God revealed for humans, the norms and rules guiding Muslims on that path, and Islamic law and normativity as enshrined in sacred texts or formal statute. Yet the ways in which Muslim men and women experience the myriad dimensions of sharia often go unnoticed and unpublicized. So too do recent historical changes in sharia judiciaries and contemporary strategies on the part of political and religious elites, social engineers, and brand stewards to shape, solidify, and rebrand these institutions. Sharia Transformations is an ethnographic, historical, and theoretical study of the practice and lived entailments of sharia in Malaysia, arguably the most economically successful Muslim-majority nation in the world. The book focuses on the routine everyday practices of Malaysia’s sharia courts and the changes that have occurred in the court discourses and practices in recent decades. Michael G. Peletz approaches Malaysia’s sharia judiciary as a global assemblage and addresses important issues in the humanistic and social-scientific literature concerning how Malays and other Muslims engage ethical norms and deal with law, social justice, and governance in a rapidly globalizing world.

Islam and the Rule of Justice

Islam and the Rule of Justice
Author: Lawrence Rosen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 022651174X

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.

Access to Justice in Iran

Access to Justice in Iran
Author: Sahar Maranlou
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2015
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107072603

A critical and in-depth analysis of access to justice from international and Islamic perspectives, with a specific focus on access by women.

Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History

Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History
Author: Amira El-Azhary Sonbol
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 1996-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780815626886

The eighteen essays in this volume cover a wide range of material and reevaluate women's studies and Middle Eastern studies, Muslim women and the Shari'a courts, the Ottoman household, Dhimmi communities, children and family law, morality, and violence.

Law, Custom, and Statute in the Muslim World

Law, Custom, and Statute in the Muslim World
Author: Rôn Šaham
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2007
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004154531

This collective volume deals with the main components in the laws of Islamic societies, past and present: sharia, custom and statute. Covers a wide range of geographical areas, from the Balkans to Yemen, and from Iraq to the Maghrib -- Back cover.

Muslim Women in Postcolonial Kenya

Muslim Women in Postcolonial Kenya
Author: Ousseina Alidou
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2013-11-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0299294633

In education, journalism, legislative politics, social justice, health, law, and other arenas, Muslim women across Kenya are emerging as leaders in local, national, and international contexts, advancing reforms through their activism. Muslim Women in Postcolonial Kenya draws on extensive interviews with six such women, revealing how their religious and moral beliefs shape reform movements that bridge ethnic divides and foster alliances in service of creating a just, multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious democratic citizenship. Mwalim Azara Mudira opened a school of theology for Muslim women. Nazlin Omar Rajput of The Nur magazine was a pioneer in reporting on HIV/AIDS in the Muslim community. Amina Abubakar, host of a women's radio show, has publicly addressed the sensitive subject of sexual crimes against Muslim women. Two women who are members of parliament are creating new socioeconomic and political opportunities for girls and women, within a framework that still embraces traditional values of marriage and motherhood. Examining the interplay of gender, agency, and autonomy, Ousseina D. Alidou shows how these Muslim women have effected change in the home, the school, the mosque, the media, and more—and she illuminates their determination as actors to challenge the oppressive influences of male-dominated power structures. In looking at differences as opportunities rather than obstacles, these women reflect a new sensibility among Muslim women and an effort to redefine the meaning of women's citizenship within their own community of faith and within the nation.

Gender and Judging

Gender and Judging
Author: Ulrike Schultz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2013-07-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1782251103

Does gender make a difference to the way the judiciary works and should work? Or is gender-blindness a built-in prerequisite of judicial objectivity? If gender does make a difference, how might this be defined? These are the key questions posed in this collection of essays, by some 30 authors from the following countries; Argentina, Cambodia, Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, the Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland, Syria and the United States. The contributions draw on various theoretical approaches, including gender, feminist and sociological theories. The book's pressing topicality is underlined by the fact that well into the modern era male opposition to women's admission to, and progress within, the judicial profession has been largely based on the argument that their very gender programmes women to show empathy, partiality and gendered prejudice - in short essential qualities running directly counter to the need for judicial objectivity. It took until the last century for women to begin to break down such seemingly insurmountable barriers. And even now, there are a number of countries where even this first step is still waiting to happen. In all of them, there remains a more or less pronounced glass ceiling to women's judicial careers.

Advancing the Legal Status of Women in Islamic Law

Advancing the Legal Status of Women in Islamic Law
Author: Mona Samadi
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9004446958

Mona Samadi examines the sources of gender differences within the Islamic tradition, with particular focus on guardianship, and describes the opportunities and challenges for advancing the legal status of women.

Applied Family Law in Islamic Courts

Applied Family Law in Islamic Courts
Author: Nahda Shehada
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2018-03-20
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1351586386

Written from an ethnographic perspective, this book investigates the socio-legal aspects of Islamic jurisprudence in Gaza-Palestine. It examines the way judges, lawyers and litigants operate with respect to the law and with each other, particularly given their different positions in the power structure within the court and within society at large. The book aims at elucidating ambivalences in the codified statutes that allow the actors to find practical solutions to their (often) legally unresolved problems and to manipulate the law. The book demonstrates that present-day judges are not only confronted with novel questions they have to find an answer to, but, perhaps more importantly, they are confronted with contradictions between the letter of codified law and their own notions of justice. The author reminds us that these notions of justice should not be set a priori; they are socially constructed in particular time and space. Making a substantial contribution to a number of theoretical debates on family law and gender, the book will appeal to both academic and non-academic readers alike.