Debating Women and Islamic Family Law. Disciplinary Shifts, Different Perspectives

Abstract

Up until the early 1970s the academic study of Islamic family law was largely the privileged terrain of those involved in Oriental studies. In their work, they mainly focused on the texts of the leaders of the major schools of Islamic law, on the one hand; and the newly codified and reformed twentieth-century laws, on the other. Considering family relations as the outcome of the provisions of Islamic law, they tended to define the classical Islamic family as monolithic, static and rigidly patriarchal, and saw the promulgation of the twentieth-century legal reforms as signaling the eclipse of this type of family.