Islamic Divorce in the Twenty-First Century

Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century shows the wide range of Muslim experiences in marital disputes and in seeking Islamic divorces. For Muslims, having the ability to divorce in accordance with Islamic law is of paramount importance. However, Muslim experiences of divorce practice differ tremendously. The chapters in this volume discuss Islamic divorce from West Africa to Southeast Asia, and each story explores aspects of the everyday realities of disputing and divorcing Muslim couples face in the twenty-first century. The book’s cross-cultural and comparative look at Islamic divorce indicates that Muslim divorces are impacted by global religious discourses on Islamic authority, authenticity, and gender; by global patterns of and approaches to secularity; and by global economic inequalities and attendant patterns of urbanization and migration. Studying divorce as a mode of Islamic law in practice shows us that the Islamic legal tradition is flexible, malleable, and context-dependent.

Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century takes a close look at the ways that Muslims from West Africa to Southeast Asia engage with and navigate Islamic law and other relevant norms during times of marital breakdown in light of twenty-first century challenges and development.
 

ERIN E. STILES is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is the author of An Islamic Court in Context: An Ethnographic Study of Judicial Reasoning and co-editor of Gendered Lives in the Western Indian Ocean: Islam, Marriage, and Sexuality on the Swahili Coast.
 
AYANG UTRIZA YAKIN is a research associate at the Chair of Law and Religion at the Religions, Spiritualities, Cultures, Societies (RSCS) Institute at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, and a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po Bordeaux in France. He is the co-editor of Rethinking Halal: Genealogy, Current Trends, and New Interpretation.
 

Note on Transliteration
List of Abbreviations
Series Foreword by Péter Berta
Preface (Acknowledgment)
Chapter 1: Muslim Marital Disputes and Islamic Divorce Law in Twenty-First Century Practice by Erin E. Stiles and Ayang Utriza Yakin                                   
Part I : State Politics and Divorce Law: Reform and Recommendations
Chapter 2: Divorce by Khul‘ in Pakistani Courts: Expanding Women’s Rights through Reconfiguring Religious Authority by Elisa Giunchi                                                           
Chapter 3: Male-Initiated Divorce before the Egyptian Judiciary by Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron                                                                                                              
Chapter 4: Problems of and Possibilities for Islamic Divorce in South Africa by Fatima Essop  
Part II: Gendered Strategies and Judicial Responses in Marital Disputing
Chapter 5: Women in the Search of Sexual Pleasure: The Judicial Practices of Divorce on the Ground of Sexual Dissatisfaction within Indonesian Religious Courts by Ayang Utriza Yakin
Chapter 6: “I Divorced Him but He Said He Has Not Divorced Me”:  Gendered Perspectives on Muslim Divorce In Accra, Ghana by Fulera Issaka-Toure                
Chapter 7: Undoing Marriage in Lebanon. Divorce within and beyond Family Courts by Jean-Michel Landry
Part III:  Islamic Divorce in the Context of Global Patterns of Mobility, Upheaval, and Changing Household Economies
Chapter 8: Islamic Renewal, Muslim Divorce and Gender Relations in Mali by Dorothea Schulz and Souleymane Diallo
Chapter 9: A ‘Much-Married Woman’ Revisited: Kinship Perspectives on the High Frequency of Divorce among Uyghurs in Southern Xinjiang, China by Rune Steenberg
Chapter 10: The Ends of Divorce: Marital Dispute as a Locus of Social Change in India by Katherine Lemons with Nadia Hussein
Afterword: Islamic Divorce in Context and in Action: Notes from the Field and Concluding Thoughts by Erin E. Stiles with Ayang Utriza Yakin                                 
Notes on Contributors
Index

"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a wonderful book in which we travel geographically and intellectually. Its importance draws on the variety of national experiences it documents in a truly comparative perspective, as well as on the scholarship of both coeditors and contributors. It is a compulsory read for everybody interested in understanding how Islam is a global phenomenon with a huge array of local declensions."

"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century provides rich empirical data and sophisticated theoretical perspectives on the gendered complexities of kinship and marriage, divorce, inequality, and Islamic law and normativity in nine nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This engagingly written and compelling volume will be welcomed by scholars in various fields and has great potential for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses."
 

"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a tour de force, offering both breadth and depth on Muslim divorce practices. In addition to presenting scholarship from rarely documented countries, this volume provides a perspective on global connections and the transformations that ensue. It is a must-read for scholars of Muslim family law."

"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a wonderful book in which we travel geographically and intellectually. Its importance draws on the variety of national experiences it documents in a truly comparative perspective, as well as on the scholarship of both coeditors and contributors. It is a compulsory read for everybody interested in understanding how Islam is a global phenomenon with a huge array of local declensions."

"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century provides rich empirical data and sophisticated theoretical perspectives on the gendered complexities of kinship and marriage, divorce, inequality, and Islamic law and normativity in nine nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This engagingly written and compelling volume will be welcomed by scholars in various fields and has great potential for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses."
 

"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a tour de force, offering both breadth and depth on Muslim divorce practices. In addition to presenting scholarship from rarely documented countries, this volume provides a perspective on global connections and the transformations that ensue. It is a must-read for scholars of Muslim family law."