Böcker av Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Presents exciting new feminist research that challenges gender discrimination and male authority in Islamic legal tradition

The model of marriage constructed in classical Islamic jurisprudence rests on patriarchal ethics that privilege men. This worldview persists in gender norms and family laws in many Muslim contexts, despite reforms introduced over the past few decades. In this volume, a diverse group of scholars explore how egalitarian marital relations can be supported from within Islamic tradition. Brought together by the Musawah movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, they examine ethics and laws related to marriage and gender relations from the perspective of the Qur'an, Sunna, Muslim legal tradition, historical practices and contemporary law reform processes. Collectively they conceptualize how Muslim marriages can be grounded in equality, mutual well-being and the core Qur'anic principles of ';adl (justice) and ihsan (goodness and beauty).

If justice is an intrinsic value in Islam, why have women been treated as second-class citizens in Islamic legal tradition? Today, the idea of gender equality, inherent to contemporary conceptions of justice, presents a challenge to established, patriarchal interpretations of Shari';a. In thought-provoking discussions with six influential Muslim intellectuals Abdullahi An-Na'im, Amina Wadud, Asma Lamrabet, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Mohsen Kadivar and Sedigheh Vasmaghi Ziba Mir-Hosseini explores how egalitarian gender laws might be constructed from within the Islamic legal framework.

Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the re-introduction of Sharica law, women's rights in Iran suffered a setback. Through interviews with clerics in the Iranian religious center of Qom, this book seeks to understand the notions of gender that inform Islamic jurisprudence and to explore how clerics perpetuate and modify these notions.

Gender equality is a modern ideal, which has only recently, with the expansion of human rights and feminist discourses, become inherent to generally accepted conceptions of justice. In Islam, as in other religious traditions, the idea of equality between men and women was neither central to notions of justice nor part of the juristic landscape, and Muslim jurists did not begin to address it until the twentieth century. The personal status of Muslim men, women and children continues to be defined by understandings of Islamic law codified and adapted by modern nation-states that assume authority to be the natural prerogative of men, that disadvantage women and that are prone to abuse. This volume argues that effective and sustainable reform of these laws and practices requires engagement with their religious rationales from within the tradition. Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law offers a groundbreaking analysis of family law, based on fieldwork in family courts, and illuminated by insights from distinguished clerics and scholars of Islam from Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia, as well as by the experience of human rights and women s rights activists.It explores how male authority is sustained through law and court practice in different contexts, the consequences for women and the family, and the demands made by Muslim women s groups. The book argues for women's full equality before the law by re-examining the jurisprudential and theological arguments for male guardianship (qiwama, wilaya) in Islamic legal tradition. Using contemporary examples from various contexts, from Morocco to Malaysia, this volume presents an informative and vital analysis of these societies and gender relations within them. It unpicks the complex and often contradictory attitudes towards Muslim family law, and the ways in which justice and ethics are conceived in the Islamic tradition. The book offers a new framework for rethinking old formulations so as to reflect contemporary realities and understandings of justice, ethics and gender rights. "

For some, the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 was the triumph of a modern, political Islam, heralding Muslim justice and economic prosperity. This book reveals the intellectual and political trajectory of a Muslim thinker and his attempts to reconcile Islam with reform and democracy.