Islamic Family Law

Abstract

Personal status law (qānūn al-aḥwāl al-shakhṣiyya) regulates practices like marriage, divorce, custody, guardianship, wills, and intestate succession. Especially since the 1990s, many Muslim-majority countries have engaged in family law reform. Those reforms have been achieved through different mechanisms, including procedural law reform. Introducing changes through procedural law is often seen as less controversial, as legislatures can avoid introducing changes in substantive Islamic family law. Procedural law and administrative provisions have been used to curtail men’s divorce prerogatives and to constrain polygyny, without questioning, in most cases, men’s right to unilateral divorce or to be polygynous. Overall, the most dominant change is that family law reform has increased judicial oversight and thereby state control over family matters. Succession law has seen the least changes. Marriage impediments, filiation, and financial rights are all linked to inheritance rights. Intestate succession is at the heart of a system that assigns complementary gender roles. Men’s right to guardianship is linked to men’s financial responsibility for their wives and children. Larger inheritance shares for men help to ensure that men can, at least in theory, perform their role as providers. The current inheritance system thus helps to keep male guardianship feasible.