Struggling for a modern family law: a Khaleeji perspective

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For Islamic family law, the 21st century started with groundbreaking reforms. In January 2000, the Egyptian parliament passed Law No 1 of 2000 governing procedure in personal status cases, article 20 of which henceforth permitted women to seek judicial divorce without any fault on their husband’s part and without his consent. The Egyptian legislature’s reinterpretation of the traditional Islamic divorce procedure of ‘mukhālaᶜ’ allows the wife to dissolve her marriage against her husband’s will so long as she is willing to ransom herself by paying him financial consideration. These Egyptian reforms were quite famously termed ‘the dawning of the third millennium on shariᶜa’ (Arabi 2001). At the same time, roughly 1,300 miles to the southeast, i.e. in the small Arab Gulf monarchies of Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as well as in Saudi Arabia, family law appeared less dynamic. Rules governing Muslim personal status remained uncodified and questions of family and succession law were guided by the individual judge’s own interpretation of the multitude of differing opinions that make up Islamic law. Hence, in the Arab Gulf, women in particular were ‘in the anomalous position of enjoying one of the highest standards of living in the world and yet being subject to a law which was developed over a thousand years ago’ (Hinchcliffe 1986). In 2005, however, the idea of comprehensively codifying Islamic family law was eventually picked up by the UAE, followed by Qatar in 2006 and Bahrain in 2009. Currently, even Saudi Arabia is debating a draft code of Muslim personal status. Codification as a means for the state to shape family relations has taken root in the Arab Gulf.This chapter first explores the legal setting prior to the codification of family law in Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE (part II). The focus will be laid on the influence of European notions of codification and Egyptian law – the birthplace of the majority of jurists working in the region – on the development of the legal regimes in the Arab Gulf following their independence. In addition, the family court systems and the few legislative steps already taken by the three governments in the area of family law before the comprehensive codifications were introduced will be assessed. Part III is devoted to the codification process itself; both the actors and the debates surrounding the first-time codification of family law will be explored. Finally, part IV will trace the approaches to codification and legal reform in the new family codes of Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE by using selected examples from among the many new statutory rules.The two main questions that the chapter sets out to answer are as follows: First, how did the three Arab Gulf States approach family law codification approximately ninety years after the very first codification of the field in the Muslim world (ie the Ottoman Law of Family Rights of 1917) and, second, did the three legislatures create a ‘modern family law’ in the sense that it accommodates the current socioeconomic realities of the Arab Gulf monarchies?