Muslim Wife Research Articles

MUSLIM WIFE’S RIGHTS TO MAINTENANCE: HUSBAND’S DUTY TO MAINTAIN A WORKING WIFE IN ISLAMIC LAW AND THE LAW IN MALAYSIA

Islamic law imposes a duty on the husband to maintain his wife. This duty arises as soon as the marriage contract is completed. The duty to maintain her continues until the contract of marriage ends either through death or separation. This paper seeks to examine the provisions of Islamic law on the husband’s duty to maintain a working wife. The examination extends to the adequacy of provisions of the law in Malaysia governing maintenance of a Muslim wife. The paper will further analyze the law on the extended duty of the husband to maintain the wife, even though the wife is working and especially earning a good salary of her own.

Marriage across frontiers: sexual mixing, power and identity in medieval Iberia

This article explores the functions that interfaith marriages and other sexual liaisons fulfilled within the overall dynamic of Christian–Muslim relations in the medieval Iberian Peninsula. While in the aftermath of the Islamic conquest exogamous marriages served to consolidate Muslim authority over the region, such alliances later became a tool of diplomacy for the Umayyads and other élite families in their relations with the emerging Christian states of the North. The taking of a Christian bride or slave concubine by a Muslim potentate was in part a dynastic defence mechanism, designed to forestall the danger that a Muslim wife's family might at some point stake its own claims to power; it was also regarded as symbolic of Islamic political and military hegemony. Here, the marriage alliance that was arranged between Princess Teresa Vermúdez of León and a certain “pagan king” of Toledo at the beginning of the eleventh century is investigated and it is argued that the ruler in question could have been the ḥājib [chief minister] ‘Abd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar or his brother ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Sanchuelo, heir to the caliphal throne. By c. 1100 a convergence of political and cultural factors – not least the marked shift in the peninsular balance of power – condemned the practice of interfaith marriage to a swift decline. However, the “cultural memory” of such liaisons was to carry a powerful resonance within Christian society thereafter, helping to reinforce community identity and define social and cultural boundaries between the faiths.

How to Be a Good Muslim Wife: Women’s Performance of Islamic Authority during Swahili Weddings

Abstract The existing literature on women of the Swahili Coast has focused largely on their involvement in activities labeled as non-Islamic by both male peers and scholars. However, Islam plays an important role in these women’s lives and they often bring Islamic knowledge to bear on their participation in seemingly secular activities. In this study I address women’s role as sex instructors with a specific focus on instructing a bride in contemporary Swahili weddings. Contextualizing participant observation within the existing literature on Swahili puberty rituals, sex instruction, weddings, and language ideologies, I find that the ritual involves a discursive performance of Islamic knowledge and thereby offers women who act as instructors a form of religious authority. This provides an important counterpoint to decontextualized representations of Swahili Islam as excluding women from positions of authority.

Khul': Between Past and Present

This article investigates past and present understandings and applications of khul (a type of divorce by mutual agreement whereby a Muslim wife can rid herself of a husband who is not at fault, by a ransoming procedure) synthesizing existing scholarship on the subject as well as Hanafi juristic doctrines. As khul' is part of a larger concept, namely, divorce initiated or approved by women, attention will also be given to the other options that Islamic law - or, on some points, cultural practices - grants women in order to obtain release from the marital bond. A comparative analysis between the application of marriage and divorce laws under the Ottomans and in contemporary Egypt will then be undertaken with a view to shedding light on the effect that the rise of the nation-state has had on gender inequality.

A note on the Muslim wife's right to divorce in Pakistan and Bangladesh

A note on the Muslim wife's right to divorce in Pakistan and Bangladesh

Talaq-i-Tafwid and Stipulations in a Muslim Marriage Contract: Important Means of Protecting the Position of the South Asian Muslim Wife

Muslim law confers supreme authority in marital relations on the husband, to such an extent that the husband can unilaterally and extra-judicially dissolve the matrimonial bond by pronouncement of the verbal formula of divorce (talaq). The wife's position may be to some extent protected by the fact that her deferred dower becomes payable to her upon termination of the marriage by divorce or the death of her husband. However, the dower may either have been set at a minimal amount or have been severely reduced by intervening years of inflation so as to provide neither an affective restraint on the husband's exercise of his power of talaq nor much real assistance to the wife after she has been divorced and turned out of her husband's house. On the other hand, if the dower is set at such an amount as to constitute a real restraint on her husband in regard to his exercise of talaq and the marriage breaks down, the husband may refuse to divorce the Wife by talaq (since by doing so he would incur liability for the dower debt) and may suggest that she agree to a divorce by mutual consent (Khul' or mubara' a). However, a concomitant of a divorce by mutual consent is some financial remuneratioin by the wife to the husband; usually the husband requires the wife to relinquish her rights to dower. The wife may thus easily be placed in position of having to buy her way out of an unhappy marriage.