Islamic family law in modern Europe and the Muslim world:
Normative,
legal and empirical
approaches beyond the women's rights
issues
19-21 June 2013 Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Famiily law organizes issues
that are central
to people's domestic
lives, such as marriage, child care, divorce and inheritance. The study of family law can therefore provide insights on constructions
and norms about parenthood, sexual
relations, the transfer
of wealth and the intertwining of the public and the private.
European and US
academic writing on Islamic family law seem
to be divided between
a normative approach,
a legal approach and an empirical
social science approach. Significant differences in questions, methodology and sources make
that these approaches rarely meet. Moreover, the field is also divided by geographical borders. Academic
work on Islamic
family law in the "West" and on Islamic
family law in the Muslim world remains
largely separated, as is the
case with work by scholars from Muslim-majority countries and studies
by scholars from Europe and the
US. This conference will bring together these fields of study to produce new insights and promote
an interdisciplinary and transnational approach.
In all three approaches, there is a strong focus
on the issues, rights and position of Muslim
women. Muslim women are sometimes depicted
as the victims
of patriarchal Islamic
family laws that grant them little claim to legal rights.
While Muslim women are at the centre
of academic attention,
Muslim men are seldom studied
in relation to family law. This conference aims to go beyond a limited women's rights
perspective and develop
a critical gender perspective, including men and
masculinities as well as women
and femininities. Discussing mixed families and transnational
relationships will provide
new insights on intersections of gender with class and ethnicity and legal
pluralism.
Questions we want to raise in this conference are: what could an interdisciplinary approach of Islamic family
law look like? How can we integrate the different approaches to the study
of Islamic family law, both in Europe and the US as well as in Muslim-majority countries? How can scholars of Islamic
family law in the West and the Muslim
World learn from each other?
What do recent events in the Arab spring
mean for family law, both in the Middle East
and in Europe? What can an
intersectional approach of gender and other inequalities contribute to the study of Islamic family law? What is the
role of Islamic family law outside
of courts and
legal conflicts, in the everyday life of people in Muslim-majority-countries and in the West? How do debates on Islamic family law in the West
and in Muslim-Majority countries influence each
other and legal practice? How does
Islamic family law interact
with other State legal systems
in the cases of migrant
and mixed families?
