Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law, Justice,
and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition

Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Kari Vogt, Lena Larsen, and Christian Moe, eds.
New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013. 320 pages.

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, some advocated a turn toward “tradition,”
thereby raising fears that women would be pushed out of the public arena de-
spite their active participation and would even lose those gains made under
previous governments. The debates around gender parity vs. complementarity
that were stirred up were not new, but they did manage to acquire new cogency
in the context of the emotionally charged deconstruction of the old political
system and the subsequent transition to new governments. 

The arguments made by both sides were often couched within a frame-
work of liberal human rights or in terms of Islamic tradition. Gender and
Equality in Muslim Family Law is a valuable contribution to the discussion
on the apparent contradiction between these discourses and a learned attempt
to bridge them. The editors of this collective book, which stems from a number
of workshops organized by the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Be-
lief, explore how gender equality, as shaped by contemporary ideas of human
rights, can be reconciled with the Islamic legal tradition, which is rooted in
pre-modern conceptions of justice. 

In the first chapter, Mir-Hosseini examines the classical fiqhī understand-
ing of gender justice by focusing on qiwāmah (guardianship of women), which
is enshrined in most Muslim family codes, and overviews twentieth-century
reforms and codifications. She also discusses the ideas of al-Tahir al-Haddad
(d. 1935) and Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988), two reformists who influenced sub-
sequent discourses on equality in the family within an Islamic framework.
Her contribution ends with a looks at the emergence of political Islam, trans-
national feminism, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), all of which
add a new dimension to preexisting debates. 

The rest of the book is divided into two sections. The first explores some
concrete efforts at legal reform and social activism that reconcile Islam and
human rights. Mulki al-Sharmani delves into the concept of qiwāmah in
Egyptian law and in courtroom practice, pointing out the legal strategies
pursued by litigants and the disconnect between the model of marriage up-
held by family codes and the actual practice of marriage. Marwa Sharafedin
analyzes Egyptian women’s rights NGOs and their discourse on personal
status law that blend, to varying degrees, religious and human rights frames

118 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 31:4

ajiss31-4_ajiss  9/26/2014  2:45 PM  Page 118



Book Reviews 119

of reference. Aicha El Hajjami delves into the religious arguments used dur-
ing the 2004 debate on reforming the Moroccan family code. While stressing
the legal and discursive innovations introduced, she observes that the judici-
ary’s resistance, lacunas in the text, and social pressure hinder the new code’s
enforcement. 

Zainah Anwar recounts how Malaysia’s SIS (Sisters in Islam) spread its
activities into new practical and theoretical fields under the dual pressure of
Islamist attempts to turn the country into an Islamic state and state-led Is-
lamization. SIS increasingly moved to hermeneutical discourses, public edu-
cation, and legal training, until in 2009 the global movement Musawah was
launched there and came to constitute a space of interaction between different
strategies to advance women’s rights. This new group has helped bridge the
gap between a human rights discourse and an Islamic discourse. 

The second section deconstructs traditionalist approaches to gender roles
and discusses theoretical approaches that allow for gender equality to be sup-
ported from within Islam. In his analysis of the classical understanding of
wilāyah (marriage guardianship), Muhammad Khalid Masud underscores the
diverse juridical views and how particular social contexts informed the doc-
trine. He then studies gender equality in the thought of several intellectuals
who have offered new hermeneutical approaches. In the following chapter,
Nasr Abu Zayd (d. 2010) expresses his view on how to read the Qur’an by
“defragmenting” its polyphonic discourse and proposes a new contextual
ijtihād to gender issues in legal matters by using inheritance and qiwāmah as
examples. Faqihuddin Abdoul Kodir focuses on the Hadith literature, which
has received far less attention from reformists, despite its importance in shap-
ing fiqh. He suggests a contextual reading of the Prophetic traditions, one in-
formed by Islam’s ethical principles, using qiwāmah and that of women
travelling without a male relative as examples. 

Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari, who focuses on and then refutes the sociolog-
ical, historical, and epistemological assumptions of qiwāmah and wilāyah,
submits ways to rethink women’s rights in the Islamic legal tradition by taking
into account a contemporary understanding of justice: The time has come, he
writes, for a “fundamental shake-up” (p. 209) based on the revision of theo-
retical assumptions and an awareness of their relationship with social circum-
stances. Mohsen Kadivar reviews the rational and textual arguments for a
“deserts-based justice,” which has led to unequal gender rights, and for egal-
itarian justice, which he considers more in accord with “contemporary ration-
ality” (p. 231) and with the spirit of the Qur’an. Desert-based justice, he
argues, was a first step to equality within a divine strategy of gradualism,

ajiss31-4_ajiss  9/26/2014  2:45 PM  Page 119



rather than a set of immutable rules. The Qur’anic verses and hadiths invoked
to justify legal differences should be reread in the light of what appears to us
today “just, reasonable, ethical and superior” (p. 231).

The second section’s essays ponder how to take into account factual dif-
ference while respecting equality, a central issue in Anver M. Emon’s conclud-
ing chapter. Emon discusses how gender difference has justified differentiation
and led to discrimination in traditional Islam. He then presents examples of
contemporary reformists to point out that how ignoring “the paradox of equal-
ity” limits the effectiveness of their arguments. The importance of this paradox
points out that understanding how factual difference has resulted in unequal
rights requires a comprehensive understanding of the context in which legal
rules were elaborated. He coherently concludes by arguing that legal changes
involve “significant reformulations of socially and culturally embedded ideas
about the right and wrong” (p. 251) and thus require broader societal and po-
litical change.

This leads me to a criticism: In this book, the social and political constraints
to reform referred to in passing by most authors might have merited greater at-
tention. The mention of political issues, such as those pertaining to the pressure
applied by other countries to resist or advance reform in conformity with
geostrategic and economic interests, would have helped readers grasp why
there is such an enormous amount of resistance in the Muslim world to reform-
ing hermeneutics. Another issue that may have merited greater attention instead
of just a brief mention in Al Sharmani’s essay is that of courtroom practice, as
some Muslim judges have advanced in innovative ways a holistic approach to
gender rights that blends human rights and Islam, thereby contributing to wider
debates and doctrinal developments. 

These considerations aside, the book is a valuable resource for those in-
terested in gender and Islam and in understanding current reformist ideas. The
first section, although somewhat limited in its geographical focus, offers stim-
ulating insights; the second, by focusing on the often overlooked underlying
values and assumptions of traditional Islam, is an especially valuable contri-
bution. All essays are well referenced and rely on either primary sources or
fieldwork. A detailed index is provided at the end of the book. 

Elisa Ada Giunchi
Dipartimento di Studi Internazionali, giuridici e storico-politici

Università degli studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

120 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 31:4

ajiss31-4_ajiss  9/26/2014  2:45 PM  Page 120