Book Reviews 125 

States and Women's Rights: The Making of 

Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco 

Mounira M Charrad 

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 341 pages. 

In her preface, Mounira Charrad traces the genesis of her study to her con­

cerns as a sociologist regarding the inadequate analytical models used to 
account for the origin of political organization in the "predominantly class­

based and capitalist societies" Maghribi societies. Charrad proposes "kin-







128 The American Journal of [slamic Social Sciences 19:4 

serious gap renders the author's recurrent claim that Islamic law sanctions 
the legal subordination of women supremely speculative, and a-contextual, 

such as when she states reductively that: "Islamic family law portrays the 

marital bond as fragile" or that: "The facilitation of divorce, especially in 
the fonn ofunilateral repudiation, the legality of polygamy, and the absence 
of common property between husband and wife, all combine to define the 

marital bond as fragile." 

The gross scantiness of direct references to primary Qur'anic refer­
ences, or what Charrad refers to as "religious texts," results in a dispropor­

tionate documentation of the three states' sources and principles of family 

law. Even though Islamic family law and Islamic law figure as important 

references analytically, they are defined solely on the basis of a selective 
treatment of two Qur'anic passages on inheritance laws and polygamy and 

an isolated treatment of divorce. Charrad's selective treatment of Qur'anic 

passages pertinent to Islamic law is even more evident in that the entire 

study contains four main references to the Qur'an-only two are direct quo­
tations of Qur'anic verses related to inheritance and polygamy. An 

informed reader is prompted to wonder why many key Qur'anic verses that 

are central to understanding the marital relationship and its foundation in 
Islamic law have been glossed over. 

These serious methodological flaws cast a shadow of doubt on an other­

wise potentially enlightening contribution to sociological, historical, and 

political studies of the region that seek to explore the nation-state's evolu­
tion, the social institutions' origin and foundation, various fonns of identity 
fonnation in the context of tribal/central government coexistence, and espe­

cially their implications for women's rights. 

Safoi Babana-Hampton 
Doctoral Student in French Literature 

University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland