abdulhakeem
21-11-04, 01:15 PM
Sunday November 21, 2004
Review by CLARISSA LEE
ISLAMIC FAMILY LAW AND JUSTICE FOR MUSLIM WOMEN
Edited by Hajjah Nik Noriani Nik Badlishah
Publisher: Sisters-in-Islam, 145 pages
IT is sad that non-Muslims know so little about Islam in Malaysia, a religion that concerns the majority of its population. The same goes for Muslims, about other religions. Could this be a result of the years of conditioning that we should never speak of religious issues, especially the religions of others?
This is a compilation of a forum discussion and papers presented at a regional workshop on Islamic Family Law and Justice for Muslim Women held in Kuala Lumpur in June 2001. Both workshop and book focus on issues pertaining to women in the provision and implementation of Islamic family law. They highlight the injustices faced by women under current Islamic juristic rulings, especially those concerning divorce, property inheritance, custody, guardianship and alimony.
Men have it easier when it comes to all these, especially in a divorce. There is less red tape involved where the state is concerned, whereas a woman can find herself a divorcee through mere pronouncements. If a wife is nusyuz, or disobedient (which I suspect often boils down to her going against her spouse’s wishes rather than wilful bad behaviour) the husband can withhold nafkah (maintenance).
Translated loosely, nusyuz could also mean a woman denying her husband sexual access, and in many such cases, the wife is not given a chance to explain herself. Unfortunately, there is no discussion in this book about what rights a wife has if she refuses her husband sex because he will not use contraception, or if he has been sleeping around and risks infecting her with a venereal disease, or worse, AIDS.
It is interesting that despite the changes in women’s position in the last century, the Syariah laws of this country have not changed much. Critics have advocated the need to revamp these laws as they were created at a time when Islam had to function as both a religion and political system for the desert Nomads who had renounced their Jahilliyah ways and did not have the same structural polity of other civilisations like the Babylonians, Romans, Chinese and Indians.
In a way, it was reminiscent of how Judaism used to govern the lives of the Jewish people during the pre-Christian era. If one were to look back on history, some of the laws set up at the time when Islam was still a new religion absorbed the cultural nuances of its new converts, which sometimes involved the Islamisation of certain old practises, to make them more acceptable.
Rigorous exegesis is needed when one examines the theoretical construction of any law and legislation. As Amina Wadud and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, two contributors to this volume, argue, there is a need to look at gender relations and how it is portrayed in the Quran and Sunnah. Amina advocates the need to look at the process of comprehension when discussing the hermeneutics of interpretation. She points out that “women did not participate in the formation of Islam’s paradigmatic foundations.”
In other words, whatever laws that dictate to Muslim women are often made from the point of view of men, who have certain ideas about what a woman is like, and how she views the world. It is not coincidental that in the last century, feminist literary critics have raised similar points concerning the reading of women writers and characters by traditional male critics.
There is much here that is pertinent and useful to a Muslim woman, especially if she is contemplating marriage. The various presentations by Muslim women from different countries allow the reader to see how family laws are implemented and how they affect the Muslim women in those countries. For example, Muslim women groups are pushing for compulsory pre-nuptial contracts as part of the marriage registration process. While the scope of this book relates mainly to women’s rights within the framework of Islamic family law, it paves the way for more rigorous debate on other issues within the religion.
http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2004/11/21/features/9451035&sec=features
Review by CLARISSA LEE
ISLAMIC FAMILY LAW AND JUSTICE FOR MUSLIM WOMEN
Edited by Hajjah Nik Noriani Nik Badlishah
Publisher: Sisters-in-Islam, 145 pages
IT is sad that non-Muslims know so little about Islam in Malaysia, a religion that concerns the majority of its population. The same goes for Muslims, about other religions. Could this be a result of the years of conditioning that we should never speak of religious issues, especially the religions of others?
This is a compilation of a forum discussion and papers presented at a regional workshop on Islamic Family Law and Justice for Muslim Women held in Kuala Lumpur in June 2001. Both workshop and book focus on issues pertaining to women in the provision and implementation of Islamic family law. They highlight the injustices faced by women under current Islamic juristic rulings, especially those concerning divorce, property inheritance, custody, guardianship and alimony.
Men have it easier when it comes to all these, especially in a divorce. There is less red tape involved where the state is concerned, whereas a woman can find herself a divorcee through mere pronouncements. If a wife is nusyuz, or disobedient (which I suspect often boils down to her going against her spouse’s wishes rather than wilful bad behaviour) the husband can withhold nafkah (maintenance).
Translated loosely, nusyuz could also mean a woman denying her husband sexual access, and in many such cases, the wife is not given a chance to explain herself. Unfortunately, there is no discussion in this book about what rights a wife has if she refuses her husband sex because he will not use contraception, or if he has been sleeping around and risks infecting her with a venereal disease, or worse, AIDS.
It is interesting that despite the changes in women’s position in the last century, the Syariah laws of this country have not changed much. Critics have advocated the need to revamp these laws as they were created at a time when Islam had to function as both a religion and political system for the desert Nomads who had renounced their Jahilliyah ways and did not have the same structural polity of other civilisations like the Babylonians, Romans, Chinese and Indians.
In a way, it was reminiscent of how Judaism used to govern the lives of the Jewish people during the pre-Christian era. If one were to look back on history, some of the laws set up at the time when Islam was still a new religion absorbed the cultural nuances of its new converts, which sometimes involved the Islamisation of certain old practises, to make them more acceptable.
Rigorous exegesis is needed when one examines the theoretical construction of any law and legislation. As Amina Wadud and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, two contributors to this volume, argue, there is a need to look at gender relations and how it is portrayed in the Quran and Sunnah. Amina advocates the need to look at the process of comprehension when discussing the hermeneutics of interpretation. She points out that “women did not participate in the formation of Islam’s paradigmatic foundations.”
In other words, whatever laws that dictate to Muslim women are often made from the point of view of men, who have certain ideas about what a woman is like, and how she views the world. It is not coincidental that in the last century, feminist literary critics have raised similar points concerning the reading of women writers and characters by traditional male critics.
There is much here that is pertinent and useful to a Muslim woman, especially if she is contemplating marriage. The various presentations by Muslim women from different countries allow the reader to see how family laws are implemented and how they affect the Muslim women in those countries. For example, Muslim women groups are pushing for compulsory pre-nuptial contracts as part of the marriage registration process. While the scope of this book relates mainly to women’s rights within the framework of Islamic family law, it paves the way for more rigorous debate on other issues within the religion.
http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2004/11/21/features/9451035&sec=features