Islamic Divorce in the Twenty-First Century

ERIN E. STILES is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is the author of An Islamic Court in Context: An Ethnographic Study of Judicial Reasoning and co-editor of Gendered Lives in the Western Indian Ocean: Islam, Marriage, and Sexuality on the Swahili Coast.  AYANG UTRIZA YAKIN is a research associate at the Chair of Law and Religion at the Religions, Spiritualities, Cultures, Societies (RSCS) Institute at the UniversitÉ Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, and a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po Bordeaux in France. He is the co-editor of Rethinking Halal: Genealogy, Current Trends, and New Interpretation.

"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a wonderful book in which we travel geographically and intellectually. Its importance draws on the variety of national experiences it documents in a truly comparative perspective, as well as on the scholarship of both coeditors and contributors. It is a compulsory read for everybody interested in understanding how Islam is a global phenomenon with a huge array of local declensions." - Baudouin Dupret (author of Positive Law from the Muslim World: Jurisprudence, History, Practices) "Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century provides rich empirical data and sophisticated theoretical perspectives on the gendered complexities of kinship and marriage, divorce, inequality, and Islamic law and normativity in nine nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This engagingly written and compelling volume will be welcomed by scholars in various fields and has great potential for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses."- Michael G. Peletz (author of Sharia Transformations: Cultural Politics and the Rebranding of an Islamic Judiciary) "Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a tour de force, offering both breadth and depth on Muslim divorce practices. In addition to presenting scholarship from rarely documented countries, this volume provides a perspective on global connections and the transformations that ensue. It is a must-read for scholars of Muslim family law." - Arzoo Osanloo (author of The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran) "Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a wonderful book in which we travel geographically and intellectually. Its importance draws on the variety of national experiences it documents in a truly comparative perspective, as well as on the scholarship of both coeditors and contributors. It is a compulsory read for everybody interested in understanding how Islam is a global phenomenon with a huge array of local declensions." - Baudouin Dupret (author of Positive Law from the Muslim World: Jurisprudence, History, Practices) "Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century provides rich empirical data and sophisticated theoretical perspectives on the gendered complexities of kinship and marriage, divorce, inequality, and Islamic law and normativity in nine nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This engagingly written and compelling volume will be welcomed by scholars in various fields and has great potential for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses."- Michael G. Peletz (author of Sharia Transformations: Cultural Politics and the Rebranding of an Islamic Judiciary) "Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a tour de force, offering both breadth and depth on Muslim divorce practices. In addition to presenting scholarship from rarely documented countries, this volume provides a perspective on global connections and the transformations that ensue. It is a must-read for scholars of Muslim family law." - Arzoo Osanloo (author of The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran)

• Note on TransliterationList of AbbreviationsSeries Foreword by PÉter BertaPreface (Acknowledgment)Chapter 1: Muslim Marital Disputes and Islamic Divorce Law in Twenty-First Century Practice by Erin E. Stiles and Ayang Utriza Yakin                                   Part I : State Politics and Divorce Law: Reform and RecommendationsChapter 2: Divorce by Khul‘ in Pakistani Courts: Expanding Women’s Rights through Reconfiguring Religious Authority by Elisa Giunchi                                                           Chapter 3: Male-Initiated Divorce before the Egyptian Judiciary by Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron                                                                                                              Chapter 4: Problems of and Possibilities for Islamic Divorce in South Africa by Fatima Essop  Part II: Gendered Strategies and Judicial Responses in Marital DisputingChapter 5: Women in the Search of Sexual Pleasure: The Judicial Practices of Divorce on the Ground of Sexual Dissatisfaction within Indonesian Religious Courts by Ayang Utriza YakinChapter 6: “I Divorced Him but He Said He Has Not Divorced Me”:  Gendered Perspectives on Muslim Divorce In Accra, Ghana by Fulera Issaka-Toure                Chapter 7: Undoing Marriage in Lebanon. Divorce within and beyond Family Courts by Jean-Michel LandryPart III:  Islamic Divorce in the Context of Global Patterns of Mobility, Upheaval, and Changing Household EconomiesChapter 8: Islamic Renewal, Muslim Divorce and Gender Relations in Mali by Dorothea Schulz and Souleymane DialloChapter 9: A ‘Much-Married Woman’ Revisited: Kinship Perspectives on the High Frequency of Divorce among Uyghurs in Southern Xinjiang, China by Rune SteenbergChapter 10: The Ends of Divorce: Marital Dispute as a Locus of Social Change in India by Katherine Lemons with Nadia HusseinAfterword: Islamic Divorce in Context and in Action: Notes from the Field and Concluding Thoughts by Erin E. Stiles with Ayang Utriza Yakin                                 Notes on ContributorsIndex