Child Custody in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice in Egypt since the Sixteenth Century.

• Author: Al-Sharmani, Mulki

Child Custody in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice in Egypt since the Sixteenth Century. By AHMED FEKRY IBRAHIM. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2018. Pp. ix + 266. $99.99, [pounds sterling]75.

Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim's Child Custody in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice in Egypt since the Sixteenth Century is a timely scholarly contribution. Ibrahim excavates premodern Sunni legal tradition for discourses and practices that can challenge the mainstream juristic constructions of custody and guardianship rights as fixed and gendered, and which are reflected in many contemporary fiqh-based modern Muslim family laws. Put differently, Ibrahim's study can be said to investigate the ways in which the modern concept of the best interest of the child as encapsulated in international convention on child rights (CRC) can also be grounded in Islamic legal tradition. This endeavor is significant for present-day Muslim debates about the reform of child custody and guardianship laws. A case in point is Egypt (the focus of Ibrahim's book) where intense contestations have recently been taking place about what the best interest of the child means with regard to existing and newly proposed custody laws, as well as the Islamic basis of these laws. Additionally, this study makes the case, persuasively in my opinion, for an understanding of Islamic legal tradition as one whose constituents are not only juristic doctrines but also the social and legal practices of Muslim women and men, their families, and the judges who adjudicate their disputes. In this understanding, the relationship between doctrine and practice is always interconnected, but it also maintains a tension that allows for the dynamism and flexibility needed for the legal system to meet the different and changing needs of Muslim families and communities. This reading of Islamic legal tradition is relevant for contemporary scholarly and political debates that continue to grapple with questions such as: What is the nature of Islamic law, and how can it function as a framework for legal reforms that uphold equality and justice?

Ibrahim's book, which builds on an earlier article published in 2015, examines how the child's welfare was constructed with regard to custody and guardianship in Islamic Sunni legal tradition in Egypt in the period from the sixteenth to nineteenth century. Ibrahim's overall aim is to investigate how premodern juristic and judicial understandings of the child's welfare compare to the modern concept of the best interest of the child as developed in the Euro-American legal tradition.

The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. The chapters...