The Islamic Marriage Contract: Case Studies in Islamic Family Law.

• Author: Azam, Hina
• Position: Book review

The Islamic Marriage Contract: Case Studies in Islamic Family Law. Edited by ASIFA QURAISHI and FRANK E. VOGEL. Cambridge: ISLAMIC LEGAL STUDIES PROGRAM, Harvard Law School, 2008. Pp. xiii + 375. $29.95.

Quraishi and Vogel's edited volume on the marriage contract in Islamic law is a solid collection of essays from a variety of perspectives, one that is both instructive to specialists and a useful classroom resource. The volume consists of four parts, over which are distributed fifteen chapters, all of which emerge from a workshop and conference convened by the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School in 1997 and 1999, respectively. The chapters combine to create a sustained exploration of the various ways in which marriage has been constructed in Islamic law, both historically and contemporarily, both in theory and in practice.

There are a number of issues that are highlighted through this collection's singular focus on the marriage contract specifically, not least of which is the legal nature of marriage. Although marriage among Muslims may have traditionally allowed for emotional attachment or may theoretically be seen by modern Muslims as activating a set of personal ethics, these chapters remind us that underlying any such considerations has been the sense that marriage is a matter of law--of rights and obligations enforceable through a variety of interpersonal and judicial mechanisms. Furthermore, the collection underscores as critical marriage as a contract--that is, its nature as a negotiated agreement which requires certain elements in order to be valid, which envisions a certain exchange of "goods" or "services," which can be tailored through the inclusion of stipulations, and which delineates procedures for dissolution. This negotiated quality, as several authors show, means that the marriage contract is potentially an instrument of empowerment for women. At the same time, the marriage contract in its classically developed forms establishes a conjugal relationship in which the husband has considerable control over the wife, and so the continuation of these forms unchanged may limit female empowerment. The potential benefits of conceiving marriage as a contract are brought to light by Ziba Mir-Hosseini and by Mona Zulficar, in their work on Iran and Egypt, respectively. In both Ja'fari Shici law and Hanafi law, a woman's ability to seek dissolution of marriage for harm or hardship (darar or fiaraj) is highly constrained...