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Larson, et al. (eds.), “Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law”

Next month, I.B. Tauris Publishers will publish Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Process edited by Lena Larsen, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Christian Moe and Kari Vogt.  The publisher’s description follows.

This book examines how male authority is sustained through law and court practice, the consequences for women and the family, and the demands made by Muslim women’s groups. Examining the construction of male guardianship (qiwama, wilaya) in the Islamic tradition, it also seeks to create an argument for women’s full equality before the law. Bringing together renowned Muslim scholars and experts, anthropologists who have carried out fieldwork in family courts, and human rights and women’s rights activists from different parts of the Muslim world, from Morocco to Egypt and Iran, this book develops a framework for rethinking Islamic Law and its traditions in ways that reflect contemporary realities and understandings of justice and gender rights.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Coming Economic Crisis in Egypt?

Here at CLR Forum, we’ve been thinking about the role of Islamic law in Egypt’s new constitution, which voters approved last month. The new constitution represents a significant victory for Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. But, as Walter Russell Mead points out on his blog today, the Brotherhood still faces major problems. Egypt is on the brink of an economic crisis that the Morsi government seems unable to handle.

Since the Arab Spring, foreign investors and tourists have fled Egypt and the country’s currency has plummeted. Regional allies like Turkey and Qatar have lent Egypt billions of dollars, but the IMF, which has the real money, is refusing to advance roughly $5 billion until the Morsi government implements an austerity package. This would mean political disaster for Morsi, since many Egyptians depend on government food subsidies to survive. So things are in a holding pattern. Meanwhile, the bad economy is creating a security crisis. Egyptians complain about a lack of basic safety.

It’s hard to know what will come next. Perhaps frustrated Egyptians will decide that the problem is that the Muslim Brotherhood is not Islamist enough and turn to the even more radical Salafis. I can’t imagine the Salafis would have a better relationship with the IMF, though. Or perhaps a military strongman who mouths the correct pieties will take charge. Anyway, it’s hard to imagine a situation in which Egyptians turn to the secular liberals whom the West hoped would run Egypt after the fall of Mubarak.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

“Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East” (Hroub, ed.)

If you are promoting a political and legal blueprint for society, it helps to have a media outlet. Islamists in the Middle East have become very adept at using media networks to advance their aims. In Egypt, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood operates its own TV station, Misr25. A new collection  of essays from Columbia University Press, Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East (2012), investigates Muslim, Christian, and Jewish religious programming in the Middle East. The collection is edited by Khaled Hroub (Cambridge). The publisher’s description follows:

Religious broadcasting in the Middle East has benefited tremendously from new transnational media networks and the widespread availability of satellite broadcasting technology. Dozens of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish religious channels are now on air, advocating different forms of religiosity and shaping public perceptions through dialogue and debate. Mainstream news channels, such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, broadcast popular religious programming, in some cases filled with highly politicized content. Others feature more apolitical commentary and are concerned only with preaching God’s word.

The Middle East’s highly-charged religious and political ferment has certainly been propitious for such broadcasters as they seek to convey their message. This has, in turn, reinforced the link between the dominant “religious atmosphere” and religious broadcasting. Monitoring the content-analysis of some of the region’s most influential religious channels and programs, the contributors to this volume provide pioneering insights into the Middle East’s burgeoning religious media market. They explore the themes, discourses, appearances, and “celebrities” of this rapidly expanding phenomenon and how its complex dynamics have transformed the region and the world.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Egypt’s Constitution: A Return to Classical Islam?

Last week, I wrote that the constitutional struggle between Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and the country’s Supreme Constitutional Court – a struggle that continued this week, when pro-Morsi picketers shut the court down – might represent an attempt to impose a conservative version of Islamic law in Egypt. Now that more of the draft constitution is available in English, the strategy seems even more apparent.

The draft constitution, like the Mubarak-era document it would replace, makes Sharia the primary source of legislation in Egypt. Traditionally, the SCC has had authority to determine whether laws comply with Sharia principles, and the court typically has taken a moderate, flexible approach. The draft constitution contains new provisions that could change things.

For example, one article declares, “The principles of Sharia include general evidence and foundations, rules and jurisprudence as well as sources accepted by doctrines of Sunni Islam and the majority of Muslim scholars.” It’s not entirely clear from the wording, but the reference to the majority of scholars may suggest a return to the idea of scholarly consensus that informed classical Islamic law, or fiqh. The idea is that Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 2 Comments

Egypt’s Draft Constitution

Obviously, Egypt’s version of the Constitutional Convention is not going as smoothly as everyone might have hoped. The plan was for a Constituent Assembly comprised of Islamists, Christians, and secular deputies to draft and vote on a consensus constitution sometime next January. Things haven’t worked out that way. Greatly outnumbered from the start, the Christians and secular deputies have all resigned in frustration. And, rather than wait till next year, the Assembly has just finished rushing though all 230 provisions of the constitution in a marathon, 16-hour session. The Assembly will present the document to President Morsi tomorrow, and he will then submit it to a national referendum. Why the rush? The Assembly and Morsi want to accomplish all this before the Supreme Constitutional Court has a chance to rule, perhaps as early as Sunday, on the legality of the constitution-drafting process. Meanwhile, pro- and anti-Morsi demonstrators are facing off on the streets of Egyptian cities. It all looks very unstable.

Given our own experience, observers in the US may see the struggle between Morsi and the SCC in terms of the rule of law: Morsi is just another strongman trying to stare down an independent judiciary. That’s true as far as it goes, but there’s an added issue people may miss. Article 2 of the draft constitution declares that Sharia is the principal source of legislation in Egypt. This is nothing new; the Mubarak-era constitution contained the same provision. Traditionally, the SCC has had authority to determine whether Egyptian laws comply with Sharia principles and, traditionally, it has adopted a flexible, non-fundamentalist approach to the question. In staring down the SCC now, Morsi and his allies in the Assembly may be laying down a marker for future conflicts with the SCC over Islamic law. The message seems to be this: power dynamics in Egypt have changed fundamentally, and the SCC had better get in line.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Coptic Church Names New Pope

A follow up to Thursday’s post: on Sunday, the Coptic Orthodox Church named its 118th pope, Tawadros, a bishop from the Upper Nile region. Pope Tawadros now has what Walter Russell Mead ruefully calls “the toughest job in the world”:  negotiating for the Christian minority in an Egypt governed by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, as well as their political rivals, the even more fundamentalist Salafists, have talked about increasing the role of Islamic law in Egypt. The National (United Arab Emirates) reports:

At the center of the political squabbling in Egypt is the role of Islam in the country’s new constitution, currently being drafted. . . . Christians, along with liberal and secularists, oppose demands by Islamists to increase the role of Shariah. The prospects of a stronger role for Islamic law in legislation increase the community’s concern of further marginalization, or of a curtailing of their rights of worship and expression.

Al Jazeera also has interesting coverage, including a group interview with scholars and representatives from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Coptic Church.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Egypt Issues Arrest Warrants for American Filmmaker and Others

According to the AP, Egyptian prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for several American citizens connected with the production and distribution of the YouTube video, “The Innocence of Muslims,” that has sparked violent protests in that country and throughout the Muslim world.  Egypt charges the defendants — who include the video’s maker and publicist, assorted Coptic Orthodox Christians, and Florida pastor Terry Jones — with “harming national unity, insulting and publicly attacking Islam, and spreading false information.” Some of the charges carry the death penalty.

What happens now? Some reports indicate that Egypt has contacted Interpol, the  international police cooperation organization in Lyon, France, for help in executing the warrants. In a press release, however, Interpol says  it has  not received any such request and that, in any case, its Constitution forbids it from undertakings “of a political, military, religious or racial character.” The strong implication: don’t expect us to help. The US and Egypt have an extradition treaty that dates back to Ottoman times, but, according to this unofficial version on the web, the treaty doesn’t cover offenses of the sort Egypt alleges here. Anyway, it’s inconceivable that the State Department would assist Egypt any more than Interpol, or that American courts would ever allow these defendants to be transferred to Cairo. Observers expect Egypt will end up trying them in absentia.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Faour on Religious Education and Pluralism in Egypt and Tunisia

Muhammad Faour (Carnegie Middle East Center) has published Religious Education and Pluralism in Egypt and Tunisia, a contribution to the Carnegie Institute’s Working Paper Series. The abstract follows.

Religion occupies a prominent position in the education systems of all Arab countries. With the rise of Islamists across the Arab world, especially in Egypt and Tunisia, there is a possibility that the new parties in power will update education curricula to reflect conservative Islamic beliefs. Education is very important for any ideological party that assumes political power. And in the long run, the Islamists of Egypt and Tunisia will target education reform to ensure that more Islamic content is included in all students’ schooling. But in the short term, the emerging power of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in Egypt and Ennahda in Tunisia is unlikely to lead to a dramatic change in the curricula Read more

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Agrama, “Questioning Secularism”

This October, the University of Chicago Press will publish Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt by Hussein Ali Agrama (University of Chicago). The publisher’s description follows.

The central question of the Arab Spring—what democracies should look like in the deeply religious countries of the Middle East—has developed into a vigorous debate over these nations’ secular identities. But what, exactly, is secularism? What has the West’s long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In Questioning Secularism, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.

Drawing on a precedent-setting case arising from the family law courts —the last courts in Egypt to use Shari‘a law—Agrama shows that secularism is a historical phenomenon that works through a series of paradoxes that it creates. Digging beneath the perceived differences between the West and Middle East, he highlights secularism’s dependence on the law and the problems that arise from it: the necessary involvement of state sovereign power in managing the private spiritual lives of citizens and the irreducible set of legal ambiguities such a relationship creates. Navigating a complex landscape between private and public domains, Questioning Secularism lays important groundwork for understanding the real meaning of secularism as it affects the real freedoms of a citizenry, an understanding of the utmost importance for so many countries that are now urgently facing new political possibilities.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Goldenziel on Courts in Majority-Muslim Countries

In the conflict between Islamists and secularists in majority-Muslim countries, courts can play a major role. Yesterday, for example,  Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court issued rulings allowing a former Mubarak loyalist to run for president and effectively dissolving the country’s Islamist-dominated parliament — clear victories for executive power and supporters of the old regime. A new piece by Jill Goldenziel (Harvard), Veiled Political Questions: Islamic Dress, Constitutionalism, and the Ascendance of Courts, suggests that the situation is more complicated, however. Courts in majority-Muslim countries do not always side with executive power. Even in Egypt, there are tensions between the SCC, which the Mubarak regime brought to heel, and the High Administrative Court, which remained more independent.  Her piece makes for interesting reading. The abstract follows.

This article explains how judicial independence can develop in regimes that are not fully democratic. Conventional wisdom holds that a strong legislature and political parties are necessary for the emergence of an independent judiciary. This article challenges conventional wisdom by explaining how judicial independence may arise in regimes where these conditions are not present. It presents a theory of how judicial independence emerges and why and when other political actors will respect it. The article also explains why courts may be better poised than legislatures to counter executive power in non-democracies. The theory is developed through a discussion of cases involving Islamic headscarves and veils in Middle Eastern courts. These cases have broad political implications because Read more