Islamic Divorce in North America: A Shari’a Path in a Secular Society

The book contributes to the scant qualitative literature on divorce and religious experience. It counters media and widespread assumptions of Islamic marriage and divorce as backward and anti-American

There is increasing attention among policy-makers and the public to the role of shari’a in the everyday lives of Western Muslims, raising negative associations and public fears among their American and Canadian neighbors. The most common way North American Muslims relate to shari’a is in their observance of Islamic marriage and divorce rituals; recourse to traditional Islamic marriage and, to a lesser extent, divorce is widespread. In the course of her research, Julie Macfarlane conducted hundreds of interviews with Muslim couples, and her book describes how their Islamic marriage and divorce processes are used in North America, and what they mean to those who abide by them. The picture that emerges is of an idiosyncratic and frequently inconsistent private ordering system, dominated by imams and other community leaders, which reflects a wide range of attitudes towards contemporary family values and changes in gender roles. The emergence of a western shari’a challenges readers to consider how to find the right balance between state commitment to universal norms and formal equality, and the protection of religious freedom expressed in private religious and cultural practices.

About the Author

Dr. Julie Macfarlane is Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Windsor, Adjunct Professor of Practice at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social and Public Understanding. She conducts qualitative empirical research and has written extensively on dispute resolution and in particular the role of lawyers (The New Lawyer: How Settlement is Transforming the Practice of Law).

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Muslim identity in the West
Chapter Two: A Primer on Islamic Family Law
Chapter Three: Getting Married
Chapter Four: Staying Married
Chapter Five: Marital Conflicts and Abuse
Chapter Six: Getting Divorced
Chapter Seven: The Consequences of Divorce
Chapter Eight: Legal Issues for Islamic Marriage and Divorce
Appendix A: Marriage Contracts
Appendix B: Divorce ruling on verbal delegated talaq
Appendix C: Faskh ruling

Bibliographic Information

Title: Islamic Divorce in North America: A Shari’a Path in a Secular Society

Author:  Dr. Julie Macfarlane

Publisher: Oxford University Press

 Language: Arabic

Length: 312

ISBN:  978-0199753918

Pub. Date: 2012/07/22