Rutgers University Press
September 16, 2022Islamic Divorce in the Twenty-First Century
Visiting Fellow Fatima Essop analyzes Islamic divorce practices in South Africa, highlighting the challenges that women face.
In “Problems of and Possibilities for Islamic Divorce in South Africa,” Visiting Fellow Fatima Essop analyzes Islamic divorce practices in South Africa, highlighting challenges that South African women face in seeking to obtain a divorce in Sharia courts, and proposes solutions to address current shortcomings.
This chapter is published in the newly released volume “Islamic Divorce in the Twenty-First Century: A Global Perspective” by Rutgers University Press.
Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century shows the wide range of Muslim experiences in marital disputes and in seeking Islamic divorces. For Muslims, having the ability to divorce in accordance with Islamic law is of paramount importance. However, Muslim experiences of divorce practice differ tremendously.
The chapters in this volume discuss Islamic divorce from West Africa to Southeast Asia, and each story explores aspects of the everyday realities of disputing and divorcing Muslim couples face in the twenty-first century.
The book’s cross-cultural and comparative look at Islamic divorce indicates that Muslim divorces are impacted by global religious discourses on Islamic authority, authenticity, and gender; by global patterns of and approaches to secularity; and by global economic inequalities and attendant patterns of urbanization and migration. Studying divorce as a mode of Islamic law in practice shows us that the Islamic legal tradition is flexible, malleable, and context-dependent.