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Marriage is a way of gaining a peaceful mind and soul, be it monogamous or polygamous marriage. This is the sweetness of marriage as enshrined by Islam. To achieve this wisdom, conditions laid down by the religion and legal requirements must be observed. Otherwise, a marriage may turn into a miserable and thorny life for couples, especially in polygamy. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to disseminate legal knowledge and refine the understanding about polygamous law in Malaysia. The central arguments of this study are two-pronged: (1) to deliberate on the Malaysian legal framework for polygamous marriage and (2) to discuss a crucial legal issue related to polygamy, namely cross-border marriage and its effects. The qualitative method of doctrinal legal research was employed to obtain and analyse primary and secondary data from various sources. It included examining the statutes and decided cases of the Syariah Courts, including reported and unreported cases. The relevant statutes studied were the Islamic Family Law (Federal Territories) Act 1984 and the Enactment of Islamic Family Law (Kedah Darul Aman) 2008. In substantiating arguments, data from e-Syariah Version 3 (ESV3) was used together with existing literature. The findings revealed that refusal or failure to comply with legal requirements pertaining to polygamous marriage may lead to cross-border marriage and its aftermath effects on the legality of the marriage, jurisdiction of the court, and the rights of wives and children in the context of law. Hence, the enforcement of existing laws on polygamy should be emphasised to control any abuse of power by a man to contract a polygamous marriage. More importantly, the laws and enforcement should be strengthened to protect the rights of the wives and children. Future research may focus on issues involving the rights of the wives and children of a polygamous marriage upon the death of the husband or father according to Islamic family law in Malaysia and its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2004 reforms of Islamic family law in Morocco brought about a long-awaited expansion of women's rights. The Moroccan women's movement was a key player in the promulgation of the reforms. We highlight the role of professional women leaders in the movement and show how they developed political capital and the "power of presence" by combining (i) professional attainment, (ii) leadership in women's organizations, and (iii) active participation or positions in politics and civil society. We suggest that more needs to be understood about the implications of women's education and professional attainment for legal change, especially in the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper looks at the interplay between the administration of Islamic law in Malaysia in relation to Islamic family law and Islamic criminal law; and human rights. The paper examines the basis of the administration of Islam in Malaysia in relation to its history and post-independence mandate. It looks at the position of human rights under the Federal Constitution and the position of the administration of Islamic law under the constitutional framework. The research found that entrenching fundamental liberties through the supremacy clause resulted in the prevalence of human rights over freedom of religion. However, this is not consistently arrived at since the constitutional frameworks allows for plurality of laws and exclusion of personal law from the principle of equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes Islamic legal arguments for the ambitions, possibilities and limitations of Muslim family reform law. Topics discussed are reform strategies that make up the legal arguments including exercising preference, patching, parallel contracts and stipulations and Islamic corpus, as well as the state of legal reform in restricting polygamy, limiting divorce pronouncements, raising minimum marriage age and expanding a wife's access to divorce, and impact of Muslim family law reform.

In the Netherlands, where views of Muslims and Islamic family law are highly politicised, the application of Islamic family laws by Dutch courts is a topic of heated political debate. Especially polygamy and unilateral divorce by men (talaq) are thought to have a strongly negative impact on the position of Muslim women in the family. In order to assess the gendered impact of Islamic family laws in a European context, this article takes a closer look at Dutch state courts' decisions. It asks how the application of Islamic family laws can be understood against the background of Dutch political discourses on Islam, family law and women's rights. While in public and political debates, Islamic family laws are frequently thought to be women-unfriendly, this article shows that the encounter between Islamic family laws and Dutch law often has severe impact on the position of Muslim men living in the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the differences between jurists of the three Shīʿī sects - Zaydīs, Ismāʿīlīs, and Twelver Shīʿīs - concerning the marriage contract. In general, Zaydī, Ismāʿīlī, and Twelver jurists agree on three elements of the marriage contract of a woman who is an adult, single, and a virgin (bikr). However, they disagree over certain elements of the contract, the dower, the role of the marriage guardian (walī), the minimum legal age for women to marry, and the role of the adult single woman in concluding her own marriage contract. I examine the varying degrees of agency each Shīʿī sect granted women in contracting their marriages in the period between 900 and 1600 ce I argue that Shīʿī substantive law (fiqh) is as restrictive as Sunnī fiqh regarding a woman's role in contracting her marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Judicial divorce symbolises women's resistance to the domination of local interpretations and practices of Muslim family law in Lombok, such as male arbitrary repudiation and polygamy. In this pattern, husbands hold the privilege to terminate marital unions unilaterally and remarry without their wives' consent. These practices find their grounds in classical-medieval Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), which is endorsed by the custom of patriarchal society. It is by turning to the court that women attempt to subvert such hegemonic discourses. By examining divorce cases from the religious courts, and looking at their broader socio-religious and cultural contexts, this study attempts to propose an analysis of judicial divorce as a locus of women's resistance against male domination endorsed by local practices of Islamic law, customary law and state law, and examines an important dimension of contemporary practice of Islamic family law, which reveals patterns of domination and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having a good relationship with family members is the utmost consideration in family life. This socio-legal study focusses on the family institution, in which all family members play pivotal roles in determining the wellbeing of the family. The main objective of this study is to understand family relationships in terms of legal awareness among family members. The survey was the main method used in this study and it will be analysed using statistical techniques. The semi-structured interview was also employed in this research. The study shows that most rural folks prefer mediation in settling disputes. The findings of this research are expected to fill the gap in socio-legal literature on Muslim marriage matters and to provide valid reasons for designing a new policy and regulatory framework to deal with the implementation and enforcement of Islamic Family Law in Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the legal institution of mahr in Islamic family law from three research perspectives in order to provide insights into the phenomenon's complexity, particularly with regard to current legal practices. In particular, emphasis is placed both on countries where family law is shaped by Islamic traditions (e.g., Morocco) and on countries whose legal traditions do not have a mahr counterpart (e.g., Germany). First, the social and economic function of dower will be described. As a special form of property transfer, mahr will be analyzed in its historical and present shape in theory and practice. Second, the legal conceptualization of mahr in the German legal context will be discussed. The example of Morocco serves to illustrate the changes with regard to mahr because of the process of incorporation of Islamic legal concepts into a national statutory law system. Given the Muslim diaspora, these insights are important contributions to the legal intepretation of mahr in a transnational context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on the legal recognition of religiously-based family law based on the principles of political liberalism in the U.S. Topics discussed include religious concepts as well as politically liberal concepts of the family such as Muslim family law, Islamic concepts of distributive justice within the family and the significance of arbitration in protecting the autonomy of individual religious believers. It also focuses on Islamic concepts of equality within the family.