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The tendency in comparative legal theory to define a separate 'Islamic legal family', implies that the law in Muslim countries is entirely different from other legal systems. In the description of this legal family, sharia plays a crucial role. However, if the role of sharia is in fact marginal in the law of Muslim countries, then this categorization is not justified. This paper examines the role of sharia in Tunisian law. For this, it will give an overview of Tunisian legal history, and a description of the role of sharia in current Tunisian law. If the role of sharia in Tunisian law is marginal, then it can be concluded that Tunisian law does not belong to the Islamic legal family. In that case, the theory that Muslim countries in general belong to the Islamic legal family is unjustified, since Tunisia is a Muslim country. Furthermore, since Tunisian legal history, existing in a diminishing role of sharia, is to a certain extent representative for many other Muslim countries, the conclusions about Tunisia might have consequences for the mere existence of a separate Islamic legal family. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Shahbano decision in the 1980's, the heated public debate on Muslim family law in India has framed Muslim women's right to equality in direct opposition to their right to religious liberty. This paper attempts to look at a different framework by examining the public debates over the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939 and the Pakistani Family Laws Ordinance, 1961. These legislations, which received almost unanimous support across the ideological spectrum, attempted to secure for Muslim women their rights as "Muslim women" by selectively codifying rules from various schools of Islamic law. Reformist clergy, women's groups and politicians reread Islamic history and borrowed from contemporary developments in the Middle East to challenge the rigid categories of Anglo-Mohammadan law and the hegemony of the colonial state.The paper examines the relationship of gender and the wider concerns of nationality and formation of community identity by following public debates through newspapers, party documents and assembly records to explain the building of consensus and the intellectual resources for the reforms. In the second part, the paper attempts to contrast the legislative and judicial attitudes towards the reforms by a close reading of judicial interpretations of the "new" laws. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Iraqi constitution's designation of Islamic law as "a source of law" pushed the question of Islamic law's role in state law to the forefront of the debate on democracy and women's rights. Does "rule of law" in Islamic democracies forward Islamic law's ends or democratic ones? Are the two necessarily at odds? Indeed, classical Islamic family law entails tensions between notions of liberal democratic and human rights norms on the one hand, and Islamic values on the other. But one can imagine prospects for how hybrid legal responses can respond to calls for both tradition and progress. This paper will cover two themes. First, it will focus on the institutional role that the Iraqi constitution contemplates for the jurists by comparing its Islamic law provisions with those of other "Islamic constitutions" in the region. Second, it will look at how other countries have approached family law reform within an Islamic framework, and consider the role that jurists play alongside political and judicial processes. It will take the recent Moroccan family law (Mudawannat al-usra) as one model because of its unique joinder between classical Islamic law and modern human rights norms. The reforms resulted from a collaborative effort between the government and the jurists in a self-conscious attempt to harmonize human rights norms with classical Maliki law. In reviewing that process and analyzing the Islamic legal bases for the reforms, this paper will consider the implications for the rule of law and law's legitimacy in "Islamic constitutional" countries like Iraq. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]