Family Laws in the Middle East

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By: Mulki Al-Sharmani

The Social Research Center at the American University Cairo recently ran and were involved with hosting two back to back workshops on Family Law. The first one on ‘Reforming Family Laws in the Middle East’ aimed to disseminate the findings of the research that the SRC team has been conducting on the reforms in Egyptian family laws. The second, which ran from 9-11 January 2009, was hosted by The Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief on ‘Guidelines for Islamic Family Law: Women’s Equality, Male Guardianship, and Legal Objectives’.

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    Legal Reform and Feminist Activism

    This project researched the reforms that have been taking place in Egyptian personal status laws since 2000. The aim was to examine the unfolding reform story and what it entailed in terms of successes and challenges for women's rights activists in their pursuit of justice and equality in marriage and divorce rights, and for Egyptian women at large who seek legal redress in family courts. The focus of the study was on two aspects of the reform story: 1) the process of mobilising for the new laws, building alliances, choosing strategies, and making concessions, and 2) the implementation of the legal reforms in the new family courts that were introduced in 2004. …

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    The 'Religious' In Debates About Reforming Egyptian Personal Status Laws

    In this paper, presented to 'Pathways: What are we Learning?' Analysis Conference, Cairo, 20-24 January 2009, I want to argue against a common and perhaps a temptingly easy understanding that posits a direct and problematic link between the challenges of reforming Egyptian personal status laws and their seemingly inescapable religious identity. Such a reading has a homogenizing effect that: 1) collapses those who take issue with the proposed changes in the substantive laws from a religious perspective into one unitary position, 2) fails to appreciate the interconnectedness of secular (e. g. human rights) and religious discourses that frame the debates about the new legal reforms, and 3) conceals a number of underlying issues which go beyond the question of the religious boundaries of the family laws. …