Re-configuring Muslim Marriage: Law, Islam, and Modernity in Postcolonial South Asia, 1947-2012

Fireside Chat with Global South Visiting Scholar, Anisur Rahman

The conversation concerning Muslim marriage has taken a different course in postcolonial South Asia (Pakistan and Bangladesh). Inspired by modernist currents within Islam, Muslim legal professionals in Pakistan and Bangladesh have reinterpreted Sharia in order, on the one hand, to abolish the husband’s archaic authority in marriage and, on the other, to empower married Muslim women to dissolve their marriages. Consequently, Muslim marriage has increasingly been discussed in the language of contract, where both parties are able to set the terms themselves — a development that Henry Maine (1861) suggested as a progression toward a modern society. Drawing on cases decided by the Supreme Courts of Pakistan and Bangladesh, I hope to shed light on how judicial interpretation and legislative reforms have contributed to abolishing the law’s violence against women in marriage and, thereby, to moving Muslim societies in South Asia toward a particular direction of modernity.

For Zoom link, please contact Louise Chen at chen@allard.ubc.ca. The link will be sent the day of the lecture. 

Speaker

Anisur Rahman, an Associate Professor of Law at the Independent University, is a socio-legal historian. His research interests include Intellectual History of Law; South Asian Legal History; Islamic Law and Society; Law and Religion; and Legal Secularism. Anisur fulfilled his PhD with the National University of Singapore. Recently, he has published a book chapter titled “Criminalizing Adultery in Colonial India: Constructing the Wife vs. the ‘Other’ in Islamic Family Law” in Criminal Legalities in the Global South: Cultural Dynamics, Political Tensions, and Institutional Practices (Routledge: 2020). His manuscript entitled Reconfiguring Muslim Marriage: Law, Islam, and Modernity in South Asia is under review by the Melbourne University Press. Anisur has taught several universities, including the Asian University for Women.