Islamic Law in a Quasi-State: Husbands and Jurists at the Fatwa Council in Iraqi Kurdistan (WGF - Post PhD Research Grant)

Part of the Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant Application Collection Metadata (DRAFT) project

Author(s): J. Andrew Bush

Year: 2019

Summary

This resource is an application for the Post PhD Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

According to predominant norms among Muslims in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, sharia ("Islamic law") empowers a husband to divorce his wife by spoken repudiation. When husbands regret their repudiation, they often visit jurists at local Fatwa Councils seeking advice to restore their marriage. Having squandered the authority granted them by sharia, husbands try to restore that authority through sharia itself. While husbands regard jurists? advice as uncorrupted by Iraqi state secularism, Fatwa Councils often send husbands to civil courts for a solution, showing the inseparability of three jurisdictions: sharia, Iraqi Civil Code, and civil provisions in the Kurdistan region. In this way, jurists adapt the procedures of the secular state to serve their vision of sharia. This project explores how Fatwa Councils mobilize multiple legal languages to restore men's authority as husbands after they squandered it. In doing so, the project expands existing studies of gender and sharia that predominantly focus on women. Ethnographic research links Fatwa Council proceedings to Islamic legal traditions and historically shifting civil codes in Iraqi Kurdistan. A detailed account of how men engage men through legal language will contribute to the comparative study of how civil and religious law work to reconstruct men's authority.

Cite this Record

Islamic Law in a Quasi-State: Husbands and Jurists at the Fatwa Council in Iraqi Kurdistan (WGF - Post PhD Research Grant). J. Andrew Bush. 2019 ( tDAR id: 468655) ; doi:10.48512/XCV8468655

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

Keywords

Investigation Types
Ethnographic Research

General
divorce • Islamic law • Law • manhood • Marriage • Masculinity • Post-PhD Research Grant • Socio-Cultural • Text

Geographic Keywords
Iraqi Kurdistan • Middle East

Temporal Keywords
19th-20th Century • Contemporary

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Wenner-Gren Foundation

Notes

Rights & Attribution: This resource is an application from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and has been approved by the grantee solely for pedagogical purposes. Please do not cite, circulate, or duplicate any part of these documents without the express written consent of the author.

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