Divorcing Traditions : Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism / Katherine Lemons.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lemons, Katherine, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Legal polycentricity--India.

Legal polycentricity.

Secularism--India.

Secularism.

Islam and state--India.

Islam and state.

Divorce--Law and legislation--India.

Divorce.

Divorce (Islamic law)--India.

Divorce (Islamic law).

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (245 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Divorcing Traditions is an ethnography of Islamic legal expertise and practices in India, a secular state in which Muslims are a significant minority and where Islamic judgments are not legally binding. Katherine Lemons argues that an analysis of divorce in accordance with Islamic strictures is critical to the understanding of Indian secularism. Lemons analyzes four marital dispute adjudication forums run by Muslim jurists or lay Muslims to show that religious law does not muddle the categories of religion and law but generates them. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted in these four institutions-NGO-run women's arbitration centers (mahila panchayats); sharia courts (dar ul-qazas); a Muslim jurist's authoritative legal opinions (fatwas); and the practice of what a Muslim legal expert (mufti) calls "spiritual healing"-Divorcing Traditions shows how secularism is an ongoing project that seeks to establish and maintain an appropriate relationship between religion and politics. A secular state is always secularizing. And yet, as Lemons demonstrates, the state is not the only arbiter of the relationship between religion and law: religious legal forums help to constitute the categories of private and public, religious and secular upon which secularism relies. In the end, because Muslim legal expertise and practice are central to the Indian legal system and because Muslim divorce's contested legal status marks a crisis of the secular distinction between religion and law, Muslim divorce, argues Lemons, is a key site for understanding Indian secularism.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

PART I. The State

Chapter 1. Regulating Kinship under Legal Pluralism

Chapter 2. Muslim Divorce, Secularism's Crucible

PART II. The Qazi

Chapter 3. Shari'a Courts' Family Values

Chapter 4. The Converging Jurisprudence of Divorce

PART III. The Mufti

Chapter 5. "Talaq, Talaq, Talaq . . ."

Chapter 6. The Healing Jurist

Conclusion. Divorcing Traditions

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Feb 2020)

ISBN:

9781501734779

1501734776

9781501734793

1501734792

OCLC:

1044780820