Justifying Gender Inequality in the Shafii Law School:Two Case Studies of Muslim Legal Reasoning

摘要

The topic of "women and Islam" is highly contentious in both popular and academic literature. While this broad topic often addresses the status of Muslim women in their diverse cultures, the focal points of investigation frequently tend to be of a legal nature, such as dress code, marriage and divorce rights, or women leading mixed congregations in communal prayer. Yet even when the sphere of inquiry is limited to specific topics of Islamic law, scholars must engage an immense library that can be bifurcated into normative and effectual texts. The former category comprises textbooks and their commentaries (fiqh books proper), books on legal theory (usul al-fiqh), and collections of fatwas (responsa); the latter one consists of court registers (sijillat) and state-promulgated laws (qanun).~2