Cases in point: polygamy, dowry, marriage and divorce
Regarding polygamy, Asma Lamrabet urges to re-set that ruling in the context of its times: the Arab tradition allowing men to marry several women must be read against the background of the wars concomitant with the rise of Islam. She shows that in several respects the Quranic verses represent progress: the Quran limits the number of wives, protects the interests of female prisoners of war, orphan girls and widows, specifically sparing the latter the humiliation of being included in an inheritance as part and parcel of a relative's chattels; furthermore, it compels men to give them their dowry, to refrain from disinheriting them against their wishes and above all to be just towards them. Lamrabet infers from this that the Quran disapproves of polygamy and that this disavowal has been on-going. Other reformists share this interpretation and demand a ban on polygamy.
On the question of dowry and matrimony, Quranic prescriptions allow for women to choose a husband and the latter must offer his wife a dowry that amounts to a sort economic right. In this, Asma explains, the Muslim law in its current form and application does not observe Quranic conjugal ethics. Instead of an egalitarian relationship founded in mutual accord, dialogue, serenity, love and kindness, it has established the notion of obedience.
According to Lamrabet, divorce was a widespread practice among Arab peoples before Islam and men alone had the right to repudiate their wives. With Islam, she asserts, that right has become common to both men and women. She numbers three instances cited in the Quran: divorce by mutual consent, divorce at the husband's request, divorce at the wife's request. The first instance, which, according to the author, is in keeping with international legislation, has but recently been tested in Morocco. She hails this initiative as one of the “emblematic innovations of new code ”. Nevertheless, she points out that traditional Muslim law has flouted the rules of divorce as they are stipulated in the Quranic text and the Sunnah. As for women who venture to file for divorce, they continue to be the victims of abuse and blackmail from men.
Inheritance is strictly off-limits. Women may well have marched in Tunisia in 2011 for the abolition of discrimination in inheritance matters but in Morocco, the leader of one political party provoked the anger of some conservatives when he called for an honest debate around several themes, inheritance among them. Quranic references on this point are essentially to be found in the Surah “The Women” (4, 11-12 and 4, 176). Lamrabet offers an interpretation favouring an egalitarian sharing of the inheritance relying on three points: the level of kinship, the position of the heirs' generation and general obligations. Successoral law according to Muslim tradition is very complex: in some cases a woman may inherit the same share as a man and sometimes even more than him; this is always determined by the nature of kinship. Lamrabet incidentally always makes a point of re-setting the share formula that grants a daughter half of her brother's entitlement in the event of the death of one of the parents in the context of early Islam, a time at which financial responsibilities always fell to the man. This state of affairs seems out-dated in the 21st century, given the growing number of families run by a woman, and this in several Muslim countries.
