In 2019, Musawah embarked on a multi-year research initiative titled ‘Reclaiming ‘Adl and Ihsan in Muslim Marriages: Between Ethics and Law.’ This project built upon the findings of our previous research on qiwamah and wilayah, highlighting the detrimental impacts of hierarchical gender relations and unequal rights in Muslim families.
Our research has three key components:
We explore frameworks for egalitarian ethics and jurisprudence in Muslim marriages.
Investigating how Muslims in various contexts understand and practice egalitarian gender relations in their marriages.
We create spaces for new discourse that advocates for equality, justice, and care in Muslim marriages.
Our contemporary marriage laws and practices often fall short of contemporary justice standards, reflecting concepts from a different time. These concepts lack gender equality and can contradict the ethical principles of the Qur’an. We aim to provide alternatives and align Islamic ethics with contemporary justice.
The Qur’an emphasises the equal worth of all humans and calls for social relations, including gender relations, based on justice (‘adl), beauty and care (ihsan), and doing what is commonly known to be good (ma‘ruf). Our project aims to map out these ethical values within Islamic jurisprudence.
In a diverse world, various ethical frameworks, norms, and laws regulate social relations. Legal pluralism acknowledges the coexistence of Qur’anic norms, social norms, human rights norms, and more. Our project aims to harmonise these frameworks.
