Women and Law in Gulf History This research will focus on the history of personal status laws in the Arabian peninsula and Gulf societies. It will trace the genesis of modern personal status and family laws pertaining to family and family relations and identify important watershed dates in regards to women’s history and legal rights as they pertain to family relationships. Here can be included marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, as well as labor laws and rights as they pertain to family authority, marital obedience, and financial support. Inter-family violence and the laws handling them will also be a focus of attention. Since the modern family is actually a new-comer in world history, this research will trace various types of social formations constituting blood alliances and other relations that constituted various types of family structures in Arabia and the Gulf over the history of Islam. Using archival records, Shari`a court records, literature, chronicles and major histories, the changing shape of family and inter-family alliances will be traced and connected to major socioeconomic and political transformations. Oral history will also be an important source to tap in regards to changes in alliances in the last decades. Altogether it is hoped that connections will be drawn between women’s role within the family, their relative power vis-à-vis other members of the family, the codification of laws pertaining to family and changes in Shari`a law and its application from one period to the other.

Pakistan since 1979 has been transformed into an amalgamation of often contradictory political enterprises which retain two cohesive strands: the articulation of divergent views on the rights of women and rhetoric to incorporate more laws and institutions derived from Islam. The debate over what constitutes accepted roles and rights of women finds different constituencies deeply divided. This debate has been particularly poignant over the past few years as Pakistan has seen reserved parliamentary seats for women revived, the revision of the Hudood Laws which resulted in the Protection of Women Act 2006, and Pakistan’s CEDAW Report submitted and successfully defended before the Division for the Advancement of Women at the United Nations. Consensus, however, remains elusive in identifying what constitutes women’s rights in Pakistan.Ongoing political crises have important ramifications for promoting related legislation such as in the case of another recent bill on women’s rights – to ban anti-women practices such as forced marriages, marriage in exchange for vengeance, and deprivation of women’s inheritance – which has languished after being submitted to the National Assembly nearly two years ago. Various groups, particularly Islamist opposition parties, are calling for legislation purportedly based on Islam that would limit women’s rights and access in fundamental ways. The relatively new PPP (Pakistan People’s Party) administration actively advocates for women’s empowerment, though its track record thus far remains limited in this regard. This paper will review key features of recent legislation promoting women’s rights in Pakistan, will explore the controversies surrounding this legislation as well as elaborate upon ongoing challenges, particularly by Islamist groups, to promote women’s rights through legislation further in the country.

Political parties are essential to representative democracies and important in agenda setting and shaping the political discourse, even if they fall short of acquiring seats in the legislative branch or forming the government. Focusing on the case of Turkey, this paper examines the extent to which human rights have been incorporated into the programs of political parties and governments and identifies the pattern of change over time. In addition to analyzing the relationship between party and government programs, the paper explores the domestic and international events that have stimulated the promotion of human rights. The manifest and latent content analyses of 97 party programs and 60 government programs are conducted, for the period of 1920-2007, and juxtaposed with important domestic and international events. Contending that Turkish political system has been a volatile one, which fluctuated between identity and class politics as a response to the changing international politics and domestic forces, it attempts to identify the factors that brought certain rights to the forefront, which in return reinforced or hindered the advancement of democracy. Treating Turkey as a case study, the paper seeks an answer to a broad theoretical question: Which type of politics – identity or class politics – is more conducive to the advancement of human rights and stability of democracies?

Debates over Equality of Marriage (kaf??a) in Contemporary Saudi Arabia Western scholars of Islamic law who have examined the subject of equality in marriage (kaf??a), particularly as it relates to equality of lineage, consider its relevance to have diminished in the present day. Though this may be true in general, the evidence from Saudi Arabia would appear to conflict with this assessment. Kaf??a remains today an issue of often bitter contention within Saudi society, and is the subject of frequent debate and discussion both within the religious ruling establishment and without. In light of kaf??a’s survival as a living doctrine in Saudi Arabia, this paper examines the various ways in which kaf??a has been invoked and interpreted within Saudi clerical and lay debates, taking into account both the Islamic legal dimension and the sociological context in which these debates play out. Specifically, it will seek to explain why the premier mid-twentieth century Saudi scholar Mu?ammad ibn Ibr?h?m ?l al-Sheikh (d. 1389/1969) and his successor ?Abd al-Azi?z ibn B?z (d. 1420/1999) demonstrated divergent attitudes to the question of kaf??a in their religious rulings (fat?w?) on the matter. In sociological terms, it might be tempting to attribute this difference in attitude between student and mentor to the rapid transformation Saudi Arabia underwent through the lifespan of the two scholars. But as the history of kaf??a in ?anbal? legal discourse proves, both support for and opposition to various aspects of the doctrine are embedded within the legal tradition. Finally, this paper will examine some of the contemporary debates surrounding the question of marital compatibility in relation to tribal lineage in Saudi Arabia. It will be argued that the frequency with which contemporary Saudi Muft?s demonstrate disapproval of genealogical considerations in marriage arrangements points to a reformist drive among Saudi clergy to stamp out discrimination on the basis of lineage in the Najd and beyond. At the same time, it will be concluded, the strength of this drive is a consequence of the frequency with which lay anxieties over equality of lineage in marriage rise to the surface of Saudi public discourse.