A close scrutiny of the Islamic religious field in Israel reveals that those responsible for the application of shari'a rules (i.e. judges presiding in shari'a courts), do not possess the "symbolic capital" that is required in order to distinguish them from laymen. Since shari'a judges in Israel enjoy unprecedented centrality within the Islamic religious field, the field itself is not well-distinguished from the secular legal field. is situation results not only from the fact that persons without proper shari'a training have been appointed to the office of shari'a judge (qadi), but also from the fact that the qadis are appointed by a non-Muslim authority and that the shari'a courts are subordinated to Israeli legislation. I argue that the Islamic religious field in Israel is an anomaly, characterized by lack of autonomy, ambiguous boundaries and lack of competition between actors (due to the monopolization of power by qadis).Keywords qadi, Israeli shari'a courts, Bourdieu, Islamic religious field, shari'a education, Muslims in Israel In this essay I describe and explain how the lack of religious autonomy for Muslim citizens of Israel has resulted in a non-Muslim sovereign state appointing judges (qadis) to preside over the shari'a courts. I further argue that the shari'a judges have virtually monopolized the shari'a field in Israel and that, in Bourdieusian terms,

In this article, I study Article 130 of the Ottoman Family Law, which is still applied in Israel, with special attention to developments within the SharÊ#a Court of Appeals between the years 1992 and 2003. I argue that this Court has encouraged reform regarding the issue of niz §# wa-shiq §q (quarrel and disagreement). This reform has four main components. First, it entails a weakening of the patriarchal concept that limits a woman's role within Muslim society, her authority over her body, and her movements. Second, it eases the burden of proof by lowering evidentiary requirements. Third, it improves the procedure of arbitration by better defining the suitability of the arbitrators and supervising the methods of their work. Fourth, it enables the SharÊ#a Court to nominate arbitrators and control their decisions. This reform has improved women's rights to divorce and has made divorce a relatively easy option. The reform also makes it easier for both men and women to obtain divorce, particularly as compared to other religious minorities in Israel.

The dual legal system of religious and civil law in Israel and the existence of a religious court system alongside a civil one causes distortions in the implementation of the rights and duties of husbands and wives. Due to this duality, in practice, in Israel, there is neither religious law nor law based on equality. This hybrid legal system leads to the reinforcement of what I will call here “patriarchal liberalism,” which means that there is a development in a liberal direction alongside obstacles and barriers that prevent advancement to full equality between men and women. Although this legal hybridity leads to the introduction of liberal norms into the legal relations between men and women, it also preserves patriarchal features. This article focuses on child support allotted to Muslim children in family courts in Israel. Since 2001, both shariʿa courts and family courts may rule in matters of child support for Muslim children, which means that there is parallel jurisdiction between the Muslim religious law according to religious belonging of the parties involved in cases.

In this paper we explore how Shari‘a Courts cope with the issue of custody, in light of two Supreme Court rulings concerning custody cases, in which the regional Shari‘a court suspected the mother of living a Christian way of life. The article aims at discerning the debate between the Shari‘a Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court concerning the Legal Capacity and Guardianship Law and rulings in the issue of child custody, and at proposing an alternative line of interpretation that would help avoiding the debate. The article argues that Shari‘a courts have embarked on a “purification” process, removing secular elements from their legal discourse, both at the rhetoric and symbolic levels, and thus excluding any affinity to secular legislation. The Legal Capacity and Guardianship Law is a main focus of those “purification” efforts. This raises the question of why the Supreme Court actually reversed only so few Shari‘a court rulings. We suggest that it did not have to do so. Though explicitly not basing its rulings on civil law, the Shari‘a Court of Appeals actually imported the principle of the child’s best interest through the back door, by considering it to be a principle acknowledged by Shari‘a. The court reinterpreted religious legal literature and in fact Islamized Israeli law, in the sense of turning an Israeli legal principle into an Islamic one. Another softening of what appears to be a rigid position held by the Shari‘a court may be discerned in its rulings that allow drawing on social workers’ reports in order to determine a child’s best interest.

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