Divorce Reform in the Sharia Court of Appeals in Israel (1992-2003)

Abstract

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.

Divorced from Citizenship: Palestinian-Christian Women between the Church and the Jewish State

“…Matters pertaining to the family affairs of Christians in Israel-as to other ethnoreligious communities-are governed by a personal-status regime: a legal-institutional arrangement that imbues communal-religious courts with jurisdiction in the family matters of their respective community members (Halperin-Kaddari 2004;Sezgin 2004Sezgin , 2010Abou-Ramadan 2006a, 2006bYefet 2009Yefet , 2016Zafran 2013;Blecher-Prigat and Zafran 2017). Drawing on the Ottoman millet system, as adopted and transformed by the British Mandate authorities (Agmon 2017), the institutionalization of this confessional architecture in the Israeli postcolonial context has culminated in the official recognition of fourteen religious communities: Jewish, Muslim, Druze, Baha'i, and ten different Christian denominations.…”

A Tale of Two Courts: How Organizational Ethnography Can Shed New Light on Legal Pluralism

“…The Israeli sharī‘a court system suffered from very low public opinion during the 1980s and early 1990s (Reiter ), and Qāḍī Natur was apparently determined to improve its reputation. Among the many policy reforms that he initiated (Abou Ramadan ; ) one was directly related to his attempt to establish productive relations with the Jordanian Islamic legal establishment in Jerusalem. According to Qāḍī Natur, the turning point in the relations between the Israeli and the Jordanian sharī‘a courts in Jerusalem occurred in 1995, when he issued an appellate ruling determining that the Jordanian qāḍī of Jerusalem should be considered ‘ālim min ‘ulamā’ al‐’umma (a religious scholar from among the scholars of the nation) .…”