Islamism and Family Law Reform in Morocco and Jordan

Between Dissent and Power

“…Rather they were forced to act in accord with other political forces following their participation in the legislative elections in 1997, and MUR/PJD had representatives in Parliament who officially supported Yusufi's government. Moreover, MUR/PJD tried to show that it was cooperative towards Muhammad VI, who seemed to be very favourable to the government's Project (Clark and Young 2008). Even though MUR published criticisms of the reform project in al-Raya, the criticisms were not accompanied by any violent condemnation of those in favour of the reform.…”

“…Some observers have pointed out that the political attitude of the Islamic movement has been shaped by the interactions between the regime and opposition forces, not by ideological choice (Clark and Young 2008;Wegner and Pellicer 2011). The reason the Islamists ceased to be revolutionary and took a more gradualist character was because the regime decided to provide them a competitive arena for power through the introduction of political pluralism and the acceptance of opposition groups into the formal political sphere.…”

Moving Beyond Culturalism and Formalism: Islam, Women, and Political Unrest in the Middle East

“…Kandiyoti (1991) argued th at w om en's lives vary greatly across Muslim societies, and their roles cannot be understood w ithout understanding the political roles played by nation-states. Some experts dem onstrated that even Islamist groups and parties are not uniform in their treatm ent of women, as their policies are shaped by w om en's activism and their relationship with the states that solidify reform s (Janine Astrid Clark and Jillian Schwedler 2003;Janine Astrid Clark 2006;Janine Astrid Clark and Amy E. Young 2008). O thers criticized culturalism from a political economy perspective by dem onstrating how neoliberal policies im posed by the International M onetary Fund (IMF) contribute to patriarchal structures (Nilufer Cagatay and Gtinseli Berik 1994;Mervat H atem 1994;Eleanor Abdella Doum ato and Marsha Pripstein Posusney 2003;Valentine M. M oghadam 2005).…”

Islam and the Language of Human Rights in Nigeria: “Rights Talk” and Religion in Domestic Politics

“…The story this research tells is one of qualified success, with domestic women's rights movements committed to the international human rights framework pressuring regimes in, for example, Tunisia (in the early 1990s) and Morocco (in 2004) to reform their family and personal status codes in favor of women's rights (Charrad 2001;Catalano 2013). But while a number of studies have looked at how religious (and particularly Islamist) actors respond to these reform movements with opposition or acquiescence (Buskens 2003;Clark and Young 2008) relatively little attention has been paid to how human rights norms and discourse influence their response to international and domestic reform pressure.…”