GENDER JUSTICE AND LEGAL REFORM IN EGYPT
GENDER JUSTICE AND LEGAL REFORM IN EGYPT
Negotiating Muslim Family Law
Mulki Al-Sharmani
The American University in Cairo Press
Cairo • New York
This electronic edition published in 2017 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2017 by Mulki Al-Sharmani
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978 977 416 775 1
eIBSN 978 1 61797 783 1
Version 1
For Khaled
(1984–2008)
Contents
1. The New Family Courts: Actors, Agendas, and Goals
2. The New Courts and Gender Reform
3. Khul‘: Between Law and Lived Realities of Marriage
4. Love and Other Things: Marriage and Family Law
5. And the Reform Story Continues?
Final Reflections: Post-2011 Egypt and Gender Justice
1.Cases Reviewed in a Settlement Office in Giza
2.Cases Reviewed in Six Settlement Offices in Alexandria
3.Monthly Statistics of Cases Reviewed in a Settlement Office in Alexandria
4.Profile of Interviewed Women Seeking Khul‘
5.Profile of Interviewed Women Seeking Fault-based Divorce
6.Khul‘ vs. Fault-based Divorce
7.Profiles of Interviewed Women
This book and the research on which it is based would not have been possible without the support, assistance, and contributions of many people. In the following few paragraphs, I wish to express my gratitude and debt to them.
I would like to thank Hania Sholkamy, associate professor of anthropology at the American University in Cairo’s Social Research Center (SRC). Hania proposed the initial idea of the research on Egyptian family courts and invited me to take it on as part of the Middle East research hub, which she was convening in the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Consortium. I am forever grateful to Hania for that idea because it took me to fascinating and important research paths that I continue to pursue with great interest. I am grateful for Hania’s insightful feedback on various aspects of this research over its four-year span as well as her support, which allowed me to design, develop, and pursue this study autonomously and in my own voice. I also thank Hania for many discussions over the years about gender, family law, Egypt, and recently Islamic feminism, which have always pushed me to reflect and reflect some more.
I thank Andrea Cornwall, the coordinator of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Consortium for the support she provided me to undertake this research and to produce various publications about the findings.
My thanks to Hoda Rashad, research professor and director of the SRC, for her support, which greatly facilitated the fieldwork. I am also thankful to Dr. Rashad for her feedback on some of the analyses in this work, which were presented in a number of workshops and conferences at the American University in Cairo in 2008 and 2011. I thank the SRC’s administrative staff as well for their valuable assistance with the logistics of the fieldwork.
I thank my colleagues Sawsan Sharif and Fayrouz Gamal, the research assistants at the SRC, for undertaking the research with me. I also thank Sawsan for assisting me in the organization of the data and most of all for many helpful discussions about the research over the years. I am very glad that, in the course of this research, Sawsan completed her doctoral studies in education and went on to conduct her own research on gender and Islamic religious knowledge in Egypt. I follow her work with great interest.
My thanks also go to the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women (ADEW) and its board director Dr. Iman Bibars for assisting with the field research. I am thankful to the lawyers Marwa Shahat and Azza Salah El Din for their great insights and for their valuable help with the fieldwork.
Special thanks to Ousama Radwan for facilitating the fieldwork in the studied settlement offices. I am thankful to numerous people who work at various family courts in Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria where we conducted our study and who have also greatly helped with the research. My thanks go to the judges who opened their courts to me, and to the settlement experts, court experts, and lawyers who shared their knowledge and work experiences. Most of all, I wish to thank all the women and men who graciously shared their legal experiences and their marriage aspirations and challenges. I am grateful to all.
Among the interviewees, I also wish to thank several former members of the National Council for Women, the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, and the National Democratic Party, who were involved in the work on the new personal status laws that were passed in the period from 2000 to 2005. In particular, I would like to thank the Egyptian lawyer and activist Mona Zulficar; Judge Mahmoud Ghoneim; Isis Mahmoud at the National Council for Women; Dr. Fawzeya Abdel-Sattar, professor of criminal law at Cairo University; Raga Shehata at the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood; and the late Dr. Zeinab Radwan, professor of Islamic philosophy at Dar al-Ulum, Cairo University, Fayoum branch. I am also grateful to the religious scholars the late Gamal al-Banna