Introduction

“I urge you women to revolt!” said the late Dr. Zaki Badawi, head of the Muslim College and the Muslim Court, during a conference lecture in 2000.1 The suggestion was very well received by the women, but it caused much consternation among the men in the audience. Those who clearly did not accept this challenge argued that it clashed with the Islamic feminine ideal of the good wife and mother. Furthermore, a woman’s place was in the home. When all was said and done, a revolt would be a threat to the family. Some of the women in the room strongly objected that the traditional feminine ideal did not accord with the lived reality of Muslim women in Europe, particularly the fact that many women worked a “double shift,” and that their jobs outside the home were poorly paid. The audience only calmed down when Badawi ended the discussion by stating: “I urge you women to revolt, in order to be treated according to Islamic standards”. What is it that makes “Islamic stan- dards” soothing? Clearly, the lofty ideals perceived by the men did not accord with the experiences of the women. While the women wanted change, with a focus on rights, the men took up a defensive position on behalf of a patriarchal ideal of femininity. The status of women is intensely debated among Muslims in Western Eu- rope, both as part of a global debate, and as a central issue in the encounter of Islamic identity and Western societies. Muslim women are being drawn between two competing sets of norms: on the one hand, the traditional Islamic view of unequal gender rights, with an emphasis on women’s submission and obedience; on the other, equal rights, with an emphasis on women’s rights and equality before the law. Women’s challenge is to find “Islamic” solutions to this dilemma. They search for “Islamic standards” in answers to the questions they have, rooted in their own experiences.

In this book, I examine fatwas given from 1992 onwards2 as proposed solutions for the challenges faced by Muslim women inWestern Europe, and ask whether Islamic scholars contribute, through their fatwas, to reconciling adherence to

1 Dr. Badawi (1922–2006) was lecturing on Islamic legal thought for minorities at the con- ference Muslims in the New Millennium: Multiculturalism, Identity and Citizenship, held in in September 2000. 2 The institutionalization of fatwa-giving for Muslims in Western Europe started with the inter- national conference that resulted in the report Muslims in the West: A Fiqh Seminar in France (1992).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004367852_002 2 introduction the Islamic tradition with the Western European ideal of equality. I also tell the story of the muftis behind the fatwas. They represent a trend that under- stands the situation of women as a problem in the modern age, and sees its solution as lying in . They devote particular attention to the local context, and to what they perceive as the reality in which the women who ask the ques- tions live their lives.3 In this way, the fatwas may be seen as supportive of the call for women to revolt in in order to be treated according to “Islamic stan- dards.”

This way of framing the question is at odds with with a common Western view of fatwas as the very embodiment of a clash between Islamic values and the modern common morality4 and sense of justice. That perception is not least due to the so-called Rushdie fatwa issued by Khomeini, which has led the West- ern public to understand fatwa as “death sentence”. A fatwa, in Islamic legal thought, is a normative legal statement5 made in answer to a question.6 The institution is traditionally justified with reference to the Quran: The underlying formulation is “They ask thee … Say …,” which is a minimal definition, as it only indicates form and not substance.7 The Quran also uses various verb forms of the root f-t-y for question-and-answer activi- ties: (i) “asking for guidance” (istiftāʾ) and (ii) “giving guidance” (aftāʾ).8 The terminology for the fatwa institution in Islamic legal thought is derived from

3 This refers to actors within the modern Islamic revival movement, initiated by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897) and Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905). Islam was argued to be the solution for the problem of backwardness and stagnation compared with Europe (Abukhalil 2009). A line may be traced from the establishment of this movement in to Western Europe. In order to understand the argument that “Islam is the solution”, it is important to under- stand the “Islamic Awakening” (al-sahwa al-islamiyya) that has taken hold since the 1960s. In the Arab world, it was tied to Islamist movement, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood (see Lacroix 2011, 51–52). Central concerns of the movement have been the focus of the scholars on a renewal of Islamic jurisprudence, and what Lacroix calls a claim of monopoly over fiqh al-waqiʿ (“the understanding of reality”). 4 The Norwegian philosopher Knut Erik Tranøy (d. 2012) defines common morality (allmenn- moralen) as “… the moral ideas and concepts held by most people, whatever their sources, of what is morally good and evil, of moral virtues and vices, of right and wrong in practical life.” Tranøy 2001, 104. 5 Eggen 2001, 94. 6 I use the terms “law,” “legal thought” and “legal” in a broader sense, and not exclusively about the positive law of states or international legal orders. 7 Quran 2:189. 8 Quran 4:127, 176.