Experts in Islamic history, laws and practices have argued that modern realities are pushing for reforms in Muslim family laws so as to reflect a more gender-sensitive approach to the practice of Islam.

This took centre-stage during the latest edition of the Toyin Falola Interview Series held across various social media and online platforms. The Toyin Falola Interviews is a series of discussions, hosted by Professor Toyin Falola at the University of Texas at Austin, that aim to amplify the voices of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Members of the panel, led by Professor Falola, were Professor Cheikh Anta Babou of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia; Professor Yahya Sseremba, a research fellow at Makarere Institute of Social Research; Professor Fatima Seedat, Head of Department of African Feminist Studies, University of Cape Town; Professor M. Oloyede AbdulRahmon, a university administrator, with specialisation in Arabic literature at the University of Ibadan; and Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, Islamic scholar and the Chief Executive of the National Petroleum (NPA) of Ghana. Members of the audience that contributed to the conversation were Dawood Adesola Hamzah, Aliyu Abdulfattah, Amidu Sanni, Dr Mary Owusu, Professor Hey, among others.

While responding to the theme of the conversation, Islam in Africa, Professor Seedat noted that the rights and privileges of women must be respected within the Muslim family laws. For her, “The nature of Islamic law marriage is generally, unless a couple has negotiated it in their contract, unilateral. The exit from the marriage is primarily unilateral; it is unequal. Such is the nature of the contract and we are often very proud of the idea that in Islam, marriage is a contract because it suggests that two parties require consent and can enter into this as active agents. What is important to note is that, the kinds of rights couples have getting into a marriage are not exactly similar when they choose to exit the marriage. Technically though there are facilities available for this, they are however not widely used in our communities. In fact if you ask most people about the nature of divorce in marriage, they will tell you about Talak. And Talak in itself is about pronouncement, that a man can say Talak.

In Islam, the man holds Talak in his hands. He may at the point of marriage delegate the Talak. The other way to end a Muslim marriage is a judiciary pronouncing a separation. There is another way of ending a Muslim marriage in Egypt where the woman returns what was paid on her at the point of marriage; by this she releases herself from the marriage. This is one of the ways that Muslim family laws have been working and operating which is behind the push for reforms. To be able to get into a contract and not be able to exit that contract is problematic. The ideas of reform stem from the nature of the marriage contract which once might have suited societies and communities but doesn’t appear to be working right now for us. Some of this comes from the nature of the marriage contract. The legal contract of the marriage does not restrict a husband to exclusive intimacy with his wife even though it restricts the wife to exclusive intimacy with her husband. Most young people don’t know this and when they get married, they assume that if they don’t give consent to their husband getting into a second marriage that he will not, cannot or he may not. But that is not true. Technically within most systems of Islamic law, a man may contract a second, third and fourth marriage with or without the consent of his first wife. These are some of the issues that lie at the base of the calls for reform.”

Speaking on the Western conceptualisation of Madrassa (Islamic school system) and the negative labeling as aiding political violence, Professor Sseremba told the audience that “the failure of the colonial state dominates the definition and interpretation of Islam as closely as it did with the customs allowing Muslim societies to enjoy considerable autonomy in defining Islamic truth for themselves. One aspect in which the Muslims have enjoyed autonomy is the aspect of Islamic education, in the determination of what to teach. We can therefore say that Muslim societies have lived in some state of self-governance, in significant aspects of their affairs like Islamic education, marriage, divorce, inheritance, and so on. The International Centre for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD) and by extension the American government it represents has recycled the old culturalist, racist and Islamophobic assumptions of colonial anthropology by claim that the politics and violence of Muslim actors is posed by Islam or a certain interpretation of Islam, especially Salafism. The ICRD has no explanation for political violence apart from pointing to the Quran. Such culturalist, racist and Islamophobic narratives are founded by a laughable distinction between the West and East, between reason and tradition, between the secular and the religious as we all know.”

Professor Babou expressed a note caution that it is wrong for the West to argue that Islamic history is only limited to state-building and Jihad. According to him, those who frame Islam as bad as those who are scared that Islam might have a global followership that would negate the selfish ideologies of the West. For him, “The Islam that is problematic for them is the Islam that may lead to pan-Islamism. This is the Islam that has the potential of uniting Muslims beyond race, ethnicity, and geography and beyond languages, and which may create an umbrella identity of Muslims. This could be a threat to the West and its ambition of a cultural domination. More recently, we have to address political Islam, Jihadi Islam, but you know as I know that this is something very new.

Of course, there was militancy in Islam but even somebody like Uthman Dan Fodio needed to justify his use of violence. He produced extensive scholarship to convince himself and other Muslims that he was going that path because he had no other choice. El-Kanemi opposed his idea that militancy was not the solution. But in my view, this kind of Islam that is developing in Sub-Saharan Africa has less to do with Islam as a religion and more to do with the political and economic circumstances. I think that Islam has become the new radicalism. In my own work, I have interviewed leaders of Salafist movements in Africa and I was struck that many of these leaders were former Marxist and Maoist. They told me this themselves. They told me that the major tenet of Marxism and Maoism is radical social change and that since these ideologies are dead, the one which comes very close to achieving this was Islam. We are seeing new Islamic traditions that are developing in Africa; they are disconnected from the traditions that I talked about recently.

We have neglected our own reason and tradition of Islam. As long as there are economic disparities, injustices, and corruption in our countries, radical Islam will find a perfect soil to grow.”