The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog

Student Blogger - #dgemw Blog: Akbar Ganji’s Keynote Address

Akbar Ganji, Iranian journalist and dissident gave an extremely interesting Keynote Address to close the conference. The text and video of his talk will be available here shortly. I will focus here on the possible solutions that he suggested to the problem of human rights and discrimination against women in Islam. This is only a small part of his talk and therefore it is highly recommended for interested parties to read the text or watch the video.

The commandments of the Qur'an can be divided into primary and secondary commandments. If a problem is not solved by the primary commandments, they can be suspended. The problem can then be solved by issuing a secondary commandment. However, this suspension has never been used to deal with the problem of women. The Shia Muslims believe that Mohammed was followed by 12 imams, one of whom is missing. Until he returns, all of the laws should be suspended. Others argue that judges can take the place of the missing imam until he returns.

Student Blogger - #dgemw Blog: Kinship and Civic Myths

Suad Joseph notes that it is interesting that we are still wondering about the relationship between women's rights and democracy. They are quite unfinished projects that are hard to contain and hard to define. The idea of democracy that we usually use is bundled with rights. It also related to citizenship, which is both a question of formal law and one of rights and responsibilities and how these are carried out. Citizenship is defined by civic myths. Civic myths inform how people see themselves and each other and what their relationships are with their community.

Joseph would like to focus on the civic myth of kinship or the kin contract. When we think about kinship we tend to focus on family law. And this makes intuitive sense. The relationship between family and state is important. However, we should not forget that the family has the power to shape the state. We should look at the family as the point of departure when looking at women's rights. Family relationships have a dynamic force of their own and they have a causal connection with material reality. We should ask why women stay in their families? Can family and kinship be understood in the context of care? We should not ignore the importance of care and attachment when in examining control and subordination. This is why Joseph does not focus on patriarchy even though does not deny its existence.

In order to illustrate her point she presents the example of Lebanon. One of Lebanon's civic myths is sectarian pluralism. This myth insists that different religious sects require different personal status laws. The fallacy is that the eighteen religious sects are not discrete. There is not really unity within the sects and there is much cross-similarity. In reality, the connection and obligation to the family supersedes that to the religious sect. And this is too often neglected in analysis. How do we understand rights in a society where one must be connected to kin networks in order to engage in society? Kin networks must be seen as shaping political realities, not merely subject to them.

Student Blogger - #dgemw Blog: Freedom of Speech and the Exclusion of Women from the Labor Force

Yakin Ertürk began by explaining the value of the historical perspective in reform movements. Historical vision helps us come back to reality. Otherwise, we look at the world in snapshots and differences are highlighted. A historical approach allows similarities to come through. Patriarchy seems to be consistent throughout the world, though reactions to it are different. The historical perspective allows us to recognize that resistance to oppression has existed throughout history.

In 1963, Ertürk spent a year at a Catholic high school here in Hyde Park. In school he would challenge her teacher, a nun, on the Catholic Church's view of contraception and she influenced some of her fellow students. She was very much influenced by the democratic approach of this teacher who allowed her to speak even though she did not like what was being said. Years later, in Saudi Arabia she taught a class where she was not able to speak freely. She was also influenced by the young women with whom she interacted and the way that they lived without the freedom to say what they wanted to say. She recognizes that freedom of speech is not the only democratic ideal, but it is definitely an important.

Throughout the conference, we have spoken about family law and Shari'a as the main constraints on equality for women in the Muslim world. We can agree that women's rights are constrained and that democracy, where it exists in the Middle East, is fragile. However, Ertürk points out that these are not the only constraints. In order to accurately assess the situation we need a political economy approach in addition to the religious/cultural approach related to identity. This approach looks at material resources. The countries of the Middle East can be divided into two categories, countries that are rich in oil and countries that are not. Ertürk has noticed that the countries that do not have oil supplies have experienced significantly more reform than the ones that have. The lack of oil makes it more difficult to keep women out of the labor force. There is little reason for one to participate politically if she is excluded economically; people seek change in politics to change their material existence. We need to look at the labor codes in these countries. In the oil rich countries they are generally either protectionist or biased and the result seriously undermines the economic position of women. Islam is often used to justify such legislation and this is a serious loss to democracy. The implication seems to be that freedom of speech is not enough; without economic participation freedom of speech is less likely to be exercised.