The impact of cyberspace on legal development: the case of Islamic law

In her paper at the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2010, Shaheen Ali (University of Warwick) examined the impact of the Internet on the development of Islamic law.

This paper sought to explore the discourse of Internet fatawa relating to women and gender relations and its potential implications for evolving family law norms within a plural Islamic legal tradition. It engaged with selected fatawa drawn from three Internet sites (lslamtoday.com, IslamOnline.net, IslamOnline.com), posing the question whether this burgeoning field of communication reflects emerging discursive sites for Muslim women within a counter-hegemonic transnational and global ‘virtual’ space.

• What constituency (of Muslim women) do these ‘fatawa seekers’ represent, which countries are they based in and to what extent does the question posed have relevance beyond the country of the questioner?
• What is the profile of the Internet muftis (people qualified to give fatawa) and what schools of juristic thought (madhab) do they follow when handing down their fatawa?
• What sorts of questions are being posed and what areas of life are these most focused on?
• Are new communication systems (such as the Internet) essentially an enabling and empowering mechanism, in particular for Muslim women, who are often unable to articulate challenging and private questions in ‘public’ or face to face meetings? Or, is the fatawa site proliferation tantamount to yet another regulatory process to channel Muslim women towards a particular understanding and interpretation of Islam?
• Finally, in the absence of face to face question-answer sessions, are these fatawas being used with a pedagogical aim to educate Muslims in an increasingly globalised and internationalised world?

The paper argued that increasing access to the Internet challenges historical conceptions of legitimacy surrounding legislative prerogative of state and governments as well as regulatory norms (policy frameworks, legislation etc) arising from governmental and governance functions, particularly those enacted in the name of Islam. Further, that these ‘new’ cyberspace regulatory mechanisms serve as a global Muslim space for generating a transnational discourse encompassing a wide spectrum of legal norms exploring which set of rules to apply to a certain situation in issues relating to women and gender and why.

It also highlighted the ‘irrepressible’ plurality of the Islamic tradition, which is not lost even in the most contemporary communication systems, as each website analysed adopts a distinctive approach towards similar questions posed. Finally, that fatawa sites have enabled Muslim women, in particular from diasporic communities in the west. to raise questions and issues surrounding their lives which they would not have been able to frame in a face to face encounter due to the sensitive, private and at times challenging nature of the enquiry.

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Elizabeth Craig (University of Sussex) reports:

Shaheen sought to explore the discourse of Internet fatawa relating to women and gender relations, reflecting on the identity of both the questioners and the muftis and highlighting the particular engagement of those from diasporic communities in the west in this discourse. 
 
Examples from the three sites relating to dress and to remarriage after divorce illustrated the tensions between the muftis’ law and the ‘living’ law recognised in local Muslim communities – these “new cyberspace regulatory mechanisms” are contributing to the development of a “global Muslim space for generating a transnational discourse encompassing a wide spectrum of legal norms exploring which set of rules to apply to a certain situation in issues relating to women and gender and why”.
  
The issues raised in the paper generated a lot of interest amongst participants, who also engaged with the idea of the development of a counter-hegemonic ‘virtual’ space.

About Shaheen

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Shaheen Ali is a professor of law at the University of Warwick. She has consulted with numerous national and international organisations, including the British Council, the DFID, and UNICEF.
 
Shaheen’s teaching and research interests include human rights, Islamic law and jurisprudence, and gender and the law. She is currently leading the UKCLE funded project to develop an Islamic law curriculum.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010