When I arrived in Palestine in the fall of 2013 to spend my sabbatical at Birzeit University, I did not know that I was going to be drawn into a fascinating societal and intellectual debate that would captivate me for the next seven years or so. My research interest, continuing my previous fieldwork in Iran (2009), was about “law in context.” What I found was a country – under occupation and thus functioning under very difficult conditions – with a vibrant civil society, a state that despite the struggle over its territory established itself with all available means, and a Sharia establishment that reflected the full range and variety of different interpretations of what is normally called “Islamic law” or Sharia.
I stepped into the middle of a hot discussion about khulʿ (divorce) and more generally about women’s extended access to divorce, which had already begun in 2012 before the issuing of the new ruling, the Supreme Judge’s 2012 taʿmīm. Khulʿ continued to be debated in the public sphere even after the implementation of the ruling in the Sharia Courts. I decided to take up the topic in my book because looking through this lens enabled me to grasp what interests me most: how different societies, including my own, create and deal with gender roles, gender clichés, gendered rights, and hierarchies, as well as how politics and law interact. I returned to Palestine in 2014, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Since 2014, the debate about khulʿ was slowly replaced by a new aspect that became more dominant by 2017 and 2018: the perspective of international law. The question was brought up, and as always in Palestine, controversially discussed: how to reconcile the requirement of gender equality and equal rights for men and women entailed by international law with the existing outdated national legislation in the West Bank and Gaza. Whereas at first my idea had been to keep the focus on the khulʿ debate, I decided to take this shift in the public debate as an opportunity to broaden my understanding of public discourse in Palestine, to understand the interaction between the Sharia establishment, civil society, and the state with regard to family law and the construction of gender and gender roles.
My first and most deeply felt gratitude is to the Palestinians, those academics and non-academics who always welcomed and were open to my questions, who gave of their time patiently answering my questions, and who invested a lot of effort in explaining to me their opinions and points of view with regard to the legal discussions, especially on the legal position of women and women’s rights under the extremely difficult political situation. I sincerely thank my old friend Nazmi Jubeh, Professor of History and Archaeology at Birzeit University, who was always ready to listen, explain, and help. Palestine was new to me after my work in Iran in the preceding years. I owe him much in terms of understanding Palestine, the country, its history, and its present situation. I am also grateful to Helga Baumgarten, who at that time was a Professor of Political Sciences at Birzeit University. She introduced me into the Palestinian academic field and helped me better understand the academic system as well as the political background in the West Bank and Gaza. I profited much from her profound knowledge of the Palestinian political system. In both of them I always had friends I could consult and rely upon in what I experienced as sometimes difficult situations. I also thank Jamal Juda, Professor of History at Nablus University, who introduced me to colleagues at his university and arranged fascinating meetings with them. I thank Asem Khalil and Jamil Salim, professors at Birzeit University for the time they took to listen to my research questions and Professor Mudar Qasis who accepted me as a visiting professor at the Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights in 2018. At Al-Quds University, I am grateful to Professor Mustafa Abu Sway in the Theology Department, Professor Munir Nuseibeh in the Law Department, and Professor Amne Badran in the Department of Political Sciences. Bärbel Stark at the office of International Relations did a great job connecting me to many colleagues.
In the West Bank, I met with and talked to many people who left great impressions on me. I name only some of them: I am very grateful to Sheikh Yusuf Id‘is, at that time Supreme Judge in Ramallah who allowed me in 2013 to attend his class at Birzeit University and gave me an interview. I was deeply impressed by his scholarly personality and his openness and engagement with his students but also with me. I was and I still am very impressed by all the women and men in Palestinian society who struggle to improve the legal and social conditions for women. First and foremost, I am indebted to Sumud al-Damiri, Judge of the Sharia Appeal Court and Head of Prosecution in Family Law. She is not only a very engaged jurist with a high degree of professionality but also an open-minded woman with clear visions and ideas for the development of her society and a sharp analytical understanding of what could be the solution to many of the current problems. I thank Laila Abed-Rabho who put me in contact with three female judges in the West Bank and enabled me to interview them. Of civil society actors, I want to thank the late Nihaya Muhammad (d. 2015) for two long interviews that opened my eyes to the position of civil society. I also thank the late Maha Abu Dayyah (d. 2015), Randa Siniora, and many others for long talks and much information about not only the positions of their organizations but also different projects and strategies. Basma Khatib, working at the German Representative Office in Ramallah, gave me invaluable advice for my research and connected me to very interesting people. I owe much to her in-depth knowledge of legal and social debates in Palestine, and I thank her for our long talks. Juman Qunays introduced me to the media in Palestine and her program Lāzim Naḥkī. With regard to the State of Palestine, I thank Hasan al-‘Uri, legal advisor to the president, for two long interviews; I also thank many employees of the Ministries of Justice and Women’s Affairs. I am grateful to Dr. Haifa Agha, former Minister of Women’s Affairs who took time to have a long talk with me, and Omar Iwadallah of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an inspiring interview about the future of international law in Palestine.
I am grateful to Bettina Marx, Head of the Heinrich-Böll-Office (Ramallah) and Reham Alhelsi, who enabled me to travel finally to Gaza in April 2019 to evaluate one of Heinrich-Böll-Foundation’s projects about the khulʿ law in Gaza. With their help, I was able to have interviews with Zaynab al-Ghunaymi of the civil society, Hasan al-Juju from the Sharia establishment, and Huda Naim, a state representative. I was impressed by the cooperation between these three very different personalities, and their joint effort to improve the legal status of women. This very short (due to travel restrictions) field trip to Gaza considerably deepened my understanding of the legal debate in Gaza and helped to reconsider my former results, which I had gained from watching TV programs and reading the news and announcements of different participants of the debate.
I could not have written this book without the invaluable gift of time provided by relief from my university duties. Therefore, I thank the Käthe- Hamburger-Kolleg in Bonn that granted me a stipend for three months in the summer of 2014. From 2016 to 2019, I had the chance to be part of an European Union project “Understanding Sharia: Past Perfect/Imperfect Present,” which led me, together with my esteemed colleagues Robert Gleave (Exeter), Knut Vikør (Bergen), Léon Buskens (Leiden), and our postdocs Nijmi Edres, Mahmood Kooria, Omar Anchassi, and Eirik Hovden, to discuss in depth questions of how the past was used in current debates. It sharpened my perception of this aspect and of the arguments used in Palestine in the family law debates. Our meetings were always incredibly stimulating and their comments invaluable to me.
Finally, I want to thank the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin that accepted me as a fellow in the academic year 2018/19. This was a great opportunity for me to finish this book. The Wissenschaftskolleg provided an inspiring environment for me to meet many colleagues from different disciplinary backgrounds and benefit from their views.
I am especially thankful to all who read and commented on my book or parts of it: Amr Hamzawy (Stanford) and Christoph Möllers (Berlin) as well as Fritz Schulze (Göttingen).
I relied on a great team assisting me at Göttingen University. I thank Lara-Lauren Goudarzi-Gereke who was extremely helpful and quick in finding new articles and websites, and tracing information online. I am indebted to Ghada Issa who transliterated many of the recorded audio and TV programs and also the Qāḍī al-Quḍāt’s course at Birzeit University with patience and accuracy, discussing with me the pitfalls of the Palestinian dialect. I am thankful to Judith Koschorke and Bettina von Linde-Suden for their help. I also thank Claudia Winter for proofreading the text in her usual, absolutely reliable and very precise way. I thank Judith Tucker and Susanne Dahlgren, the editors of the series “Women and Gender. The Middle East and the Islamic World” for including my book in their series. I thank Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar for coordinating the publication process, Ilana Brown for excellent editing and Dinah Rapliza for the layout, and Brill for publishing it. Any shortcomings are mine.
As always, I owe much to the love and support of my family, my husband Kamran and my sons Daniel and Jonas. I thank them for their interest in the topic, for reading and engaging in sometimes quite lively and controversial discussions with me about the questions within this book and many others.
Berlin, June 17, 2020