Following Jacques Derrida’s (1981/2021, p. 6) position on prefaces, I believe that a conclusion should be part of the text contained in a book, not an external text that can be understood independently of the book. I see the conclusion as an opportunity to present the theory of the Islamic juridical vacuum in condensed form, utilizing the terminology developed in previous chapters. This is something I could not have done until this point.
Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss remind their readers that “the published word is not the final one, but only a pause in the never-ending process of generating theory” (Glaser & Strauss, 2017, p. 40). Following my pointing out in Chapter 1 that sharia studies do not currently have a theory, I present the notion of the Islamic juridical vacuum as a grounded theory that may be further developed, and also applied beyond Islamic studies in other fields that are structured by absence. The condensed theory only contains statements that may be considered generally true of vacuums, and it is therefore easy to derive testable predictions from the discussion below. I believe this is the right way of presenting my findings as it introduces a level of accountability. If my grounded theory makes erroneous predictions, the vacuum theory is wrong; however, as I am conservative in my claims and because I have been rigorous in my attempts to falsify the theory, I believe that it merely needs further development in some areas. A particular area that needs urgent attention is that of male perspectives and experiences of coercion, and further studies of female Islamic authorities are likewise needed (see Chapter 4).
I also add two arguments that are absent in previous chapters: first, on the textual grounding of Islamic divorce practices; and second, that the Islamic juridical vacuum may be detected in media databases, which means that researchers may quickly assess whether the vacuum described in this study also exists in their region.
1 The Vacuum Theory in Condensed Form
The Islamic juridical vacuum is generated by demand in a field of absence. Women, desperate to get out of Islamized coercive and honor-motivated control, and Islamized post-separation violence, approach Muslim leaders to request Islamic divorce. Marital breakdown is not “translated” into fiqh terminology until the late stages of conflict where it may become saturated in Islamic semiotic resources.
If a Muslim leader accepts his being framed as a qadi, he will generate a presence, and once this presence is rumored, a cascade effect puts him on a trajectory towards institutionalization. Yet the dynamics of control and violence in this pattern pose a security risk for qadis, because their Islamic juridical performance will be seen as an intervention in a conflict, and the party that is intervened against may threaten or assault the qadi in response. Together, the cascade effect and security risks cause trajectories of institutionalization to be interrupted because of resource depletion and/or threats of violence (or actual violence), meaning that presences in the vacuum are temporary as Muslim leaders oscillate between absence and presence.
It is important to note the selection mechanism governing who typically become a qadi in the vacuum. Women approach Muslim leaders whom they believe will be able to help them, and those who respond by providing such assistance are selected and put on the trajectory towards institutionalization. This means that people without formal training, let alone in fiqh, may become qadis in the Islamic juridical vacuum, and the site of adjudication may be a private apartment just as well as a mosque.
The selection mechanism does not lead to a field dominated by helpful (and oscillating) Muslim leaders; rather, Muslim leaders who tend to side with husbands and families against the women thrive in the vacuum, as doing so does not lead to security issues. In other words, their actions do not generate a presence and, therefore, they do not oscillate. In other words, the vacuum situation incentivizes Muslim leaders to side with the strongest party (usually the husband and family against the woman) as this avoids both the cascade effect and security issues.
The welfare state plays an important role in the generation of the Islamic juridical vacuum as, women, looking for help, often approach social workers, who have no relevant courses of action due to negative politics. Some social workers, therefore, engage in unauthorized practices, such as requesting the assistance of Muslim leaders and sometimes even putting pressure on them to take on the role of qadi themselves. It is women’s navigating the Islamic juridical vacuum that both generates demand and confirms the validity of parallel legal practices, because one cannot tactically navigate a social field without confirming the rules of the field (Certeau, 2011; Scott, 1990). These unauthorized practices are often well-known below the epistemic ceiling, but either they are unknown or knowledge about them is suppressed above it. Nevertheless, in practice, so-called “parallel” legal practices are not parallel below the ceiling; rather, sharia practices constitute an integrated part of how the welfare state operates. In short, above the ceiling sharia practices are conceptualized as parallel, even if they are in fact an integrated part of the welfare state below the ceiling.
The concept of absence or a vacuum is foreign to the epistemic community of presence, which instead assumes that the field is dominated by presences. This means that above the epistemic ceiling people believe that Muslim leaders (often narrowed down to imams) have jurisdiction; that is, they believe that Muslim leaders invest a significant quantity of resources so that they can preside over Islamic divorce cases. This imposes a systemic blindness on journalists, debaters, politicians, and most civil servants in the central administration of both municipalities and the welfare state (e.g. ministries and the top management of institutions such as the Danish police and the Agency of Family Law).
The systematic blindness has significant consequences because absence- related problems below the ceiling are continuously addressed as presence-related problems above it, and, therefore, policies designed to counter parallel legal practices have little to no effect. In practice, the epistemic community of presence often confuses notions of how the world is with how they believe the world ought to be – for example, that there ought to be a monopoly on family law in Denmark; however, this is merely a claimed or assumed monopoly. As this book and similar studies have demonstrated, the monopoly is imperfect and faces serious challenges. In practice, there is no freedom of divorce for a segment of Muslim women in Denmark, no matter what the Danish law says.
Parallel family law is demand driven, and, therefore, markedly different from parallel penal law which constitutes an imposed jurisdiction. When a leader of a social entity (e.g. a gang or a clan) contacts a victim in a criminal case to negotiate a solution without the involvement of the police, this is a parallel legal process that is imposed on the victim. Analyzed with the terminology developed in this book, this entity constitutes a presence imposing its jurisdiction, whereas the woman requesting Islamic divorce from a Muslim leader constitutes a search for presence in a field of absence.
There are significant differences between demand-driven and jurisdiction-driven parallel legal practices, because while the latter may be enforced by the entity that passes the verdict, such powerful enforcement mechanisms seldom exist in the former. Rather, rulings leading to presence are deferred and often unstable, and rulings may even oscillate between valid and invalid depending on how the post-ruling situation evolves. Similarly, rulings may be seen as valid in some social circles but invalid in others (and oscillate in both). This changes once the field transitions into a presence, as happened in Britain from the 1980s, but as I briefly point out in the following, despite significant institutionalization of parallel legal practices, Britain does not yet comprise a perfect state of presence.
Presence is not absolute. Therefore, perhaps I should have written “presence” throughout the previous chapters rather than presence; similarly, I probably should have written “parallel” legal practices as these practices are in fact integrated into the welfare state, not parallel. I refrained from doing so as it would have introduced complexity at too early a stage with little benefit. However, there is no perfect presence, not even in Britain; likewise, there are no perfect absences or actual vacuums as these contain oscillating presences. Therefore, absence should also be “absence”.
The transition from “absence” to “presence” transfers judicial power from husbands and families to “parallel” legal institutions. This is what generates both the cascade effect and security issues: women wanting to break free of control (cascade) and husbands and families enforcing control (security). In conditions of “absence”, the strongest person in the room decides what sharia says, but when there is a planned “presence”, qadis decide, and, unlike in a field of “absence”, these qadis are typically selected by Islamic institutions because of their religious educational credentials, not by women wanting Islamic divorce. In a field of “presence” Muslim leaders and Islamic divorce councils cannot do more than pose as “presences”; observable reductions in deferral attests to their success, while their unstable (legal) performativity, as Bowen frames it, attests to their failures (Bowen, 2016, pp. 88–102). In other words, the field of “presence” is not characterized by perfect “parallel” legal practices; rather, it is one in which a third significant actor has entered the scene (the qadi), in addition to the husband and the family, and in Britain this third actor has become powerful enough to make effective interventions.
The high degree of institutionalization of the Islamic Sharia Council (ISC), established in 1982, can be discerned from its warning against fake councils utilizing their name.1 In 2016, the ISC registered its logo as a trademark with the Intellectual Property Office,2 meaning that it can take legal action against fraudulent use, but in 2024 the fraudulent use seemed to be so out of control that its webpage began to warn against “hundreds of fake sharia councils”3 mushrooming in the United Kingdom. Such degrees of institutionalization are non-existent in mainland Europe, but as I have demonstrated in this book, a field of “presence” is emerging in Denmark, and in at least some other European countries. The Islamic Divorce Council, described in Chapter 8, has not yet even been publicly announced, and public awareness is an important characteristic of institutions.
Finally, it is important to underline that the theory of the Islamic juridical vacuum does not predict that Islamic divorce councils will necessarily emerge and stabilize as institutions, although this is a possible outcome. The demand for “parallel” legal institutions may be curbed by positive politics or other variables, which means only a slight vacuum is generated, insufficient to create “parallel” legal institutions.
2 Khidir
It is a conception among some Muslim leaders in Denmark that one must send three letters to a husband before issuing an Islamic divorce without his consent, so that he is provided with an opportunity to protest and/or enter into talks about reconciliation. This practice has been adopted from Britain where it is normative (Bowen, 2016); informants would often be explicit in their reference to British Islamic divorce councils’ procedures, adding that: this is how things are done in Islam.
The tradition of sending three letters is a late invention (Hobsbawm & Trevor-Roper, 2012). It emerged in Britain around the time when Islamic divorce councils began to appear in the 1970s and 1980s, and it is grounded in the Quranic story of Moses’ meeting with a stranger, traditionally understood to be Khidir (18:65–82). Moses journeys with Khidir to learn from him, but Khidir has stipulated that Moses is not to ask about anything before Khidir himself mentions it. When Moses breaks this stipulation the first and second times, Khidir forgives him, but the third time Khidir states that their paths must part.
When John R. Bowen asked one of the founders of the ISC, Suhaib Hassan, about the council’s early efforts to standardize procedures, Hassan explained the process:
Suhaib: I drafted the procedures, and I did not have any models. So I wrote the models for letters that we send husbands, and we still are using them thirty years later! But we should really revisit them …
JRB: How did you decide to send out letters?
Suhaib: I had no models. Shariʿa says to give three chances, as in the story of Moses and Khidir, in Sura al-Kahf, where Moses tells him not to speak, and he does, and then again, and then after the third time, Moses says, “That’s over and we will go separate ways.” Only later did I see that British courts also send three letters. Also, later on I saw books of the cases the Prophet decided. … We added procedures from time to time. For example, we added talāq tafwīz [delegated divorce] as another form of divorce. (Bowen, 2016, p. 81)
When Bowen later inquired with a local imam (Shahid), representing the Birmingham branch of the Muslim Law (Sharia) Council, he “gave the same reason for three letters as did Suhaib, from the Islamic tradition of giving three chances, as shown in the story of Musa and Khidir” (Bowen, 2016, p. 86). However, as noted above, this tradition has not only spread within Britain; the Islamic Divorce Council described in Chapter 8 adopted this practice from Britain, and in Chapter 3 I described how the imam Haitham evaluated an Islamic divorce as void due to the absence of three warning letters.
When I inquired of Haitham whether he knew “the background for sending three letters as they do in Britain”, he answered “No”, adding, “I have just noted that it made sense.” He then explained that it did not really matter to him how it was textually grounded because it was more important to him that divorces were conducted in an orderly manner that takes the rights and well-being of both parties into consideration. When I stated that the rule was grounded in the story about Khidir, Haitham immediately grasped the textual foundation. This merely became a fun fact in our conversation, not a topic for deeper contemplation on the textual grounding of Islamic divorce practices.
My reason for emphasizing the grounding of this particular sequence of the Islamic divorce procedure is that it highlights how Islamic divorce rules may not merely be produced in context, as is commonly assumed: a process in which Islamic scholars analyze a situation and derive the appropriate rules from texts after deliberation with each other. Such processes do exist in the form of fatwas but, as demonstrated in previous chapters, these seldom have significant influence on actual practices. Therefore, I suggest that Islamic divorce practices may also (or maybe even primarily) be produced by context: a process whereby Muslim leaders respond to situations in ways they find appropriate, utilizing the semiotic resources they have at hand. This fits with how many of my informants improvise rules and procedures in response to situations, and how such improvisations often function as templates for future action (cf. Bowen, 2016, p. 81ff.; Petersen, 2022, pp. 167–72).
Muslim leaders are often both creative and practical when solving specific problems by improvising with Islamic rules and procedures. As Bowen writes, “The widely practiced rule that one year’s separation constitutes grounds for divorce is only indirectly grounded in fiqh, according to the Qadi, Atif, at Islamic Sharia Council in Leyton.” He then quotes Atif’s saying,
Well, the scholars said yesterday that many jurists had different views about this: some said sixty years, some ten, some five, some one, and they took the easiest number. Those jurists’ rulings had to do with the cases where the husband had disappeared, but the scholars now apply it to the length of separation. (Bowen, 2016, p. 84)
Again, qadis use the Islamic semiotic resources at hand to improvise Islamic rules and procedures. This points to something important: it is commonly assumed that “The force of law is the force of custom” (Caputo, 2018, p. 203), but the origin of a custom may not have the long history that people assume; after all, “We credit the law with authority, like money without a gold or silver standard to back it up” (Caputo, 2018, p. 204). In other words, even if this ad hoc improvisation of Islamic rules and procedures became publicly known (neither Suhaib nor Atif seem concerned with keeping it a secret), it is unlikely to do any harm to the legitimacy of Islamic divorce processes, because they do not derive their legitimacy from scriptural sources. Rather, Islamic rules (sharia) derives their legitimacy from being viewed as Islamic in a process of semiosis whereby certain meanings become authorized as Islamic by the religious authorities who influence social consensus. “The origin of the law might be just that, that someone seizes the moment and asserts authority and others fall in line”, and if successful, such action will become a template for future action (Caputo, 2018, pp. 203–204). I suggest that this constitutes an accurate description of how many Islamic divorce rules and procedures emerge.
3 Hidden in Plain Sight
With inspiration from Aaron Hughes (2025), in the following I argue that the Islamic juridical vacuum has been hidden in plain sight for more than 30 years. Women have told their stories and journalists have repeatedly described “parallel” legal processes, albeit typically conceptualized above the epistemic ceiling. The main point with identifying concepts from this book in old media stories is to argue that if such stories exist in other European countries, then this is a strong indication that Islamic juridical vacuums also exist in these countries. In other words, this is a good starting point if one wants to test whether an Islamic juridical vacuum exists in a specific country without spending more than an afternoon searching through a digital media database.
In 1992, the newspaper Ekstra Bladet interviewed a convert to Islam who described that she was the second wife of a Syrian Muslim man:
Half a year ago, Margit’s life was changed. Her husband Ahmad began talking about getting a second wife. Initially Margit believed he was joking. … Ahmad travelled to Cypres to be introduced to an Arab woman while Margit was nervous at home in Odense. When Ahmad returned, he had married Groud from Lebanon – both an Islamic and civil marriage. “It was a bit strange. I did not really believe it until I saw the marriage certificate and pictures of the bride and groom. It was disgusting. I got a big lump in my stomach and I asked him if he wanted to divorce me then, but he did not.” (Ekstra Bladet, 1992)
The story follows the pattern described by Amina, Nabila, and others in Chapter 4. Ahmad moved in with his new wife, and Margit tried to make the polygamous nikah work. As she explained to the journalist,
It took four months before I got my act together. The day it finally happened, I was so nervous that it took me almost half an hour to get up the stairs to their apartment. But it actually went OK. We have not become best friends, but we have learned to accept each other.
The journalist concludes, “Ahmad does what he can to please both his wives. Every other day he is with Margit, but only until bedtime, because Groud does not like sleeping alone.” Although the narrative is a bit vague in some parts, it seems safe to say that beyond the Islamic polygamy described in the quotations above, it at least includes nikah captivity, Islamized coercive control, weaponized talaq, and the kidnapping of one of Margit’s children to Syria. In other words, it references a range of the phenomena investigated in this book. Although Margit’s story is a rare phenomenon in Danish media in the 1990s, it demonstrates that the topic of this book has been described by women themselves for more than 30 years.
When Islam, Muslims, and integration became important political topics in the run-up to the 2001 parliamentary elections, Danish media began to take a greater interest in the problems described in this book. I have documented this in previous chapters by frequently pointing out that journalists have also described “parallel” legal practices. A few examples that are all more than twenty years old underline my point. In 2004, the newspaper BT pointed out that weaponized talaq is a problem: “Muslim women in Denmark are forced to hand over everything – also child support – to their husband if they want to become Islamically divorced” (Krog, 2004), and in 2001 BT interviewed a woman who had experienced Islamized post-separation violence and who told the journalist,
He continued to seek me out even though we were divorced. As a Muslim, he does not recognize that the marriage is over because it has not been dissolved in the Islamic way. I still got beaten up when he showed up [at my door]. (Nederland, 2001)
Danish police have also noticed the phenomenon of nikah captivity.
Detective Inspector Hermann Overgaard from Odense has also heard that Danish girls can have difficulty getting out of their Muslim marriages: “We hear from alternative sources when we investigate other cases that Danish girls have problems. It might involve violence. But as soon as we tell them that they have no obligation to speak out, we often get no explanation. I do not understand the Danish girls.” (Østlund, 2002)
However, as a specialist at Aarhus Municipality explains, “The girls’ problem is that they do not understand that that are not legally married. They do not understand that they can just leave” (Østlund, 2002). While the latter comment may illustrate that we have come a long way in our understanding of nikah captivity, it is also important to note that information campaigns are still the main political strategy to address it (see Chapter 6): that is, informing women that they can just leave.
There is an abundance of stories like these in the Danish media, and if similar stories have been reported in other countries, they are a strong indication that Islamic juridical vacuums exist there as well. In other words, an ethnographic study – following the methodology I have laid out – should be able to identify oscillating “presences” and, depending on the size of the demand, may also identify Islamic divorce councils, either as temporary “presences” or as stabilized institutions similar to those I have found in Denmark, Mahmoud Jaraba (2019, pp. 92–93) has found in Germany, and Mulki Al-Sharmani, Sanna Mustasaari, and Abdirashid A. Ismail (2017, pp. 276–281) have found in Finland.
The Islamic Sharia Council (2024): Fake Councils & Bad Practice. https://www.islamic-sharia.org/new-page (accessed 14 October 2024).
Trademark number: UK00003202991.
See note 1.