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Amrikan Shari'a

The Reconstruction of Islamic Family Law in the United States

Saminaz Zaman holds an MA in International and Comparative Legal Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Currently a second-year graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where her fields of study are Southwest Asian and Islamic Civilization and International Communication, she also works as a researcher for the Islam in the West Program at Harvard University. Address: The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford, MA 02155, USA. [email: saminaz.zaman{at}tufts.edu and saminaz.zaman{at}gmail.com]

This article examines the growth and development of the hybridized practice of Muslim laws in the shadow of the American legal system, a form of unofficial law that may be called amrikan shari'a. Following the immigration trajectory of many American Muslims, transnational information links forged by wide-scale immigration are explored, particularly the innovative use of new online resources available to Muslim immigrants in America and the proliferation of online fiqh discussion groups, which has fostered the very American character of the do-it-yourself mufti. A further section considers several mahr cases that have reached American courtrooms and compares one such case with a similar English case, which was decided rather differently. The article concludes with an assessment of how the Bush government's ‘War on Terror’ and domestic US developments, such as legalizing gay marriage in Massachusetts and the increasing presence of second-generation Muslim Americans, combine to affect the future of amrikan shari'a within a secular legal system.

Key Words: Amrikan Shari'a • Angrezi Shariat • cyber-muftis • dower • fiqh • internet • mahr • Muslims • pluralism • Shari'a • Councils, USA

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