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Sharia Courts and Muslim Personal Law in India: Intersecting Legal Regimes
Author(s) -
Lemons Katherine
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
law and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1540-5893
pISSN - 0023-9216
DOI - 10.1111/lasr.12351
Subject(s) - secularism , law , sharia , supreme court , political science , legal pluralism , state (computer science) , islam , sociology , legal realism , legal research , politics , history , archaeology , algorithm , computer science
In July 2005, a Delhi lawyer filed suit with the Supreme Court of India seeking to ban “sharia courts” ( dar ul qazas ) and Islamic legal opinions, arguing that they constitute a “parallel judicial system” that undermines the state's legal institutions. The Supreme Court decided in 2014 that dar ul qazas are not parallel but appropriate alternative forums. In this article, I analyze several divorce cases in Delhi and Patna dar ul qazas to show that, rather than being alternative or parallel, dar ul qazas intersect with state courts. Attending to this intersection, I argue, has implications for how we understand legal pluralism, secularism, and the relation between them. Specifically, I argue that because of how cases travel between dar ul qazas and state courts, dar ul qazas help to consolidate the oppositions between religious and secular law, kin relations, and rights upon which secularism relies.