ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the relationship between legal texts and social practices, ending with a note on forms of modernity and feminism that do not take the West as its model, but position themselves within an Islamic tradition. It also focuses on female property ownership has been an important contribution in countering a perspective that conceptualizes Islamic family law exclusively in terms of "patriarchy," there is a caveat here. The flexibility of Islamic law is also underscored when turning to the debate on the origins of legal doctrine and practice. Women's rights with regard to property are a particularly apt topic to undermine one-sided notions of patriarchy and women's subordination. A focus on legal reforms may obscure how contractual provisions, in particular the marriage contract, may affect women's position. Although modernization and feminism are often equated with secularization, some recent work deals with new trends in Islamic family law in terms of the development of "Islamic" modernity and feminism.
