ABSTRACT
This chapter features the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board, a women’s organization based in Lucknow involved in the re-interpretation of Islamic laws concerning women – not only challenging the patriarchal constructions of the Islamic laws by male clergy but also seeking reforms within the Islamic sharia. The Board members as an informal adjudicative body interpret Islamic laws of polygamy, divorce and maintenance, and uphold the rights of the women with regard to the cases that approach it. This chapter focusses on the divergent opinions regarding the Muslim Personal Law and argues that the experience of the board with regard to lived realities of women and their problems makes the conceptions of Islam very different to the board members. This perspective thus becomes crucial in concluding that the Muslim positioning to law is fragmented, critical and complex along lines of gender and religious ideology and not uniform, linear and simple as commonly presumed.
