ABSTRACT
Increasingly, today, women find the traditional liberal/legal choice between freedom and faith, or equal rights and religion, wanting. The challenge for law in the twenty-first century is to actualize plural rights and values in all spheres of women's lives. This chapter explores the specific challenges posed to traditional legal understandings of religion and culture by women reformers who, rather than choosing liberty or equality, demand both. Paradoxically, fundamentalists take advantage of the legal tradition of deference to religion, obtaining exceptions from gender equality norms in the name of religious liberty. Women fight back in turn, questioning previously accepted religious dogma and insisting on the compatibility of religion and rights, faith and freedom. The actual plurality of values and sentiments within the Muslim Indian community could not be so easily contained or disregarded.
