Abstract

Islamic fundamentalism (Islamic neo-traditionalism) is an important component of Islamic identity struggles in the three South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The contested role, status, and legal rights of women provide a focus for comparative study, and the treatment of women in the courts showcases the problematic relation of religious and civil law. The cases of Shah Bano in India and Safia Bibi in Pakistan display (1) the radically different ways fundamentalism influences judicial processes; (2) the varying challenges that confront Muslims in different polities (in India, the maintenance of Islamic identity; in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the evolution of a just and democratic Islamic state); and (3) the fact that the single gravest problem confronting Muslims regardless of political frontiers and varying structures of civil government is whether piety requires that religious law formulated in premodern cultures be regarded as fixed and binding today.