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From Issue: 988 [Read full issue]
Preserving Religion
It is widely agreed upon by legal scholars, both Sunni and Shiite, that the sharia serves to promote and preserve a few fundamental interests. The "goals of the sacred law" most commonly articulated are: religion, life, property, intellect, and lineage.
In traditional Sunni law, "preserving religion" to a large extent meant establishing and supporting religious institutions and authorities, punishing blasphemy and apostasy, and generally finding ways to secure Islam's place in society. In this context, the establishment of secular or civil marriage would seem on the face of it to be undermining of religion. If people could have a civil marriage, then Muslim women could marry non-Muslim men and there would be no requirement for the children of such a union to be Muslim. Indeed, in Lebanon, where civil registration of marriage was introduced in 2013, the Sunni Grand Mufti Shaykh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani issued a fatwa against it, saying, "any Muslim with legal or executive authority in Lebanon who supports the legalization of civil marriage is an apostate and outside the religion of Islam". Similarly, most Christian and Jewish religious officials in Muslim-majority nations and Israel also feel that civil marriages will defeat their attempts to "preserve religion."
A reformist view of the sharia, which departs from traditional Sunni law, looks at the goals of the sharia somewhat differently. In the first place, beginning with the early modern scholar Ibn Ashur, reformists have added "freedom" to the goals. Further, since the establishment of modern Muslim nation-states, reformist scholars who have seen the tremendous capacity of the modern state for interference in personal matters have tended to shift from a paternalistic model of the state to one based on personal liberty. While the goals of the sharia are the same, the proper role of the state is now seen as providing a secure environment in which individuals can pursue their understanding of these interests, as long as they do not violate the rights of others.
Most importantly, we have seen that if Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities wish to retain their right to interpret their own family laws, especially if their interpretations are traditional, there will continue to be individuals who seek their own interests above orthodoxy and communal solidarity. These individuals will bedevil the system through court shopping and insincere conversions, leading, at times, to apostasy scandals. False conversions undermine trust in a community. Apostasy scandals create trauma and can trigger human rights violations. This undermines, rather than preserves religion. There is little doubt that the establishment of civil marriage will cause a growth in the secular sector. At the same time, perhaps those who adhere to their religious communities will have more sincerity—a valuable quality in any faith.
Compiled From:
"Could Civil Marriage Help 'Preserve Religion' in Muslim-Majority Countries?" - Ingrid Mattson