This paper focuses on competing appropriations of international women’s rights standards in the framework of the Moroccan Equity and Reconciliation Commission (ERC) and its follow-up projects. I argue that, even if the ERC’s gender approach has been introduced as part of international models of transitional justice, it is geared toward earlier women’s rights and human rights activism, as well as to established state practices of at least selectively supporting women’s rights. Like political reform in general, the ERC and its gender approach are an outcome of internal, long-time dynamics of change. Within the ERC’s politics of gender, there exists a tendency to depoliticize women’s rights activism in the process of reconciliation by making women a target for welfare measures and “human development.” Yet, at the same time, the officially recognized gender approach also allows for strategies to broaden the basis for women’s rights activism by making women’s experiences of violence during the “Years of Lead” (the period of fierce repression under the rule of Hassan II), an issue of concern in the framework of its new politics of memory. The implementation of the ERC’s gender approach can be interpreted as an example of how women’s rights activism may be able to push its agenda while adjusting to both transnational discourses and national politics.
This article is devoted to an analysis of Algerian court cases. It focuses on family law in practice, in order to shed light on the disputed character of this realm of law and the ambiguity involved in its reform. The aim of the article is to question the assumption of an intrinsic opposition between the (traditional/Muslim) family on the one hand, and (modern) state law on the other. It will be argued that the legal regulation of the family, far from being simply imposed by the state, represents a dynamic process in which different actors with different interests and orientations partake. The material used consists mainly of decisions taken by the Algerian Supreme Court covering the period from 1963 (the year of the its creation) to 1990.
Taking Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī as an example, this article suggests looking at neo-conservative Islamic discourse on homosexuality in connection with the enduring vehemence with which this discourse upholds religiously framed notions of marriage and the family while continuously making adaptations on questions of women’s rights in order to accommodate political and societal change. In his writings, al-Qaraḍāwī systematically treats the topic of homosexuality in connection with the central theme of his programme of wasaṭiyya gravitating around the legitimate ‘Islamic’ family which actually proves to be a hybrid of national state sanctioned familism and a decontextualised ideal of sexual difference as an eternal ‘cosmic’ principle. While contributing itself to their politicisation, Islamic discourse constructs both family and sexuality as lying beyond the reach of (secular) politics. Naturalised and sacralised notions of marriage and sexuality thereby warrant a realm for religious authority to rise to legitimately speak in public. So far, research on homosexuality and Islam has largely focused on religious and juridical qualifications as well as on questions of categorisation. The main argument presented here is that the ideological zeal in Islamic discourse on the topic is always also more basically directed against any attempt at transferring the language of (secular) rights to issues of gender and sexuality.Key words: heteronormativity, Islamic discourse, homosexuality, sexual rights, Islamic normativity.
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