used the courts to protect property rights. The reg-
istration of a property sale, a loan, or the establish-
ment of a waqf provided a written record if
challenged. When women were involved in litiga-
tion, it usually was a lawsuit over the denial of
property rights. Finally, for all women the difficul-
ties of going to court to protect their rights in the
face of family opposition would have been daunt-
ing. Only women who had strong personalities or
support networks would have been able to do so.
Urban middle- and upper-class women had ac-
cess to the Ottoman legal system, and the legal sys-
tem usually upheld the rights granted to women in
the Sharì≠a. At the same time many women faced
obstacles in using this system. Ultimately, the sys-
tem upheld basic patriarchal structures of society.
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Margaret L. MeriwetherSouth AsiaSouth Asia’s relatively well-established legal sys-
tem allows Muslim women to exercise their rights
in marriage, divorce, maintenance, custody, and in-
heritance under Sharì≠a and secular laws. Their
ability to do so depends on their level of education,
and their economic, political, and sociocultural
south asia 377situation. The continuation of feudal patriarchal
social structures, poverty, widespread illiteracy, and
cumbersome court procedures tend to work against
women. The struggles over legislative changes in
India and Pakistan demonstrate the difficulties
faced by women in realizing their rights. Despite
the ostensible success of the Indian women’s move-
ment in India (which before 1947 included Pakis-
tan and Bangladesh), every legislative initiative that
improved women’s rights relating to inheritance,
divorce, and polygamy was strongly resisted by
conservatives of both Muslim and Hindu commu-
nities. Following partition, despite constitutional
and legislated rights, the same forces actively oppose
the realization of rights, often citing the same polit-
ical and social reasons that devolve around family
and community loyalty, adversely affecting poor,
rural, and semi-literate women.
After 1947, with the creation of Pakistan and
later of Bangladesh, the safeguards under Sharì≠a
laws, such as a waiting and arbitration period after
declaration of divorce, were legislatively and ad-
ministratively tightened, as were laws on polygamy
and inheritance. Indian Muslim law remained
without such safeguards, but Sharì≠a laws inter-
preted by secular civil courts have benefited women.india
In India a number of cases have highlighted the
inadequacies of the Dissolution of Muslim Mar-
riages Act (DMMA) in the absence of safeguards
particularly with regard to maintenance, divorce,
and polygamy. The Indian courts had used the
mahror bridal gift as the compensation due to
women at divorce in place of maintenance. In the
Bai Tahira case the court, citing section 125 of the
Criminal Procedure Code 1973, ruled that it was
the obligation of a divorced husband to provide
maintenance if the wife were indigent. This set a
precedent for other maintenance cases, in particu-
lar Muhammad Ahmed v. Shah Bano Begum,
which created a political furor and led to the pas-
sage of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights
on Divorce) Act 1986. This act provides some lati-
tude to courts in Section 2, stating that a Muslim
husband’s obligation extends to reasonable and fair
provision as well as the amount of mahrdue or
other properties promised at the time of marriage.
This was demonstrated by Ali v. Sufaira in 1988
when it was noted “that the unmistakable intent
of the 1986 Act was to protect the interests of
divorced Muslim women” (Pearl and W. Menski
1998, 216–17). Indian Muslim law has effectively
established the Qur±ànic basis for the husband’s
responsibility on divorce and the 1986 act has