This article is an ethnographic exploration of a women’s sharia court in Mumbai, a part of a network of such courts run by women qazi (Islamic judges) established across India by members of an Islamic feminist movement called the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (Indian Muslim Women’s Movement). Building upon observations of adjudication, counselling, and mediation offered in cases of divorce and maintenance by the woman qazi (judge), and the claims made by women litigants on the court, this article explores the imaginaries of the heterosexual family and gendered kinship roles that constitute the everyday social life of Islamic feminism. I show how the heterosexual family is conceptualised as a fragile and violent institution, and divorce is considered an escape route from the same. I also trace how gendered kinship roles in the heterosexual conjugal family are overturned as men fail in their conventional roles as providers and women become breadwinners in the family. In tracing the range of negotiations around the gendered family, I argue that the social life of Islamic feminism eludes the discourses and categories of statist legal reform. I contribute to existing scholarship on Islamic feminism by exploring the tension between the institutionalist and everyday aspects of Islamic feminist movements, and by exploring the range of kinship negotiations around the gendered family that take place in the shadow of the rhetoric of ‘law reform’ for Muslim communities in India.

本文是对孟买妇女伊斯兰教法法院的人种志探索，孟买妇女伊斯兰教法法院是由伊斯兰女权主义运动成员在印度各地建立的由妇女qazi（伊斯兰法官）运营的此类法院网络的一部分，该组织名为Bharatiya穆斯林Mahila Andolan（印度穆斯林妇女移动）。根据妇女qazi离婚和maintenance养案件中提供的裁决，咨询和调解意见（法官），以及女性诉讼人在法庭上提出的主张，本文探讨了构成伊斯兰女权主义日常社会生活的异性恋家庭和性别亲属角色的假想。我展示了异性恋家庭如何被概念化为脆弱而暴力的机构，而离婚被认为是逃离同性婚姻的途径。我还追踪了异性恋夫妻家庭中的性别亲属角色是如何被颠覆的，因为男人在提供者中失败了，而女性在家庭中成了养家糊口的角色。在追踪有关性别家庭的谈判范围时，我认为伊斯兰女权主义的社会生活没有涉及国家主义法律改革的论述和范畴。