Doctrinal Change in Islamic Law: the Right of a Wife to Judicial Divorce Based on Darar (Harm) in Maliki Law

Professor Mohammad Fadel, Professor of Law, University of Toronto will speak about the Maliki rule permitting wives' access to judicial divorce upon proof of harm (darar)' and how this rule has become widely adopted in modern Islamic family law. Yet, the concept of darar as grounds for a judicial divorce is absent in the earliest sources of Maliki law. This talk will discuss how the right to judicial divorce came to be part of substantive Maliki law and what that process tells us about how doctrinal change took place in Islamic law in the age before parliaments.

Join experts Professor Lynn Welchman, Professor of Law (SOAS) and Professor Mashood Baderin, Professor of Law (SOAS), who will discuss Professor Fadel's research. This event will take place on 28 November from 7-9 pm at the Paul Webley Wing, SOAS, in the Senate Wolfson Lecture Theatre (1st Floor).

Mohammad Fadel is a professor of law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He has written extensively in

Islamic legal history, Islam and liberalism, modern Islamic reform movements, and international law.