Dynamics of Continuity and Change: Islamic Family Law in Europe

This paper presents the results of a pilot survey that was anonymous and quantitative in nature on how a group of Muslim citizens in Germany understands and applies the classical Islamic family law. This small survey was conducted 2018 in different places throughout Germany, mainly among young educated Muslims. The main questions addressed were related to identifying the role of a European context and its impact on German Muslims’ understanding of marriage and divorce, gender roles, as well as matters pertaining to interfaith marriage, mediation, and the role of the secular law. The survey consists of 20 questions divided into three main thematic constellations: a) Marriage, b) family life, and c) divorce. The employed framework corresponds to a shift in research paradigms in modern Islamic theological studies: Rather than emphasising classical Islamic conceptions of family law as laid out in classical sources and regarding these as the exclusive representative argument of a so-called Muslim point of view, the current focus is rather on how Muslims actively comprehend these conceptions and see their role in their respective lived contexts