Muslim Marriage in Western Courts

Pascale Fournier is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa and a Research Associate at the University's Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC). Professor Fournier received her LL.B in Law (1997) from Laval University, her LL.M. (2000) from the University of Toronto and her S.J.D. (2007) from Harvard Law School. Before arriving at Harvard, she served as Law Clerk to Justice L'Heureux-Dubé at the Supreme Court of Canada. Her scholarship focuses on comparative family law, Islam and Judaism in Europe and North America, constitutional law and freedom of religion, migration in the context of globalization, and the relationship between multiculturalism and gender. Her current research project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, investigates the migration of two forms of religious divorces (the Jewish Get and the Islamic Talaq) in Canada, France, Britain and Germany, and the effects of such migration on Jewish and Muslim women. Pascale has lectured at the State University of Haiti, McGill University, the University for Peace in Costa Rica and the Institute for Women's Studies and Research in Iran. She recently served as an expert consultant on issues of gender and Islamic law for the United Nations Development Programme. She was awarded the Laval University Raymond-Blais Medal in 2008, the Québec Bar Association's Advocatus Emeritus distinction in 2009 and the Québec Bar Foundation prize for 'best article' in 2009.

Introduction; Chapter 1 The Roots of Mahr and the Hybrid Transplant: Introducing Mahr as an Islamic Legal Conception and a Fragmented Legal Concept; Chapter 2 When Mahr Travels: Adjudicating Mahr in Canada, the United States, France and Germany; Chapter 3 Nourishing the Transplanted Law: Fertile Soil or Rocky Ground?; Chapter 4 Contradictions in the Reception of Mahr as Ideology and Subjectivity; Chapter 5 Samir and Leila Revisited: The Adjudication and Reception of Mahr and its Subjective Significance for Muslim Women; Chapter 6 Deep Roots and Tall Branches: Conclusions on the Reception of Mahr by Western Courts;