Qadri Imperialism

Colonial encounter and family reform

Colonial encounter and influence from Western colonial powers radically changed the Islamic legal system and removed the flexibility of it. For example, in India, British colonists wanted to obtain simple, reliable, and accurate understanding of legal practices in indigenous society to maintain social order with minimal military involvement. Ignoring indigenous legal practices which adopted an eclectic approach to Islam and Hiduism, they categorized indigenous religio-legal cultures into two simplified categories, Hindu and Muslim. They also ignored difference of cultures and histories within Muslims and eliminated internal contradictions and differences in legal practices. Moreover, they gradually limited

The efforts of Egyptian officials who were trained in European law can be see in the Qadri’s code, which was unofficial but widely referred as a manual to deal with family matters before codification. The form of Qadri’s code mimicked the French code, and its order of topics also conformed with French Civil Code. More importantly, though contents of the articles on marriage and divorce followed the standard Hanafi interpretation, the Qadri’s cods elided historical debates and different opinions and made the family law authoritative and unequivocal. That is, Muslim family law transformed from a jurists’ law that had room for contradictory opinions and argument into a uniform and static positive

“The family” became an important topic of debate among upper- and middle-class reformers, and later, among nationalists because family was now considered as the foundation of the modern nation. In order for building the strong nation, the development of healthy family is indispensable. Moreover, it was necessary for them to defend their culture before Westerners who viewed women’s status in the society as the index of civilization and judged the Islamic society as being backward. Reforming marriage in order to make it suitable for the modern nation was a political project, and the future of the country depended on its