State, feminists and Islamists—the debate over stipulations in marriage contracts in Egypt

Abstract

A new dispute between Shaykh al-Azhar and the [Chief] Muftī concerning the marriage contract: Shaykh al-Azhar argues that the new contract permits the forbidden and forbids the permitted, that the contract is the creation of the secularists, and that it contains forbidden innovation (bid‘a) and is misleading; the Mufti holds that the contract does not permit the forbidden or forbid the permitted, that it is a result of a permissible independent reasoning (ijtihād mashrū‘), and that some of the articles included in the contract were approved by a few classical jurists.