Muslim Women Leaders and Legal Reform in Postcolonial Kenya

Abstract

The post-Cold War conditions created new socio-political spaces in Kenya for new articulations of Muslim women’s public activism and leadership. This essay focuses on two such Muslim women in terms of their leadership responses to issues of Muslim women’s rights in Kenya as framed within a secular paradigm, on the one hand, and within an Islamic one, on the other. In spite of their differences, the essay concludes the efforts of the two leaders complement each other in fundamental ways, especially with regards to their contributions to the national debates on theShari’aand the reform of the Kadhi’s Court.