A reforming Muslim jurist reframed shari’a courts as guardians of family privacy

Evidence

But what is striking is the way Abduh approaches the basic social function of the shari¯‘a courts in terms of something that has come to be called “the family.” … These courts, he writes, intervene between husband and wife, father and son, a guardian and his ward, and between brothers. There is no right relating to kin over which these courts do not have jurisdiction. This means, says Abduh, that shari¯‘a judges look into matters that are very private and listen to what others are not allowed to hear. For even as they provide the framework of justice, so they are a depository for every kind of family secret. In other words, the courts are expected both to guard the privacy of the words and acts of domestic life and to work through the sentiments on which social life ultimately depends. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1093

Categorization

• SEED: Material for an essay on how modern ‘reform’ of religious law (Ottoman, Egyptian) proceeded by translating jurisprudence into the categories of domestic privacy and sentiment — the same grammar of private/public that frames Western modernity.
• XREF: Extends the Cooper thread: Abduh’s 1899 move — modernizing shari’a courts by remaking them as family-privacy institutions — shows the private-faith/family schema being actively exported, which Cooper’s US material dates later, suggesting a shared liberal genealogy.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does Abduh’s procedure-focused reform differ from the later codifications under Nasser that actually displaced shari’a? And does his framing predate or borrow from Western family-law concepts?