Modernizing Islamic law redefines sharia as personal status law with separate moral sanctions.

Evidence

The consequence of that equation is not simply abridgement but a rearticulation of the concepts of law and morality. The latter comes increasingly to be seen as rules of conduct whose sanctions are essentially different from those of legal rules—that is, not subject to institutionalized, worldly punishments. This is precisely what one finds in the liberal reform lawyers who describe the shari¯‘a as “the law of personal status” (qa¯nu¯n al-ahwa¯l al-shakhsiyya), that is, as rules for regulating “the family,” a modern institution built around the married couple. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1196

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how ‘law of personal status’ reframes sharia around the nuclear family as a modern institution.
• XREF: Connects to the immodesty moral-panic piece and to scholarship on how law/morality split tracks modernization.