Negotiating Women's Reproductive Rights Within the Framework of Islamic Law
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65586/insani.v1i2.57Keywords:
Abortion, Gender justice, Reproductive rights, Sexual relations, Termination of pregnancyAbstract
Negotiations over women's reproductive rights become an epistemological and ethical arena that brings together bodily authority, taklīf constructions, and interpretative struggles between the protection of human dignity and reproduction as a locus of normative control within the family institution. The purpose of this study is to comprehensively analyse the negotiation of women's reproductive rights within the framework of Islamic law, using an integrative approach that connects normative, institutional, and social-experience dimensions. This study uses a qualitative approach with a socio-legal and critical hermeneutic design, as its focus lies not only on fiqh norms as texts but also on the dynamics of social practices and power relations that shape women's experiences as legal subjects. The results confirm that the negotiation of women's reproductive rights in Islamic law is, in fact, the most tangible test of fiqh's capacity to remain a liberating ethic of life, rather than merely a device for controlling women's bodies. When classical concepts such as qiwāmah, tamkīn, and ḥaqq al-istimtāʿcontinue to be upheld without a critical reading of maqasid, fiqh risks becoming frozen into a legitimisation of patriarchal domination. Conversely, when riḍā, lā ḍarar wa-lā ḍirār, and ḥifẓ al-nafs are placed at the centre of ijtihād, Islamic law can emerge as a moral system that protects women's dignity and safety without undermining the institution of the family.
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