Developments in the Law of Marriage and Divorce in Libya Since the 1969 Revolution

Abstract

How to reform traditional laws of marriage and divorce has proved to be one of the major legal issues facing contemporary Muslim societies. It is a sensitive issue that impinges on many domains—the social, religious, and political as well as the legal. The problems of reform turn more than anything else on the question of how to reconcile fidelity to Islamic law, the shari'a, which remains largely—if not exclusively—controlling on matters of personal status in many Muslim countries, with the demands for change prompted by the process of modernization.