Page 127 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

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of a modern public sphere has been recognized. It has been argued that a mod-
ern Muslim public sphere has come into being with an increasingly diverse set
of actors and publics engaging in public debate about the common good (Eickel-
man and Anderson 1999; Salvatore and Eickelman 2004). Within this frame-
work, the Islamization of the public sphere is no longer viewed as necessarily
negative for women. Yet those arguing for the emancipatory effects of processes
of secularization, as well as those pointing to the enabling effects of Islamiza-
tion, make assumptions that need to be scrutinized. Employing a notion of
agency that is equated with freedom and emancipation leaves out the forms of
disciplining that are simultaneously at stake, while a focus on the greater variety
of participants involved in public debate may result in overlooking the people
and practices that have become marginalized. At the same time, conceptualizing
the modern public sphere—be it “secular” or “Muslim”—as an arena of verbal
debate easily leads to the neglect of other forms of communication, such as
comportment, body language, and styles of dress. In short, public spheres are
not simply sites of disembodied debate but are also arenas for the formation
and enactment of embodied social identities, where group identities and inter-
ests are always at play (Fraser 1992; Warner 1992). The central question, then,
is how certain groups are able to deny their particularities and present them-
selves as embodying the common good, as the public (Mah 2000), a notion that
is always unstable and a site of struggle and contestation. An analysis of public
debates about family law in Palestine highlights the need to address issues of
both voice and authority as well as the politics of embodied presence.

Debating Family Law in Palestine:
Verbal and Visual Accounts

Public debates about family law emerged soon after the establishment
of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
in 1994. Unifying the legal systems of both areas and deciding what sort of legal
system to adopt was one of the most pressing issues confronting legislators.
Prominent members of the shari’a judiciary took the initiative to ensure sepa-
rate communal jurisdiction of the shari’a courts. Human rights groups and
women’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) developed projects to iden-
tify legal provisions that discriminated against women and to propose reforms.
When they started a series of public discussions on family law, the Islamists also
entered into the debate. 5
What lines of argumentation did the various participants use to legitimize
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their positions? To the religious functionaries it was self-evident that family law
fell within their ¤eld of expertise. The women’s NGO movement, on the other
hand, with a long history of nationalist engagement and a tradition of secularist
cultural politics, argued on the basis of an equality platform within the frame-
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work of human rights and UN conventions. While they had expected that this
would be acceptable to the Palestinian public, it turned out to be a bone of con-

116 Annelies Moors