WOMEN’S RIGHTS UNDER ISLAMIC LAW: SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF PUBLISHED LITERATURE IN SCOPUS DATABASE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22452/fiqh.vol23no1.6Keywords:
Muslim Women, Sharīʿah, Women’s Rights, Literature Analysis, Islamic JurisprudenceAbstract
Several scholars have studied women’s rights from the Islamic perspective. Studies indexed in Scopus mainly focused on three categories of women's rights: social and civil rights, economic and financial rights, and political rights of women under Islamic law. This article aims to systematically examine and organise various studies and research that discuss women’s rights under Islamic law. This systematic review of the literature has been developed entirely according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), where it identified and explored available literature in the Scopus database to define the search, to select the relevant articles, and to analyse the results. The initial search yielded 484 results, of which 31 met the inclusion criteria and were analysed in detail. These results show that there is a focus on some women’s rights under Islamic law, such as protection of women from violence, marital and divorce rights, equality, dignity, health, education, the right to breastfeeding compensation, and the right to wear a ḥijāb and niqāb, women’s right to inheritance (mīrāth), women’s right to mahr, women’s right to ownership, and women’s right to work and financial independence. Nevertheless, there is no research on the right to life and protection in armed conflicts, the right to personal security, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to move and travel, the right to adequate living standards, guidelines and conditions of women’s right to work, and the rights of women to financial support and maintenance (nafaqah). Additionally, the review of women’s political rights under Islamic law highlights a limited scholarly focus and a lack of in-depth discussion. Therefore, future research should address this gap in the published literature to better grasp the rules of women’s rights under Islamic law, which will contribute significantly to the body of knowledge.
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