INTRODUCTION

This chapter focuses on legal problems relating to extra-judicial Muslim divorces (and marriages as these are inter-related) in the Finnish and Nordic context, an issue on which only scarce literature exists in this particular context. It studies these divorces against the backdrop of growing anxiety in recent years about Islamic family law in Europe and repeated calls in the public space for ‘one law for all’. There is a significant and growing body of research showing that the relationship between law, state governance and religion is multifaceted and requires a careful and empirically grounded analysis, but for some reason this knowledge often fails to be taken into account in public debates around these issues.

Only recently, in January 2019, did the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopt Resolution 2253 (2019) on Sharia, the Cairo Declaration and the European Convention on Human Rights. In the Resolution, the Assembly underlines ‘its support for the principle of the separation of State and religion, as one of the pillars of a democratic society’ and states its concern over the fact that ‘Sharia law – including provisions which are in clear contradiction with the Convention – is applied, either officially or unofficially, in several Council of Europe member States, or parts thereof ’. According to the Assembly, ‘Sharia law rules on, for example, divorce and inheritance proceedings are clearly incompatible’ with several provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and its additional protocols.

Research in the field of Muslim families and legal pluralism points out that the so-called separation thesis is a much too simplistic model to understand the dynamics of religious and secular governance. In general, secular rule and governance is about a variety of ways in which religion and religious practices are defined and regulated, and how legality and authority emerge as socially constituted and connected to several intertwined systems of meaning-making rather than merely separate institutions of ‘state law’ or ‘religious law’. This highlights the interactive side of these power relationships. As Bredal notes, engaging with debates about the secular governance of Muslim marriage and divorce requires not only looking at how state authorities govern religion, but also at how different actors, such as mosques and individuals themselves, have responded to this governance.