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ABSTRACT
This article explores the criminal prohibition against bigamy during the British colonial rule of Palestine, drawing particular attention to the exemptions it afforded to Muslims. Through archival research, the article analyses the debates that led to the legislation of the 1936 Criminal Code Ordinance through three distinct lenses – political, religious, and gendered to circumspectly explore the inconsistencies of the British approach toward Bigamy. I reveal how mandatory legislators prohibited it as a matter of public and criminal law while creating a broad exemption of its stipulations by essentially relegating the matter to the less heavily regulated ‘private’ sphere. I argue that the exemption provided for Muslims on the bigamy prohibition demonstrates the complexity of colonial law and its intrinsic paradox manifested in outlawing bigamy while accommodating it. This paradox and inconsistencies in colonial legislation are in line with colonial policies toward native populations, reflecting British colonial perception and anxiety towards colonial subjects and themselves.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Prof. Oran Alyagon-Darr for her valuable comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Given the lack of primary sources concerning this specific topic, the article relies largely on secondary sources. Despite the methodological challenge that this entails, I used secondary sources and relied on the work of other scholars to complete the aspects missing from the archives.
2 Nicholas B. Dirks, ‘Foreword’, in Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, ed. Bernard S. Cohn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), ix–xviii.
3 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Tension of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 6.
4 Ibid., 7.
5 Ibid., 6.
6 Ibid., 11.
7 Steven Pierce, ‘Punishment and the Political Body Flogging and Colonialism in Northen Nigeria’, Interventions 3, no. 2 (2001): 209–12, 217–9.
8 Varsha Chitnis and Danaya C. Wright, ‘The Legacy of Colonialism: Law and Women’s Rights in India’, Washington and Lee Law Review 64 (2007): 1315–48.
9 Ibid.
10 Mitra Sharafi, ‘The Marital Patchwork of Colonial South Asia: Forum Shopping from Britain to Baroda’, Law and History Review 28, no. 4 (2010): 979–1009.
11 Flavia Anges, Law and Gender Inequality: The Politics of Women’s Rights in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 59.
12 Chitnis and Wright, ‘The Legacy of Colonialism’, 1317.
13 European powers tended to espouse a ‘civilizing mission’ to justify their presence in imperial colonies. The logic of the colonizing empire was therefore based on the inferiority of the colonial subjects and on the notion that the civilizing efforts made by the colonial authorities would enhance the progress of the latter. See Michael Mann, ‘“Torchbearers upon the Path of Progress”: Britain’s Ideology of a “Moral and Material Progress” in India’. in Colonialism as Civilized Mission, eds. Harald Fischer-Tiné and Michael Mann (London: Anthem Press, 2004), 4–5.
14 Chitnis and Wright, ‘The Legacy of Colonialism’, 1318.
15 Anges, Law and Gender Inequality, 21.
16 While acknowledging the political motivation behind the British actions and their imperial interests, it should be noted that the intrinsic paradoxes of colonial rule could include the possibility of genuine concern for indigenous women. The acknowledgement of such possibilities is essential in understanding colonial paradoxes and actions. It expands our comprehension and offers us possibilities for interpretation beyond the binaries of colonizer-colonized.
17 Ania Loomba, ‘Dead Women Tell No Tales: Issues of Female Subjectivity, Subaltern Agency and Tradition in Colonial Writings on Widow Immolation in India’, History Workshop Journal 36 (1993): 212.
18 Ibid., 213.
19 Anand A. Yang, ‘Whose Sati? Widow Burning in Early in Early 19th Century India’, Journal of Women’s History 1, no. 2 (1989): 8.
20 Himani Bannerjee, ‘Age of Consent and Hegemonic Social Reform’, in Gender and Imperialism, ed. Clare Midgley (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998), 25.
21 Loomba, ‘Dead Women Tell No Tales’, 220.
22 Chitnis and Wright, ‘The Legacy of Colonialism’, 1324.
23 Ibid., 1326.
24 Ibid., 1329.
25 Ratna Kapur, Erotic Justice: Law and The New Politics of Post Colonialism Erotic Justice: Law and The New Politics of Post Colonialism (London: The Glass House Press, 2005), 29–30.
26 Chitnis and Wright, ‘The Legacy of Colonialism’, 1346.
27 Shamil Jeppie, Ebrahim Moosa, and Richard Roberts, eds., Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa: Legacies and Post-Colonial Challenges (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 26–7.
28 Mahmood Mamdani, Citizens and Subjects: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 19.
29 Jeppie, Moosa, and Roberts, Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa, 24, 22.
30 Abdulkadir Hashim, ‘Coping with Conflicts: Colonial Policy towards Muslim Personal Law in Kenya and Post-Independent Court Practice’, in Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa: Legacies and Post-Colonial Challenges, eds. Shamil Jeppie, Ebrahim Moosa, and Richard Roberts (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Publishers; 2009), 224.
31 Jeppie, Moosa, and Roberts, Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa, 22–23.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 23–24.
34 Ibid., 31–33.
35 Jeppie, Moosa, and Roberts, Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa, 24, 41.
36 Shouket Allie, ‘A Legal and Historical Excursus of Muslim Personal Law in The Colonial Cape, South Africa, Eighteenth to Twentieth Century’, in Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa: Legacies and Post-Colonial Challenges ed. Shamil Jeppie, Ebrahim Moosa, and Richard Roberts (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 63.
37 Ibid., 74–75.
38 Hassan Mwakimako, ‘Conflicts and Tensions in the Appointment of Chief Kadhi in Colonial Kenya’, in Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa: Legacies and Post-Colonial Challenges, eds. Shamil Jeppie, Ebrahim Moosa & Richard Roberts (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 109–10.
39 Ibid., 110–1.
40 Ibid.; James S. Read, Indirect Rule and The Search for Justice: Essays in East African Legal History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 253.
41 Mamdani, Citizens and Subjects, 111.
42 Roger Owen, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, 3rd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 81.
43 Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republic Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Colombia University Press, 2000), 71.
44 Ibid., 9.
45 A series of reforms during the Ottoman Empire between 1839 and 1876 that improved the legal status of Muslim women. William L. Cleveland and Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2009).
46 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 9.
47 Ibid., 3.
48 Ibid., 67.
49 Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied (London: Hurst & Company, 2003), 113.
50 Ibid.
51 Noga Efrati, Women in Iraq (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 52.
52 Ibid., 20–3.
53 Ibid., 23.
54 Ibid., 20–3
55 Hanan Kholoussy, For Better, For Worse: The Marriage Crisis that Made Modern Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 5.
56 Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Modernity, Islam (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 205–56.
57 Efrati, Women in Iraq, 48, 52.
58 Assaf Likhovski, Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
59 A semi-constitutional document employed by the British in dealing with their colonies. See Robert Eisenman, Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 5.
60 Ibid.
61 In contrast to existing scholarship, new research has revealed that the notion of Ottoman legal continuity is mistaken. The fact that the British applied the Ottoman Law of Family Rights of 1917 only to Muslims contradicts the Ottoman continuity claim. See Iris Agmon, ‘Yesh Shoftim BeYerushalayim Vehayo Mechokikim BeIstanbul—Al Hahistorya Shel Hachok Hakaroy (Beta’ot) Chok Hamishpacha Haotomani’ [There are judges in Jerusalem and there were legislators in Istanbul: On the history of the law called (mistakenly) The Ottoman Law of Family Rights], Mishpacha ba-Mishpat (Family in Court) 8 (2016–2017): 136–144. See also Gal Amir, ‘Al Ma Anachnu Medabrim Keshanachnu Medabrim Al Hamillet?’ [What are we talking about when we talk about the Millet?], Mechkarey Mishpat 30 (2017): 677.
62 Likhovski, Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine, 27.
63 Amir, ‘Al Ma Anachnu Medabrim’, 693.
64 Palestine Order in Council, 1922.
65 Ibid.
66 Kholoussy, For Better, For Worse, 5.
67 Efrati, Women in Iraq, 52.
68 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 115.
69 Likhovski, Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine, 85–6.
70 Ibid., 86.
71 Ibid.
72 Likhovski, Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine, at 85.
73 Badi Hasisi and Deborah Bernstein, ‘Multiple Voices and the Force of Custom on Punishment: Trial of “Family Honor Killings” in Mandate Palestine’, Law and History Review 34, no. 1 (2016): 123.
74 Ibid., 119.
75 Likhovski, Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine, 85.
76 Orna Alyagon-Darr, ‘Narratives of “Sodomy” and “Unnatural Offenses” in the Court of Mandate Palestine (1918–1948)’, Law and History Review 35, no. 1 (2017): 236.
77 Philippa Levine, Gender and Empire (Oxford University Press, 2004), 1
78 Ibid., 134–5.
79 Ibid., 135.
80 Ibid.,141.
81 Ibid.,144.
82 Philippa Levine, ‘Venereal Disease, Prostitution, and the Politics of Empire: The Case of British India’, Journal of History and Sexuality 4, no. 1 (1994): 580.
83 Ibid., 581. 584–5.
84 Ibid., 584–5.
85 Ibid., 590.
86 Paola Zichi, ‘Prostitution and Moral and Sexual Hygiene in Mandatory Palestine: The Criminal Code for Palestine (1921–1936)’, Australian Feminist Law Journal, 47, no. 1 (2021): 51.
87 Ibid.,151.
88 Philippa Levine, Gender and Empire, 153.
89 Ofri Ilany, ‘“An Oriental Vice” Representations of Sodomy in Early Zionist Discourse’, in National Politics and Sexuality in Transregional Perspective: The Homophobic Argument, ed. Achim Rohde, et al (Routledge, 2017), 107.
90 Ibid., 117.
91 Orna Alyagon Darr, Plausible Crime Stories: The History of Sex Offences in Mandate Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2018), 66–85.
92 Likhovski, Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine, 49–50.
93 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 114.
94 Ilan Pappe, Atsulat Haaretz: Mishpachat Al-Husayni, Biographia Politit [The Dynastic Family: Al-Husaynis, a Political Biography] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2002), 234.
95 Amichai Radziner, ‘Itzuvo Shel Isor Habigamya Leyehudim Beeretz Yisrael Hamandatorit’ [The formulation of the prohibition against bigamy for Jews during the British Mandate], in Chuka Achat Vemishpat Achad Laish Velaisha [One Constitution and One Law for Man and Woman], ed. Eyal Katvan, Margalit Shila, et al. (Jerusalem: Bar Ilan University Press, 2010), 8–9.
96 Ibid., 8–9.
97 Ibid., 8–9.
98 Ibid.
99 It should be stressed that bigamy was completely prohibited for Christians according to their religious personal status laws and partially prohibited for Jews; indeed, there are exemptions that allow bigamy according to Jewish law. It was mainly practiced by Jews of Eastern origins (especially Yemenite Jews). During the mandatory period there were also some cases of bigamy among Jews of Western origin. Regardless of these differences between the religious groups, an important principle of British criminal law was its territorial application – it should apply equally to all religious groups despite their differences. See Amichai Radziner, The Formulation of the Prohibition against Bigamy for Jews during the British Mandate, 152–168.
100 Letter from Hassan Sidqi Dajani Advocate to President of the Supreme Moslem Council (11 December 1933), Archival Division No 2, State Secretary, File No 296/36 State Archive.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid.
103 Letter from the President Supreme Moslem Council to Chief Secretary Government Offices Jerusalem (2 January 1934), Archival Division No 2, State Secretary, File No 296/36 State Archive.
104 Telegram from High Commissioner for Palestine, Trans–Jordan to Secretary of State (22 May 1934), Archival Division No 2, State Secretary, File No 296/36 State Archive.
105 Letter from High Commissioner to Chief Justice (8 June 1934), Archival Division No 2, State Secretary, File No 296/36 State Archive.
106 For a broader analysis of the Arab uprising of 1936 in Palestine see Mustafa Kabha, ‘The Courts of the Palestinian Arab Revolt, 1936–1939’, in Untold Histories of the Middle East, eds. Amy Singer, Christoph K. Neumann, and Selçuk Akşin Somel (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2010), 209–25.
107 Pappe, Atsulat Haaretz, 301.
108 Eisenman, Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel, 77–9.
109 Ibid., 85–7.
110 Uri Kupferschmidt, The Supreme Muslim Council: Islam under the British Mandate in Palestine (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 2–3.
111 Ibid., 5.
112 Ibid., 28.
113 Ibid., 37.
114 Ibid., 17.
115 Ibid., 38.
116 Ibid.
117 Ibid., 42.
118 Pappe, Atsulat Haaretz, 285–6.
119 Kupferschmidt, The Supreme Muslim Council, 44.
120 Ibid., 47.
121 Ibid., 14.
122 Ibid., 44–5.
123 Ellen Fleischmann, ‘“Unnatural Vices” or Unnatural Rule? The Case of a Sex Questionnaire and the British Mandate’, Jerusalem Quarterly 11–12 (2001): 14–5.
124 Ibid., 16.
125 Ibid., 17.
126 Ibid., 17–8.
127 Ibid., 20–1.
128 Ibid., 21.
129 Ibid.
130 Ibid.
131 Iris Agmon, Family and Court: Legal Culture in Modernity in Late Ottoman Palestine (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006), 3–21.
132 Ibid., 22–7; See also Iris Agmon, ‘Women’s History and Ottoman Sharia Court Records: Shifting Perspectives in Social History’, Hawwa 2 (2004): 172.
133 Elizabeth Brownson, Palestinian Women and Muslim Family Law in the Mandate Period (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2019), 68–91.
134 Agmon, Family and Court, 32.
135 Scott Lauria Morgensen, ‘Theorizing Gender, Sexuality and Settler Colonialism: An Introduction’, Settler Colonial Studies 2, no. 2 (2012): 3.
136 Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997).
137 Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 30. Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘The Cry for Land: Algerian Reform, Gender and Land Rights in Uzbekistan’, Journal of Agrarian Change 3, no. 1–2 (2003): 225.
138 Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 27–53.
139 Kapur, Erotic Justice, 29–30.
140 Ellen Fleischmann, The Nation and Its ‘New’ Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement 1920–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 5–6.
141 Ibid., 7.
142 Ibid., 9–10.
143 Lena Salaymeh, ‘Imperialist Feminism and Islamic Law’, Hawwa 17 (2019): 99.
144 Ibid.
145 Ibid., 106.
146 Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and The Boundaries of Rule’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 1 (1989): 134–5.
147 Fleischmann, The Nation and Its ‘New’ Women, 34.
148 Ibid., 25.
149 Ibid., 32.
150 Ibid., 35.
151 Ibid., 50.
152 Ibid., 36.
153 Ibid., 37–8.
154 Ibid., 38–9.
155 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, at 115.
156 Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Bearers of The Collective—Women and Religious Legislation in Israel’, in Israel Women’s Studies: A Reader, ed. Esther Fuchs (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 121–32.
157 Ibid., 92.
158 Susan Moller Okin, ‘Feminism and Multiculturalism: Some Tensions’, Ethics 108, no. 4 (1998): 664–5.
159 Ibid., 43.
160 Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 139.
161 Ibid., 680.
162 Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation, 80.
163 Fleischmann, The Nation and Its ‘New’ Women, 31.
164 Ibid., 100–3, 112.
165 Joseph A. Massad, Islam in Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 116–117; Maria Lugones, ‘Toward a Decolonial Feminism’, Hypathia 25, no. 4 (2010): 742.
166 Manar Hasan, The Invisible: Women and the Palestinian Cities (Jerusalem: The Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2017), 43, 65 (Hebrew).
167 Ibid., 46.
168 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Kopf, 1993).
169 Hasan, The Invisible, 36; Lugones, ‘Toward a Decolonial Feminism’.
170 Fleischmann, The Nation and Its ‘New’ Women, 84.
171 Ibid., 89.