Corruption, Friendship, and Women’s Bodies

Thanawi published an influential treatise called "The Consummate Stratagem for the Powerless Wife" (Al-Hila al-najiza li 'l-halilat al-'ajiza).It was a response to what many ulama of that time perceived as a serious ongoing crisis, whereby Muslim women were deliberately apostatizing in order to escape undesirable marriages ( Lemons 2019; De 2010).This phenomenon was seen to pose an existential threat to Indian Muslims at a time of growing religious nationalism.It was never clear how many women converted from Islam in this fashion ( Lemons 2019).Nevertheless, Thanawi put forward an expansive jurisprudential framework through which Muslim women could more easily terminate marriages while remaining within the fold of Islam, while arguing that apostasy should not alter women's existing marital contracts (nikah).This perceived crisis had a lasting impact as Al-Hila formed the basis for the 1939 Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act, part of a draft of colonial legislation known collectively as Anglo-Muslim personal law (ibid).Thanawi's treatise addressed a principle of Hanafi jurisprudence which holds that renouncing Islam invalidates existing nikah contracts.This principle is mentioned in passing in Perilous Intimacies, in a chapter focusing on everyday ritual activity as a contested site of political theology.Tareen describes the Barelvi scholar Ahmad Raza Khan's argument that Muslims should avoid attending Hindu festivals due to the heavy cost of tashabbuh, or imitation, whereby a "Muslim who began to think favorably of Hindu rituals that promoted polytheism and the rejection of divine sovereigntyrisked being charged with unbelief," ( Tareen 2023, p. 200).This risk is all the greater, Tareen notes, because such apostates' "marriage contracts would be annulled," ( Lemons 2019).