Affiliations of Muslim woman's rights in the Palestinian marriage document

Abstract EN

This small-scale study investigates the rights of Muslim woman listed in the marriage document issued by legal court in Palestine.

It aims to describe the moves as well as the steps of the contract at the macro level, interpret the nature of the right each move and step sustains for women at the micro level of the document, and finally explain the forces lying behind the documentation of one particular right.

The study applies a qualitative research method in which Bhatia’s (2004) genre as well as van Dijk’s (1998) critical discourse analysis (CDA) models were utilized to analyze the rhetorical features and components of the Palestinian marriage document.

It has been found that the document consists of three major parts conceived as moves as follows : The heading, the central, and closing move.

The heading move steps to identify the issuer of the document, justify the notion of marriage from an Islamic perspective, assign the settings of the document.

The central move steps to provide the details of people getting married, check their age and health, identify the amount paid as dowry and how, assign the wife’s parent and the son-inlaw as direct implementers of the contract being held, suggest any potential conditions of any partner, assign two mature witnesses, and finally to word the marriage knot.

The closing move steps to sign the document by two Muslim witnesses, the couple, their parents, and finally the state agent.

It has also been found that the marriage document clearly preserves the fiscal, sociocultural, legal and physical rights of both sexes getting married.

However, it has been concluded that the documents under investigation is not only oriented to a good extent by the Islamic notion of marriage but also dominated by the sociocultural values of patriarchal masculinity.