Khatib, an Arab-Israeli lawyer, was confirmed Tuesday by a Justice Ministry committee responsible for appointing judges (qadis in Arabic) to the nine Islamic courts that adjudicate the country's Islamic family law. Although, with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s support, the committee unanimously appointed Khatib, her appointment represents the fruition of a fraught 22 year struggle against conservative Muslim and Jewish ultra-Orthodox leadership to open the benches of Israel's Islamic judiciary to women - exposing the complex relationship between Islam, women, and the Jewish state. [...]
From this perspective, Khatib's appointment represents a potential step towards transforming the Islamic courts into secular Israeli institutions. Academic specialists Mousa Abou Ramadan and Yuksel Sezgin have explained that Muslim leadership view patriarchal elements of the Islamic courts as protection for their religion’s authenticity and independence within a Jewish majority state. This attitude is intensified by the framing of Islamic courts as a last bastion of Muslim legal autonomy in Israel. Issues of identity were far less at play in the Palestinian Authority’s Islamic courts, where women became judges without obstruction in 2009. [...]
In a Knesset discussion, MK Issawi Freij (Meretz) explained the Haredi opposition: "They do not want to create a precedent that could return like a boomerang to us in Judaism... If it is possible to appoint a qadiya among the Muslims, which according to Islamic law is permissible, we are creating a precedent for ourselves in Judaism, that tomorrow there will be the demand to appoint female rabbis to rabbinic courts." Orthodox state-funded rabbinic courts in Israel, who have a denominational monopoly on religious legal services for the country’s Jews, do not accept women as judges.
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