Benevolent Patriarchy" : Palestinian Women between "Ideal" and "Reality

Abstract

In this article polygyny is used to illustrate how the ideal of benevolent patriarchy and the"good" Muslim man as the benevolent patriarch tends to create a discrepancy between thelegal and the moral in Islamic legislation as well as in Islamic discourse. The study is basedon fieldwork in the West Bank in 2011 when 49 Islamist and Islamic-oriented women wereinterviewed. The main finding of this study is that Islamist women tend to accept theIslamic gender system as the divine will, and they also accept its legal expression, PersonalStatus Law. However, there is a little awareness of the lack of legal consequences for menwho do not behave according to the moral code, which is not explicitly but only implicitlyassumed in the law.