Reconciling Gender Equality and Muslim Family Law in Sri Lanka: A Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah Approach to the MMDA

Sri Lanka’s 1978 Constitution guarantees equality before the law and nondiscrimination on the ground of sex, and the country ratified CEDAW without
reservation in 1981. Yet Article 16(1) of the Constitution shields all existing written
and unwritten law, including the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA) of
1951, from constitutional challenge. This article asks whether that stand-off reflects
a genuine doctrinal conflict between Islamic law and international human rights
norms, or whether it is better understood as a product of restrictive juristic
interpretation. Drawing on maqāṣid al-sharīʿah, the higher objectives of Islamic
law, the article argues that CEDAW’s equality norms and Sri Lanka’s constitutional
guarantees substantively converge with, rather than contradict, Islamic law’s own
purposes. Rather than re-deriving that doctrinal convergence provision by
provision, the article takes it as established and asks a further question, what does
the convergence argument imply for how reform should be drafted and
institutionalised? Using the minimum age of marriage, divorce procedure,
polygamy regulation, the bride’s consent and Quazi appointments as illustrations,
it moves from doctrinal justification to concrete proposals for statutory language
and institutional design.