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a coherent alternative to the classical understanding of marriage as a fundamentally gender- differentiated institution which presumes, at least at some level, male authority and control.
    Dower, which holds a central place in the legal structure of marriage and in the social practice of some Muslim commu- nities often takes on a merely symbolic form among American Muslims. Adhering to the symbolism comes at a price, however. If dower is meant to be an economic safety net for women, then a more useful approach would depend on factors other than consummation, such as length of marriage, contribution to the household economy, wages lost and earning potential dimin- ished during childbearing and caretaking, and so forth. Feminist assertions that women do not have any Islamic obligation to perform domestic services or childcare may have the ironic effect of devaluing those contributions. Although stress on the voluntary nature of women’s performance of domestic duties can highlight their significance, this recognition that dower does not compensate for a wife’s household contribution is not usu- ally accompanied by a discussion of precisely for what it is that dower compensates a woman.
    Discussions about dower, spousal rights, and intermar- riage must occur in the context of a broader consideration of what men and women contribute to marriage and to the family, including the recognition that most American Muslims do not maintain the separate asset regime assumed by classical law and that complete male economic responsibility is more theoretical than actual. Perhaps one positive outcome of the neo-traditional vision of the wife providing homemaking and childrearing services in exchange for male providership could be the dissoci- ation of sex from support; if sex is no longer the wife’s marital duty, then it could become a fully mutual right. This does not
    marriage, money, and sex 23
    resolve the problem of how to deal with the double-shift that emerges when women work outside the home to provide partial support for the household without the husband taking over a portion of the household duties, but it might be more reason- able to see those duties as less explicitly gendered than the others. If some Muslims want to adopt a provider/homemaker division of labor that provides some kind of economic independ- ence for women, that ought to be negotiable. But the pretense that such a structure, and only such a structure, is religiously legitimate avoids the reality that many Muslims organize their lives differently, as well as the real incompatibility of classical definitions of male and female obligations with most contem- porary understandings of spousal roles in marriage.

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    Lesser Evils: Divorce in Islamic Ethics

    God did not make lawful anything more repugnant to Him than divorce. Reported saying of the Prophet Muhammad, Sunan Abi Dawud 1

    A woman knows (that is, comes to know with certainty) that her husband has divorced her thrice; the husband denies having divorced her; and the woman has not the ability to prevent the husband from (having access to) her person: it is permissible to the woman to kill the husband; because she is helpless in preventing mischief to her person; and, therefore, it shall be allowable to her to kill him; but it is proper that she should kill him with drugs, and not with an instrument of death; because if the woman should kill him with an instrument which inflicts wound, she shall be put to death by way of kisas (or retaliation).
    Fatawa-I-Kazee Khan , Hanafi legal text 2

The image of a husband repudiating his wife by declaring “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you” has been one of the most persistent and negative stereotypes of Muslims.And while it does not tell anything resembling a complete story, this image has a basis in reality. So-called triple divorce, while widely considered blameworthy even among the earliest Muslims, is nonetheless still practiced in many places. Recent