3 - Palestinian-Arab Religious Jurisdiction As an Individual Predicament

Summary

It is true that the accordance of jurisdictional authority to the Palestinian-Arab religious communities is a boost to their empowerment, vis-à-vis society at large or against their own members. However, identifying the religious jurisdictional power among the Palestinian-Arabs in Israel as a form of a liberal multicultural accommodation has one major normative implication. Vulnerable individual members among this community, especially women and children, become exposed to a wide variety of patriarchal religious norms and practices as prescribed by their respective religious institutions, all when such practices are legitimized in the name of liberalism and the accommodation of religious minorities. This is the individual predicament, also known in the literature on multiculturalism as the “internal minority” or “minority within the minority” problem. This chapter exposes the wide variety of norms originating in Palestinian-Arab religious jurisdiction that encroach on the individual liberty and freedom of Palestinian-Arabs. It will expose the different jurisdictional authorities – adjudicatory and prescriptive - possessed today by the Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities – a reality that originated in the Ottoman millet system.