This book offer new insights into the problems and realities of personal law in Bangladesh. Looking at the ways in which religious jurisprudence has changed in the contemporary political climate, Pereira chronicles the tangled history of ideas of divorce, marriage, inheritance, and property as they affect women. She identifies features of Islam in Bangladesh that make Islamic lawmaking in that country unique, and she compares it with the situation among Christians, Hindus and other minorities there. Glancing at similar problems in India, she theorises on law and the intersections of patriarchy with religion in a Third World society.