“Indeed Allah commands you to render trusts to whom they are due, and when you judge
between people to judge with justice.” (Quran, Surat an-Nisa, “The Women,” 4:58)
Kholoud Al-Faqih could be a stand-in for any other Palestinian aunt. She walks with a bit of a
shuffle as she enters the flagstoned courtyard filled with pomegranate trees. She has a smile
that lights up her round face. Other women feel at ease with her. They exchange the customary
three kisses across cheeks. Then, the chit-chat in the courtyard abruptly transitions from hugs
and greetings to questions about divorce and safety, and Kholoud’s smile vanishes. Her open-
faced smile closes into a hard focus.

She advises two women who ask a hypothetical question: a woman wants to divorce her
husband because he beats her. How will Shari’a law serve this woman?
Kholoud’s brows knit in deep concern. She advises the women that a battered spouse can
seek a divorce, spousal support, custody, and to send her abuser to prison. If he beats her,
Kholoud says, “it’s a crime.” She places emphasis on the last word, and you can almost read
its synonyms on her face. The travesty, shame, sin.
Kholoud seems to relax when the women nod in understanding; they have been put at ease by
her advice. The smile finally returns to her face as she declares “Justice is beautiful.”

The two women are quite right to place their dilemma in Kholoud’s hands. In 2009, Kholoud Al-
Faqih was instated by the Palestinian Shari’a court as the first ever female Shari’a court judge
in all of Islamic history.
“The problem,” she says, “is that we [women] are not educated about our rights. People are
unaware.”
“The Judge” details Kholoud’s rise to the judge’s bench, her appointment as the first ever
female Shari’a court judge in Islamic history. While Kholoud’s appointment should have been a
moment for celebration at the shattering of another type of glass ceiling, it was only another
step forward on a battlefield Muslim women have wearily traversed since the death of the first
Ummah.

While women have been judges in Palestine’s criminal courts since the 1970s, Kholoud being
appointed as a Shari’a court judge rocked the country and the Muslim community worldwide.
Kholoud bases her rulings directly on the Quran and the Hadith, the teachings and life of the
Prophet Muhammad, and as a Shari’a court judge, she deals almost exclusively with disputes
between Muslims who submit themselves to Shari’a law; marital law, divorce proceedings,
custody agreements, inheritance disputes.
Why should a woman adjudicating in family matters be more distressing to the Ummah than a
woman being a criminal or civil court judge? Because it is in this arena, in the Shari’a court
system, that Muslim women are disenfranchised the most by the people closest to them: the
men in their families.
With a female judge on the bench, women are empowered to come forward with their
grievances. Battered wives can approach Kholoud with genuine hope that she will help them
safely leave their husbands, daughters seek her help when sueing their fathers for their rightful
inheritance, engaged women appear before Kholoud to ensure the dowry their fiancé offers will
be sufficient. As the scales of justice even out, the chokehold of inequity loosens. While women
breathe free in Kholoud’s presence, some men seek to tighten their grip on women, children,
and property, treating all three as the latter.
“The Judge” is easy to watch in that its cinematography and the conversational style of its
interviews flow easily and are pleasing to the eye. Aerial views of Palestine combine with still-
camera shots of Kholoud’s courthouse. The camera movements, the color palette, the
language of the film is beautiful but unpretentious and unobtrusive. While watching this film,
you are not made to be overly conscious of the style of the camera or the mind of the person
behind it. You have to pay attention to far more important and distressing things. As the film
progresses, the sunset-painted Palestinian landscape becomes a breath of fresh air between
uncomfortable conversations and retellings of tragic events, the worst of which take place in
Kholoud’s own courtroom.

Even with occasional gasps of crisp Mediterranean air, “The Judge,” makes you feel the
stranglehold of toxic masculine culture and its effect on the women of Palestine and the greater
Muslim community. Kholoud and her comrades at the Ministry of Women, a group focused on
protecting families (especially women and children) from violence, offer up what every Muslim
feminist knows in her marrow, what so many Islamophobes and misogynistic Muslim males
refuse to hear. The problem, they assert, is not Islam, but hyper-masculine patriarchal culture,
which itself is antithetical to preserving the rights of women outlined in the Quran and put into
practice in the Hadith.

Her colleagues outline the attitudes and practices that create a “shame culture, that defines its
honor through women’s sexual behavior.” The pervasive idea that women are property, that
women must be controlled and subdued so as not to tarnish the honor of a family, a
community, a nation, proves dangerous year after year. Domestic violence and spousal abuse,
child abuse, honor killings, the abandonment and disinheriting of women who afterward
become homeless or fall upon the mercy of strangers, all are symptoms of a society that views
women as having one purpose: to serve the needs and wills of men.
“This is the problem, the way they see women,” Kholoud says. “She exists only for pleasure
and childbearing.”
So what could possibly be the solution to such deeply-ingrained hostilities towards women?

If so much of the problem stems from women and children not knowing or being able to
access to their rights under the Sharia, the solution is, as Kholoud’s father puts it, to “arm them
with education.”
Kholoud’s parents, peasant farmers whose educations did not progress past middle school,
ensured that all twelve of their children were able to graduate from college.
“A man can work and become self-sufficient, but for a woman, education is her weapon,” her
father says, arm around Kholoud, beaming with pride while a cigarette, half-forgotten, dangles
from his hand as he gestures.
If education is a woman’s weapon, the education of a fellow woman is her shield. A female
Shari’a court judge, then, is an entire army.
Kholoud’s crusade, her jihad, her righteous struggle to maintain the rights and the lives of
women depend upon first securing her place as a judge in a male-centric world determined
to undermine her.
“Other judges say I like to make problems,” Kholoud laughs. “But my opinion is that if I don’t
achieve justice for myself, I won’t achieve it for the people.”