Doing Divorce Under the Radar: Politics and Muslim Divorce Councils in Norway

An emerging literature from several European countries has explored how imams or so-called “sharia councils” or divorce councils are providing religious divorce to Muslim women, in cases where their husband or ex-husband does not want to grant them the right to a religious divorce. In the UK, this practice is institutionalised and openly acknowledged, even though it remains controversial and is not regulated by the state (Bowen 2016). Research contributions from recent years have shown that divorce councils can be found in other European countries as well – Germany (Jaraba 2019), Finland (Mulki et al. 2017) and Denmark (Petersen 2025). This article contributes to this emerging literature in two ways. Based on interviews with 10 imams and mosque leaders, I document for the first time that formalized Muslim divorce councils, led by imams, have existed in Norway since at least 2009. Analytically, I advance on the existing literature by exploring how such divorce councils are affected by political discourses on Islam and multiculturalism. In line with Petersen (2025), I show that the main reason such councils have emerged has to do with the strong demand from Muslim women. Imams seem to reap very little benefit from providing such divorces. They do so because the demand from Muslim women is so strong. The shape that such councils take, however, is influenced by larger political discourses. Due to a fear of political backlash, imams decide to provide such divorces quietly and under the radar, even though their practice is legal and arguably is helpful to Muslim women. Even though the governance of religion in Norway can be labelled as a kind of moderate secularism (Modood and Sealy 2024), the skepticism against Muslim religious leaders that can be found in Norwegian political discourse seems to prevent Muslim leaders from cooperating with authorities on some contested issues.