Minority Law to Go

Minority Law to Go is a podcast mini-series about the debates at the crossroads of law, religion, gender, and state power in the Arab region. Hosted by Dörthe Engelcke, AGYA member and acting head of the Centre of Expertise for the Law of Arab and Islamic Countries at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, the series brings leading scholars and legal practitioners into conversation. Together, they explore the lived realities of legal pluralism and the political contexts that shape them. The series grew out of the conference “Minority Law in Arab States – Governing Religious Diversity”, organized by the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA) together with the Centre of Expertise for the Law of Arab and Islamic Countries at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law. The conference took place at the MPI in July 2025.

Across the episodes, we meet trailblazers and critical thinkers who challenge how we understand law and minority law. With Maya Mikdashi, we turn to Lebanon to unpack the concept of sextarianism and examine how religious, legal, and political differences are constructed and contested. With Gianluca Parolin, we explore debates around Christian inheritance rights in Egypt and the limits of legal pluralism in the wake of constitutional change. And with Scarlet Bishara, the first female church court judge in an Arab country, we hear how legal reform and gender relations are negotiated within the church courts and learn about the challenges of reforming the family laws of Christian communities in Arab countries.

The conversations reveal how struggles for justice and change unfold within legal systems where family law is tied to religious affiliation. They highlight how these laws shape daily life, mediating questions of identity, community, and equality. The series also places current debates in their historical context. Since the colonial period, the question of minority rights has been politicized, and coloniality continues to shape today’s legal frameworks and power structures. The struggle over legal reform is inseparable from broader debates about governance, national identity, citizenship rights, and the pursuit of justice.