Drawing on life stories of religiously committed women living in Istanbul and fatwas delivered by female preachers through the telephone hotline run by the Directorate of Religious Affairs in Turkey (Diyanet), this dissertation examines how women evaluate and navigate gender-related challenges in their own marriages and divorce processes, or those of fatwa seekers. It explores how they strive to find moral solutions to crises, situating themselves and others within a broader Islamic cosmology centred on the presence of divine power. While the narratives of ordinary women provide self-insights on their marital lives and divorce as well as their meaning-making processes, the fatwas given by female preachers show how state employees tried to find solutions to the problems fatwa-seekers faced in their family lives. Both lines of research shed light on the complex ways in which women uneasily navigate legal, Islamic and social norms and kin relationships as well as their desires, aspirations and affective commitments, while striving to live a moral, and religiously adherent life amidst the numerous demands placed upon them. Within a context where gendered normativities have a pivotal role in shaping the institution of marriage and divorce process, both ordinary women’s evaluations of their past experiences and female preachers’ fatwas on family problems address the pursuit of justice. The dissertation therefore focuses on women’s sense of justice beyond the law, which is shaped as they gain experiences in relation to others, as wives, daughters, mothers, fatwa givers, and devotees
