SHERENE H. RAZACK THE ‘SHARIA LAW DEBATE’ IN ONTARIO: THE MODERNITY/PREMODERNITY DISTINCTION IN LEGAL EFFORTS TO PROTECT WOMEN FROM CULTURE ABSTRACT. The normative figure in Western feminism remains the liberal autonomous individual of modernity. ‘Other’ women are those who have their freedom to choose restricted. Typically, ‘other’ women are those burdened by culture and hindered by their communities from entering modernity. If we remain in the terrain of thinking about women as vulnerable or imperilled, and some women as particularly imperilled, as we generally do of Muslim women, we remain squarely within the framework of patriarchy understood as abstracted from all other systems. A modernity/premodernity distinction will continue to invade any projects intending to help Muslim women. This paper shows the persistence of the modernity/premo- dernity distinction in contemporary debates around applying Sharia law to the set- tlement of family law disputes under the Arbitration Act in Ontario, Canada. I argue below that in their concern to curtail conservative and patriarchal forces within the Muslim community, Canadian feminists (both Muslim and Non-Muslim) utilized frameworks that installed a secular/religious divide that functions as a colour line, marking the difference between the modern, enlightened West, and tribal, religious Muslims. I suggest that feminist responses might have helped to sustain a new form of governmentality, one in which the productive power of the imperilled Muslim woman functions to keep in line Muslim communities at the same time that it defuses more radical feminist and anti-racist critique of conservative religious forces. I end by exploring how this effect could have been restricted. KEY WORDS: Canadian feminists, culture, modernity, Muslim women, Sharia law What politics are promoted by the notion that the world is not divided into modern and non-modern, into West and non-West? (Asad 2003, p. 17) ENTRY POINT:DEAD BODIES AND DEAD SUBJECTS In June 2004, I attended a keynote lecture on honour killings in Europe by Unni Wikan, a Norwegian anthropologist who specializes Feminist Legal Studies (2007) 15:3–32 Ó Springer 2007 DOI 10.1007/s10691-006-9050-x