half the dower; if the wife asks for a divorce and intercourse has occurred, the husband pays half the mahr; and if the wife asks for a divorce and intercourse has not occurred, then no mahr is required to be paid by the husband. Modern era Legal transformation In the modern era, sharia-based laws were widely replaced by statutes based on European models, and its classical rules were largely retained only in personal status (family) laws. Different explanations have been proposed for this phenomenon. Several scholars have argued that because these laws are more extensively specified in the Quran and hadith than others, it has been difficult for believers to accept deviating from these rules. In contrast, Wael Hallaq sees it as a legacy of colonialism: changing family laws would have provided no benefit in colonial administration, and colonial powers promoted the theory that these laws were sacred to the population, advertising their preservation as a mark of respect, which in turn led to them being taken up as a point of reference in modern Muslim identity politics. Important changes in family laws took place in the modern era. The laws underwent codification by legislative bodies and were also displaced from their original context into modern legal systems, which generally followed Western practices in court procedure and legal education. This severed them both from the classical interpretative tradition and from the institutional foundations of the pre-modern legal system into which they were embedded. In particular, control over the norms of divorce shifted from traditional jurists to the state, though they generally remained "within the orbit of Islamic law". In her article 'An unequal partnership', Sulema Jahangir insists that, Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and other international standards expect that non-financial contributions of women to a marriage ought to be recognized to enable an equal standing between spouses. Many Muslim countries are finding ways and means to account for non-financial contributions of women to a marriage and improve divorce compensations. Some Muslim nations such as Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Libya and Tunisia, are effecting rules legislationes to pay additional compensation called 'mata’a' as part of Islamic kindness to departing spouses in addition to dower and maintenance. Many Muslim countries are adding conditions called 'haq meher' (right of financial maintenance and capital awards) in marriage contracts called nikahnama. Methods of reform Changing social conditions have