This book examines the challenges of the implementation of Islamic law in Malaysia. Malaysia is a pertinent jurisdiction to explore such challenges given its global focus, colonial history and institutions, and the intersection of the Shari’ah and secularism/multiculturalism. The resultant implementation challenges are underpinned by three factors that make Malaysia an important jurisdiction for those interested in understanding the place of Islamic law in the global context. First, Malaysia is often considered as a model Islamic country. Islamic law is a source of law in Malaysia. The Islamic law legal system in Malaysia operates in parallel with a common law legal system. The two systems of law generally are in harmony with one another. Nevertheless, occasional cross-jurisdictional issues do arise, and when they do, the Malaysian judiciary has been quite efficient in solving them. The Malaysian experience in maintaining such harmony between the two legal systems provides lessons for a number of countries facing such challenges. Second, Malaysia has a developed Shari’ah court system that interprets and applies Islamic law predominantly based on the Shafi’i school of thought. While, for the most part, the approach has been successful, there have been times when the implementation of the law has raised concerns as to the compatibility of Islamic law with modern principles of human rights and common law-based values. Third, there have been cases where Islamic law implementation in Malaysia has gained global attention due to the potential for wider international implications. To do justice to this complex area, the book calls on scholars and practitioners who have the necessary expertise in Islamic law and its implementation. As such, this book provides lessons and direction for other countries that operate a dual system of secular and Islamic laws.

In The Politics of Islamic Law, Iza Hussin compares India, Malaya, and Egypt during the British colonial period in order to trace the making and transformation of the contemporary category of ‘Islamic law.’ She demonstrates that not only is Islamic law not the shari’ah, its present institutional forms, substantive content, symbolic vocabulary, and relationship to state and society—in short, its politics—are built upon foundations laid during the colonial encounter. Drawing on extensive archival work in English, Arabic, and Malay—from court records to colonial and local papers to private letters and visual material—Hussin offers a view of politics in the colonial period as an iterative series of negotiations between local and colonial powers in multiple locations. She shows how this resulted in a paradox, centralizing Islamic law at the same time that it limited its reach to family and ritual matters, and produced a transformation in the Muslim state, providing the frame within which Islam is articulated today, setting the agenda for ongoing legislation and policy, and defining the limits of change. Combining a genealogy of law with a political analysis of its institutional dynamics, this book offers an up-close look at the ways in which global transformations are realized at the local level.

Most Muslim-majority countries have legal systems that enshrine both Islam and liberal rights. While not necessarily at odds, these dual commitments nonetheless provide legal and symbolic resources for activists to advance contending visions for their states and societies. Using the case study of Malaysia, Constituting Religion examines how these legal arrangements enable litigation and feed the construction of a 'rights-versus-rites binary' in law, politics, and the popular imagination. By drawing on extensive primary source material and tracing controversial cases from the court of law to the court of public opinion, this study theorizes the 'judicialization of religion' and the radiating effects of courts on popular legal and religious consciousness. The book documents how legal institutions catalyze ideological struggles, which stand to redefine the nation and its politics. Probing the links between legal pluralism, social movements, secularism, and political Islamism, Constituting Religion sheds new light on the confluence of law, religion, politics, and society. This title is also available as Open Access.

Drawing on ethnographic research, Living Sharia examines the role of sharia in the sociopolitical processes of contemporary Malaysia. The book traces the contested implementation of Islamic family and criminal laws and sharia economics to provide cultural frameworks for understanding sharia among Muslims and non-Muslims. Timothy Daniels explores how the way people think about sharia is often entangled with notions about race, gender equality, nationhood, liberal pluralism, citizenship, and universal human rights. He reveals that Malaysians’ ideas about sharia are not isolated from—nor always opposed to—liberal pluralism and secularism. Living Sharia will be of interest to scholars as well as to policy makers, consultants, and professionals working with global NGOs.

Few symbols in today’s world are as laden and fraught as sharia—an Arabic-origin term referring to the straight path, the path God revealed for humans, the norms and rules guiding Muslims on that path, and Islamic law and normativity as enshrined in sacred texts or formal statute. Yet the ways in which Muslim men and women experience the myriad dimensions of sharia often go unnoticed and unpublicized. So too do recent historical changes in sharia judiciaries and contemporary strategies on the part of political and religious elites, social engineers, and brand stewards to shape, solidify, and rebrand these institutions. Sharia Transformations is an ethnographic, historical, and theoretical study of the practice and lived entailments of sharia in Malaysia, arguably the most economically successful Muslim-majority nation in the world. The book focuses on the routine everyday practices of Malaysia’s sharia courts and the changes that have occurred in the court discourses and practices in recent decades. Michael G. Peletz approaches Malaysia’s sharia judiciary as a global assemblage and addresses important issues in the humanistic and social-scientific literature concerning how Malays and other Muslims engage ethical norms and deal with law, social justice, and governance in a rapidly globalizing world.