Living Sharia ─ Law and Practice in Malaysia

"Examines the sociopolitical roles that sharia plays in Malaysia today. Drawing on fieldwork and textual research, it probes the contested implementation of Islamic family and criminal laws and sharia economics, and delineates cultural frameworks for understanding sharia among Muslims and non-Muslims. These include the views of Malay secular nationalists, political Islamic activists, Muslim feminists, Islamic NGOs, Sufi revivalists, liberal Muslim reformers, opposition party leaders, a non-Muslim social democratic political party, and liberal rights organizations. This thoughtful ethnography demonstrates that the way people think about sharia is often entangled with notions about race, gender equality, nation, liberal pluralism, citizenship, and universal human rights. Close investigation of the way diverse members of Malaysian society speak, write, and think about sharia reveals that ideas about sharia are not isolated from or always opposed to liberal pluralism and secularism. Intra-Muslim contests as well as Muslim and non-Muslim skirmishes chronicle revealing faultlines and suggest areas of potential compromise"--

Timothy P. Daniels is professor of anthropology at Hofstra University. He is the author of Islamic Spectrum in Java and Building Cultural Nationalism in Malaysia, and editor of Performance, Popular Culture, and Piety in Muslim Southeast Asia.