Islam, Law and the State in Southeast Asia: Singapore: Volume 2

Islam, Law and the State in Southeast Asia: Singapore: Volume 2, I.B. Tauris, 2012

Posted: 20 Oct 2013

See all articles by Timothy Lindsey

Timothy Lindsey

Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, Melbourne Law School

Kerstin Steiner

La Trobe Law School; Law School, The University of Melbourne

Date Written: 2012

Abstract

Southeast Asia has the world’s largest Muslim population - Indonesia alone is home to more Muslims than the entire Middle East - yet nowhere in the region has a theocratic government emerged. Instead, Southeast Asian Islam is characterised by heterodox local traditions. Muslim societies today are torn between radical Islamist reformers calling for Syari’ah law and secular governments using law to contain and co-opt it. The result is a tension between state laws and institutions and Islamic alternatives.

These three volumes provide an account of this complex contest across contemporary Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei in a comprehensive form not attempted for decades.

Drawing on extensive new research and fieldwork, these three volumes provide an up-to-date account of the interaction of Islamic legal traditions and modern laws across contemporary Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei, in a comprehensive and detailed form not attempted for several decades. In systematic way that allows for country comparison, the volumes cover areas as diverse as legal doctrine, substantive laws, judicial decision-making, the administration of religion, intellectual debate, state policy development and an extensive range of selected case studies.

The second volume in the Islam and Laws in Southeast Asia series focuses on the legal treatment of Islam in contemporary Singapore, covering the substantive regulations and legal institutions by which the state manages the religion of its Malay minority. Through a detailed account of positive law and related religious and social institutions, this volume explores the balance the Singaporean government seeks to maintain between its obligations to an indigenous Muslim minority and the needs of its majority non-Muslim immigrant community.

Under colonial rule, Islamic law in Singapore developed through British common law state institutions that produced a hybrid ‘Anglo-Muslim’ mixture of legal doctrines. This sophisticated, if idiosyncratic, jurisprudence for Muslims referred very little to the classical Shari’ah but drew heavily on the secular common law and its legal traditions, procedures and principles, as the state subordinated Islamic traditions to the needs of colonial administration.

Following independence, the management of Islamic law within a tightly-controlled secular framework tied to ethnic identities continued. The result is that Shari’ah in Singapore today is mostly concerned with procedural issues and the administration of statute law, rather than the creation of precedents or substantive principles. Islamic law has been largely marginalized, both politically and legally.

This volume explores this process - and challenges to it - across a range of areas, including the operation of Syari’ah justice, the production of fatwa and religious education.

Keywords: Islam, religion, Singapore, state and law, state and religion

Suggested Citation

Lindsey, Timothy and Steiner, Kerstin, Islam, Law and the State in Southeast Asia: Singapore: Volume 2 (2012). Islam, Law and the State in Southeast Asia: Singapore: Volume 2, I.B. Tauris, 2012, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2342513

Timothy Lindsey

Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, Melbourne Law School ( email )

Melbourne Law School
185 Pelham Street
University of Melbourne, VIC, 3010
Australia
+61 3 834 48134 (Phone)
+61 3 8344 4546 (Fax)

Kerstin Steiner (Contact Author)

La Trobe Law School ( email )

La Trobe University
Bundoora, VIC 3083 3142
Australia

Law School, The University of Melbourne ( email )

185 Pelham Street
Carlton, Victoria 3053
Australia

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Abstract Views
707
PlumX Metrics