Transformations in Islamic Law in Malaysia, Late 1980s-Present

FAIN: FA-57104-13

Michael G. Peletz
Emory University (Atlanta, GA 30322-1018)

The main objectives of this project are to analyze anthropological, archival, and other data bearing on transformations in Islamic law (sharia) in the Muslim-majority nation of Malaysia from the late 1980s to the present, and to prepare a book that describes and interprets continuities and transformations in Malaysia’s Islamic judiciary in relation to dynamics of Islamization, corporatization, and globalization. The more general goals are to examine the Malaysian case in comparative historical perspective, with regard to Indonesian and Egyptian material in particular, and to address important empirical and theoretical issues in the social scientific and humanistic literature concerning the ways that Malays and other Muslims engage ethical norms and deal with law, discipline, and disorder in a rapidly globalizing world.

Associated Products

Malaysia's Syariah Judiciary as Global Assemblage: Islamization, Corporatization, and Other Transformations in Context (Article)
Title: Malaysia's Syariah Judiciary as Global Assemblage: Islamization, Corporatization, and Other Transformations in Context
Author: Michale G. Peletz
Abstract: This essay concerns transformations in the judicial apparatus involved in implementing Islamic law (syariah/shari‘a) in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation in Southeast Asia. Three of my goals are to delineate some of the empirical complexities of the syariah judiciary's day-to-day operations and the mutually contradictory directions in which it is moving; to problematize the widely invoked trope of Islamization as a gloss for these phenomena; and to illustrate that this judiciary is profitably viewed as a global assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Ong and Collier 2005). Another, more general, objective is to elucidate some of the ways that religion, law, and attendant phenomena are being bureaucratized, rationalized, corporatized, and otherwise transformed in an increasingly globalized world.
Year: 2013
Access Model: Purchase
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 55, No. 3, 603-633
Publisher: Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History

Reason and Passion: Representation of Gender in a Malay Society (Book)
Title: Reason and Passion: Representation of Gender in a Malay Society
Author: Peletz, Michael G.
Year: 1996
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=9780520200708
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: Berkeley: University of California Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780520200708

Islamic Modern: Religious Courts and Cultural Politics in Malaysia (Book)
Title: Islamic Modern: Religious Courts and Cultural Politics in Malaysia
Author: Peletz, Michael G.
Year: 2002
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=9780691095080
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: Princeton: Princeton University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780691095080

Gender, Sexuality, and Body Politics in Modern Asia. Key Issues in Asian Studies, No. 1. (Book)
Title: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Politics in Modern Asia. Key Issues in Asian Studies, No. 1.
Author: Peletz, Michael G.
Year: 2007
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=9780924304507
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780924304507

A Tale of Two Courts (Article)
Title: A Tale of Two Courts
Author: Michael Peletz
Abstract: Judicial transformation and the rise of a corporate Islamic governmentality in Malaysia
Year: 2015
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: American Ethnologist

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