4 - Politics of Syariah Reform: The Making of the State Religio-Legal Apparatus

Summary

Introduction

Exercises in authority building are intrinsically related to the quest for state-making. Moreover, the expansion of modern state institutions in itself is a highly political process and the effects of this process are similarly political. In a Muslim society, Muslim leaders readily utilize the idiom of religion to engage with such a process of state-making. Various Islamic actors — over a wide ideological spectrum — strive for the attainment of a vision of state and nation on both ideological and institutional fronts. Some aspire to the creation of an “Islamic state” — based on the Islamic canons and tradition. Others adopt a less dogmatic approach to establish authority based on religious-inspired moral principles.

In a more modern context, this contestation over the nature of the state, as Clive Kessler elegantly showed in his classic study on Muslim-Malay politics in Kelantan, is transferred into the arena of party politics (Kessler 1978). What the outcomes of these contestations are, as Kessler emphasizes elsewhere, depends not on the irrevocable influence of doctrinal forms, but on historically, sociologically, and ideologically determined patterns of political agency (Kessler 1979).

The jurisdictional expansion and institutionalization of the Islamic (Syariah) judicial mechanism in Malaysia offer an intriguing case for examining the process of state-making. A reform drive in he Syariah judicial apparatus since the 1980s, spearheaded by the UMNO (United Malays National Organization) (which has dominated government) has brought about an unprecedented institutional development on the constitutional, legislative, and administrative fronts. The apparatus of the Syariah courts was upgraded, with their jurisdiction expanded within the country's still essentially “secular” judicial system. This apparent “Islamization” trend has corresponded with the organizational expansion of the state machinery administering Syariah matters, including the increased employment of better-qualified Syariah personnel. One important overall effect of this process is the rise of highly institutionalized state mechanisms regulating Islamic agencies and actors.