Consolidating Islamic Law and Muslim Administration from the Frontier in British Malaya

Hanisah Sani, National University of Singapore

Islamic law, as it is practiced in many Muslim majority countries today, was keenly shaped by the colonial experience. Deeply embedded in the colonial state, the legacies of Islamic legal administration and institutions persist to shape postcolonial state-building and how Muslims encounter and experience Islamic law. Despite these enduring legacies, current literature suffers from an incomplete historiography of the administration of Muslim law and institutions in former colonies and protectorates. Specifically, the literature reproduces a view that privileges a metropole-centric topography of colonial law which accounts for the diffusion of Islamic laws and institutions from the mercantile center to the rural frontier. Often, this account falls short of the consolidation of Islamic law and Muslim administration where the direction of institutional diffusion was eventually reversed. Taking the example of British Malaya, I examine how the historiography of Islamic law suffers from a disproportionate empirical focus on the Straits Settlements and western Malay states to the neglect of the hinterland, thus guiding an incomplete story of the consolidation of Islamic governance in the colonies and protectorates. I examine the establishment of the Council for Religion and Malay Customs in the northern and frontier state of Kelantan that pioneered a model to consolidate Islamic laws and Muslim administration and which was subsequently replicated across the Malay states. In doing so, I examine institutional diffusion that radiated from the Malay hinterland to the urban centers to reconstitute the topography of Islamic law in the colonial state.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 14. (Dis)assembling the State: New Approaches to Studying State and Society