From ‘Kadi Justice’ to E-Syariah Governance: Corporatization and Discourses of Transformation in an Islamic Judiciary

Leiden Southeast Asia Seminar

This paper examines the heuristic value of terms such as “Islamization”, “syariatization”, and “desecularization” with respect to recent changes that have occurred in Malaysia’s Islamic judiciary. Michael Peletz argues that despite their apparent utility, all such glosses are deeply problematic insofar as they elide distinctions among processes that are both empirically and analytically distinct. More specifically, he illustrates that while some trends bearing on the Islamic judiciary might be said to involve a kind of Islamization, others reflect long-standing concerns to model it on its more prestigious civil-law counterpart and the common-law traditions with which that counterpart is inextricably associated. Further complicating the picture are analytically distinct trends involving corporatization and e-governance, undergirded by Japanese systems of management and auditing, which have been embraced by the Islamic judiciary and the governmental apparatus in its entirety to better discipline Malaysian citizen-subjects and help guide them to a more secure and prosperous future.

Michael G. Peletz is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at Emory University (USA). His specialties include social and cultural theory, gender, sexuality, kinship, law, religion (especially Islam), and modernity, particularly in Malaysia, Indonesia, and other parts of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim.

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The Leiden Southeast Asia Seminar is a cooperation of the KITLV, IIAS, VVI , the Programme in South and Southeast Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of Cultural Anthropology & Development Sociology, Leiden University.