How do Islamic courts work? What sorts of cultural understandings inform judicial process and litigants' strategies? How do women's claims fare? Addressing such questions, this book provides ethnographic, historical, and transnational perspectives on contemporary Islam in the shifting landscape of an important region of the world - Malaysia.

LIST OF MAPS ix LIST OF TABLES xi FOREWORD xiii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv NOTE ON SPELLING, TERMINOLOGY, AND CURRENCY xix INTRODUCTION 1 Background and Context Methods PART ONE: THE CULTURE, POLITICAL ECONOMY, AND HISTORY OF THE ISLAMIC COURTS 23 CHAPTER ONE: Locating Islamic Magistrates and Their Courts in History 25 Islamic Magistrates, Islamic Courts, and Islamic Law through the 1830s Colonial Representations of Islamic Magistrates and Their Courts, 1840s-1880s The Reorganization and Rationalization of the Courts, 1890s-1980s CHAPTER TWO: The Work of the Courts 64 Background and Setting Domains and Jurisdictions Operations The Cultural Logic of Judicial Process CHAPTER THREE: Litigant Strategies and Patterns of Resistance 128 Women's Strategies and Experiences Men's Strategies and Experiences Patterns of Resistance and Oppositional Discourses PART TWO: MODERNITY AND GOVERNMENTALITY IN ISLAMIC COURTS AND OTHER DOMAINS 193 CHAPTER FOUR: Reinscribing Authenticity and Identity 195 What's There and What's Not: The Said, the Unsaid, and the Unwritten Reinscribing Authenticity and Identity Rationalization and Resistance Revisited CHAPTER FIVE: Producing Good Subjects, "Asian Values," and New Types of Criminality 239 A Note on Gender Pluralism, Transgender Practices, and the Long Duree Narratives of "Asian Values" and the Rise of Social Intolerance New Types of Criminality: Azizah, Anwar, and Beyond CONCLUSION: Islam, Modernity, and Civil Society 277 Kinship Matters in the Dialectics of Civil Society and the State Back to the Malaysian Future NOTES 291 GLOSSARY OF FREQUENTLY USED MALAY TERMS 305 BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 INDEX 327

"This engagingly written study illuminates the workings of Islamic courts and the politics and meanings of Muslim identity in one of Asia's most important 'new tigers.' While elucidating the dynamics of Muslim families and family law, Peletz provides dazzling insights into Malay-Muslim subjectivities and notions of gender, sexuality, and modernity. The result is an intellectual tour de force that should be read by anyone and everyone interested in Islam, democracy, civil society, and the thorny question of just what, in political and sexual terms, it means to be modern."—Robert W. Hefner, author of Civil Islam"With one out of five people in the world subject to Islamic law this important study of the Malaysian variant is a genuine milestone in our understanding of Muslim law and society. It challenges our appreciation of the power relations between men and women and of the politics of law in building a modern state. This is law not on the books but in daily life. The insights afforded here are central to the broader role Islamic law is playing in the lives of the whole world."—Lawrence Rosen, Princeton University"This is at once Michael Peletz's most sophisticated and most ambitious book. He is concerned with at least three huge projects: the Islamic resurgence, the Islamic legal system, and cultural politics. This is an evocative, often brilliant book that shows how cosmopolitan politics engineered from Kuala Lumpur have produced a contradictory notion of Asian values that poses an opaque but imminent danger."—Bruce Lawrence, author of Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence"Based on impressive fieldwork and archival research, this is the first full-length treatment of Islamic courts in contemporary Malaysia. It makes the important point that, far from being antiquated and out of touch, Islamic courts are helping to make a 'modern' Malaysia."—James Piscatori, coeditor of Muslim Politics

This engagingly written study illuminates the workings of Islamic courts and the politics and meanings of Muslim identity in one of Asia's most important 'new tigers.' While elucidating the dynamics of Muslim families and family law, Peletz provides dazzling insights into Malay-Muslim subjectivities and notions of gender, sexuality, and modernity. The result is an intellectual tour de force that should be read by anyone and everyone interested in Islam, democracy, civil society, and the thorny question of just what, in political and sexual terms, it means to be modern. -- Robert W. Hefner, author of "Civil Islam" With one out of five people in the world subject to Islamic law this important study of the Malaysian variant is a genuine milestone in our understanding of Muslim law and society. It challenges our appreciation of the power relations between men and women and of the politics of law in building a modern state. This is law not on the books but in daily life. The insights afforded here are central to the broader role Islamic law is playing in the lives of the whole world. -- Lawrence Rosen, Princeton University This is at once Michael Peletz's most sophisticated and most ambitious book. He is concerned with at least three huge projects: the Islamic resurgence, the Islamic legal system, and cultural politics. This is an evocative, often brilliant book that shows how cosmopolitan politics engineered from Kuala Lumpur have produced a contradictory notion of Asian values that poses an opaque but imminent danger. -- Bruce Lawrence, author of "Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence" Based on impressive fieldwork and archival research, this is the first full-length treatment of Islamic courts in contemporary Malaysia. It makes the important point that, far from being antiquated and out of touch, Islamic courts are helping to make a 'modern' Malaysia. -- James Piscatori, coeditor of "Muslim Politics"