Islam, Law and the State in Southeast Asia: Volume 1

A thorough and detailed survey of Islam and the law in Indonesia today is long overdue. This volume offers an expert and systematic update of the interaction of Islam and positive law (substantive regulations and institutions) in contemporary Indonesia, where Islamic law has developed within a state-approved and secularising bureaucratic structure that valorized local traditions over the scriptures of Islam. Successive governments have sought to integrate Islam into the framework of a secular national ideology, albeit in contested form, with constant ideological debates over relevance and content. The result is an increasingly complex mixture of local traditions and norms and state secularism, with growing social and political pressure for an orthodoxy modeled more closely on Arab cultures. Based on extensive fieldwork, this volume gives a detailed account of current debates, legal institutions and substantive laws, explicitly asking whether a uniquely Indonesian approach to Shari'ah can be identified, as many local Muslim leaders have long argued is the case.