Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. viii, 351 pp. (Table, illustrations.) US$37.50, paper. ISBN 978-0-226-32334-3.
This historical study of the colonial and post-colonial evolution of Islamic law is driven by the following issues: the way in which contemporary institutions of Islamic law have been shaped by colonial antecedents; modern Muslim state reliance upon colonial-era frames; how institutional and theoretical frames shaped Islamic law; Islamic law as an arena of political contestation; and Islamic law as state-controlled and a powerful arsenal of the modern state. Hussin succinctly highlights the importance of the historical study of Islamic law:
Given recent political and legal controversies in many Muslim states, the need for deeper understanding of the politics of Islamic law has rarely been greater; at a time when misunderstanding of the core dynamics of Muslim states and communities is prevalent, the need for the systematic study of the underpinnings of contemporary Islam has rarely been more pressing. Muslim societies today continue to struggle to define what is Islamic … a better understanding of past struggles may help inform future movements, whatever direction they take. (8–9)
Despite Islamic law being central to the book’s focus, the framing of Islamic law is less than precise. However, Hussin does make note of commonly understood (but truncated) notions of Islamic law, in particular, the conflation of Islamic law with sharia, the parsing of Islamic law as fiqh, and its conflation as personal status or family law (7). Islamic law is described as “multiple, slippery and contested” (7) and a “contingent and constructed political space, through which historical processes work” (9). The “multiple, slippery and contested” understanding of sharia in the contemporary political context is explored in the Malaysia case study.
The working definition of the post-colonial state is less than precise and as a result, discussion of the post-colonial secular (or quasi-secular) constitutional foundations of the Malaysian, Indian, and Egyptian post-colonial state is ambiguous. A rigorous discussion of Ahmed Kuru’s (2009), Abdullahi An Naim’s (2008), and Khaled Abou el Fadl’s (1997) comparative and political-legal analyses of the foundational dynamics of Muslim-majority states would have addressed this limitation.
A key strength of this largely historical study is the way in which Hussin ambitiously compares the making, unmaking, and remaking (10) of Islamic law in three former British colonies—Malaya (Southeast Asia), India (South Asia), and Egypt (Middle East)—by diligently excavating significant amounts of archival material in the Malay, Arabic, and English languages. She mines the archival material creatively, focusing on treaties, trials, and portraits of local male elites. These “creole pioneers” shrewdly used multiple modes of representation to different audiences to achieve goals that often diverged from the colonial project (164). An analysis of the shifting portraits and personas of elite women would have enriched the discussion.
The choice of Kathleen Thelen and James Mahoney’s (2010) historical institutionalist framework effectively highlights the way by which elites exploited institutional ambiguities to their advantage. The employment of James Scott’s (1998) framework of resistance via “hidden transcripts” is also particularly useful. That said, Hussin has relied too strongly on the frameworks of anthropologists and sociologists such as Wael Hallaq and Talal Asad. Their frameworks may not be particularly useful in understanding the complex political dynamics of non-Arab post-colonial states such as Malaysia and India. Asad’s framework potentially obfuscates the significance of Malaysia’s and India’s post-colonial secular democratic foundations and its relevance for nation-building and citizenship rights in multi-religious societies beyond the Middle East.
Hussin convincingly demonstrates that local elites played critical roles in the construction of Islamic law as a codified and state-centred system that is limited to areas of personal and family law. Transformations in local legal systems profoundly altered political systems (14). But this point is not altogether novel. What is rather novel, however, is the assertion that “the law was conceived, bargained over, and used by powerful men and women involved in the workings of the colonial state” (23). The inclusion of elite women as having contributed to the workings of the colonial state offers a potentially innovative spin to the book. But who are these vanguard elite women? Were they wives or daughters of elite men? Unfortunately, these questions are not elaborated on. Only fleeting references to the relationship between gender rights and Islamic law are found in chapter 7’s discussion of women who have renounced Islam. It was a little surprising that the Malaysian regime’s politicization of Islam coupled with the growing influence of salafi-wahbabi Islam within the sharia court system and Islamic bureaucracy were not discussed more systematically in this chapter.
By and large, The Politics of Islamic Law is an impressive comparative and historical study that has extended the boundaries of scholarly knowledge on a complex topic that continues to challenge the vast majority of Muslim-majority states.
Lily Zubaidah Rahim
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
pp. 785-787