Islamic Law and Islamic Legal Professionals in Southeast Asia

Abstract

This cutting-edge edited volume (posted here on SSRN in its entirety) analyzes the Islamic legal systems of three Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. It also includes new information about the training, organization and professional culture of judges and lawyers who work in these Islamic legal systems. The volume begins with an essay discussing the state of academic knowledge about contemporary Islamic legal systems and about the judges and lawyers who work in the Islamic courts. It explores why, at a time of great interest in Islamic law, we still have a limited understanding of the institutional structure of Islamic legal systems, and almost no knowledge about the training and professional culture of the figures who administer Islamic justice around the world. It argues for the importance of comparative research in this area. The rest of the volume is divided into three sections — each focusing on a different country. Each section begins with history of Islamic law in the country at issue and of the systems that it has developed to interpret, adjudicate and enforce Islamic law. In each country-section, the historical introduction is followed by a chapter exploring in detail how Islamic judges in that country are trained, selected, supervised and promoted. This is followed by another article discussing the lawyers who represent clients before these courts. It describes the training and credentialing of these lawyers, the bar associations to which they belong and the relationship of “Islamic lawyers” to other types of lawyer in the country. Providing a wealth of empirical data about three important Islamic legal systems and a new comparative perspective, this volume allows us to understand better the structure and culture of Islamic adjudication in crucially important countries. It allows us also to identify hitherto hidden patterns and discrepancies in the administration of Islamic law around the world.