Shariʿa and Social Engineering

Abstract

Abstract This final chapter builds on the empirical data presented in the chapters that precede it to develop a more sustained discussion of the idea of Shariʿa as a tool of social engineering in contemporary Aceh. In doing so it traces the various lines of influence that have shaped this forward-oriented, instrumentalist vision of Islamic law in society — including strains of twentieth-century American sociological jurisprudence, daʿwa-inspired Islamic activism, Indonesian state developmentalist ideology, and the international reconstruction and development rhetoric of ‘building back better’. These and other diverse elements have come together in unexpected and powerful ways to shape the discourse and practice of Islamic law in contemporary Aceh in the post-disaster/post-conflict period.