Women, men, and the long and short term of inheritance in Pulau Langkawi, Malaysia

Abstract

This paper examines inheritance practices among Malay Muslims on the island of Langkawi, Malaysia.1 These are complex, variable and flexible. Broadly, they are based on two sets of principles applied on different time scales. One, which is informal, applies immediately following a death and often for a considerable number of years thereafter, stresses rights through residence and equal inheritance within a sibling group irrespective of gender; the other allocates rights according to Islamic law. In the state of Kedah, of which Langkawi is part, Islamic inheritance rules are automa tically applied whenever recourse is made to the courts by Malays for a formal division of property, but not necessarily prior to this. Nor are heirs under any obligation to go through this legal procedure. In Langkawi portions of an estate are often also reallocated after such a formal division with the agreement of all beneficiaries, and this reallocation is then vali dated by the local Land Office. The manner in which these two systems are manipulated in Langkawi is relevant to the long-standing debate on an obvious disjunction between Islamic law and adat (custom, tradition, propriety) in Southeast Asia. In this case an informal system sustains an ideology of equal inheritance between women and men, while the formal, legal apparatus upholds the