Malay Adat Research Articles

On Human-Nature Relations: The Importance of Malay Adat and Rituals in Protecting the Suhaid River in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Many scholars have examined human-nature relations through various frameworks. A few researchers, however, have studied human-nature relations through Malay adat (custom) and rituals concerning the Suhaid river in Kapuas Hulu, West Kalimantan. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the relationship between humans and nature is made significant through Malay adat and rituals that protect rivers. This study uses manuscript data, interviews, and observations in Suhaid of Kapuas Hulu regency in West Kalimantan. The respondents consisted of the head of the Malay traditional court, village religious leaders, and the local Malay community. In addition, researchers also used an anthropological approach to study Malay culture. This study shows that the relationship between humans and nature in the river illustrates: 1) adat and rituals have local values ​​and beliefs which protect rivers; 2) the Suhaid Malay community is concerned with protecting rivers; 3) Malay customary laws aimed at maintaining the relationship between humans and nature were developed as part of a peace treaty between Pangeran Suma Dilaga and the Iban people; and 4) the contemporary relationship between humans and nature in the Suhaid river has been outlined in customary law (hukum adat) and is practiced in the tradition of buang-buang rituals. The researcher's findings highlight the importance of Malay adat and rituals in the conservation of the Suhaid river in West Kalimantan.

Between Intention and Implementation

In 2018, news of a 41-year-old Malay man’s marriage to a Thai girl of 11 as his third wife broke out in the Malaysian media, catalysing nationwide concerns on the state of affairs of child marriage in Malaysia. This article analyses the news reports on this child marriage scandal and draws on my own long-term ethnographic fieldwork studying marriage and intimacy in the state of Kelantan to examine the ensuing public and religious debates concerning the amendment of Malaysia’s Islamic family law enactments. I demonstrate that state- and federal-level efforts at curbing child marriage have failed largely due to the lack of consensus amongst the religious and political elite, as well as members of the Muslim community, on what the purpose of marriage is, who – and whose interests – it is meant to protect, and what measures should be implemented to prevent its abuse. Furthermore, child marriage in Malaysia has been ideologically sustained by a rhetoric of ‘masculinist protectionism’ in which men justify their marriage to young girls as an act of care and benevolence to mask a reality of coercion and violence. However, legal reform on child marriage will not only be ineffectual but also inadequate if it is not enforced in tandem with other initiatives such as seeking poverty eradication in rural regions; looking at the feasibility of contracting eloped marriages in Southern Thailand; and carefully reconsidering Malay adat and Islamic norms promoting young and early marriage as alternatives to prolonged periods of courtship.

Intimacy Under Surveillance: Illicit Sexuality, Moral Policing, and the State in Contemporary Malaysia

Abstract Malaysia’s Malay-Muslim majority adheres to heteronormative forms of sexuality that recognise marriage as the only means of securing access to lawful sexual intimacy. Islam, Malay customs (adat), and the Malaysian state impose strict sanctions on pre- and extramarital intimacy in its Syariah criminal laws. A Vice Prevention Unit responsible for moral policing is legally authorised to arrest couples who violate Islamic rules of behaviour, including sexual offences such as khalwat (illicit proximity)—a crime of passion punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment. This article compares two khalwat trials in Kota Bharu and Kuala Lumpur’s Syariah court to illustrate what Peletz (2002) calls the judges’ “cultural logic of judicial reasoning”. In these trials, Syariah judges extend beyond a narrowed focus on gender to also consider cultural understandings of age, profession, family circumstances, and marital status, thus reproducing Malay adat understandings of intimacy, marriage, and personhood. In an effort to steer young couples away from forbidden sexual temptations, the Malaysian state liberalises access to marriage by recognising cross-border marriages contracted in Southern Thailand, offering financial incentives to young couples intending to marry and defending existing legal provisions allowing the marriage of minors. The Malaysian state’s mix of punitive, preventative, and pro-marriage policies, I suggest, are various ways of surveilling sexuality by bringing uncontrolled desires under the purview of matrimony, where it may find its lawful expression.

Southeast Asia's Forgotten Female Muslim Rulers

The Malay world, while united by a common language, a collective commitment to Islam and a shared history, also preserves a variously expressed but mutually held set of customary traditions (adat). Muslim scholars, both past and present, have long debated the Islamic legitimacy of adat. In reality, however, many adat practices complement the ideals of Islam ideals often overlooked by more orthodox Muslim practitioners. This is particularly so regarding the treatment of women. A perception exists that Islam encourages the seclusion of women. While modern feminist readings of the Quran are celebrated for challenging this, it is worth noting that Malay adat has permitted Muslim women to attain public positions of power and influence for centuries.

English

Research by Andaya (1999) has shown that the “expansion of authority” in Southeast Asia is jostled through culture. In Malay archipelago, such authority and legitimacy are manifested in the regulation of “dress, language, and custom,” reinforcing powerful gains emanating from wide cultural control. Following this premise, we seek to provide insights that work in tandem with how culture evolves to signify one’s power and position through conversational exchanges palpable in popular TV fiction. Specifically, in this paper, we argue that reasons related to culture including religion and communal beliefs are employed by the “dominant knower” to prevail in TV fiction’s narrative exchanges. Based on Conversation Analysis (CA) of Julia and On Dhia, we show that “dominant knowers” triumph using Malay adat (customs), as a reasoning firstly to justify the behavior of everyday discourse (friendships, relationships, and parenthood) and secondly to explicate one’s choices in instituting the roles of women and men in the Malay world. Through such analysis, it is also found that any arguments through logic are denied and eliminated. Given these findings, this study demonstrates whether followers do or do not possess agency and whether followership does or does not dwell on loyalty to friendship and kinship over the course of navigating their private and public lives. By focusing on the narrative exchanges, we also contend that although TV fiction evokes issues that are decidedly modern and liberal in response to forces of globalization, Malay adat is still powerful for boosting power and authority in everyday Malay discourse. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/GEMA-2015-1501-12

Islamic Sufism and Malay Adat in Two plays by Malaysia's Noordin Hassan

Islamic Sufism and Malay Adat in Two plays by Malaysia's Noordin Hassan

Aspects of Terminological Problems in Describing Proprietary Relations Under Malaysian Land Law

The peoples of the Malay peninsula came into contact with western legal systems first through the Portuguese, then the Dutch and then the British (Braddell 1982; Ibrahim 1970: 9). Of these three, the British legal influence had the most enduring effect on the Malaysian legal system. However, before the advent of British administration, the system of laws existing in Malaya was already an amalgam of Muslim law and Malay adat (Ibrahim 1970: 5).

Visible Women in East Coast Malay Society: On the Reproduction of Gender in Ceremonial, School and Market.

Reviewer: Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf, Department of E.nglish Language and Literature, International Islamic University Malaysia. Norwegian Professor Ingrid Rudie is not a new name in social anthropological research on Malay women. She has researched andpublished extensively on women in Islamic societies, changing roles of Malay village women and Malay female leadership. In the Visible Women in East Coast Malay Society, Rudie describes her research (done over the period of 8 months between visits in 1986 and 1988) as a follow-up study of her earlier research in Kelantan in 1964-5. The second study investigates changes in gender relations especially concerning women who in 1965, were seen as having wider and freer roles as wives, mothers and businesswomen. They owned, inherited, bought and sold land. They dominated the bazaar and had more say on family economy and family politics. As Rudie charts changes and development of Malay women in Kelantan in the 1960s and later 1980s, one is reminded of an assertion brought forth by Malaysian anthropologist, Professor Wazir Jahan Karim in her book Women and Culture: Between Malay Adat and Islam. Karim argues that the Malay ad at (custom/tradition) liberates Malay women and gives them freedom to say and act. Rudie seems to share this belief but observes that the long established customary laws favouring women continue to thrive despite the Islamic revival in the 1980s:

Wazir Jahan Karim: Women and culture: between Malay adat and Islam. xiv, 255 pp. San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press, 1992. £25.95.

Wazir Jahan Karim: Women and culture: between Malay adat and Islam. xiv, 255 pp. San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press, 1992. £25.95.

Women and Culture: Between Malay Adat and Islam.

Women and Culture: Between Malay Adat and Islam.

Women and culture: between Malay Adat and Islam

Gender, culture, and history women and the state in early Malay history adat and Islam as ideology and social organization women in party politics, voluntary movements, and the formal construction of power contemporary adat and Islam in a Malay village - gender relationships, status and power education, Islamics revivalism and industrialization cultural splitting among the younger generation adat and Islam in contemporary Malay society and the principle of syarat.

Adat and Islam in Malaya

The aim of this essay is twofold : First, to describe the relationship between the system of law (adat) and a religious system which is also a legal system (Islam) as these co-exist in contemporary Malaya. The relationship is important because although both systems apply to the same persons ? the Malay peasants ? their respective rules in such important matters as marriage and inheritance are dissimilar and indeed conflict in certain important respects. The second aim is to attempt a better understanding between lawyers and anthropologists both of whom have studied adat, Islam, and the relationships between them.1 It is widely recognised that the methods and standards of these disciplines are by no means mutually compre hensible, but by concentrating attention upon a subject of common interest the present position may very well be improved. An obvious caveat has to be entered here because the writer is by training a lawyer; the approach adopted in this paper will, therefore, be an approach developed upon the canons of jurisprudence but taking account of ethnographic fact. A yet further qualification has to be added: this is that the substance and scope of both Islam and adat is subject to legislative and judicial determination as well as to administrative regu lation. It is hoped, however, that by setting out the sorts of arguments deemed necessary in jurisprudence a better appreciation, benefiting both studies of Malay adat and Islam, may result. The existence of a dual legal culture and a variant disciplinary approach may be illustrated in the following example.

The Challenge of Malay Adat Law in the Realm of Comparative Law

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Readings in Malay adat laws. Edited by M. B. Hooker, pp. xxii, 478. Singapore, Singapore University Press, 1970. Straits $45.

Readings in Malay adat laws. Edited by M. B. Hooker, pp. xxii, 478. Singapore, Singapore University Press, 1970. Straits $45.

Readings in Malay Adat Laws. Edited by M. B. Hooker. Singapore, Singapore University Press, 1971. xxii478 pp. Glossaries, Bibliography of Adat Cases, Index. $45.00 (Singapore).

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Readings in Malay Adat Laws. By M. B. Hooker. [Singapore: Singapore University Press. 1970. xxii, 463 and (index) 14 pp. S$45.

Readings in Malay Adat Laws. By M. B. Hooker. [Singapore: Singapore University Press. 1970. xxii, 463 and (index) 14 pp. S$45.

Readings in Malay Adat Laws.

Readings in Malay Adat Laws.