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Liberal Rights versus Islamic Law? The Construction of a Binary in Malaysian Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Tamir Moustafa
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Abstract

Why are liberal rights and Islamic law understood in binary and exclusivist terms at some moments, but not others? In this study, I trace when, why, and how an Islamic law versus liberal rights binary emerged in Malaysian political discourse and popular legal consciousness. I find that Malaysian legal institutions were hardwired to produce vexing legal questions, which competing groups of activists transformed into compelling narratives of injustice. By tracing the development of this spectacle in the courtroom and beyond, I show how the dueling binaries of liberal rights versus Islamic law, individual rights versus collective rights, and secularism versus religion were contingent on institutional design and political agency, rather than irreconcilable tensions between liberal rights and the Islamic legal tradition in some intrinsic sense. More broadly, the research contributes to our understanding of how popular legal consciousness is shaped by legal mobilization and countermobilization beyond the court of law.

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Law & Society Review , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 771 - 802
Copyright
© 2013 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

Funding for this project came from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. I wish to thank Oysim Chin, Masjaliza Hamzah, Andrew Harding, Zaid Kamaruddin, Shanmuga Kanesalingam, Shanon Shah, Ibrahim Suffian, Jacqueline Surin, and Azmil Tayeb for assistance in Malaysia. I also thank Tracy Lim and Erin Morisette for research assistance in Vancouver. For helpful feedback on various drafts of the article, I am indebted to Onur Bakinar, Ceren Belge, Elizabeth Hurd, David Leheny, Saba Mahmood, Mark Massoud, Michael McCann, Michael Peletz, Intisar Rabb, Kim Lane Scheppele, Rachel Stern, and Max Weiss, as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers for the Law & Society Review. Any errors or shortcomings are my own.

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