Constituting Religion

Abstract

Most Muslim-majority countries have legal systems that enshrine both Islam and liberal rights. While not necessarily at odds, these dual commitments nonetheless provide legal and symbolic resources for activists to advance contending visions for their states and societies. Using the case study of Malaysia, Constituting Religion examines how these legal arrangements enable litigation and feed the construction of a "rights-versus-rites binary" in law, politics, and the popular imagination. By drawing on extensive primary source material and tracing controversial cases from the court of law to the court of public opinion, this study theorizes the "judicialization of religion" and examines the radiating effects of courts on popular legal and religious consciousness. The book documents how legal institutions catalyze ideological struggles that stand to redefine the nation and its politics. Probing the links between legal pluralism, social movements, secularism, and political Islamism, Constituting Religion sheds new light on the confluence of law, religion, politics, and society. CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LAW AND SOCIETYFounded in 1997, Cambridge Studies in Law and Society is a hub for leading scholarship in socio-legal studies. Located at the intersection of law, the humanities, and the social sciences, it publishes empirically innovative and theoretically sophisticated work on law's manifestations in everyday life: from discourses to practices, and from institutions to cultures. The series editors have longstanding expertise in the interdisciplinary study of law, and welcome contributions that place legal phenomena in national, comparative, or international perspective. Series authors come from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, law, literature, political science, and sociology. Series EditorsMark Fathi Massoud, University of California, Santa Cruz Jens Meierhenrich, London School of Economics and Political Science Rachel E. Stern, University of California, Berkeley A list of books in the series can be found at the back of this book.