Craving Bureaucracy: Marriage, Islamic Law, and Arab Petitioners in the Straits Settlements

Abstract

British involvement in Muslim affairs in the Straits Settlements (Malacca, Penang and Singapore) was done at the behest of Muslim subjects in the colony. Arab Muslims, who were a minority in the region, exhorted British authorities to take charge of the administration of Muslim marriages and divorces. In this way, authority was vested by these Muslims in colonial legal institutions. Instead of trying to wrest religious authority from the secular colonial power, petitioners essentially attempted to remove religious authority from the hands of Muslim qāḍis by granting more control to non‐Muslim British colonial authorities. Though British authorities were initially reluctant to take on the mantle of administering legal lives of Muslim subjects who formed fifteen percent of the British Crown Colony, a petition in 1875 subsequently led to the application of legal codes and case law devised in British India in 1880 through the Mahomedan Marriage Ordinance that was brought into effect in 1882. This led to an unprecedented development in the administration of Islamic law in Southeast Asia. Thereafter, colonial legal practitioners relied heavily on this corpus of precedents and knowledge prepared by their predecessors in British India. Their conception of Islamic law was in other words based on a universal view of Islamic law, minimally affected by local understandings and customs. A universal view of Islam, coupled with centralized colonial bureaucracy suited the needs of highly mobile Arabs who traversed the Indian Ocean as they craved accountability on the part of legal administrators.

Muslim Modernities: Interdisciplinary Insights Across Time and Space1

“….to be masters of the country and terrorized the hereditary chiefs as well as the populace whenever these last were disposed to peace; [and] that only a forcible subjugation followed by orderly control over the administration could bring peace. 31 Thus, with the subtle consideration of diverse Islamic practices buried in later chapters, the introduction, stripped of any such complexity, offers a reductionist dichotomy between "good" and "bad" Muslims replete with actionable advice to Dutch policymakers. To achieve "forcible subjugation," Hurgronje counsels relentless attacks on those defenders of the "dogmas of Islam.…”

“…The good versus bad polarity, in essence, 30 Kloos, "Becoming Better Muslims," 76-77. 31 C. Snouck Hurgronje, The Achehnese, trans. O.W.S.…”

“…This becomes clear in the public commemoration of the 47 th anniversary of Qutb's martyrdom on August 29, 2013, entitled "Sayyid Qutb night and Egypt's resistance," which came on the heels of the Egyptian military's toppling of President Mursi, Egyptian security forces' raiding of pro-Mursi protests in Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya square as well as anti-government protests across Turkey. 31 We see three divergences or innovations that distinguished the 2013 event from the foregoing gatherings: first, a new reading of Qutb's concept of cahiliye, second the raising of the idea of şehadet, and third, the identification of the audience and contemporary Islamist struggle in the region with Qutb himself. Both the concept of şehadet and the forging of spiritual identifications across time and space had the effect of calling the audience to perform Qutb's message.…”

“…More importantly, each qād : ī might favor his own ethnic community over another, putting the highly mobile Arab migrant without influential footing in the colony at a disadvantage. 31 Arabs formed only a small minority, at less than 1% of the entire Muslim population in the colony. Most Muslims in the colony were from the IndoMalay Archipelago, although there were also South Asian Muslims based in the region.…”

“…al-barā'), which is defined as the opposite of love and affection. 31 In other words, according to Ibn Bāz, if the land of minority is a land of kufr and if the people are kuffār, then barāaa has to be declared. A Muslim has to detach himself from the disbelievers.…”