Kristen Stilt, Northwestern Law- “Constitutional Islam: Genealogies, Transmissions, and Meanings”
Kristen Stilt, Northwestern University
“Constitutional Islam: Genealogies, Transmissions, and Meanings”
I will present a part of a much larger project, which is tentatively titled “Constitutional Islam: Genealogies, Transmissions, and Meanings.” This project aims to understand how law that is identified as Islamic is formulated and applied in Egypt, Morocco, and Malaysia, and how various groups within the populations of these countries engage with and respond to this production of law, including demanding a more thorough and rapid process of “Islamization.”
This new project is, like my first book, Encountering Faces of Law in Mamluk Egypt (ca. 1250-1517) (forthcoming from OUP in 2011), concerned with socio-legal history, and addresses some of the same basic questions: Who asserts the authority to determine the content of and then apply law that is called Islamic? Who claims authority to decide what laws are Islamic, and what are their sources of reference? To what extent and on what basis do individuals and groups challenge the label of Islamic as applied to laws adopted by the state, or claim that Islamic law (as they determine it) is not sufficiently pervasive within the legal system, or is too pervasive? And what are the terms of reference for these debates?
This project focuses on three countries—Egypt, Morocco, and Malaysia—beginning for each with the end of their pre-independence periods and continuing to the present. For each country, I focus on the historical development of the relationship between Islam and the state and then the contemporary dynamics surrounding this relationship. Historically, I am interested in the structures of Islamic authority in each country pre-independence and then the process by which new relationships were forged at independence and memorialized in the post-independence constitutions. One area of focus is the process of drafting the new constitutions, because for all three cases, the debates surrounding them identify the full range of positions that existed at that time, pre-figuring the contemporary debates. All three countries ended up with similar constitutional language, for example, providing that Islam is the religion of the state, but the range of sentiments expressed in each context reveal localized hopes and fears that are largely still identifiable today.
In this presentation, I will focus on the formation of the Malaysian constitution (which went into effect upon Malaysian independence in 1957) during the final period of British control and in particular on the formation of Article 11, which provides that “Islam is the religion of the Federation, but other religions may be practiced in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation.” Such language was initially resisted by the drafting committee (which was British-led and included members from several commonwealth nations, though no local representatives); by the rulers of the Malay states that would form the Federation of Malaya; and by the many non-ethnic Malay and non-Muslims who were living in the Federation (mainly Chinese and Indian). I will discuss the process by which this language was included into the constitution, focusing on these questions: who wanted this language, and with what intended meaning and effect in mind? What was the response of the drafters, the Malay rulers, and the British parliament, which had to approve the constitution? And how did this language shift authority over Islam and Islamic law in the Federation as a result?
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