ABSTRACT
Since the latter part of the twentieth century, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other Muslim-majority regions of Southeast Asia have witnessed a series of trends in state policies, public piety, and popular culture that scholars have variably characterized as ‘conservative,’ ‘illiberal,’ ‘punitive,’ and/or ‘authoritarian.’ Paradoxically, none of these glosses adequately encapsulate the overall thrust of recent historical developments in the region’s Islamic judiciaries, which are key components of state apparatuses and important symbols of male authority and Islamic normativity alike. Indeed, in the period since the 1970s and 1980s, Islamic courts in Muslim areas of Southeast Asia have become ‘more friendly’ to women and increasingly engaged in predominantly positive ways with the global circulation of rights talk, notwithstanding the conservative, illiberal, and related trends noted above. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, this essay examines this paradox and explores some of its comparative and theoretical implications.
