ABSTRACT
The Sultanate of Brunei or Brunei Darussalam (Abode of Peace), which is located along the northern coast of Borneo, is the sole ruling monarchy in Southeast Asia. Its head of state and government, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, has been on the throne since October 1967. In August 1998, he installed his eldest son, Al-Muhtadee Billah, as crown prince. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Brunei exercised suzerainty over much of Borneo (giving its name to the island) and into the south of the Philippines archipelago. Its territorial extent was whittled down considerably over the centuries, while its separate identity was only preserved through British colonial intervention, albeit with further loss of territory. Brunei became a protected state in 1888 and only acquired internal self-government in 1959, with internal security powers transferred in 1971 when Britain gave up an automatic defence guarantee for a consultative defence arrangement. It became fully sovereign in January 1984 when Britain transferred its residual responsibility for foreign affairs. Brunei then comprised two territorial enclaves of some 5,765 square kilometres accessible from one another only by water and surrounded on the landward side by the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Its population is estimated at around 300,000, of whom some 230,000 are Malay-Muslim who dominate the political and bureaucratic life of the sultanate. Ethnic Chinese, most of whom lack citizenship, number around 50,000. Non-Malay indigenous people add up to about 10,000, while the balance is made up of expatriates, including skilled professionals from the West and construction and factory workers from other parts of Southeast Asia. The official religion is Islam, while the state is represented as a Malay Islamic Monarchy (Melayu Islam Beraja) in the interest of sustaining political conservatism. The sultan, by combining religious and royal roles, seeks to contain radical Islam, which is viewed as a threat to the established political order. In recent times however, Islam has come to assume a more prominent place in this traditional Malay kingdom. This trend was underscored in October 2013 when the government announced its intention to extend the authority of its shari’a court beyond its traditional confines of family law to the national penal code, a move that came to fruition in February 2014 when an Islamic penal code was implemented formally.
