Islamic and Secular Human Rights
IMPLEMENTATION OF SHARIA FAMILY AND CRIMINAL LAWS IS FAR from unanimous in Malaysian society, as a significant array of social forces produce contra-sharia discourses and promote competing sociopolitical projects.
Although the Malaysian Muslim political parties and NGOs that coalesce around the sharia projects evoked by the phrases Ketuanan Melayu and Ketuanan Islam remain dominant, they are increasingly challenged by liberal Muslim reformers and secular human rights organizations. Liberal Muslim reformers and secular human rights organizations, however, are not the only social forces speaking of “human rights.” The UMNO-led Malaysian government is a signatory of many international human rights covenants and has adopted the position of formally accepting all the provisions of these statutes that do not conflict with traditional Islamic laws and ethics. Many Malaysian jurists in sharia courts and government departments as well as activists in Islamic NGOs also speak of “human rights” within an Islamic worldview, in which they are dependent on divine directives and subordinate to the “rights of God.” In contrast, liberal Muslim reformers, whom I also refer to as “Islamic human rights” proponents, strive to reconcile Islamic ethical notions with a fuller embrace of dominant global conceptions of fundamental human rights. They often join with secular human rights activists to form a phalanx of social forces aimed at blocking and reversing the move toward greater sharia-tization. These secular human rights activists, unfettered by commitments to religious ideas, call for the upholding of secular, liberal, and pluralist principles in Malaysian society.Of relevance here are the cultural ideas, sharia models, and sociopolitical projects of the liberal Muslim civil society organizations Sisters in Islam (SIS) and Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF), the political parties People’s Justice Party (PKR) and Democratic Action Party (DAP), and some secular civil society organizations. These groups illustrate the interplay of sharia projects and the predicament of Malay political elites that are increasingly being driven toward realizing a more sharia-oriented state and enchanted modernity. There is much less interdependence and compromise concerning the liberal rights of ethnic and religious minorities than there is with gender. While Sisters in Islam and their supporters engage in some give-and-take with the Malaysian government and some Islamic NGOs about reforming sharia family laws along the axis of gender, Islamic and secular human rights groups and traditional Muslim forces tend to clash in a more uncompromising fashion over changes along the axes of race and religion.