SURVEYS OF THE VIEWS OF THE YOUNGER AND OLDER GENERATIONS

I conducted a survey of Muslim youth and adults, males and females, asking them a structured set of questions aimed at eliciting their views about sharia laws and ethical norms. I approached my respondents in public places—such as transportation hubs, indoor and outdoor restaurants, mall cafeterias, newspaper stands, masjids, and suraus—introduced myself as a social science researcher, and asked for permission to ask them a series of questions and to record their responses on my digital recorder.

My interlocutors were overwhelmingly in favor of having sharia family and criminal laws institutionalized and implemented in society (see table 7.1). Only one young woman, Lila, a twenty-three-year-old recent business college graduate from Kelantan, told me she felt that other people should not get involved in the “private matters” of individuals who decide to go to nightclubs, drink alcohol, and commit khalwat. She agreed with the liberal notion that these moral issues should be treated as personal matters between individuals and God.

Nearly 90 percent of my respondents were in favor of strengthening existing sharia criminal laws. They felt that many Muslims are not deterred from violating sharia ethical norms because of the low level of punishment under current sharia law, and expressed the view that the level of fines, prison terms, and canings should be increased. Most of them were in favor of a gradual increase implemented together with more Islamic education and dakwah aimed at making Muslims more knowledgeable and observant practitioners of the faith. Some asserted that this gradual increase in the level of punishment should eventually arrive at full implementation of the hudud penal code, while others expressed the view that hudud does not fit with Malaysia’s ethnic and religious diversity. Zaidah, a twenty-two-year-old recent college graduate from Sabah, told me that she preferred the “balanced” approach of UMNO, gradually applying Islamic laws and continuing with economic development. To the contrary, there were several that opined that full hudud should be implemented as soon as possible, or even immediately, and argued that it fits with Malaysia’s diverse society just as it did with the diverse society of Medina under the leadership of Prophet Muhammad. Some also stressed the idea of applying sharia law to rich and poor alike as integral to the process of making sharia laws stricter.

TABLE 7.1. General views on sharia laws

Only 4 percent of respondents were in favor of applying the hudud code to both Muslims and non-Muslims. Most of those in support of the idea of immediately or eventually implementing hudud and qisas punishments argued that they should be applied only to Muslims. Some added that these punishments could also be applied to non-Muslims who choose to be punished according to hudud rather than civil laws. This has been the PAS position for many years. Nevertheless, three respondents expressed the view that hudud laws should fall on both Muslims and non-Muslims. Nor Arushah, a young married woman, told me that hudud is good for everyone, and since Malaysia is one nation and Islam is universal it should be applied to Muslims and non-Muslims equally. Likewise, Siti Aini, a twenty-five-year-old college student from Kuala Terengganu, contended that because sharia is definitely just, there is no problem applying it to both Muslims and non-Muslims. Rohaya, a twenty-year-old student at an Islamic school in Kota Bharu, to support her position, gave me the example of a mixed non-Muslim and Muslim couple committing zina. She felt that for the non-Muslim partner to not be punished according to hudud while the Muslim would be was not an acceptable policy. As a supporter of PAS, she was surprised when I told her that the PAS position is to give the non-Muslim person in the couple the option of having hudud punishment applied or not. She concluded that more study is needed of how Rasulullah applied hudud in Medina.³

Only 8.9 percent of my respondents were in support of using only advice and counseling as the institutionalized treatment of apostates (see table 7.2).

TABLE 7.2. Handling of apostates (murtad)

The notion that men should be the leaders of the nation, perform the role of imam in religious contexts, and be the heads of households is widespread in Malaysian Muslim society. Over 98 percent of women and 100 percent of men I interviewed held these views (see table 7.3). Only one young woman, Suzanna, expressed the opinion that men and women should both be leaders of the nation and of households. She said she feels that the Sisters in Islam are a bit “extreme,” but that she agreed with them that gender equality is based in the Qur’an and Sunna. Suzanna told me that during the Prophet’s time there was a shūrā (collective deliberation) council, implying that Muslim men and women today should form this sort of consultative organization in the home and in society at large. Gender inequality is based in culture, not religion, she added. However, she did not challenge the leadership of male religious figures in terms of performance of ibadah in collective, mixed-gender religious contexts. Yet, all of my other respondents held the traditional Islamic view, propagated widely in Malaysian society, that according to revealed knowledge men should be leaders in homes, masjids, and polities. For example, Julianna, a twenty-five-year-old executive for a private telecommunications company, told me that men should be the ketua (heads) of families and society and that she totally disagrees with Muslims who promote the notion of “total gender equality” in the sense of men and women being on the same level throughout society.

Julianna and the vast majority of my interlocutors were in favor of polygyny being allowed in sharia family laws. Over 96 percent of women and 100 percent of men expressed the view that men should be permitted to marry more than one wife, up to the limit of four decreed in the Qur’an. Rosmawati, a twenty-two-year-old diploma graduate of a civil engineering program, informed me that she agreed with the opposition of SIS to polygamy and their drive for reform of current provisions on nusyuz (disobedience) in family sharia laws. She went on to express the view that husbands should be sympathetic with their wives. Similarly, Siti Zubaidah, a twenty-year-old student from Perak, stated that she disagreed with allowing polygamy overall but thought it was acceptable in cases where the first wife accepted it. Although practically all of my contacts thought men should be permitted to marry more than one wife, they did not feel that this permission should be given without conditions. Several young men and women expressed the view that men must be able to provide sufficient financial support for their wives and families and be able to treat each wife fairly. For instance, Azrul, a twenty-year-old student from Melaka, stated that practicing polygamy is a lot of responsibility and that only men with the ability to provide for their wives should be allowed to practice it.

TABLE 7.3. Women’s views of gender relations and sharia family laws

While no men or adult women were in favor of reforming current nusyuz provisions, 11 percent of young women felt that reform of these provisions is necessary. For the five women who were critical of current provisions requiring wives to be obedient to the lawful demands of their husbands, these laws contradicted their ideas about fair, flexible, and complementary social relations between men and women in families. For example, Ruzita, a twenty-five-year-old university student from Kedah, stated that in Islam men are leaders but below the leader there are women, and qualified male leaders should treat women justly. Emilia, a twenty-year-old chemistry student, similar to Suzanna, argued that flexible gender roles in which women work outside the home and men perform domestic chores are based in the Sunna of Prophet Muhammad.

Although young women overwhelmingly supported current provisions and traditional understandings of nusyuz, many of them held ideas that placed checks and ethical limitations on male behavior. Hamidah, a twenty-eight-year-old married woman, stated that she learned in Islamic institutions that the man should be the leader of the family, but if he is brutal or abusive there is a process to correct his behavior. She said that “women should follow their husbands in general as long as they don’t order something that is contrary to Allah’s orders.” In addition, some young women viewed sharia regulations prohibiting men from engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage as corresponding to nusyuz for wives; men must be obedient and not betray their wives, just as wives are not to betray their husbands. They argued that both sides of these ethical norms are based in the Qur’an. All of my male interlocutors, both young and adult men, were in full support of nusyuz provisions, viewing them as part of the rights and responsibilities Allah bestowed on them. A few young men stressed the obligatory nature of the requirement for a wife to “submit” to the lawful demands of her husband by reciting the popular aphorism Syurga isteri di bawah kaki suami (A wife’s heaven is under the feet of her husband). For Azrul, the young man from Melaka, this saying meant that a wife must follow the desires of her husband even if she is not in the mood or tired after a long day of work.⁴

Even though they generally thought women had to follow the leadership of, and be obedient to, their husbands at home, all of the men and women I interviewed were in favor of gender equality at work or in the broader economic life of society. Nur, a twenty-six-year-old university graduate, expressed the widespread view that it is all right for women to lead on the job, but when they come home they still must follow the leadership of their husbands. Likewise, Siti Zubaidah told me that men must be the heads of families and the country, but in the economy it is good for men and women to be on the same level. Ruzita, Rosmawati, and others stated that women should play prominent roles in society, including positions in business and government. My findings with Malaysian Muslims is comparable to Christel Manning’s (1999) research with conservative Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, and Orthodox Jewish women in the United States, in which she found that many believed it appropriate to have male leadership at home and in religious institutions but supported gender equality at work. Manning concludes that the conservative religious women in these three communities take on a “feminist” self-conception in the secular context of work and a “traditionalist” self-conception in religious institutions. In contrast, I infer that Malaysian Muslims learn and share a cultural model they use to reason about and organize gender relations across the contexts of home, masjid, and work. Whereas their cultural framework raises a patriarchal gender hierarchy at home and in the masjid, it reduces gender stratification and constructs more of an equal playing field in the domain of work.

These surveys indicate that the disciplinary practices of government ulama, Muslim political parties, Islamic schoolteachers, and dakwah movements have had a strong influence on the views of Malaysian Muslims, who have internalized normative sharia models and use them to construe the need to implement the laws and ethical norms sent down from Allah to regulate Muslim lives and benefit society. As these sharia models entail representations of Malaysia’s ethnically and religiously diverse citizenry, many are concerned about the effects such institutionalization of hudud and qisas criminal laws in Malaysia will have on the lives of non-Muslims. Thus, they generally either want to strengthen existing sharia laws falling short of hudud or want to only make hudud mandatory for Muslims. Likewise, my interlocutors utilize normative sharia models to reason about the proper handling of apostates, concluding that they must be given advice and an opportunity to repent, but that they be punished if they fail to reform themselves. They believe that Muslims, through birth or conversion, cannot be permitted to move from belief to unbelief. However, liberal Islamic models, entailing a reformed emphasis on the objectives of sharia and religious freedom, have had some impact on the views of Malaysian Muslims. Similarly, the sharia models of SIS scholars and activists have influenced the views of my respondents. Although they tend to consider SIS “extreme” or lacking in Islamic knowledge, their discourses still reflect the impact of this NGO’s reformist campaigns. While they internalize and operate with the normative sharia model of proper Islamic gender relations projecting male leadership in political, religious, and domestic contexts, they also claim gender equality in work contexts and inclusion and consultation in other settings with male leadership. They tend to search for a basis in sacred rather than secular sources for their efforts to tweak the normative sharia model in the direction of leveling patriarchal gender hierarchies.