Islam

Before the establishment of Dutch and British rule (from about 1800), the Muslims of Southeast Asia had sophisticated polities based on Muslim state practice in the Middle East. From thence were derived theories and practices of sovereignty, legitimacy of rule, public order and duty, and the distribution and exercise of power. However, the European powers replaced this tradition with colonial ("Western") principles, chief among which was the conviction that God was not necessary to validate government. Islam, and Islamic law and government, was reduced in status. From being the foundation of the state it became just a religion like any other. It had no public presence.

The Dutch in the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) saw Islam as a political and military threat. Their solution was to deny the religion any credible public presence, and an important aspect of this effort was to deny shari'a (Islamic law) by subordinating it to custom (adat), thus reducing its status to just a personal law. In time, however, the shari'a did receive limited recognition, which it retains in contemporary Indonesia. It is now a state-sponsored Compilation of Islamic Law (1991) administered through religious courts. Together these changes have successfully secularized the classical shari'a, which is now in a form unrecognizable to a classical scholar.

The same result has been achieved in Malaysia (formally British Malaya). Here a few selected rules of family law and trusts have been incorporated into English law precedents and statutes. These are a direct colonial legacy, and in contemporary Malaysia they are the shari'a that is administered in religious courts of restricted jurisdiction. Because Malaysia is a federation, each state has its own legislation, and thus shari'a varies from place to place, but the variations are not major. The main point to understand is that anyone trained in Anglo-American law can read and understand the shari'a in this form, whereas a classically trained qadi (judge) would be completely at a loss.

In short, for Southeast Asia, the shari'a has been redefined in secular terms, for administration by the state. It is not now necessary to know Arabic or the classical texts.