Lawless intimacy and inconsistencies in Malaysian Islamic law

In Muslim-majority Malaysia, an extensive Islamic bureaucracy exerts significant force in determining where and with whom Muslims can be intimate, and what constitutes “halal” (lawful) intimacy.

This is achieved through Islamic criminal laws that enable state surveillance and criminalisation of extra- or pre-marital sexual intimacy, and through Islamic family laws that govern the rules of marriage.

In this talk, Nurul Huda Mohd. Razif demonstrates that state attempts to gatekeep access to “halal” intimacy may not be as airtight as it seems due to legal ambiguities and loopholes in Islamic law.

To illustrate this, she draws on two recent debates and developments in Islamic family law: the first concerns a scandalous union between a 41-year-old polygamous man with his (third) 11-year-old wife; and the second addresses the rising incidence of eloped polygamous marriages contracted across the border in Southern Thailand.

These issues, she suggests, reveal inherent inconsistencies in Islamic family law that perpetuate unregulated marital practices such as child marriage and polygamy.

Moderator: Barbara Ruiken