About the project

MALAYMATRIMONEY:

The Division of Matrimonial Wealth in Malay Polygyny & the Codification of Culture in Malaysian Islamic Family Law

This project is a socio-legal study of the division of matrimonial wealth (harta sepencarian) in Shari’ah (Islamic) courts in contemporary Malaysia. Under Malaysian Islamic family law, matrimonial wealth can be claimed upon the death or divorce of a spouse, or before a monogamous marriage becomes polygynous – that is, when a husband is applying for a Shari’ah judge’s permission to marry a subsequent wife in polygyny.

In recent years, the division and distribution of matrimonial wealth has sparked great interest among Malay-Muslims in Malaysia, particularly where polygyny is concerned. Although polygyny makes up less than five percent of Muslim marriages, stories of co-wife competition for the husband’s wealth and intrafamilial inheritance disputes between children in polygyny have become heavily dramatized in public debates and popular culture, reflecting a heightening anxiety about the intensifying tension between polygyny and wealth distribution in Malay society. 

Although matrimonial wealth is integrated into the current Islamic family law enforced in Malaysia today, its origins are actually in Malay adat (customary traditions), not Islam. This points to the malleability of Malaysian Shari’ah law and its complementarity with Malay adat, which calls for a deeper investigation into the dialogical relationship between Islam, adat, and gender.

This research will address research gaps in two fields: first, in the study of marriage in the Malaysian Islamic family law; second, in the codification of law in Muslim-majority states. It is thus designed with the following objectives:

Objective 1: To capture, through ethnographic and archival research, the everyday experiences of men and women claiming for matrimonial wealth in polygyny applications;

Objective 2: To investigate the textual sources, legal reasoning, and judicial practice that allows for the “codification” of culture (Malay adat) in Malaysian Islamic family law.

Methodology: This project will implement anthropological methods of research based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork that will examine the practical and empirical outcomes of the codification of adat in Malaysian Islamic family law. This fieldwork will be conducted primarily in the Shari’ah Courts situated in the Kuala Lumpur metropolitan area. 

Why study Islamic law in Bergen?

This project will be supervised by Dr. Eirik Hovden, principal investigator of the CanCode Project at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen. Supported by the Trond Mohn Research Foundation, the CanCode Project examines processes of change in Islamic law and legal texts through the conceptual lenses of “canonization” and “codification”. Researchers working on this project at the doctoral and postdoctoral level focus on various parts of the Muslim world and various time periods, including pre-modern and colonial Swahili Coast; pre-modern Zaydi Yemen; modern Egypt and Israel; and contemporary Scandinavia.

My MSCA project will add a Southeast Asian regional focus to the CanCode Project by examining how codification takes place in modern-day Malaysia’s Islamic family law, in connection with historical and contemporary processes including British colonial legacy and the bureaucratization of Islam.