Constituting Religion
Constituting Religion

Author: Tamir Moustafa

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-07-25

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1108334075

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Most Muslim-majority countries have legal systems that enshrine both Islam and liberal rights. While not necessarily at odds, these dual commitments nonetheless provide legal and symbolic resources for activists to advance contending visions for their states and societies. Using the case study of Malaysia, Constituting Religion examines how these legal arrangements enable litigation and feed the construction of a 'rights-versus-rites binary' in law, politics, and the popular imagination. By drawing on extensive primary source material and tracing controversial cases from the court of law to the court of public opinion, this study theorizes the 'judicialization of religion' and the radiating effects of courts on popular legal and religious consciousness. The book documents how legal institutions catalyze ideological struggles, which stand to redefine the nation and its politics. Probing the links between legal pluralism, social movements, secularism, and political Islamism, Constituting Religion sheds new light on the confluence of law, religion, politics, and society. This title is also available as Open Access.

A History of the 1957 Federation of Malaya Constitution
A History of the 1957 Federation of Malaya Constitution

Author: Joseph M. Fernando

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-12-09

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1040266878

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Fernando examines important aspects of the drafting of 1957 Federation of Malaya constitution related to the system of governance, division of legislative and executive powers, the conceptualisation of citizenship and the roles of the judiciary and election commission. The book sheds new light on the balances that the Reid Commission sought to embed in the constitution and the historical constitutional debates and discussions which greatly shaped the framing of the new federal constitution between 1956 and 1957. Drawing on historical evidence mainly from declassified primary constitutional documents, it analyses the submissions, debates and discussions among the framers and various interest groups during the drafting of the constitution between 1956 and 1957 to discern more clearly the intentions of the framers on many aspects of governance and distribution of powers embedded in the constitutional provisions. This book reveals more deeply the nature and complexity of the constitutional issues faced by the framers and how they attempted to reach compromises between the various interest groups in Malaya. It is a valuable resource for scholars and academics of Malaysian, Asian and Commonwealth constitutional history as well as those interested in history, law, political science and important aspects of governance and distribution of powers in the system of parliamentary democracy.

Malaysia
Malaysia

Author: Cheah Boon Kheng

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9789812301758

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Focuses on Malaysia's four Prime Ministers as nation-builders, observing that each one of them when he became Prime Minister was transformed from being the head of the Malay party, UMNO, to that of the leader of a multi-ethnic nation. Each began his political career as an exclusivist Malay nationalist but became an inclusivist.

Proportionality in Asia
Proportionality in Asia

Author: Po Jen Yap

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-08-27

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1108851711

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This is the first book that focusses on how proportionality analysis – a legal transplant from the West – is applied by courts around Asia, and it explores how a country's commitment to democracy and the rule of law is fundamental to the success of the doctrine's judicial enforcement. This book will appeal to lawyers, political scientists, and students of law and political science who seek to understand how proportionality analysis is blossoming and, in some cases, flourishing in Asia.

The Constitution of Malaysia
The Constitution of Malaysia

Author: Andrew Harding

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2012-07-27

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1847319831

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Malaysia's constitution was set at the independence of the Federation of Malaya in 1957 along the lines of the Westminster model, embracing federalism and constitutional monarchy. That it has endured is explained in terms of the social contract agreed between the leaders of the three main ethnic groups (Malay, Chinese, Indian) before independence. However, increasing ethnic tension erupted in violence in 1969, after which the social contract was remade in ways that contradicted the basic assumptions underlying the 1957 Constitution. The outcome was an authoritarian state that implemented affirmative action in an attempt to orchestrate rapid economic development and more equitable distribution. In recent years constitutionalism, as enshrined in the 1957 Constitution but severely challenged during the high-authoritarianism of Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad's developmental state, has become increasingly relevant once again. However, conflict over religion has replaced ethnicity as a source of discord. This book examines the Malaysian approach to constitutional governance in light of authoritarianism and continuing inter-communal strife, and explains the ways in which a supposedly doomed colonial text has come to be known as 'our constitution'.

Creating "Greater Malaysia"
Creating

Author: Tai Yong Tan

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9812307478

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Malaysia came into existence on 9/16/63 as a federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sabah (North Borneo), and Sarawak; in 1965 Singapore withdrew from the federation. Offers an in-depth and detailed analysis of the political processes that led to formation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. It argues that the Malaysia that came into being following the amalgamation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo was a political creation whose only rationale was that it served a convergence of political and economic expediency for the departing colonial power, the Malayan leadership and the ruling party of self-governing Singapore. 'Greater Malaysia' was thus an artificial political entity, the outcome of a concatenation of interests and motives of a number of political actors in London and Southeast Asia from the 1950s to the early 1960s. This led to a number of unresolved compromises between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and did not obviate the possibility of future difficulties, and the seeds of dissension sown by the disagreements between the two governments were to sprout into major crises during Singapore's brief history in the Federation of Malaysia.