Sharia Advances in Maylaysia
13th July 2014
Malaysia is one of those countries that have been cited, along with Indonesia and Turkey, as evidence that a predominantly Muslim country can have a secular government and can, in general, be modern. A prominent commentator wrote some years ago that the Arab world may be hopeless, but the Islamic world isn’t. That didn’t sound overly optimistic at the time, but with hindsight, it may have been.
We all know what has been happening in Turkey. In Malaysia, Reuters reports that Islamic Sharia courts are increasingly coming into conflict with secular law. You can guess who is winning. Reuters begins with a story about a Hindu family in which the husband, after leaving his wife, became a Muslim and purported to convert his children. This resulted in his gaining custody of them, contrary to orders of the “regular” Malaysian courts.