Women and Culture: Between Malay Adat and Islam by Wazir Janan Karim

Pacific Affairs,  Spring 1994  by Nagata, Judith

THIS VOLUME represents a bold and innovative attempt to weave together some diverse strands of kinship, gender, religion and culture to create a composite portrait of Malay society over time. The historical depth, complemented by detailed observations on contemporary Malay society, makes this study a rich source of materials for the understanding of continuity and change over several centuries, beginning with the pre-colonial Malay state, and culminating with the rapidly urbanizing and industrializing society of the present.

One principal and unifying theme concerns the construction and expression of gender in relation to Malay custom (adat istiadat) and to the religion of Islam. Over the past three centuries or so, Islam has gradually redefined the role of adat in determining the status of women in Malay culture, in particular, by diminishing their importance in matters of many community rituals. In pre-twentieth-century Malay society, the relationship between Islam and adat was generally one of balance and easy coexistence, when Islam was respected, but not overly restrictive for women. While Islamic rites were essentially a male sphere, women enjoyed considerable latitude and scope as specialists in the more informal domains of life-cycle, healing and shamanistic rituals, which conferred upon them informal power and prestige at the local level. Thus male-female relations were complementary rather than conflictual. Only under the influence of recent Islamic fundamentalism has the splitting of religion and adat come about, to the detriment of women.

Another domain of adat which receives extensive treatment is the system of kinship, whose traditional bilaterality (and the matrilineal adat perpatih in the case of Negeri Sembilan) afforded substantial autonomy and control by women over property, reinforcing their productive power and status in the hierarchy of family and community. This portion of the work is particularly revealing, for not only does it add to the rather meagre literature on Malay kinship to date, but also provides pioneering new data on Malay kinship in history, through a meticulous analysis of early royal genealogies and hikayat (histories). Here, the author dissects marriage patterns and alliances between noble families in the context of state conquest by "domestication," and of a growing centralization in which a basic bilaterality evolves towards patriliny and alliances of a more European dynastic type. Not surprisingly, women of higher rank and class tend to be subject to greater restrictions in marriage choice, and this is further reinforced with the growth in the power of Islam. Likewise, polygyny was/is more common among the upper Malay strata, although Islam does provide for permission to be sought from the first wife. Not always recognized, but here revealed, is that a high proportion of divorces are initiated by women, who, when the religious courts prove intractable, use informal and subtle tactics at domestic and community levels to pressure husbands to the brink. Many such cases are pungently illustrated by homely anecdotes and a rich vernacular from kampung life.

The final part of the volume is devoted to more detailed ethnographic analysis of recent religious trends in Malay society, and the impact of Islamic religious fundamentalism on customary relationships and on political values. The author argues that the recent dakwah (Islamic) revival is in fact more an expression of anti-western sentiment than an intended anti-adat threat, to which Islam can now, as in the past, accommodate. Rather dakwah supports indigenous values and the integrity of Malay society, especially in the face of the capitalist/industrial assault from the west. It is only in the narrower domain of gender relations that Islam currently seems to have eclipsed traditional Malay custom.

Finally, the author makes a plea for the production of more detailed cultural studies, from a nonwestern feminist perspective, of gender and religious custom, of which this book is a trendsetting example. Certainly, it should be recommended for those concerned with subtle expressions of female power through informal means, and it carries messages for feminists both western and Southeast Asian.

Copyright University of British Columbia Spring 1994
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

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