Policing and Protecting Women: Some Aspects of Malay-Islamic Law-Making Under British Colonialism

Abstract

Some aspects of Malay-Islamic law-making, specifically on marriage, sexual offences and land succession and ownership rights during colonial times are discussed here. The study uncovers the gender-based dynamics of negotiation, accommodation and conflict between British administrators and Malay rulers, which drew several themes and questions in relation to women's place in society then. British colonial officials seemed benevolently supportive of Malay women's integral economic role in the social and cultural cohesion of their community. On the other hand, Malay male rulers seemed intent at reclaiming their emasculated authority from colonial powers by focusing on aspects of male-female relationships. To do so would be to attain assertion and control over their designated private sphere of religion, family and sexual relations. On land matters, the British took a more primeval view of customs and acted in such a way that customary matrilineal land could be preserved in entirety through law. But in land matters Malay rulers did not treat customs as necessarily unchangeable as they were aware that a material resource such as land could be valorised monetarily. Some other developments took place, with colonial officers not wanting anything personal to be regulated, while local rulers wanted the personal, particularly relationships between the sexes to be even more widely regulated. Ultimately it was the power to use modern law as an instrument of control, which decided the differing positions of the two parties. By centralising gender in the study of socio-legal history of law-making we see the confluence of imperial agenda and Malay ruling interests in affecting and entrenching masculinity through the motions of policing and protecting women.