Word: shari
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...women must wear headscarves in public, while several states have made forsaking Islam a crime that can result in prison time. "We should not limit Islam to a few rituals," says Sulaiman Abdullah, former president of the Malaysian Bar Council. "Malaysia would be better served if it were under Shari...
...worthy of forced "rehabilitation." Controversy also surrounds Malays who wish to convert to another religion, thus defying the constitutional clause specifying that all Malays must be Muslims. That issue is being tested by the case of Lina Joy, a Malay who has been barred from converting to Christianity by Shari'a courts. Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, a lawyer who has received death threats for representing Joy, hopes the case will be heard by the Supreme Court in the next few months. "How can we say there is freedom of religion in Malaysia," says Malik, "if a person who has practiced Christianity...
...very different place. Half the female student body striding across the campus near Jakarta wear the jilbab, a Muslim scarf that covers the head and neck. Student politics is dominated by the Campus Propagation Institute, an Islamic group that offers religious mentoring and encourages students to adhere to Shari'a, or Islamic law. Female faculty in the Department of Medicine, irrespective of their religion, are barred from wearing short skirts, while those in Humanities must eschew tight pants and low necklines. "This university is supposed to be secular, but it has become an Islamic zone," says Gadis Arivia...
...religion to return to its more austere Arab roots. What happens in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, could presage the direction other Islamic societies take. Over the past four years, dozens of regencies-provincial subdivisions-across Indonesia have used the more permissive political climate to implement Shari'a-based bylaws that include bans on alcohol and prohibitions on women going out alone at night. In 2003, only seven districts had such faith-based initiatives in place. Today, 53, more than 10% of all Indonesian regencies, are living life under some form of Islamic-inspired law. More places...
...rights of the nation's non-Muslims, now 30 million strong. But as Indonesia's wealth gap widens-roughly 40 million citizens now live below the poverty line-conservative mosques have attracted worshippers, in part, by promising to alleviate economic hardship and eradicate immorality. "They preach that Islam and Shari'a are an elixir," says Azyumardi Azra, a prominent Muslim scholar and director of the graduate school at Jakarta's State Islamic University. "The state's social institutions have not fixed problems like drugs, prostitution, gambling and corruption. So people think maybe the mosques can solve things that the government...