Video: In this seminar titled Lost in Implementation: Lawless Intimacy & Legal Inconsistencies in Malaysian Islamic Law, Dr. Nurul Huda Mohd. Razif explored the role of Malaysia’s Islamic bureaucracy in regulating intimacy for Muslims, particularly how state interventions shape notions of lawful, or “halal,” intimacy. Dr. Razif argued that Islamic criminal and family laws allow the state to monitor and criminalize extra- or pre-marital relationships and set strict regulations around marriage. Despite these controls, Dr. Razif contended that legal ambiguities and loopholes reveal the limitations of state-enforced “halal” intimacy, leaving space for unregulated practices.
To illustrate these dynamics, Dr. Razif examined two significant cases in recent Islamic family law: the controversial marriage of a 41-year-old polygamous man to an 11-year-old girl as his third wife, and the increasing prevalence of cross-border eloped polygamous marriages in Southern Thailand. She argued that these cases expose inconsistencies within Islamic family law, which inadvertently facilitate child marriage and polygamy outside formal regulations. Despite efforts to control intimate lives, these inconsistencies illustrate that access to “halal” intimacy in Malaysia is neither uniform nor impermeable to social and legal challenges.
About the speaker
Dr. Nurul Huda Mohd. Razif is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bergen, specialising in the intersections of Islam, intimacy, and state governance within the Malay world and Muslim Southeast Asia. Dr. Razif completed her studies in Anthropology and French at the University of Western Australia and Sciences Po Paris and earned her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2018. She has also held research fellowships at Harvard Law School and centres for Southeast Asian Studies in Leiden, Paris, and Kyoto.