Islamic legal education: Malaysian experience

• Main Author: Abdullah, Raihanah
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2001
• Subjects: K Law (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/12921/1/session_iii-curriculum_development.pdf; http://eprints.um.edu.my/12921/
• Institution: Universiti Malaya

Scholars of Islamic Law in the West have predicted the future for Islamic Law in Muslim countries as an amalgam of Islamic traditional law and western legal ideas and institutions with the latter are much more dominance than the former. The Muslims on the other hand have always believed that the future is for Islamic Law, although they differ in the methods and manners on how Islamic law can be made applicable without rejecting novel and modem ideas concerning family, economic activities and their ways of life. In religious practice and understanding of certain issues there is a difference between Muslim countries in the Middle East and in this region. Some researchers maintain that the influence of pre-Islamic religions and beliefs remain very important in the Muslim World in South East Asia. Local customs and beliefs in this region is still in the gradual process of being defined and refined by Islam. Nevertheless, with the resurgence of Islam in the 1980s in these regions, the influence of Islam has started to mark its place in South East Asian Muslim societies and slowly but steadily replacing old customs, practices and beliefs. Thus it is interesting to study the current development of Islamic Law in South East Asian countries through this background in order to understand the factors which make such a blend. This paper focuses only on the Islamic Legal education at the Department of Shariah and Law, University of Malaya