Constituting Religion

Tamir Moustafa is Professor of International Studies and Stephen Jarislowsky Chair at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His research stands at the intersection of law, religion, and politics. Among other work, he is the author of The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law, Politics, and Economic Development in Egypt (Cambridge, 2007) and he is the co-editor of Rule by Law: The Politics of Law and Courts in Authoritarian Regimes with Tom Ginsburg (Cambridge, 2008).

• Introduction: constituting religion; 1. The constitutive power of law and courts; 2. The secular roots of Islamic law in Malaysia; 3. Islam and liberal rights in the federal constitution; 4. The judicialization of religion; 5. Constructing the political spectacle: liberal rights versus Islam in the court of public opinion; 6. The rights-versus-rites binary in popular legal consciousness; 7. 'Islam is the religion of the federation'; Conclusion; Appendix: religion of the state, source law, and repugnancy clause provisions among Muslim-majority countries; Bibliography; Index.

'Moustafa's fascinating book demonstrates that courts in Malaysia, as in many Muslim-majority polities, enable and catalyze as much as resolve ideological conflicts between proponents of Islamic religious principles and liberal rights. The author's sophisticated understanding of law's constitutive power makes the volume an important contribution to scholarship on legal mobilization, rights contestation, and popular legal consciousness. It is a brilliant achievement, and highly recommended!' Michael McCann, Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship, University of Washington