Sisters in Islam
Nazila Ghanea-Hercock
Download NGPA Research Paper 34| (PDF)
This paper focuses on the impact of Non-Governmental Public Actors (NGPAs) on policy making, specifically in the context of Malaysian personal status laws. The focus will be on the NGPA Sisters in Islam (SIS) and their efforts to impact policies in relation to women's rights. Since personal status laws for Muslim and non-Muslim populations diverge in Malaysia, and since the work of SIS is specifically on the promotion of rights within an Islamic framework, the attention will be on Muslim women's rights as reflected in Muslim family law.
The challenge of this NGPA-policy relationship is not simply captured by the political and legal backdrop to the efforts of SIS. The additional challenges faced by SIS in Malaysian society are those of patriarchy and religion. In attempting to impact Muslim family law, SIS is seen to challenge politics, law making, religion and patriarchy.
SIS navigates this difficult terrain with a range of strategies. In order to analyse these strategies, detailed attention will be given to a key policy battle in the Muslim family law saga - that of the adoption of the 2005 Islamic Family Law (Federal Territories) (Amendment) Bill (IFL-FT). Through this, one is drawn into the complexity of policy and law making in Malaysia's federal structure, and especially in matters related to Islam. From this one gets an excellent snapshot of the impact of NGPA activism on government policy on Muslim personal status law.