The Ascendance of Bureaucratic Islam and the Secularization of the Sharia in Malaysia

Although Malaysia is not an overwhelmingly large Muslim-majority country, an extensive religious bureaucracy based on the Sharia1 has . been put in place as part of its vigorous state Islamization agenda.2 Sharia laws applied to Muslims, who comprise 60 percent of the population, are not just limited to family matters but also embrace criminal offences within Islam's wide jurisdiction.3 The expanding scope of Sharia laws, together with political rhetoric about the imminence of a Malaysian Islamic state, have aroused anxiety over Islam's potential in supplanting secular governance.4 But by reassessing the dynamics and roles of actors in Malaysia's