Across the landscape of contemporary Asia, the relationship of law to religion remains highly unstable and varies greatly from country to country.
The influence of secularism is everywhere apparent, but there is no uniform commitment to a rigorous separation of the religious and the legal spheres. On the contrary, some Asian countries view the ideology of secularism as consistent with establishing a particular religion as the officially preferred faith.
The French concept of ldicite, which would in theory prohibit any involvement of the government in religious affairs (and vice versa), has not prevailed in any society except arguably the socialist regimes. But even there, in countries such as China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, religious practices and beliefs persist and shape the legal consciousness of many in the population. And in some countries, such as Brunei, the government has adopted such a stringent interpretation of a particular religion - in this case Islam - that any deviation or customary practice (such as the worship of local spirit shrines) is deemed a threat to national security. Dominik M. Muller (20r5: 34r-2) notes that this repressive deployment of religion emerged as a paradoxical result of legal “modernization” during British colonial rule:Although the empowerment and expansion of Sharia law in Brunei is locally presented, and might be interpreted academically, as an attempt at postcolonial emancipation, it cannot evade its colonial imprint of modern legalism and bureaucratization, thus presenting a case of uneven, paradoxical continuity. By advising the sultanate on the systematic codification, institutionalization and diversification of its administration of Islam, the British helped to create the institutional and ideational substrate from which the later Shariatization, including the latest legal reform, eventually emerged. Islam became translated into the modern language of bureaucratic legalism, which still continues to shape the postcolonial state's exercise of classificatory power today, as manifested in its sanction-based policies of standardizing truth and deviance.
Considering the political priority given to Islamization policies, and leaving aside sincere beliefs in accumulating divine blessings in this world and the afterlife for realizing God's legislative will, we may ask who benefits from Brunei's expansion of Sharia law? The Sultan and his political system are the clearest winners, as the SPCO [Syariah Penal Code Order 2013] further consolidates their (literally and figuratively) unquestionable power and divine legitimation.
Simultaneously, the SPCO gives to the Islamic bureaucracy what many of its representatives had long hoped for and devoutly believe in, thereby ensuring their support, while simultaneously further cementing the state ulama's monopoly and socio-political influence.The readings in this section are not a comprehensive survey of contemporary Asia, since the field is too vast and the variation too extensive. Rather, they provide a few examples of the many different dilemmas involving law and religion in Asia today. In Vineeta Sinha's study of Singapore, we see a government struggling to maintain its political commitment to pluralism while at the same time asserting its preference for certain forms of religiosity and its opposition to others. By contrast, in Benjamin Schonthal's study of Sri Lanka, we see a very different government posture toward religion. There, as in a number of other Asian countries, the primacy of Buddhism is enshrined in the constitution, and the government finds itself drawn into pronouncements about proper and improper forms of Buddhist practice even as it asserts a role as protector of religious freedom and pluralism in general. And finally, in John Breen's article about Shinto shrines in Japan, we see a government attempting to defend its stance as a secular regime even as it maintains its ancient connection to sacred Shinto legitimizing practices and institutions that, in modern Japan, can also have disturbing right-wing political overtones.
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