The Arab elite in Southeast Asia played an outsized role in the development of Islamic law in the British Straits Settlements (Penang, Malacca, and Singapore) and, to a smaller extent, the Netherlands Indies. Colonial jurisdictions permeated the colonies incrementally over time not simply by statute or decree but gradually through the steady accretion of litigation and petitions—legal formulas that conform to specific legal formats propelled by colonial subjects to a significant extent. In both colonies, the Arab elite compelled colonial jurisdictions to be applied to more areas of life, and wider sections of colonial population than before. Considering that the ratio of Arabs to “Malays and other Natives of the Archipelago” in the official Straits Settlements censuses was about 7 to 100,000 toward the end of the nineteenth century, their impact was disproportionate. Even in Singapore, which held the largest Arab population in the Straits Settlements, the local Muslim population, glossed as “Malay,” outnumbered them with a ratio of 3:500. British involvement in Muslim affairs in the Straits Settlements was done at the behest of Arab mercantile elites in the colony who continually tugged at the hem of colonial governments, asking them to take charge of Muslim lives and thus displacing more indigenous forms of authority even further in the process. By insisting on the “correct” interpretation of laws, the Arab elite shifted the trajectory of legal administration in the colonies. They persuaded British and Dutch colonial governments to facilitate changein their favor, to centralize legal infrastructure to stave off future dialogue, and to let them fill the role of religious arbitrator in the colonies. Their choice to continually appeal to colonial authorities suggests that they were granted a social sense of citizenship rights due to their class although they must have been aware of the impossibility of full enfranchisement under colonial rule.

DS1 JAS

Malays (Asian people) -- Singapore -- History||Islam -- Singapore -- History||Singapore -- Social conditions -- 19th century