From the Tengku Ampuan of Pahang, Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah
What frightens many people today when discussing Islamic
criminal law (hudud) or shari’ah law, is often not the historical reality of the Malay legal tradition, but contemporary political perceptions surrounding it.
The discussion is frequently framed as though Islamic law is something foreign, harsh, incompatible with plural societies, or impossible within constitutional governance. Yet the historical experience of the Malay world tells a far more balanced and mature story.
For centuries, the Malay Sultanates of the Nusantara, particularly Melaka and later Pahang, Johor, Aceh, Brunei, Perak, and their successor states, functioned as Muslim kingdoms governed through a constitutional and ethical framework rooted in Islam, adat, and kingship. The Hukum Kanun Melaka and the Hukum Kanun Pahang demonstrate clearly that the Malay world was not lawless, tribal, or governed arbitrarily. Rather, it possessed a sophisticated legal civilisation.
Within the Malay-Islamic constitutional tradition, the Ruler was not merely the head of state or a symbol of sovereignty, but also served as the Head of Religion entrusted with upholding the Laws of Allah based upon the Qur’an and the Hadith. Within the Malay Kanun traditions, royal authority was bound not only by adat and political power, but also by the Sharīʿah, amanah, justice, and moral responsibility toward both the people and religion.
The Ruler within the Malay-Islamic tradition was understood as a khalifah or zillullah fil-ardh, the shadow of Allah’s authority upon earth, responsible for ensuring that governance operated according to the principles of Islamic justice. Royal authority was therefore never intended to be absolute without limits, but rather authority restrained by the Laws of Allah. A just Ruler was regarded as the protector of religion, guardian of the state’s security, preserver of adat, and upholder of justice.
This explains why within the Malay Kanun traditions, not only the rakyat were governed by laws, but ministers, wazirs, shahbandars, temenggungs, and even the Ruler himself were described with ethical conditions and responsibilities. Governance was understood as a religious trust, not merely political authority.
This is extremely important to understand.
Today, many people speak about Islamic law as though it concerns punishment alone. Yet when one actually reads the Malay Kanun traditions, most of the content is not about punishment at all. Instead, they discuss:
- ethics of governance,
- qualifications of ministers and officials,
- responsibilities of state administrators,
- commercial regulations,
- maritime law,
- taxation,
- judicial procedure,
- family law,
- market ethics,
- social order,
- and moral conduct.
The Malay constitutional tradition understood that law was not merely punitive, it was civilisational.
Even the hudud-related provisions within the Malay Kanun existed within a much wider ethical and judicial framework. They were accompanied by evidentiary rules, witness requirements, procedural safeguards, and moral admonitions. The objective was not cruelty or oppression, but the preservation of justice, order, and social harmony.
And historically, the system functioned.
The Malay Sultanates survived for centuries as stable Muslim polities actively engaged in international trade, diplomacy, maritime governance, scholarship, and multicultural coexistence. Melaka itself was among the greatest cosmopolitan ports in the world, inhabited by Arabs, Persians, Gujaratis, Chinese, Indians, Javanese, Malays, and many other communities. Yet all of this functioned within a recognisably Islamic constitutional order.
This is the point often forgotten today,
the existence of Islamic law did not prevent plural society.
Historically, the Malay world governed diversity through a Malay-Islamic constitutional framework. Islam formed the civilisational foundation of the state, while non-Muslim communities continued to live, trade, and function within the kingdom. The Sultan upheld Islam as the religion of the state, while governance simultaneously accommodated the realities of a diverse maritime civilisation.
In many respects, this resembled the broader Islamic political tradition historically seen from Andalusia to the Ottoman Empire, where Muslim sovereignty did not necessarily require uniformity of population.
The fear surrounding Islamic law today partly emerges because modern societies encounter Islam primarily through political slogans, media narratives, or ideological conflicts. Many no longer study how Islamic governance historically functioned within their own civilisation. Colonial knowledge narratives also played a major role in reshaping Malay historical consciousness.
Under British advisory system, Islamic legal systems were potrayed to be gradually reduced, compartmentalised, and confined largely to religious matters such as marriage and ritual worship. Meanwhile, European legal systems became associated with “modernity,” “constitutionalism,” and “civilisation,” even though the Malay world had already possessed constitutional traditions centuries earlier.
From this emerged a profound psychological rupture,
the Malays slowly forgot that their civilisation had once stood upon a Malay-Islamic constitutional order. Yet the continuity never disappeared entirely.
Until today, the Sultan remains the Head of the Religion of Islam within the respective states under the Federal Constitution of Malaysia. This itself represents continuity from the older Malay-Islamic philosophy of governance. The constitutional position of the Malay Rulers did not emerge accidentally, but developed from centuries of Malay-Islamic statecraft rooted since the time of Melaka, Pahang, and Johor.
In this sense, the phrase, “Kerajaan Melayu Islam Beraja Berpelembagaan” is not merely a modern political creation. Rather, it is a historical description of a constitutional civilisation that existed within the Malay world for centuries.
The real question therefore is not,
“Can Islamic governance function?”
History has already demonstrated that it did function. Instead, the deeper question is, how did a civilisation once so confident in its own legal, intellectual, and constitutional traditions become so disconnected from its own historical memory?
That is among the most important questions raised through the study of the Hukum Kanun Melaka and the Hukum Kanun Pahang today.
The Tengku Ampuan of Pahang, Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah, is a master’s candidate at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC), International Islamic University Malaysia.