Papers

• Female Islamists and Anti-Gender Movement in Malaysia: A Case Study of the International Women’s Alliance for Family Institution and Quality Education (WAFIQ) Nurhuda Ramli Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Wai Weng Hew The University of Edinburgh

  This paper examines the role of female Islamist actors in shaping contemporary anti-gender mobilisation in Malaysia, with a focus on the International Women’s Alliance for Family Institution and Quality Education (WAFIQ). Situated within the broader trajectory of Malaysia’s state-led Islamisation and the growing influence of religious bureaucracy, the study investigates how women within Islamist networks actively contribute to mainstreaming and legitimising conservative gender norms through discourse, knowledge production, policy advocacy, and digital mobilisation.
  Drawing on discourse analysis of WAFIQ’s publications, policy statements, shadow reports, and social media communications—supplemented by observations from public events and policy engagements involving WAFIQ representatives—the paper demonstrates how the organisation constructs its conservative gender ideology through a selective synthesis of multiple sources. These include state religious institutions, fatwa authorities, male religious scholars at public universities, biomedical and psychological research, constitutional and legal arguments, and Western conservative narratives. Through this synthesis, WAFIQ produces gender-related knowledge that frames conservative norms as religiously authoritative, scientifically credible, and socially necessary, while amplifying these narratives through policy advocacy and social media mobilisation.
  The paper locates this mobilisation within a wider struggle over Muslim gender activism in Malaysia by comparing WAFIQ’s advocacy with the feminist Islamic activism of Sisters in Islam (SIS). While SIS promotes gender justice through feminist interpretations of Islam and legal reform, WAFIQ advocates for the protection of the family institution and reinforces traditional gender roles through alliances with state and religious authorities. This paper contends that female Islamist actors such as WAFIQ and its Indonesian counterpart, AILA, are not merely passive supporters of conservative agendas but are active ideological players leading anti-gender mobilisation, aimed at limiting the rights of women and sexual minorities.

• Dancing at the Threshold: Religious authority, gender politics and state power in Lengger mask dance in Wonosobo (Java, Indonesia) Musokhib Musokhib Palacky University

  This study examines the Lengger Mask Dance of Wonosobo, Central Java, by looking at how it survives amidst the competing pressures of religious authority, gender politics, and state power. The research highlights how state power is imposed through cultural sanitization and “projects of amnesia” following the tragedy of 1965, which demand that the dance be standardized to fit nationalist imagery and a state-controlled, refined (adiluhung) aesthetic. At the same time, religious authorities have pushed for a major shift away from the traditional ritual practice of trance (ndadi). Instead, they promote non-trance formats that are framed as more “Islamic” to protect the tradition from being labeled as harām (forbidden) or musyrik (polytheistic).
  In the realm of gender politics, there has been a noticeable transition from the ancient tradition of cross-gender performance (lengger lanang) to a modern scene dominated by biologically female dancers. This shift can be seen as a strategic move to comply with contemporary moral norms and to sidestep the social stigma often attached to non-binary gender identities.
  Drawing on fieldwork carried out in 2025, this study concludes that artists and practitioners are constantly negotiating at this threshold to keep their cultural heritage alive. By adapting flexibly to these external pressures, they ensure the continuity of their tradition within the complex landscape of contemporary Indonesia.

• Islamic Constitutionalism in a Multiconfessional State: The Indonesian Constitutional Court and Minimum Age of Marriage Laras Susanti University of Pittsburgh/Universitas Gadjah Mada

  In various communities, determining the appropriate age for marriage is highly complex because marriage serves a crucial role in religion and family honor. From the states’ perspective, the minimum marriage age reflects their politics on religious law and women’s rights. Indonesia is a prime example of how negotiations over the minimum age of marriage unfold—not only in the legislative process, but also in practical implementation and, more recently, through judicial review at the Constitutional Court. The Indonesian Marriage Law, enacted in 1974, sets unequal minimum marriage ages: 19 for men and 16 for women. I use a social-legal approach to study how this negotiation played out in two judicial review cases on the minimum age of marriage. Drawing on my experience with Koalisi 18+, I analyze advocacy efforts to support survivors of child marriage, particularly during the second Constitutional Court case. I also examine the process of drafting amendments to the Marriage Law following the Court’s decision. I argue that, in deciding the minimum age of marriage cases, the Court balanced human rights considerations—especially the rights of women and children—against a more traditional Islamic legal framework. In the first case, the Court favored the Islamic conservative constituency by refusing to review, citing religious harmony. The Court then has shown a deeper understanding of women’s rights in the second case, declaring the minimum age of marriage as unconstitutional. This study also highlights the women’s rights movement’s persistent efforts to achieve gender equality. This paper contributes to a broader understanding of family law in multiconfessional states where religion plays a crucial role in shaping citizenship and rights.

• Decolonizing Visibility: Rethinking LGBTQ Discourses Beyond Western Human Rights in Malaysia Afifi Nordin Middle East Technical University Nurzalyna Mohamed Zaki Albukhary International University

  Mainstream LGBTQ discourses in global peace and human rights scholarship are predominantly shaped by Western epistemologies that equate visibility with emancipation and universal recognition with progress. This paper challenges that assumption by examining the politics of LGBTQ visibility in Malaysia through a decolonial and Global South lens. It argues that the uncritical application of Western liberal frameworks, rooted in secular individualism and universalist rights language, often obscures local cultural, religious, and epistemic specificities that define sexuality and identity in postcolonial societies. Drawing on decolonial thinkers such as Walter Mignolo and Maria Lugones, as well as Global South scholarship on cultural relativism and peacebuilding, this paper explores how visibility itself can become a site of epistemic violence when imposed as a universal moral imperatives. In Malaysia, where Islamic values, communitarian ethics, and colonial legal residues intersect, queer identities are not simply suppressed but negotiated within complex social and moral boundaries. Rather than framing non-visibility as silence or repression, this study reinterprets it as a possible form of agency, protection, and cultural negotiation. By deconstructing the Western paradigm of LGBTQ visibility, this paper proposes an alternative understanding of peace, one grounded in plural epistemologies, cultural coexistence, and respect for contextual moral systems. In doing so, it contributes to decolonization of both peace studies and human rights discourse by situating Malaysia not as a deviant exception to universal norms but as a site of epistemic plurality that challenges the coloniality of global queer narratives.

Abstract

Keywords

• 1965
• Global South
• Indonesia
• Islam
• LGBTQ
• Lengger mask dance
• Malaysia
• Wonosobo
• anti-gender movement
• constitutional court
• cultural dynamics
• decoloniality
• digital mobilisation
• female Islamists
• gender politics
• human rights
• marriage age
• women