Social Impacts Of Applying Legal Pluralism In Muslim Majority Countries

Abstract

A legal system can be defined as a set of rules and procedures that a community uses
to interpret and enforce its laws, which is compulsory for the well-being of every social
institution. When there is existence of multiple legal systems within one society or
geographical territory, it can be called as Legal pluralism. As countries like India has special
Islamic laws and principle for those who follow Islam. And other communities’ issues will be
dealt by secular courts. As if a Muslim dies, his properties can be divided for his ancestors
according to Islamic law, or can be divided equally according to public legal system. The
system is favorable and also hate-provoking at the same time in a social perspective. My
study concentrate on those social responses to the system. The system doesn’t shrink only in
Islamic law, but also in other religious laws like Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. But Islam is one
and only religion flourished by a legal system that deals with all the deeds of a human. So,
the topic is more likely to concentrate the Islam. We can get the relevance of topic from
involvement of even Muslim minority countries like USA, Canada, Australia and Germany in
conducting debates on allowing legal pluralism. The paper also concentrate especially on
Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia and Egypt. The research can give an idea on
how much applicable and practicable is legal pluralism.