438 Islamic Law and Society 23 (2016) 438-440 book reviews Azza Basarudin Humanizing the Sacred: Sisters in Islam and the Struggle for Gender Justice in Malaysia. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2016. ISBN: 978-0295995328. Pp. vii+330. $30/$80. Perhaps the most consequential and fraught fault-line in contemporary Ma- laysia is the question of what role Islam should play in national identity and political life, including who should be the arbiter of appropriate Muslim ideas and praxis. A numerically small but important voice in those debates for over twenty years has been Sisters in Islam (SIS), the Malaysian non-governmental organization at the center of Azza Basarudin’s cogent, insightful account. SIS falls within a global tradition of Islamic feminist analysis combining schol- arship and activism to improve the status of women under Islam, with the central premise that the guiding texts of Islam itself are not the problem; patri- archal human interpretations are. The activists Basarudin profiles are “Muslim women who live under the increasing politicization of Islam, who are excluded from interpretive communities and who are in search of equality and justice” (p. 190). Their activism serves to animate their faith and open space for public debate, however acrimonious or dismissive, while modeling possibilities for Malay Muslim women’s leadership and agency; SIS (and its newer transnation- al counterpart, Musawah) facilitates transformation at both the individual and the community level. SIS began in the late 1980s among a group of Malay Muslim women – law- yers and other professionals – concerned over issues related to women’s status under Islamic family law. SIS was officially registered in 1993; it was the first, and remains the main, organization in Malaysia to press for public debate on women’s rights in Islam. As SIS’s approach has evolved, it has drawn upon a shifting balance of Islamic primary sources (approached via feminist herme- neutics), constitutional law, and human rights principles to argue for reforms to syariah in Malaysia, pursue transnational solidarity around gender and Is- lam, and engage in public education and advocacy. By focusing on SIS, Basaru- din is able to excavate the feminist interpretation of Islamic sources, which breaks the (male) ulama monopoly on textual interpretation of Islam and re- veals the cultural, historical, and political processes behind the evolution of gender roles and rights in Malaysian Islam, as well as to explore women’s po- tential to change themselves into visible, political actors, if given space and encouragement to defy norms of Malay Muslim femininity. Since the British colonial era, Malaysia has had a two-track legal system: a uniform criminal code, coupled with separate syariah and civil laws and courts for Muslims and non-Muslims, respectively. While the federal government sets an overarching framework, matters of Islam, including Islamic law, rest mostly ISSN 0928-9380 (print version) ISSN 1568-5195 (online version) ILS 4 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/15685195-00234p06Islamic Law and Society 23 (2016) 438-440 book reviews 439 at the level of Malaysia’s thirteen states and three federal territories. Moreover, this complex system is far from static; revisions to Islamic family law and other regulations, especially since the 1980s, have developed amid increasing state-led Islamization of public life and policies, and the attendant criminal- ization of behavioral transgressions. Racial relations have deteriorated in tandem, given the overlap between ethnic and religious identity among the Malay-Muslim majority. Expanding state involvement in matters of Islam and privileging of the status of Muslims in the Malaysian polity have entailed curbs on minority racial/religious rights. Against this political backdrop, notes Basarudin, “women’s bodies have become a tool for authenticating piety and morality” (p. 10), and family law increasingly “privileges men’s rights while it infantilizes women” (p. 49), notwithstanding both Islamic and Malay histories of women’s autonomy and assertion. It is in the realm of personal and family law that the state’s intrusion into Muslims’ private lives and consolidation of “private patriarchy” (p. 153) are most evident. The eight founding members of SIS (and subsequent recruits) included women from backgrounds of varying levels of religious observance, as well as converts to Islam. They started with a program of directed study, engaging closely with the Qur’an and hadith and developing their own analysis of the boundary between syariah as divine and fiqh as the product of human agency. Basarudin seeks to uncover how these women not only reconcile faith and feminism (whether or not they choose to use the latter term), but in many cases also develop a deeper appreciation for Islam as a premise for claims of justice and equality, bringing Islam to a personal level informed by and rele- vant to their own experience and knowledge. Yet SIS sparks controversy, even as critics avoid engaging the organization on the issues it raises. Rather, its members are “invalidated” (p. 146) by ulama, Malay-rights activists, state offi- cials, and members of the public alike – to a greater extent than for male or more mainstream voices – as lacking the theological and linguistic training to speak, as inappropriately aloof from acknowledged authorities, as driven by emotion, and as unrepresentatively elite and influenced by neoimperialist per- spectives and Western liberalism. Indeed, not all SIS members agreed with the epistemological and “Arabic-oriented” (p. 98) strategy upon which the group settled – yet not because, as for “a majority of Muslims,” they believed “that authority in Islam lies with men” (p. 162). Basarudin builds her account on two main foundations: interviews with, and observation of, SIS activists and others able to comment on SIS’s or their own Islamist activism or work, and secondary literature, primarily theoretical. These two elements could at times be better synthesized. In particular, while the author’s use of theory to illuminate her case is commendable, she might also reverse the vector to consider how this case revises wider conceptions or Islamic Law and Society 23 (2016) 438-440.