This project involves a cultural anthropologist studying the changing relationship between Islamic legal institutions, civil courts, and customary law procedures in Indonesia. Indonesia is the largest Muslim society in the world. Using ethnographic techniques of intensive interviews and participant observation as well as reviewing court cases, the project will study the shift away from local customary law procedures towards more universalist Islamic legal code. The universalist rules clash with local values around the important theme of inheritance, and this brief project will focus on a community first studied by the anthropologist in 1978 to see how local authorities deal with the problem. By understanding how the local community reacts to the religious-legal proscriptions of the central national authorities, this project will provide important information about the abilities of Islamic society to adapt to changing local circumstances. Increased understanding of Islamic local diversity and reactions to change will better enable our society to deal with Muslims. "
