International Center for Cultural Studies

側記｜Inter-Asia Cultural Studies lecture series 2023 Fall

2024-01-18

【演講活動側記】
Date：2023/11/20
2023秋亞際文化研究演講系列
Inter-Asia Cultural Studies lecture series 2023 Fall

側記作者：張珈瑀 (陽明交大亞際學程碩士生）

Topic:
Penalising homosexuality to promote Islamic local value?
Tracing the (dis)continuation of penal laws targeting same-sex relation in Malaysia
Lecturer:
黃凱薈 /清華大學亞際文化研究國際碩士學位學程碩士生
Kai Hui Wong / Master’s student, IACS, NTHU
Commentor:
黃道明 /中央大學英美語文學系教授
Hans Tao-Ming Huang / Professor, Department of English, NCU
蔡孟哲/ 陽明交通大學文化研究國際中心博士後研究員
Meng-che Tsai / Postdoctoral Researcher, ICCS, NYCU

This lecture is the first in a series of lectures on Asian and International Cultural Studies. The lecture was delivered by Kaye Wong, a master's degree student in Asian Cultural Studies from Tsinghua University, with Prof. Huang Daoming, Professor of the Department of English and American Studies at the Central University of China, and Prof. Cai Mengzhe, a post-doctoral researcher at the International Center for Cultural Studies, Yang Ming Jiaotong University, as the panelists.

　　The talk focused on how homosexuality has entered the center stage of national and international politics in Malaysia. How the liberation and punishment of homosexuality has been placed at the center of a dichotomy between conservative resistance to Western cultural forces and human rights discourse that embraces pluralistic and progressive values. The speaker's relationship with the topic was first inspired by his work as a journalist who witnessed the public flogging of a lesbian couple in a Malaysian court. The shocking images and confusing feelings prompted the speaker to think further about how homosexuality has moved into the arena of national criminal law, and what unequal power structures have interwoven to create such an arena.

　　The speaker's research attempts to analyze the construction of the contemporary Malaysian judicial system and the dualistic power relationship behind it using a genealogical approach. Although Islam is the state religion of Malaysia, Malaysia is a secular state in terms of its legislative, judicial and administrative systems. In terms of the judicial system, Malaysia has both a federal legal system and state laws that are framed by Islamic precepts. Under the Malaysian constitutional framework, there should not be any overlap between secular law and Islamic law, but the norms of homosexuality are situated in a paradoxical place where the two overlap. The speaker further analyzed that the construction of criminal law in Malaysia is closely related to the colonial history of the country, and that the criminal law as a secular law has a Jewish and Christian background in penalizing homosexuality. Therefore, in re-examining the background of Malaysian law, the speaker believes that to a certain extent, Islamic law can be regarded as a "by-product" of colonization. It has undergone a series of reorganization, transformation and translation into the present-day society.

　　In the face of a series of changes in the history of Islamic law, the speaker reconsiders how legal sexuality was governed and how same-sex sexuality was criminalized again during the pre-colonial period, the British colonial period, and all the way up to the 1980s, and argues that, in the post-colonial context of Malaysian history, the Islamic legal system has been given a newly-constructed cultural significance. This is the speaker's view of Malay-centered nation-building. Continuing the Malay-centered nation-building, post-colonial Malaysia has witnessed a strong local desire for Islamic renaissance in order to mend the shattered identity, and the state has attempted to reincorporate Islamic values into the native values of the country in the colonial history, which is opposed to the all-pervasive Western culture, and homosexual behavior is also included in it. In other words, in opposition to the imagined Western Other, Malaysia reinvents itself and creates tradition. It is explained how the penalization of same-sex relationships after the 1980s is linked to the preservation of traditional Islamic values.

　　Finally, the pathologization of homosexuality in Malaysian law is a recent development, and in order to answer the question of how modern homosexuality has been pathologized and under what historical conditions liwat and musahaqah were re-criminalized in 1980s Malaysia, it is necessary to retrace the knowledge/conceptual genealogy of the "homosexual" by re-tracing it. genealogy of the knowledge/concept of "homosexuals". It is necessary to re-construct the connotations of indigenous values. This is because, as mentioned above, the speaker found that the indigenous traditions that Malaysia has vigorously protected and placed in opposition to Western culture are in fact translations from European psychology and sexuality. Since this is a paper that is still being organized, the speaker also mentioned that some of the contents and issues are still to be developed.

　　Finally, the speaker also shared that this paper is mainly based on literature research and through intensive reading of the literature and integrating data and perspectives from law, history and anthropology, it tries to explain the historical context behind the criminalization of same-sex sexual behavior in Malaysia and to understand why Malaysia is placed in a complex relationship of human rights/native values and Western/Islamic dichotomy. What the speakers attempt to show is a dynamic, multifaceted and complex process of change.

　　At the end of the talk, the two speakers also gave the possibility of further reflection. Prof. Choi Meng Chit asked that in the pre-19th century Western Europe, where anal sex was criminalized, the traditional values that were created in Malaysia actually came from the Western European past. Nowadays, apart from the colonial influence brought about by the British colonial period, was Islam influenced by the Ottoman Empire or other religions or regimes long before the colonial period? Moreover, the pathologization of homosexuality in Malaysia has occurred at a later stage than in other regions, what are the possible reasons for this? Prof. Wong also asked how it is possible for Islam to rebuild itself in the face of the wave of atomic individualism without resorting to coercive and punitive measures, recognizing the ills of racial nationalism in the past.