Competing for inheritance : the contestation between Islam, adat and modernity in inheritance distribution in Indonesia

There are two books under review. All are written in Indonesian language. They all discuss Islamic inheritance law in one way or another. The first book is written by Professor Muhammad Amin Suma, the long serving dean of Islamic law faculty at the Islamic state university Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta. His booklet entitled Islamic Inheritance law; from textual and contextual approach, consisting of 146 pages divided into 13 chapters. In his introduction, he stated that this booklet is written as a result of several questions raised by Muslims on the issues surrounding Islamic inheritance law, especially the different portion between men and women. As well understood in Islamic inheritance law, female heirs potentially receive only a half of male heirs in certain cases. As a conservative, he cannot hide his misgiving the increasing number of Muslims who question this different inheritance portion. Thus, his objective in writing the booklet is to provide apology to defend Islamic inheritance law, which is highly based on eternal textual foundation in the Holy Qur’an.