In October 2017, more than 200 Iraqi nationals were arrested in Selangor for taking part in the Ashura mourning. The Iraqis, most of them postgraduate students and diplomats from the Iraqi embassy were attending a 10th Muharram ceremony, a major date in the Islamic calendar which, among others, marks the martyrdom of the grandson of the Prophet, Imam Hussain.

The persecution of the Shiites in Malaysia has been extensively discussed by close observers of Malaysian affairs such as Ahmad Fauzi, Farid Alatas and Faizal Musa. However, little has been said about the ways in which Shiites are using the legal space provided by the Malaysian constitution to resist the attempts by the state religious bureaucracy to curtail their rights.

…Mohamed Nawab Osman is Coordinator of the Malaysia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Iulia Lumina is a Research Analyst at RSIS.