Emerging Markets vs. Sharia Law

It’s easy to overlook Brunei, a country smaller than Delaware located on the north side of Borneo, population 412,000. But there’s a reason the kingdom’s neighbors recently started watching it closely. By embracing a stringent variant of Islam, the government of Brunei increasingly represents the region’s deepest anxieties about its own future.

On December 23, officials from the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei, stopped by local restaurants with a stern request: take down your Christmas decorations. According to the Borneo Bulletin, which confirmed the operation with the local Shariah Enforcement hotline, as well as staff at one of the restaurants, proprietors were informed that the decorations were “against Islamic beliefs.” Four days later, the Religious Affairs Ministry affirmed in a press release that “public displays” of Christmas cheer -- or any other non-Islamic religious festival -- were, in fact, prohibited under sharia.