Paper short abstract:

Being religiously minority, Muslims in the Philippines live in the plural legal orders.　By analyzing about their practices and legal cases, this paper discusses about their plural identities and how the particular and universal values interact to construct their identities.

Paper long abstract:

The republic of the Philippines is generally known as a Christian dominant country in Asia, however about 5% of population is consisted of Muslims and there are numbers of indigenous peoples.

Same as the varieties of the population, the normative orders are very plural. The customary, religious and national laws have formed the plural legal reality and the global influences interact with the existing legal plural systems. Policies and legal systems to recognize and realize the pluralistic elements have been in long contestation. Under this situation,　different actors behave according to different normative orders and their behaviors transform the plural legal orders and plural identities.

This paper focuses on particularly Muslim women in their selections of life courses, marriages and divorces. As well as the social changes of the whole society, the mobility of people going abroad and the influence of Islamic resurgence are also taken into consideration as global factors to construct their identities.