Culture, Religion, and Coercive Control: An Intersectional Analysis of Malay Muslim Women's Experiences in Terengganu, Malaysia

This article examines how culture, religion, and coercive control shape the experiences of Malay Muslim women who pursued divorce following domestic abuse in Terengganu, Malaysia. Drawing on a qualitative phenomenological study of 32 divorced women recruited through purposive and snowball sampling, the article explores how coercive control operates within everyday marital and institutional contexts. Participants described abuse not only in physical terms but also through emotional manipulation, economic dependency, and the regulation of social and religious expectations. Emotional abuse emerged as a particularly significant mechanism of domination, reinforced by gendered norms surrounding obedience, family honor, and marital endurance. An intersectional analysis highlights how women's experiences were shaped by the interaction of patriarchal relations, socioeconomic inequalities, and institutional structures, including the Syariah system. Rather than treating religion as inherently oppressive, the study shows how religious authority is mediated through social practices and institutional interpretations that can both constrain and enable women's responses to abuse. Divorce emerged not as a sign of personal failure but as a negotiated and strategic response to cumulative harm. The article contributes to sociological understandings of coercive control by demonstrating how domination and agency are produced through the intersection of religious authority, cultural expectations, and institutional governance in a non‐Western Muslim context.

Clinical Trial Registration

This is a qualitative sociological study exploring lived experiences; it is not a clinical trial. Therefore, registration in a clinical trial database is not applicable.