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When Islam was accepted as the religion of the nation, embraced by the royal and their subjects, a new country was born and emerged as the Kesultanan Melayu Islam (Islamic Malay Sultanate) and known in the present day as Brunei Darussalam. The Brunei monarchy made the Islamic teachings and tenets as the basis to form the state law and remains so until now, despite the fact that it used to be referred to personal law by the colonial power during the British era in Borneo. Scholars have been focusing on the history and development of Islamic law in Brunei but rarely discuss on the history of criminal legislation, particularly on the development of shariah criminal offences. As such, this article discusses that aspect in order to examine the history and the development of what is known today as shariah criminal offences in Brunei in light of the Perintah Kanun Hukuman Jenayah Syariah 2013. To this end, this article contributes significantly in the area of the Islamic legal history in Brunei by exposing the importance of the Sultans in empowering Islamic law in the country as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DNA profiling of X-chromosomal short tandem repeats (X-STR) has exceptional value in criminal investigations, especially for complex kinship and incest cases. In this study, Investigator® Argus X-12 Quality Sensor (QS) kits were successfully used to characterize 12 X-STR loci in 199 unrelated healthy Kedayan individuals living in Sabah and Sarawak, Malaysia. The LG1 haplogroup (DXS8378 – DXS10135 – DXS10148) has the largest HD (0.9799) as compared with all other closely linked haplotype groups examined (LG2; DXS7132-DXS10074-DXS10079, LG3; DXS10103-DXS10101-HPRTB and LG4; DXS10134-DXS7423-DXS10146). Data from statistical analysis showed that high combined of PDM, PDF, MEC_Krüger, MEC_Kishida, MEC_Desmarais, and MEC_Desmarais_duo values (0.999999994405922, 0.99999999999999, 0.999990463834938, 0.999999975914808, 0.999999975985006, and 0.999996491927194, respectively) in the Kedayan. In a two-dimensional scaling (MDS) plot and dendrogram constructed using allele frequencies at the 12 X-STR loci, Kedayan appear to be most closely related to their other Austronesian populations including the Malays and Filipinos as compared with other reference population groups. Findings from the present study thus demonstrate high genetic variability across the 12 tested X-STR loci and can be used for population studies and forensic applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]