R. Michael Feener is a historian of Islam in Southeast Asia, now professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University (since 2020), previously Sultan of Oman Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and associate professor of history at the National University of Singapore and researcher at its Asia Research Institute. He wrote Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia (2007), which discusses Hasbi Ash-Shiddieqy among others, and Shari'a and Social Engineering: The Implementation of Islamic Law in Contemporary Aceh, Indonesia (2013). His work reads sharia implementation in Aceh as a project of social engineering and a laboratory of religious bureaucracy. He also directs the Maritime Asia Heritage Survey and has researched local histories of Aceh and the Maldives.