Review Article: Two Recent Volumes on Islam and Politics in Southeast Asia (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
The present volume seeks to understand "political Islam" which the editor, Johan Saravanamuttu, describes as "aspirations to political power and the remolding of state and society in accordance with Islamic teachings" (p. ix) in Southeast Asia. The project originated in 2004 and later adopted the notion of "authoritarian democracy" to serve as the contributors' common frame of analysis. This is a key concept and has been theorized by one of the book's contributors, Chaiwat Satha-Anand, as especially relevant to the study of Islam and governance in Southeast Asia. As presented, authoritarian democracy posits a ruling style that adopts a façade of democracy masking an inherently undemocratic regime that disadvantages the country's minorities. Thus, regime power wielders could be Muslim, Buddhist or Christian while Islam might be either privileged or oppressed. In using this rubric, the contributors aspire to address a number of questions relevant to Islam and the region's current political life.
Southeast Asian Studies, 2012
The present volume seeks to understand "political Islam" which the editor, Johan Saravanamuttu, describes as "aspirations to political power and the remolding of state and society in accordance with Islamic teachings" (p. ix) in Southeast Asia. The project originated in 2004 and later adopted the notion of "authoritarian democracy" to serve as the contributors' common frame of analysis. This is a key concept and has been theorized by one of the book's contributors, Chaiwat Satha-Anand, as especially relevant to the study of Islam and governance in Southeast Asia. As presented, authoritarian democracy posits a ruling style that adopts a façade of democracy masking an inherently undemocratic regime that disadvantages the country's minorities. Thus, regime power wielders could be Muslim, Buddhist or Christian while Islam might be either privileged or oppressed. In using this rubric, the contributors aspire to address a number of questions relevant to Islam and the region's current political life.
"Political Islam": Explaining the Socio-political Weakness of Islam in Southeast Asian States
Explaining the Socio-Political Weakness of "Political Islam" in Southeast Asia, 2020
Many popular justifications have been charted for why political Islam walks with a crutch in Southeast Asia, and this research paper will critically look at three: one, it will cite capitalist transformation, political economy, and the post-colonial state as factors for political Islam’s weakness, most notably in Indonesia and Malaysia; two, it will evaluate how non-internationalisation, political channels, and transnational counterterrorism in SEA has actively maintained this weakness, despite alarmist reports; lastly, it will criticise the dissociation with which Islam and political Islam are studied in these debates, namely through securitisation and language.
Islam and the Limits of the State
Islam and the Limits of the State, 2015
x preface of Aceh has also facilitated the work of a new generation of scholars working on diverse aspects of Islam and society. Exciting new lines of investigation have been directed at the complex ways in which Islamic belief and practice are configured within the everyday experiences of Muslims as they navigate the diverse transformations of society. This volume brings together an international group of researchers who have recently conducted extensive fieldwork on various aspects of Muslim religious life in Aceh, and among different social groups. This work presents insight into diverse expressions and interpretations of Islam all across the province that can help us to better understand the range and extent of ways in which Islam both informs and reflects dynamics of political and cultural change in contemporary Aceh. Most of the chapters are adaptations of papers presented at the international conference "Islam in Contemporary Aceh: Reconfigurations of Ritual, Doctrine, Community and Authority" which was held in Leiden in September 2011. They help us to understand how diverse expressions and interpretations of Islam in relation to the current state Shariʿa project have come to inform and reflect broader dynamics of political and cultural change across the province. Given Aceh's iconic position in the history of Islam in Indonesia, and taking into account the broader field of the anthropology of Muslim societies, this volume aims to contribute to discussions about patterns of continuity and change in the fields of lived experience, the officialization of religious thought and practice, and the role of Shariʿa and the state in contemporary Muslim societies. It starts out with an overview of the process of Shariʿa implementation, and a further elaboration of the central theme of the volume. Subsequent chapters focus on such issues as gender relations, the role of civil society, the drafting of religious laws, leadership dynamics, public morality, punishment, public space, the remaking of everyday life in post-conflict, post-tsunami contexts, and changing ideas about community and individuality. As such, we hope that this book will invite further debate, and help propel and sustain the flowering of Aceh scholarship into a wider field of academic and non-academic discussion. The editors are grateful to all those whose work and generous support made the 2011 conference possible. In particular, we would like to thank lucis (Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society), who funded the event and the Leiden University faculty who participated, including Léon Buskens, Kees van Dijk and Nico Kaptein. Our discussions there were also significantly enriched by the contributions of Arskal Salim and Daniel Birchok. We are grateful to Jaap Fokkema of vu University Amsterdam, who produced the Aceh administrative map printed here. We would also like to acknowledge all of the encouragement and assistance of Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar, Teddi Dols and Kathy van Vliet at Brill in helping us bring this book to publication, as well as preface xi the editorial assistance of Hongyan Li and Wajihah Hamid at the National University of Singapore's Asia Research Institute, and an anonymous reviewer for his/her helpful comments. map 1 Administrative map of Aceh List of Maps 1 Administrative map of Aceh xi 2 The Acehnese diaspora in the world 215