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Southeast Asia in 2021: A Year of Reckoning?
- Edited by Daljit Singh, ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute, Thi Ha Hoang, ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute
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- Book:
- Southeast Asian Affairs 2022
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- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
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- 01 September 2023, pp 3-20
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Summary
An eventful twelve months saw Southeast Asia beset by a number of familiar challenges. In some respects, the year began where the previous left off, with the COVID-19 pandemic threatening to take more lives and cause further damage to regional economies as new variants of the virus circulated. Not unlike the preceding year, the pandemic hampered hopes for a return to a more normal diplomatic schedule comprising in-person meetings, with many having to continue being conducted over sub-optimal virtual platforms. Indeed, this state of affairs was used to explain the delay in the completion of the much-awaited Code of Conduct on the South China Sea between China and ASEAN, which was originally targeted for 2021.
At the same time, the year also witnessed several new—in some cases, unexpected—developments that further complicated the conduct of regional affairs. The election of a new president in the United States was met with, in some sense, a sigh of relief from regional states as it signalled a return to a more predictable and familiar—but by no means straightforward—tone and tenor in relations with Washington. Nevertheless, American re-engagement in the Indo-Pacific has also occasioned the emergence of new Washington-led initiatives in the region that created ripples that Southeast Asian states have had to adjust to. Arguably the biggest test for ASEAN over the last year, however, must surely be developments in Myanmar; specifically, how to respond to the seizure of power by the military and creation of the State Administration Council (SAC) government, whose credibility and legitimacy were challenged both domestically and internationally. To be sure, the question of how to manage the fallout from the military coup in Myanmar exercised ASEAN tremendously as the international spotlight shone harshly on the organization.
The Persistent Cloud of COVID-19
For the governments of Southeast Asia, there is no gainsaying that COVID-19—and its impact on their respective economies and societies—persisted as a hangover from the previous year.
Despite initial success in containing the virus via prompt and strict social distancing measures in some Southeast Asian countries, the appearance of the more infectious Delta variant quickly placed the region back on the defensive as governments scrambled to reimpose lockdowns and movement controls.
Democracy and Nationalism in Southeast Asia: From Secessionist Mobilization to Conflict Resolution. By Jacques Bertrand. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 280p. $99.99 cloth.
- Joseph Chinyong Liow
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- Journal:
- Perspectives on Politics / Volume 20 / Issue 3 / September 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 31 August 2022, pp. 1128-1130
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- September 2022
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Islam and Political Power in Indonesia and Malaysia
- The Role of Tarbiyah and Dakwah in the Evolution of Islamism
- Joseph Chinyong Liow
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- 15 August 2022
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- 25 August 2022
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Islamism in Indonesia and Malaysia has undergone a fascinating transformation from social movement roots to mainstream politics. How did this take place, and to what ends? Drawing on social movement theories, this Element explains this transformation by focusing on key Islamic social movements in these two countries. It argues: first, that the popularity and appeal of Islamism in Indonesia and Malaysia cannot be understood without appreciating how these social movements have enabled and facilitated mobilization; and second, that it is precisely these roots in civil societal mobilization that account for the enduring influence of Islamist politics evident in how Islamic social movements have shaped and transformed the political landscape. These arguments will be developed by unpacking how Islamist ideas took root in social movement settings, the kinds of institutional and organizational structures through which these ideas were advanced, and the changing political landscape that facilitated these processes.
2 - Managing Religious Diversity and Multiculturalism in Singapore
- Edited by Terence Chong
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- Book:
- Navigating Differences
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- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
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- 24 November 2020
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- 29 May 2020, pp 19-35
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Summary
According to the Pew Research Centre, Singapore is the most religiously diverse country in the world on grounds that its population claims to be followers of at least eight religions including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and several Chinese “folk religions”. In 2012, Forbes ranked Singapore the third richest country in the world. In 2015, ValuePenguin, a prominent New York consultancy firm, ranked Singapore the second safest country in the world. Taken together, these figures suggest that in an age where religious tension and conflict is said to be on the rise, Singapore has managed to maintain multiethnic and multireligious harmony whilst achieving a level of development which has been the envy of many a developing country. This record is all the more remarkable when one considers the trying circumstances of Singapore's independence in 1965, or the number of intrastate conflicts that had afflicted so-called Third World countries during the Cold War, many of which were triggered by issues related to the assertion of differences between communal identities. In fact, many countries continue to be bedevilled by communal and sectarian conflicts today.
The peace and stability that Singapore has enjoyed however, has not been the result of chance, serendipity, or circumstance. To the contrary, it has for a large part been the consequence of carefully calibrated policies on the part of the state, with the endorsement of the leadership of respective religious and ethnic communities in the multicultural nation-state. That the state has had to proactively intervene in order to head off the risks of tension, discord, and conflict between religious and ethnic groups has been explained by Home Minister K. Shanmugam in the following manner:
The Government has an important role. It has to be vigilant. There are tough laws to prevent race and religion being used to create divisions … We will do our best to keep Singapore safe, and ensure equality of opportunities, fairness and a fair stake for all in Singapore. We will also ensure everyone has the freedom to practise his or her religion.
The government's stance as articulated by the minister corresponds with a general view amongst the population that accords to the state a major role in building and managing peaceful coexistence of different faiths.
Foreword
- Edited by Sophie Lemière
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- Book:
- Illusions of Democracy
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 20 November 2020
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- 27 August 2019, pp vii-viii
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Summary
Contemporary Malaysia is a society in ferment. For years, the country has been led by the Barisan Nasional, a political coalition anchored by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). Once believed to be unassailable, in the March 2008 general election the Malaysian opposition managed to deny Barisan its hitherto customary two-thirds parliamentary majority while also prying several state governments from its control. The momentum of the opposition's electoral success carried over into the 2013 election, when they inflicted a major blow on the incumbent coalition by winning the majority vote, even if the latter still managed to retain power by way of the first-past-the-post parliamentary process.
As the country stands at the cusp of another impending general election (due by mid-2018), a major financial scandal involving 1MDB, a stateowned strategic investment company, threatens to further undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the prime minister and president of UMNO, Najib Tun Razak. At the same time, civil society has become increasingly active – and agitated – as they engage the state on a raft of issues ranging from defence of the sacrosanct principle of Malay-Muslim dominance, implementation of Islamic strictures, freedom of worship for followers of minority religions, corruption and nepotism, indigenous rights of residents of East Malaysia as encapsulated in the ‘20 point’ and ‘18 point’ agreement documents signed between the state governments of Sabah and Sarawak and the Malaysian federal government, the gathering pace of environmental degradation, and the list goes on. While many of these issues are hardly new, the way they have unfolded in the post-Mahathir era has hastened academic and public discourse concerning them. More importantly, these issues have given rise to new research agendas in Malaysian studies. Indeed, the breadth of this new research agenda is reflected in the work of a new generation of scholars and ‘Malaysianists’, and finds expression in recent published scholarship covering the nexus between Islamic finance and politics, Islamist pop culture, the reframing of identity and nationalism among East Malaysians, environmental politics, the increasing prominence of ulama in everyday politics, and (un)civil activism.
Southeast Asia in 2017: Grappling with Uncertainty
- from THE REGION
- Edited by Daljit Singh, Malcolm Cook
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- Book:
- Southeast Asian Affairs 2018
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- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
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- 08 June 2019
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- 06 April 2018, pp 59-74
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The year 2017 was a significant one for Southeast Asia in many ways. It was a milestone year, marking the fiftieth anniversary of ASEAN. Formed in the cauldron of the Cold War in August 1967, ASEAN has been credited with playing an instrumental role in fostering stability and security in the Southeast Asian region over the last five decades. Expressing this celebratory mood, the ASEAN calendar for the year was predictably inundated with events to commemorate the formation of the regional organization. In terms of economics, the countries of the region continued to grow at commendable rates, buoyed in no small part by increased domestic consumption and Chinese and Japanese investments.
Yet, the celebratory atmosphere could barely conceal the uncertainties and host of challenges that confront the region, and which manifested themselves in 2017. Foremost, at the geostrategic and geoeconomic level, was the election into office in the United States of Donald Trump, who, based on his campaign rhetoric, seemed to desire a fundamental overhaul of America's role in global affairs. On the other hand, China appeared to be relentlessly expanding its economic clout and influence in the region, with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) leading the way. Meanwhile, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan appears to have awakened from its slumber and has both deepened and accelerated its own engagement of the region. Together with several other major challenges, such as humanitarian crises in Myanmar and Marawi, these developments not only made for an exacting year but also reflect the increasing complexity that has come to characterize the regional strategic and economic landscape and suggest potential challenges that need to be overcome in the years ahead.
Navigating Major Power Politics
The inauguration of the mercurial Donald Trump into the White House on 20 January ushered in something of a new era in regional affairs. A product of popular dissatisfaction among the American electorate, the Trump administration cast doubt over America's continued leadership of global affairs with its “America First” approach to international diplomacy. For the region, the early portents of change were not encouraging. One of Donald Trump's first acts as president was to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was painstakingly negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
2 - Southern Philippines: Reframing Moro Nationalism from (Bangsa) Moro to Bangsamoro
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Book:
- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp 62-98
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On October 15, 2012, Philippine president Benigno Aquino III and Al-Haj Murad Ibrahim, chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or MILF signed the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro at the Malacañang Palace in Manila. On January 25, 2014, representatives of the Philippine government and the MILF signed the last of the annexes to the Framework Agreement. With the annexes complete, the landmark Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) was signed on March 27, 2014. The signing of the Comprehensive Agreement was a remarkable achievement given how both parties have been locked in armed conflict for the better part of the last three decades, including the Philippines state's waging of an “All-Out-War” in 2000 under the presidency of Joseph Estrada. With this set of agreements, a Bangsamoro autonomous state, encapsulating parts of what had come to be known as the Moro lands in the southern Philippines, will finally be formed within the territory of the Philippines.
The Moro areas of southern Philippines have widely been defined as the territories of Mindanao as well as the surrounding islands in the Sulu Archipelago. It includes the five provinces where Muslims remain a majority of the population: Maguindanao, Basilan, Tawi-Tawi, Lanao Del Sur, and Sulu. Within the geopolitical body of the Philippines, these areas stand out on at least three counts. First, they are where the vast majority of Filipino Muslims, which according to most census figures number around four to five million, are concentrated, even though Muslims in actual fact form numerical majorities only in the five aforementioned provinces. Second, these are areas identified as among the poorest in the Philippines, if not the entire Southeast Asian region. Indeed, numerous studies have been produced that draw attention to how these areas lack basic infrastructural and institutional pillars necessary for the proper functioning of society, such as education, transport, healthcare, and sanitation services. Third, until relatively recently, large segments of the local population, known in the lexicon today collectively as Bangsamoro – a term that has come to be used synonymously with Moro despite significant definitional differences between them that speak to competing conceptions of national identity (not to mention the fact that in truth, Moro identity is itself a fragmented community), have been waging protracted armed rebellion against central authority since the time of Spanish attempts to colonize the region.
3 - Thailand's Southern Border Provinces: Constructing Narratives and Imagining Patani Darussalam
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp 99-134
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Thailand's southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and the Malay-speaking districts of Songkhla have a combined population of between 1.8 and two million people, of whom more than 1.5 million are ethnic Malays who profess the Islamic faith. Once part of the independent kingdom of Patani (a historic kingdom not to be confused with the province of Pattani that exists today, although both are located in the same geographical area of the southern provinces), this distinctive ethnic-religious region has a history and identity that predate the imposition of centralized rule of the kingdom of Siam in the early 20th century.
The region is situated at the junction between predominantly Buddhist mainland and predominantly Muslim maritime regions of Southeast Asia. In cultural and linguistic terms, however, its occupants are at home in neither milieu. For instance, while Thai Malay-Muslims, known colloquially as “Nayu,” may share similar ethnic and cultural traits as their Malaysian-Malay counterparts, many who work across the border in northern Malaysia have in fact experienced alienation because of their association with the predominantly Buddhist Thai state, which they feel makes them less “Malay” in the eyes of their Malaysian neighbors. It is for this reason that anthropologists and sociologists have written extensively on Nayu as being in possession of dual (and duelling) identities. In part because of the geographic position of this region at the margins of the Thai geobody, Thailand's nation-state constructs, along with its historical narrative and the centralized structure of the Thai state, have vacillated between accommodation and alienation of the unique identity and historical narrative of the Malay south. Resonating with what was discussed in the foregoing chapter on the southern Philippines, relative economic underdevelopment of the region has added further to the sense of alienation that over the decades has exercised the Malay-Muslim cause.
It is against this backdrop that the long-standing Malay-Muslim struggle to define and defend a conception of nationhood distinct from Thailand's official discourse of nationalism has been summarized succinctly by the Thai political scientist Michael Connors, who poignantly surmised: “The history of the South may well be written as a history of differentiated cyclical patterns of Malay resistance and rebellion and state accommodation and pacification.”
Conclusion
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp 218-231
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In the conclusion to his 1963 study on religion and nationalism in Southeast Asia, the eminent political scientist Fred R. von der Mehden proposed that: “twentieth-century Southeast Asia is an excellent laboratory in which the relationship of religion to politics can be assessed against changing political and social backgrounds. The past fifty years have seen peoples lacking political, economic, and social cohesion assume nationhood and finally statehood.” Forty years later, in a quantitative article published in 2004 that collated data from the Minorities at Risk and State Failure datasets, Jonathan Fox found that since 1980, religious nationalist groups were responsible for more cases of conflict (specifically armed violence) than non-religious nationalist groups. These two observations may seem unrelated, but they provide important points of entry, as well as bookends, for this study as it draws to a conclusion.
In a sense, this book has picked up the Southeast Asian story where von der Mehden left off. It has done so by unpacking several conflicts in Southeast Asia that have commanded widespread popular attention recently, and that appear religious in nature by virtue of the frequent use of religious symbols, metaphors, and narratives to describe them on the part of media, academia, and, most significantly, conflict actors themselves. Rather than treading the beaten path to pinpoint whether or not these conflicts are “religious” in the strict sense of the term, this book has chosen to offer an alternative interpretation of religious conflicts in Southeast Asia. The search for a different approach provoked a series of questions. How do we understand the element of religion in the contemporary intrastate conflicts that have arisen in Southeast Asian societies? Indeed, why have these conflicts even taken on a confessional nature and found religious expression? How should we understand the veracity of their religious contents and claims? These questions are of signal importance because of their analytical novelty in the sense that no one else has asked these questions substantively of Southeast Asian intrastate conflicts, certainly not in the context of a comparative study contained in a single volume.
The book has set out the basic premise that religious identity and discourses have been important in the framing of political conflicts in Southeast Asia. Indeed, in all the cases investigated here, conflict actors have themselves often framed their actions in religious terms in one way or another.
Preface
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp ix-xi
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Religion has always been an important theme in Southeast Asian history and culture. It has also been a crucial feature of the region's politics and specifically, as I hope to demonstrate in this book, in the conception of nationhood and the political contestations that have defined the history of the nation in Southeast Asia. Indeed, since the emergence of anti-colonial movements in the region, religion has animated and colored nationalism in Southeast Asia. Romantic nationalists from Myanmar (Burma) to Indonesia and the Philippines, in possession of great capacities for invention and myth-making, frequently capitalized on the “immutable” religious identity of “their people” in order to construct narratives that frame conceptions of nationhood beyond the imperative of material self-interest.
Such is the currency of these narratives, it harkens to Hugh Trevor-Roper's observation, made in his illuminating tome, The Invention of Scotland, that “for what people believe is true is a force, even if it is not true.” This conceptualization of nationhood using religious metaphors, vocabularies, and referents, I should add, was not merely confined to those anti-colonial movements that agitated successfully to liberate their nations from Western imperialism. Religion has been an equally robust, if at times overlooked, phenomenon on at least two further counts: first, as a feature in the process of post-independence nation and state building and consolidation and, second, in the articulation of resistance by groups within the territorial state but who do not share in its conception of nationhood. It is in the hope of untangling this dynamic thematic combination of religious identity, nationalism, and political contestation that Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia has been written.
The topic of religion and conflict has fascinated many a scholar of the region. The result has been the production of several excellent studies that explore the role of religion in political conflict from a wide array of perspectives ranging from economic inequality to minority identity, political legitimacy, and integration. Of particular note are Thomas McKenna's illuminating study of local politics in Cotabato, Edward Aspinall's study of how religious identity blended with nationalism in Aceh, Duncan McCargo's work on southern Thailand that focuses on the legitimacy-deficit of the Thai state in the Malay south, and John Sidel's masterly analysis of the kaleidoscopic violence perpetrated by religiously inspired groups in Indonesia. This book hopes to add to this literature in at least two ways.
Glossary
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp xv-xx
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Index
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp 254-261
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Contents
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp vii-viii
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Dedication
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp v-vi
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Introduction
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp 1-17
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Southeast Asia is doubtless one of the most dynamic economic regions in the world. It is, at the same time, also home to some of the most enduring post-colonial intrastate conflicts. A brief look at the headlines of major broadsheets over the last decade and a half is a good indicator of how this has cast a shadow over the region. In Myanmar (Burma), violence has broken out between Buddhists and Muslims even as the country creeps down the path of democratization. In Thailand and the Philippines, Muslim minority groups in their respective southern provinces are purportedly waging jihad or “holy war” against what we are told are majoritarian prejudices of predominantly Buddhist and Catholic states and societies, respectively. While Malaysia has thus far avoided the outbreak of violence, the country nevertheless has witnessed an alarming escalation of tension as a Muslim-dominated government has allowed the expression of acutely exclusivist majoritarian views on religion in the name of “defending” the Islamic faith to go unchecked, the deleterious effect of which has been the constriction of the religio-cultural space afforded to non-Muslims by the Constitution. In Indonesia, post-Suharto political transformation appeared in its early years to have given rise to sectarianism and religious intolerance, which in many cases have also boiled over to violence not only between Muslims and non-Muslims, but within Indonesia's kaleidoscopic Muslim community as well.
On close inspection, a common thematic thread appears to weave through many of these conflicts – the role of religion. Because of how religious language and symbolism are evoked in some form or other, many of the aforementioned conflicts have been the subject of a great deal of media and academic attention that have chosen intuitively to cast them as religious conflicts. Given the popularity and appeal of such views, particularly those emanating from media circles, both local and international, a proper understanding of the role of religion in these conflicts is necessary and urgent. It is for this purpose that this book is written.
The book poses the following questions: how and why did religion come to assume such a prominent role in intrastate conflicts in Southeast Asia, and how should we endeavor to understand this role?
Frontmatter
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp i-iv
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5 - Indonesia: Contesting Principles of Nationhood
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp 175-217
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Scholars of religion in Indonesia have consistently maintained that it is an exceedingly complex phenomenon not given to straightforward analysis or generalizations. The complexity of the topic is arguably captured in the concept of aliran (streams, referring to the different currents of Islam in Indonesia), which since its introduction to Indonesian studies by the anthropologist Cliffor Geertz has continued to provide a useful point of entry to the analysis of social and political trends in the country. Originating in Geertz's study of Indonesian Islam, scholars of Indonesia had traditionally set great store by the notion of aliran, which speaks to the existence of multiple, dynamic, oftentimes competing streams that define the variegated nature of Indonesian society and politics. Even though the veracity of the concept has in recent times been critiqued and challenged, the evolution of autonomous regional and local histories and identities over time has doubtless also contributed to this diffused heterogeneity.
Because Indonesian society has by and large managed to accommodate this diversity, it has acquired a reputation for pluralism and tolerance. The accuracy or aptness of this characterization, however, has been a matter of considerable debate. This debate notwithstanding, the main analytical assertion here is that issues of what constitutes the nation in terms of who should be included or excluded, and on what grounds, remain contested at the geographical as well as confessional margins, and the frequent occurrence of various forms of religious tension and conflicts serves as a prescient reminder of this. Bearing this in mind, it is with caution that this chapter wades into the debate by focusing on what it is that is “religious” about religious conflicts in Indonesia, and how to conceptualize it against broader themes that define the process of negotiation and renegotiation of nationhood.
The study of communal or sectarian violence in Indonesia has long been a rich analytical and empirical field. An extensive literature is now available that explores the complex and multifarious dynamics that account for violence in Aceh, Papua, Sulawesi, Maluku, North Maluku, and Kalimantan. A careful scrutiny of this scholarship reveals a multiplicity of analytical frameworks and explanatory variables that includes ethnic identity, opportunism on the part of elites at local and national levels, terrorism and ideological and theological extremism, political transition as a result of the collapse of President Suharto's New Order government, resource competition, and criminality.
1 - Faith and Flag
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp 18-61
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Religion has a powerful hold on the nationalist imagination. Many a nationalist struggle has come to be inflected, even appropriated, by religious discourses and authority figures. At the same time, the rise of nationalism and the emergence of nation-states have also produced nationalizing effects on religious communities. Either way, it is clear religious identity and conceptions of nationhood cannot be understood divorced from the social, cultural, and historical contexts of societies and their interactions with power. This contention is premised on the view that “nationalism is a field of debates about the symbol of the nation, and national identity is a relational process enacted in social dramas and ‘events’ as well as in everyday practices.” It is bearing this in mind that the following proposition is made: in Southeast Asia, the role of religion in political conflicts and contestations is best understood in the context of national identity formation and contestation that continues to define much of post-independence politics in the region.
Before proceeding to see how this plays out in the study of religious conflicts in several cases drawn from Southeast Asia, it is necessary to first consider the theoretical literature in terms of the political aspects of religion and the religious impulses of nationalism. Towards that end, this chapter will introduce and discuss the current literature and debates that define the fields of religious conflict and nationalism studies, and how they intersect and speak to each other, before making its case for a view of religious nationalism that accounts for the dynamic and intimate relationship between the notions of religious faith, identity, rights, and belonging.
Religion
Until recently, scholarly study of religion – whether in its monotheistic or polytheistic forms – as a sociological phenomenon had been for the most part relegated to the backwaters of social sciences. With the emergence of modernization and rationalist theory as dominant paradigms in the field after the Second World War, interest in religion as a phenomenon that impacted on social, political, and economic developments diminished considerably. Consequently, its study was largely confined to the disciplines of theology and religious studies.
4 - Malaysia: Religion, Ethno-Nationalism, and Turf-Guarding
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 05 August 2016
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- 19 August 2016, pp 135-174
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Summary
Religious nationalism, as Chapter 1 pointed out, is premised on the idea that religiosity and patriotism can weave together in a manner that gives rise to a narrative which articulates a confessional perspective of nationhood. At its extreme, however, and in a climate where assertive religious claims dominate the narration of national identity and the institutions of the state, a heightened religious discourse potentially results in identity diffusion within the nation-state along religious lines, where confessional claims engender the creation of in-group and out-group identities. Malaysia provides a compelling case for how this process takes place.
In Malaysia, fault lines have formed over the issue of what it means to be a member of the Malaysian “nation” according to the official narrative of nationhood, and how this narrative has changed as erstwhile pluralist conceptions of national identity embraced by (and embracing) minority communities have been threatened, if not supplanted, by a religious discourse that seeks to rearticulate nationhood along narrow and exclusivist terms of a growing Malay-Islamic nationalism. If the previous cases of the Philippines and Thailand have demonstrated how religion offers a language and metaphor of resistance in the process of conceptualizing alternative nationhoods and national identities, in Malaysia it has taken the form of a hegemonic narrative of supremacy and exclusion dominated by religious vocabulary that is harnessed to reinforce, express, and institutionalize a narrowly interpreted narrative of Ketuanan Melayu – the dominance and lordship of the ethnic Malay-Muslims in multicultural Malaysia. Correspondingly, this has elicited responses from religious minorities who contest the legitimacy of this reframing of national identity and consciousness for reasons of the existential threat that they pose to their claims to be part of the “Malaysian nation.”
The rise of religious conservatism among Muslim actors who dominate the discourse of Malaysian politics touches on issues of both national identity construction as well as political legitimacy. This is so because of how social-political entrepreneurs operating both within and outside the state threaten by dint of explicit religious referents to erode any semblance of shared history, common sense of belonging, and “deep horizontal comradeship” upon which pluralist conceptions of nationhood stand.
Bibliography
- Joseph Chinyong Liow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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- Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia
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- 19 August 2016, pp 232-253
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