Is Southeast Asian Islam Unique?

Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 143 no.4, 519-538.

Review article discussing: Fred R. von der Mehden, Religion and Modernization in Southeast Asia (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1986). Readings on Islam in Southeast Asia, compiled by Ahmad Ibrahim, Sharon Siddique, and Yasmin Hussain (Singapore: ISEAS, 1985). M. B. Hooker (ed.), Islam in South-East Asia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983). L'Islam en Indonesië IIII, two special issues of Archipel, nos. 29 and 30 (Paris 1985). Taufik Abdullah and Sharon Siddique (eds), Islam and Society in Southeast Asia (Singapore: ISEAS, 1985. A. Popovic and G. Veinstein (eds), Les ordres mystiques dans l'Islam. Cheminements et situation actuelle (Paris: Editions de I'EHESS, 1985). Rusli Karim, Dinamika Islam di Indonesia. Suatu tinjauan sosial dan politik, Yogyakarta: Pt. Hanindita, 1985. Fachry Ali and Bahtiar Effendy, Merambah jalan baru Islam. Rekonstruksi pemikiran Islam Indonesia masa Orde Baru (Bandung: Mizan, 1986). Tapol, Indonesia: Muslims on Trial (London: Tapol, 1987).

Research Article, 2020

Southeast Asia is today home to about 230 million Muslims, almost half of the region's population and about 20 percent of the world's Muslims. Muslims constitute 88 percent ofthe population in Indonesia, 67 percent in Brunei, 58 percent in Malaysia, 14 percent in Singapore, and 5 percent or less in other countries in the region. More Muslims live in Indonesia than in any other country of the world. Viewed from the centers of Islam in the Middle East, Southeast Asia is geographically peripheral, but it is a crucial region that needs to be understood in its own terms.

1986

Books by Muslim scholars which raise theoretical issues in society and politics also raise hopes of a welcome trend because they are so rare. In the books under review we hear authentic Muslim voices. The authors make an interesting counter-poise, Muslims in the West and Muslims in Southeast The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences b l. 6, No. 2, 1989

SageSubmissions, 2019

Sufi thinking came to represent a theological default in Islamic Southeast Asia from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. There were severe polemics at times, with reformist Sufi scholars seeking to reconcile mystical practice with the Shari`a. The nineteenth century represented a watershed for Southeast Asian Islam with the consolidation of European colonialism. Old paradigms gradually gave way to new approaches among Malay-Indonesian Muslims. There was a gradual shift away from Sufi writing, whether theosophical or reformed, towards non-Sufi modernist thought. This process was consolidated in the twentieth century. Traditionalist scholars responded with streamlined organisations and activist policies. However, the stage came to be dominated by modernists and neo-modernists, who sought to interpret the primary sacred scriptures in terms of modern world challenges. Furthermore, Sufism itself responded with its own modernist response. At the turn of the 21st century, radical Islamist voices raised their profile amidst social and economic turmoil. This paper will survey the mosaic of Southeast Asian Islam over five centuries, seeking to identify different voices, ideologies and schools of thought among Malay-Indonesian Muslims.

Analysis on Islam and cultural diversity in the Malay world that covers the Islamic Southeast Asia with an empirical focus on Malaysia. Introducing the concept of 'knowledge baseline' to understand the evolution of plural society in the region and advancing yet again the 'embedded thesis' that informed the layering of many world religions in Southeast Asia.

Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2019

Social Science and Knowledge in a Globalising World, 2012