Title: Living Islamically in the Periphery: Muslim Discourse, Institution, and Intellectual Tradition in Southeast Asia
Abstract: Living Islamically in the periphery: Muslim discourse, institution, and intellectual tradition in Southeast Asia By IIK ARIFIN MANSURNOOR Banten: UIN Jakarta Press, 2011. Pp. xxi + 414. Bibliography, Index. Bangsa and umma: Development of people-grouping concepts in Islamized Southeast Asia Edited by yamamoto hiroyuki, anthony milner, kawashima midori and ARAI KAZUHIRO Kyoto: Kyoto University Press and Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2011. Pp. ix + 279. Illustrations, Maps, Bibliography, Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463414000125 Despite the rapid expansion of publications on Islam and Muslims in Southeast Asia, some problematic assumptions and characterisations persist. Within religious studies, Southeast Asian Islam has so often been cast as peripheral to the larger story of the spread of Islam in world history. Scholars working within such a paradigm argue that the religious practices of Southeast Asian Muslims are all too often mere imitations or derivatives of the pure version of Islam found in the Arab world. From this, it follows then that more attention therefore should be given to scrutinising how Islam has been appropriated rather than to pay close attention to how ideas about piety in Southeast Asia have informed the growth of Islamic thought elsewhere. If such assumptions about the seemingly 'inferior' character of Southeast Asian Islam are not enough to consign studies on Islam in the region to the periphery, there exists the widely held notion that Southeast Asian Islam had experienced little, if any, radical change and revolutionary transformation. Academics who subscribe to such reasoning pay particular emphasis to the peaceful, calm and tolerant nature of Southeast Asian Islam since its inception up until today. Episodes of conflict, contests and contentions, whenever and wherever they did occur, are studied as mere aberrations rather than the norm of what Southeast Asian Islam is supposed to be. Put differently, to be Muslim in the Southeast Asia is to be meek and mild and not belligerent, assertive and combative. The two collection of essays under review interrogate such assumptions and expand our understanding of Islam in Southeast Asia. Both books address questions of continuities as reflected in Malay-Muslim adherence to the idea of the global ummah and their commitment to establishing Islamic institutions such as mosques and Muslim schools. And yet, the authors of these illuminating studies address the ruptures, reinventions and dissension within the Southeast Asian Muslim community as they encounter new styles of thought from Europe, South Asia and the Arab World. In tracing the endogenous and exogenous factors that led to transformations in Muslim societies in Southeast Asia, these two volumes provide evidence that Southeast Asian Islam is a product of a fusion of horizons, which occurred through the interactions between local cultures and colonial modernity, through endless disagreements between defenders of tradition and advocates of reform as well as through the creative ability of Muslims in that part of the world in reinterpreting the ideals of Islam in order to suit their immediate needs. Iik Arifin Mansurnoor's Living Islamically in the periphery navigates a vast expanse of geography and time, covering the history of Islam in Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia as well as the Jawah community in Mecca. His book is an admirable attempt at filling the gaps in the literature on Islam in Brunei, a backwater subject attracting little interest from Southeast Asian scholars. Parts I and II of the book enumerate the ways in which rulers, ulamas, and reformers played instrumental roles in defending traditions and initiating improvements to institutions such as the madrasahs and mosques. He skilfully demonstrates that Islam in Brunei cannot be properly understood without considering the global connections between Muslims in the kingdom and their brethren in faith in other parts of the Muslim world. …
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
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