Secularism, Religion, and Democracy in Southeast Asia

Description

Until the 1990s, secularism was understood largely as exclusion of religion from the public domain. However, in the last two decades, the world has witnessed the return of religion as a medium and subject of national, regional, and global politics. With such a shift, the previously unquestioned Western values of modernity and secularism find themselves at loggerheads with the increasing assertion of religious identity, which results in difference-based conflicts. This antagonism also gives rise to a vibrant, religiously pluralistic civil society and speaks of a post-secular turn in modern Southeast Asian democracies.

Secularism, Religion, and Democracy in Southeast Asia tries to understand the rise of religion in modern democracies and how everyday economic, social, and political conditions aid this post-secular phenomenon in Southeast Asia. Setting itself apart from most studies of religion in Southeast Asia through its regional focus, this volume explores the ideas, practices, state responses, and anxieties related to the religious–secular divide in this geopolitical region.

About the Editor

Vidhu Verma is professor and former chairperson, Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.

Table of contents

Series Note

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Secularism, Religion, and Democracy—Changing Landscapes

Vidhu Verma

1. Problems of Representation: Buddha Dhamma , Politics, and Nation States

Timothy Fitzgerald

2. Ambivalence, Accommodation, Antipathy, and Anxiety: Religion and Singapore’s Secular Democratic Order

Thio Li-ann

3. Political Islam and Democracy in Malaysia

Kamarulnizam Abdullah

4. The Secular and the Religious: Secularization and Shariatization in Indonesia

Syafiq Hasyim

5. Religious Minorities in Southeast Asia: The Ahmadiyah and Why Tolerance Matters

Amy L. Freedman

6. Piety, Purity, and Nationalism: The Convergence of Nation and Islam in Contemporary Indonesia

Mary E. McCoy

7. Protecting the Sāsana through Law: Radical Buddhism and Religious Freedom in Transitional Myanmar

Iselin Frydenlund

8. Secularism and Ethno-religious Nationalist Hegemony in Malaysia

Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid and Zairil Khir Johari

About the Editor and Contributors

Index