Rel/PolSoc Mvmnts:Mod SE Asia

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Islam has been part of the Southeast Asian (SEA) region for over nine hundred years, arriving via Indian Ocean merchants, Chinese pirates, marriage, and missionaries. Today, it is estimated that SEA is home to almost twenty percent of the world’s Muslim population. Some of SEA’s Muslims are the majority such as in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. Others form a minority, such as in Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam. SEA’s Muslims are hardly monolithic: their diversity is clearly seen in their interpretations and expressions of Islam. This course will explore Islamic social and political movements in SEA and provide ways to understand how they define, shape, and negotiate the place of Islam in contemporary SEA communities. The first part of the course will be surveying selected countries where the Muslims, be they the majority or the minority, have made a significant impact on the political, social, and religious milieu of SEA – in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. The second part will be studying the various trends of Muslim movements in the SEA: the modernists, the traditionalists, the progressive-liberal, the Islamists, and the separatist and radical movements. The last part of the course will deal with selected issues that are debated and negotiated by these movements, such as Shari‘a, state and governance, gender and family, as well as Muslim/non-Muslim relations.