Religion in Southeast Asia: An Encyclopedia of Faiths and Cultures

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FEDERATION OF ASIAN BISHOPS’ CONFERENCES

The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) is a voluntary association of the Roman Catholic Church in Asia. The purpose of the organization is to foster among its members solidarity and co-responsibility for the welfare of church and society in Asia, and to promote and defend whatever is for the greater good. There are 19 Bishops’ Conferences and nine associate members under the FABC, and the organization is active in most of the Southeast Asian nations.

The function of FABC is to study ways and means of promoting the Christian fellowship, especially in the light of the deliberations and resolutions of the Second Vatican Council and postconciliar official documents. The organization seeks to respond to the needs of Asia, and strives to intensify the dynamic presence of the church in the total development of the peoples of the region. The FABC also helps in the study of problems of common interest to the church in Asia, and investigates possibilities of solutions and coordinated action. A main concern of the organization is to promote intercommunication and cooperation among local churches and bishops of Asia and to render service to episcopal conferences of Asia in order to help them to meet better the needs of the people of God. Through all these programs, the FABC facilitates an ordered development of organizations and movements in the church at the international level and fosters ecumenical and interreligious communication and collaboration.

The FABC functions through a hierarchy of structures consisting of the Plenary Assembly, the Central Committee, the Standing Committee, and the Central Secretariat. The Plenary Assembly is the supreme body of FABC and is composed of all presidents of member-conferences or their officially designated persons, Bishop-delegates are elected by the member-conferences, associate members, and members of the Standing Committee. The Plenary Assembly meets in ordinary session every four years. The Central Committee of FABC is composed of the presidents of member-conferences or their officially designated episcopal alternates and oversees the implementation of the resolutions and instructions of the Plenary Assembly. This committee meets every two years. The Standing Committee, composed of five bishops elected from different parts of Asia, implements the resolutions and instructions of the Central Committee. It provides direct guidance and support to the Central Secretariat and other organs of FABC.

The Central Secretariat is the principal service agency and an instrument of coordination within the FABC and with outside offices and agencies. Various offices assist the Central Secretariat, each handling specialized ministries and areas of concern. These offices are the Office of Human Development, the Office of Social Communication, the Office of Laity, the Office of Theological Concerns, the Office of Education and Student Chaplaincy, the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, the Office of Evangelization, the Office of Clergy, and the Office of Consecrated Life.

The Central Secretariat of FABC is located in Hong Kong and the Documentation Centre in Bangkok. The Documentation Centre plans to house and preserve all books published by the FABC as well as dissertations and other publications referring one way or the other to the Federation. The FABC Documentation Centre includes a conference room that can seat about 40 persons, a library and several small offices.

The FABC has a rich history of action and reflection in Southeast Asia. During the last four decades, the organization has produced a wealth of pastoral documents that stresses the importance of the local churches, enculturation and dialogue. The FABC documents repeatedly stressed “the triple dialogue”—with the poor, with local cultures, and with local religions. According to Stephen Bevan, the organization has yielded an impressive body of documents that are incredibly rich, amazingly visionary, and truly worth careful reading and study. As best they could and as often as possible, the Asian bishops wrote that successful evangelization requires building local churches upon local cultures, languages, and practices. In Southeast Asia, the FABC is involved in the difficult task of being a Christian organization that is also sensitive to the challenges of the pluralist context and yet seeking to meaningfully participate in the efforts to build a just and participatory society.

Jesudas M. Athyal

See also: Calungsod, Pedro; Christian Conference of Asia; Christianity; Contextualization; Ileto, Reynaldo C.; Interreligious Relations and Dialogue; Jesuits; Religion and Society; Ruiz, Lorenzo; Sin, Cardinal Jaime Lachica.

FEMINISM AND ISLAMIC TRADITIONS

In the midst of the emergence of a democratic society and the growing influence of Middle Eastern Islam in Southeast Asia, the Southeast Asian Islamic feminists are proposing a new paradigm and concepts about gender equality in Islam. Indeed, they criticize the gender ideology that was promoted by the New Order as well as Islamists or Salafi revivalist groups. In addition, they argue that Islam could be a source of gender equality if Muslims interpret religious texts properly and contextually. If not, it might be possible that Muslims’ understanding of the Islamic texts will create further gender problems in Southeast Asia.

Indonesian Muslim students take part in a rally in Semarang, Central Java, on September 4, 2014, to mark World Hijab Day. During World Hijab Day, Muslim women foster religious tolerance and understanding concerning why Muslim women wear hijab. (WF Sihardian/NurPhoto/Corbis)

The contemporary notion of Islamic feminism emerged in the early 1990s in various locations around the world, including in Indonesia, contemporaneous with the growth of Western literature on women in Islam (Badran 2005). There are various definitions of Islamic feminism. In the Indonesian context, Sinta Nuriyah Abdurrahman (as cited in Doorn-Harder 2006) posits herself as a feminist who considers Pancasila—the official ideology of the Indonesian state, which means “five principles”: monotheism, humanitarianism, unity, democracy, and justice—and Islamic belief to be the foundations of her actions. She states that: “I am a feminist according to Indonesia’s state ideology of Pancasila. That means that I base my action on my belief as a Muslim … My goal is equality between men and women, because it says in the Qur’an that men and women are each other’s helpers” (Doorn-Harder 2006, 37).

One research finding reveals that Indonesian Islamic feminists encourage women not only to be active members in the public sphere, but also to keep harmonious and happy families. Imbuing a family with blessing, democracy, and love for each other is among the goals of Indonesian Islamic feminists (Jamhari and Ropi 2003). Furthermore, this research showcases Indonesian Islamic feminists’ struggle for equality in public life and equipollence in domestic life (Jamhari and Ropi 2003).

When discussing feminism and religious traditions in Islam, the terms “Islamic feminist” or “Muslim feminist” should be called into question. According to Cooke (2001), “Islamic” is more relevant than Muslim, because “Islamic feminist” suggests an Islamic tradition being considered by feminists, whereas “Muslim feminist” may simply refer to feminists who embrace Islam but do not necessarily practice its tenets. Cooke further describes an “Islamic feminism” as “a particular kind of self positioning that will then inform the speech, the action, the writing, or the way of life adopted by someone who is committed to questioning Islamic epistemology as an expansion of their faith position and not a rejection of it” (Cooke 2001, 59–61).

Muslim feminists debate the terms “Islam” and “feminism”; that is, whether or not the heritage of Islam is compatible with feminism, or whether a person can combine the Islamic belief with feminist conviction at one and the same time. The debate connects with the historical polemic between the Islamic world and the West, which sees some people perceiving that feminism is West-based and that Islam has its own values. Debate focusing on the compatibility between “Islam” and “feminism” shapes the formation of self-identity among gender activists in Southeast Asia, for example, referring to themselves as “feminists.” According to Doorn-Harder (2006), young Indonesians who may have worked with nongovernmental organizations and have been influenced by Western feminists are more comfortable being called “feminists” than members of the older generation: “Younger women who are active in NGOs call themselves ‘feminists.’ What exactly the term ‘feminist’ means is not always clear. Many Indonesians and women … [of the] older generation are not comfortable being called feminists—it calls up images of western supremacy, individualism, and selfishness” (Doorn-Harder 2006, 36–37).

Saparinah Sadli, one of the older-generation activists, said: “I am reluctant to use [the term] Indonesian feminism because I am not sure that we have developed an Indonesian theory of feminism” (Sadli 2002). However, she refers to Musdah Mulia, who is younger than Sadli, as an “Indonesian Islamic feminist” (Mulia 2005). In the Indonesian context, reluctance to be called a feminist derives from the stigma attached to the feminist label. Feminists manifesting leftist (Communist) or liberal tendencies are seen as promoting individualism, selfishness, and immoral behavior such as free sex (Doorn-Harder 2006): they are thought to be anti-men and sympathetic toward lesbianism (Sadli 2002).

Whatever their identity—feminist or nonfeminist—people assume that Muslims who are feminists should consider the religious texts, the Qur’an and Hadiths, as resources in their discussions. Since Islam has a fundamental role in Muslim society, its proponents might fail to promote gender equality if feminists fail to first consider the Islamic paradigm, norms, and values in their struggle or works. Non-Muslim scholars such as John Esposito and Miriam Cooke too maintain that discussion about women and gender in Islam has to be situated within an Islamic paradigm (Cooke 2001; Esposito and Mogahed 2007).

As a matter of strategy, Muslim feminists employ historical and hermeneutical approaches to justify their understanding of gender equality. The historical approach establishes a social, intellectual, and religious space wherein it is possible to deconstruct gender inequality interpretation. The hermeneutical approach allows Islamic feminists to find the true message in Islamic texts focusing on the context in which the text was written, the grammatical composition of the text, and the worldview of the text (Wadud 1999).

Muslim feminists believe that Islamic texts respect both men and women equally and that they are the source of gender equality. They argue that many Muslims understand gender equality in the texts inappropriately, because they have interpreted them exclusively from a male perspective for centuries. The Muslim feminist scholar Asghar Ali Engineer (1992), in his book The Rights of Women in Islam, asserts that the Islamic feminist movement is an action of putting back justice between the sexes as respected in the era of the holy Prophet Muhammad. For this reason, employing hermeneutical and historical approaches, Muslim feminists tend to reread the texts emphasizing notions of equality and justice in men’s and women’s roles in the society, seeing them as “complementary and egalitarian rather than hierarchical and unequal” (Afsaruddin 1999, 23).

Prominent gender activist and Islamic scholar Nasaruddin Umar, in his work Qur’an untuk Perempuan (the Qur’an for Women), argues that when people read the Qur’anic verses addressing gender issues such as polygamy, inheritance, witnesses, reproductive rights, women’s right to divorce and the public role of women, they will gain the impression that these verses are misogynistic. However, if people scrutinize them more closely, using “the analytic methods of semantics, semiotics and hermeneutics, and paying attention to the theory of asbab nuzul” (the reason why the verses were revealed), they will see that these gender verses are part of the process of creating justice and that the texts do not discriminate against women (as cited in White 2006).

In the Malaysian context, women activists from late 1945 joined with men against the British government’s proposal for future colonization. They had moved from “the relative seclusion of their families and their home to involvement in national life” (Manderson 1980, 1). As a result, several women were appointed to the State Council in Johor, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, and Perak in the 1950s (Manderson 1980). However, this achievement was rejected by some sections of the Muslim community by saying that women and girls were forbidden to be active in public events. Radical demands made by women for reformulation of shari’a (Islamic laws) were swiftly set aside. Religious feminists, including Sisters in Islam, took part in the establishment of the National Women Coalition (NWC) in 1992 (Ng, Mohamad, and Tan 2006). In 1999, Reformasi Era women’s groups, including an Islamic organization through WAC (Women’s Agenda for Change), launched 11 demands (women’s charter) ranging from land to sexual rights (Ng, Mohamad, and Tan 2006).

Alimatul Qibtiyah

See also: Aisyiyah and Nasyiatul Aisyiyah; Bhikkhuni, Dhammananda; Indonesia; Malaysia; Oka, Gedong Bagus; Santo, Ignacia del Espiritu; Sexuality; Shari’a; Sisters in Islam; Women; Women’s Monastic Communities.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

Freedom of religion is a concept that supports the freedom of an individual or group to practice, worship, and believe in public and private. Today, the concept is strongly associated with human rights. Throughout history, the idea of religious coexistence has been institutionalized and practiced in different ways. Related concepts, mostly stemming from religious backgrounds and condemning deviance, are apostasy, blasphemy, and heresy. In its human rights–based conceptualization, religious freedom includes the right to determine one’s own religion and the right to leave a religious group. Many consider it a fundamental right. In contemporary Southeast Asian countries, controversial political debates evolve around different interpretations of this right, often regarding the situation of religious minorities but also members of religious communities who are considered deviant either by the state or by politically powerful groups.

Ideas of religious coexistence have a long history. Well-known examples are the Achaemenid Persian Empire around 550 BCE, in which Cyrus the Great encouraged the practice of local customs and religious freedom and the Edicts of Asoka. Asoka the Great protected freedom of religious worship in the Maurya Empire in the third century BCE. Muslim tradition evokes the Covenant of the second Caliph Umar, the Constitution of Medina, and tolerates non-Muslims through the concept of dhimmis, literally “protected individuals.” In various parts of the world, pockets of religiously tolerant rule existed. In the modern period, freedom of religion is strongly connected to the concept of human rights and traced back to the French Revolution. It is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966/1976). Today, the concept functions as a political instrument, mostly for activist causes and in the realm of foreign policy. There are several methods of measuring and evaluating the state of religious freedom in a given place, and the extracted data are used by human rights activists, minority interest groups, and foreign governments with military and/or economic interests. The concept is also used in measuring the grade of democratization of a political system and is imposed on countries as a condition for development schemes or economic cooperation.

Southeast Asia has a long history of religious interaction, long parts of it marked by exchange, acceptance, and tolerance. Situated at the crossroads of some of the world’s major trading routes, cosmopolitan centers developed in which different religions influenced each other and peacefully coexisted. Hindu and Buddhist thought deeply influenced the area and blended with local belief and practice in the first century CE. By 1400, Islam thrived in the region, especially in insular Southeast Asia. The coexistence of beliefs and practices lets many scholars refer to Southeast Asian Islam as syncretistic. The period of imperialism and colonization eventually led to the formation of modern nation-states. In some countries, local religious practices were formally institutionalized and integrated into the colonial administrative systems. Some of these colonial politico-religious structures remain influential until today. Southeast Asia comprises a large variety of political systems, each with different degrees of state regulation.

In Brunei, the constitution states that the official religion is Islam according to the teachings of the Islamic Shafi’i school of law. This is supported through laws and policies, especially through education. Religious freedom is enshrined in the constitution. The various religious groups generally coexist in a tolerant milieu, although any non-Islamic religious materials being distributed are subject to confiscation and some members of minorities report discrimination on religious grounds. The government observes the following religious holidays as national holidays: Christmas Day, Eid ul-Fitr, Eid ad-Adha, First Day of Ramadan, First Day of the Islamic Calendar, Isra Me’raj, Prophet Muhammad’s Birthday, and Revelation of Al-Quran.

In Cambodia, the constitution and other laws and policies protect religious freedom. Buddhism is the state religion. The government provides Buddhist training and education to monks and others in pagodas and permits Buddhist religious instruction in public schools. Foreign missionary groups largely operate freely. There are some tensions with minority religious groups, but their right to freedom of religion and worship is generally respected. The government observes the following religious holidays as national holidays: Khmer New Year; Pchum Ben; Visakha Bochea, honoring the Buddha’s birth and death; and Meak Bochea, honoring the Buddha’s enlightenment.

In Indonesia, the constitution protects religious freedom, but some restricting laws and regulations exist, and there is a lack of enforcement. The government officially recognizes six religions. Members of other religions and nonbelievers sometimes face administrative difficulties. Some groups express their opposition to religious pluralism through violent activity against individuals and groups they deem contradictory to their values—for instance, Christians, followers of traditional religious practice, and the Ahmadiyya community. The government observes the following religious holidays as national holidays: the Ascension of the Prophet, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, the Muslim New Year, Good Friday, the Ascension of Christ, the Birth of the Prophet Muhammad, Christmas, the Buddhist holiday Vesak, and the Hindu holiday Nyepi. Additional Hindu holy days are recognized as regional holidays in Bali.

In Laos, the constitutional right to religious freedom exists but is restricted in practice. Authorities are suspicious of major supporters of religious communities other than Buddhism, especially Protestant groups. The potential of religions to create social divisions is stressed to impose restrictions. The government observes two religious holidays, the That Luang Festival and the Buddhist New Year.

Malaysia’s constitution guarantees religious freedom. Restrictions are imposed through laws and policies. Islam is the religion of the state. The government and its connected institutions control most Islamic institutions. Non-Muslims are permitted to practice their religions openly but reports of discrimination exist. It is not allowed to teach Muslims about other religions. Islamic practices considered “deviant” are banned. The potential of religions to create social divisions is stressed to impose restrictions. The government observes the following religious holidays as national holidays: Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, the Birth of the Prophet Muhammad, Awal Muharram, Vesak Day, Deepavali, Thaipusam, and Christmas. Good Friday is officially observed only in East Malaysia.

In Myanmar, the authoritarian regime is strongly associated with Buddhism, even though it is not the official state religion. The government is accused of actively promoting Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced by 90 percent of the population. Buddhist doctrine is taught in public schools. There have been reports of violence against ethnic and religious minorities. The government observes the following religious holidays as national holidays: the Full Moon Day of Tabaung, Thingyan, Buddhist New Year’s Day, the Full Moon Day of Kason, the Full Moon Day of Waso, the Full Moon Day of Thadinkyut, the Full Moon Day of Tazaungmone, Christmas, and Deepavali.

In the Philippines, the government ensures religious freedom through the constitution, laws, and policies. Muslims fall under the Code of Muslim Personal Laws and are subject to shari’a-inspired law. Some members of the Muslim minority hold that they suffer from economic discrimination. There are reports of religiously framed violence, particularly in the South. It observes the following religious holidays as national holidays: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, All Saints’ Day, Christmas Day, Eid al-Fitr, and Eid al-Adha

In Singapore, there is no state religion. Religious freedom is constitutionally guaranteed but restricted to some extent. The government restricts the right in banning some groups. There are also restrictions on speech or actions that are considered harmful for religious harmony. Muslims are governed through the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore which drafts the weekly sermons and regulates several religious matters. The school system offers classes for the major religions. There are official holidays for each major religion in the country: Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, Christmas, Good Friday, Deepavali, and Vesak Day.

In Thailand, the constitution and other laws and policies protect religious freedom. There is no state religion, but Theravada Buddhism receives significant government support. The government restricts the activity of some groups. There are reports of discrimination and violence in the mainly Muslim south. The government observes the following religious holidays as national holidays: Maka Bucha Day, Visakha Bucha Day, Asalaha Bucha Day, and Khao Phan Sa Day.

In Timor Leste, the government protects religious freedom through the constitution, laws, and policies. There are reports of societal abuses and discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice. The following religious holidays are national holidays: Good Friday, Assumption Day, All Saints’ Day, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Eid al-Fitr, and Eid al-Adha.

The Vietnamese constitution, legal code, and several resolutions provide for freedom of belief and worship, but restrictions exist. The government controls and oversees religious organizations under the Ordinance on Religion and Belief. The government limits the activities of religious groups and of individuals who are regarded as threatening the authority of the Communist Party of Vietnam. There are severe restrictions on foreign missionaries. Human rights organizations report abuses of religious freedom in the country. The government does not observe any religious holidays as national holidays.

Saskia Louise Schäfer

See also: Ahmadiyya; Brunei Darussalam; Buddhism; Cambodia; Christianity; Fundamentalism; Hinduism; Humanism; Indonesia; Islam; Laos; Malaysia; Minorities; Myanmar (Burma); Philippines; Reform Movements, Religious Discrimination/Intolerance; Shari’a; Singapore; Syncretism; Thailand; Timor Leste (East Timor); Vietnam.

FUNDAMENTALISM

Fundamentalism is a much-discussed and much-misunderstood term, especially in the context of Southeast Asia. There is a serious problem of definition of the term as it is used in a variety of meanings. Fundamentalism is essentially a Western Christian construct. The term is too much loaded with Christian presuppositions and Western stereotypes and has serious limitations when applied to other religions and across cultures. Currently the word is most often associated with Islam. What is termed Islamic fundamentalism hits headlines in the media, usually relating it to terrorist acts. Fundamentalism has emerged as a major issue in the national politics of several countries and in international relations.

Fundamentalism refers to a belief in a strict adherence to a set of basic principles (often religious in nature), sometimes as a reaction to a perceived doctrinal compromise with modern social and political life under secularization. It is the perceived response of traditionally religious people to the rapid changes in society that downgrades and constrains the role of religion in the public sphere. It is a discernible pattern of religious militancy by which “true believers” assert religious identity and search for viable alternatives to secular institutions, strictly maintaining ancient or fundamental doctrines of the religion they profess. Every single fundamentalist movement in Judaism, Christianity and Islam has a profound fear of “annihilation,” convinced that modern secularization forces want to wipe out religion.

Fundamentalism stems from the attempt of a group of conservative Protestants in the United States early in the twentieth century to define what they called to be the fundamentals of Christianity. They defended conservative Christianity against liberal views in addressing such topics as scriptural authority, Christology, and evangelism. By the late 1930s, theological conservatives rallying around the “fundamentals” came to be known as “fundamentalists.” Fundamentalism in its origin was a domestic Christian issue and was apolitical.

In the 1950s and 1960s, it was fashionable to speak about secularization and the decline of religion. Western theologians joined sociologists in arguing that modernization would weaken or even destroy religion’s grip over traditional cultures, reduce the political significance of religion, and diminish individual attachment to religious values. Harvey Cox eloquently described what happened to these theories. In 1965, he had written a book entitled The Secular City about the world of declining religion. In his book Religion in the Secular City in the early 1980s, he admitted that rather than an era of rampant secularization and religious decline, it appeared to be more of an era of religious revival and the return of the sacred. The resurgence of religion was largely political—or, rather than the revival of religion, what we witnessed was a political revival in the name of religion. In theory the distinction may not apply so much to Islam, the political dimension of which occupies center stage in the current debate.

Islamic political movements are called fundamentalist, and fundamentalism is equated with militancy and militancy with terrorism. It is highly misleading to lump all Islamists, ranging from the Justice and Democratic Party of Turkey to Al Qaeda, together in a single category as fundamentalists. What has become the term for all Islamic movements is not based on a clear understanding of either the nature of the Islamic faith and the radical movements it has given rise to, or of the social and economic conditions in the countries concerned.

The term Islamic fundamentalism is ambiguous. It falls far too short of capturing the reality of the complex social movements. It has mainly been used to delineate the position of two distinct types of forces within the Muslim world: those who have used Islam mainly as a cover for violent anti-Western action that cannot find justification within the bounds of Islamic dictates; and those who have used Islam as an active ideology both of resistance and assertion, repudiating foreign ideologies as unacceptable and unworkable.

Islamic fundamentalism has appeared in several countries, and its Wahabi version is promoted and financed worldwide by Saudi Arabia. The Iran hostage crisis of 1979–1980 marked a turning point in the use of the term “fundamentalism.” The media, in an attempt to explain the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution to a Western audience, described it as a “fundamentalist version of Islam” by way of analogy to the Christian fundamentalist movement in the United States. The term gradually gained academic respectability. Thus was born the term “Islamic fundamentalism,” which would become one of the most common usages of the term.

From the time of the Iran revolution and continuing to the present, Islamic fundamentalism has become an issue of international concern. It represents a variety of broad-based religious movements that have swept over much of the Muslim world from North Africa to Southeast Asia. The clash of civilization thesis propounded by Samuel Huntington and others has strengthened fundamentalist forces, as it is argued that future conflicts will be between civilizational regimes, equating civilization with culture and culture with religion. It is a recipe for conflicts between religions.

For the vast majority of Muslims, the resurgence of Islam is a reassertion of cultural identity, formal religious observance, family values, and morality. The establishment of an Islamic society is seen as requiring a personal and social transformation that is prerequisite for the Islamic government. Effective change is to come from below through a gradual social transformation brought about by implementation of Islamic law.

Western policies, especially those of the United States in the Middle East, have to take much of the blame for the promotion of that particular brand of fundamentalism that is seen in the area today and spreading to other parts of the world. The Cold War period from 1949 fueled anti-Western sentiment, as Muslims saw Western powers, especially America, supporting dictatorial regimes in the region to suit Western interests. When references are made to jihad, it is good to remember that Ronald Reagan presented the Cold War as a “Holy War,” and that George Bush described, at least in the beginning, the War on Terror as a “Crusade.” In the U.S. list of enemies in the War on Terror, only Islamic nations find a place.

There is a tendency to link fundamentalism automatically with violence. This has no justification. Only a tiny proportion of fundamentalists worldwide take part in violent activities, including terrorism. The vast majority are simply struggling to live what they regard as a good religious life in a world that seems to be increasingly inimical to faith. There are fundamentalists in all religions challenging the secular hegemony of the modern world, but they do not resort to violence. Most of the fundamentalists are not violent.

All religiously based violence is not perpetrated by fundamentalists. Religion is sometimes used as a justification for violence by people and groups not specifically religious or having faith in God. The prevailing association between fundamentalism and violence, particularly terrorism, is often an exercise in labeling for the purpose of condemnation with little regard for the nature of the movement, its motivations, and context. Fundamentalism is a construct whose relationship to violence is highly problematic.

Islam in Southeast Asia has always been defined by tolerance, moderation, and pluralism. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. Muslims in the region generally support the secular state in the sense that the state’s basis is not religion. They eschew the interpretations of Islam that tend to violence or extremism, as in the Middle East or South Asia. The majority of them shun the radical variants of Islam found in the Middle East. Unlike in the Middle East, Islam in Southeast Asia facilitated the development of civil society and democracy. Only a small minority may be called fundamentalist, advocating the establishment of Islamic regimes governed by shari’a, the law based on the Qur’an.

But across the region, an Islamic resurgence has taken place in recent times. For the most part, the grievances of radical Muslims across Southeast Asia have been local. However, since the early 1990s, there has been a noticeable expansion of both radical Islamists and their transnational connections. The resurgence is in part inspired by links to the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Many Southeast Asians returning from Islamic religious schools in the Middle East and Pakistan have brought with them a new radical, militant, and extremist form of Islam.

Radical Islamist or extremist parties who may be labeled fundamentalist have not demonstrated broad appeal among masses in Malaysia and Indonesia during elections, even as some segments of these societies have experienced a resurgence of Islamic belief. Secular and nationalist parties are generally preferred by voters in Indonesia and Malaysia, even as Islam remains a core value of the people. In these countries, however, there is a noticeable advance in fundamentalist interpretations of Islam among the Muslim communities. There are several militant groups in Southeast Asia who have indulged in terrorist activities in the name of Islam. There are also fundamentalists in Southeast Asia who would argue for strict Islamic law but would not advocate the use of violence. Islamic fundamentalist upsurge in multiracial societies such as Indonesia and Malaysia could tear apart their social fabric and generate political instabilities. As a region of great strategic importance, religious as well as political developments in the region will be watched carefully.

Ninan Koshy

See also: Christianity; Freedom of Religion; Indonesia; Islam; Malaysia; Religion and Society; Secularism; Shari’a.

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FEDERATION OF ASIAN BISHOPS’ CONFERENCES

Further Reading

FEMINISM AND ISLAMIC TRADITIONS

Further Reading

FREEDOM OF RELIGION

Further Reading

FUNDAMENTALISM

Further Reading