"Islam in the Malay world of Southeast Asia or Islam Nusantara, as it has come to be known, had for a long time been seen as representing the more spiritual and Sufi dimension of Islam, thereby striking a balance between the exoteric and the esoteric. This image of 'the smiling face of Islam' has been disturbed during the last decades with increasing calls for the implementation of Shari’ah, conceived of in a narrow manner, intolerant discourse against non-Muslim communities, and hate speech against minority Muslims such as the Shi’ites. There has also been what some have referred to as the Salafization of Sunni Muslims in the region. The chapters of this volume are written by scholars and activists from the region who are very perceptive of such trends in Malay world Islam and promise to improve our understanding of developments that are sometimes difficult to grapple with." — Professor Syed Farid Alatas, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore

William R. Roff has spent more than forty years studying and writing about the modern history of Islam and Muslims, with special reference to Southeast Asia. With interests primarily in social and intellectual history he has contributed essays during this period to a wide range of learned journals and other publications. The present collection reprints a selection of the most notable of these, from historiographical and methodological studies to the development of Islamic educational and other institutions, the nature of the Arab presence in Southeast Asia, and the social significance of the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. The author has been a formative influence on two generations of students and other scholars, and this reissue in accessible form of seminal but scattered essays will be widely welcomed.

The renewal of the Muslim faith, which has occurred not only in Asia but in other parts of the world, has prompted warnings of an imminent "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West. Islam in an Era of Nation-States examines the history, politics, and meanings of this resurgence in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines and explores its implications for Southeast Asia, the larger Muslim world, and the West. This volume will be of interest to students of Islam, Southeast Asian history, and the anthropology of religion. In examining the politics and meanings of Islamic resurgence, it will also speak to political scientists, religious scholars, and others concerned with culture and politics in the late modern era.

In an era when Islam ostensibly lies at the heart of a volatile nexus of a global campaign of war on terrorism, simplistic notions and dangerous misunderstandings about the cultures and nature of Southeast Asian Islam, in all its variants, are used to inform and justify policies.

Islam is a major religion in Southeast Asia, with Indonesian Muslims comprising the largest Muslim population in the world. Events and developments since 11 September 2001 have added greater attention to Islam and its adherents in this part of the world. This general survey of Islam in Southeast Asia is intended to inform, explain and update readers about the more significant aspects of Islam in Southeast Asia, then and now. These include the following: the geographical origins and sources by which the faith spread in this region; the social, economic and political profiles of the Muslim communities; relations between Muslims and non-Muslims and between Muslims and the State; the strands and trends that shapes the role of Islam and the Muslims in the national body politic; and the challenges confronting Muslims in confronting the vicissitudes of their lives in this era of rapid change, characterized by modernization, capitalism, secularization and globalization. The discussion will begin with an overview of the broad picture of Islam and the Muslims in the region as a whole, covering both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority countries. This will be followed by case-study analysis of Islam and the Muslims in individual countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Given the difficulty of writing on such a complex and contentious topic, this book attempts to present the subject matter in a manner that is sufficiently objective to scholars and yet simple and accessible enough to be readily understood by ordinary readers.

By the fourteenth century the Islamic faith had spread via maritime trade routes to Southeast Asia where, over the next seven hundred years, it would have a continuing influence on political life, social customs, and the development of the arts. Sultans, Shamans, and Saints looks at Islam in Southeast Asia during four major eras: its arrival (to 1300), the first flowering of Islamic identity (1300–1800), the era of imperialism (1800–1945), and the era of independent nation-states (1945–2000). Ranging across the humanities and social sciences, this balanced and accessible work emphasizes the historical development of Southeast Asia’s accommodation of Islam and the creation of its distinctive regional character. Each chapter opens with a general background summary that places events in the greater Asian/Southeast Asian context, followed by an overview of prominent ethnic groups, political events, customs and cultures, religious factors, and art forms. Sultans, Shamans, and Saints will be of great value to students and researchers specializing in the study of Islam and the comparative study of Muslim societies and culture. It will also be useful to those with a world-systems approach to the study of history and globalization.

When students from a Muslim boarding school were convicted for the 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali, Islamic schools in Southeast Asia became the focus of intense international scrutiny. Some analysts have warned that these schools are being turned into platforms for violent jihadism. Making Modern Muslims is the first book to look comparatively at Islamic education and politics in Southeast Asia. Based on a two-year research project by leading scholars of Southeast Asian Islam, the book examines Islamic schooling in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and the southern Philippines. The studies demonstrate that the great majority of schools have nothing to do with violence but are undergoing changes that have far-reaching implications for democracy, gender relations, pluralism, and citizenship. Making Modern Muslims offers an important reassessment of Muslim culture and politics in Southeast Asia and provides insights into the changing nature of state-society relations from the late colonial period to the present. It allows us to better appreciate the astonishing dynamism of Islamization in Southeast Asia and the struggle for Muslim hearts and minds taking place today. Timely and readable, this volume will be of great interest to teachers and specialists of Islam and Southeast Asia as well as the general reader seeking to understand the great transformations at work in the Muslim world. Contributors: Esmael A. Abdula, Bjørn Atle Blengsli, Joseph Chinyong Liow, Robert W. Hefner, Richard G. Kraince, Thomas M. McKenna.