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This innovative and timely reassessment of political theology opens
new lines of critical investigation into the intersections of
religion and politics in contemporary Asia. Moving beyond a focus
on the (post-) Christian West, this volume locates 'development' -
conceptualised as a set of modern, transnational networks of ideas
and practices of improvement that connect geographically disparate
locations - as a vital focal point for critical investigations into
Asian political theologies. Investigating the sacred dimensions of
power through concepts of transcendence, sacrifice, victimhood,
aspiration, and salvation, this collection demonstrates how
European and Asian modernities are bound together through
genealogical, institutional, and theo-political entanglements, as
well as a long history of global interactions. With contributions
by leading anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists,
this volume brings new theoretical approaches into conversation
with detailed empirical case studies grounded in modern Asia. In
doing so, it offers a fresh and critical analysis of the ways in
which political theology is imagined, materialised, and contested
both within and beyond nation-states. -- .
Cosmopolitanism has emerged as a key category in Islamic Studies,
defining models of Muslim mobility, pluralism and tolerance that
challenge popular perceptions of religious extremism. Such
celebrations and valorisations of mobility and trans-regional
consciousness, however, tend to conflate border-crossing with
opportunity and social diversity with ethical progress. At the same
time, they generally disregard the ways in which such forms of
cosmopolitanism have been entwined with structures of domination,
economic control and violence. This volume addresses these issues
in ways that help to contextualize contemporary issues such as the
global refugee crisis in relation to longer histories of Muslim
mobility and coercion. Featuring new historical and ethnographic
research on China and Southeast Asia, this book explores how power
and violence have shaped the experiences of Sufis and
state-builders, as well as refugees and rebels, contributing to a
more nuanced understanding of Islamic cosmopolitanism.
The tsunami that struck a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean
on 26 December 2004 evoked international sympathy on a scale beyond
any previous natural disaster. The international relief effort
broke all records both in scale and diversity, with seven billion
U.S. dollars donated from all over the world through public and
private agencies for Sumatra alone. Simply as a reconstruction
effort, therefore, the disbursement of those funds and the
rebuilding of housing, infrastructure, and economy posed major
national and international challenges. However this was not simply
a reconstruction effort. Aceh at that time was a war zone, with
Indonesias military engaged in a major operation to crush a
separatist rebellion that had been simmering since 1976. Even
though the funds had been donated for tsunami relief, any real
reconstruction of Aceh had to consider the impact of the conflict
on the well-being of the population, as well as governance and
administrative capacities. This volumes serves the purpose not only
of discussing some of the lessons of the Aceh reconstruction and
peace processes, but also of maintaining critical links between
Aceh and the international community after the initial tranches of
aid expire.
Although often neglected in the literature on Islamic law,
contemporary Indonesia is an especially rich source of insight into
the diverse understandings and uses of the Islamic legal tradition
in the modern world. Indonesian Muslims are engaged in vibrant and
far-reaching debates over the terms, relevance, and developmental
limits of Islamic law, and Indonesia is home to a variety of
dynamic state and non-state institutional structures for the
generation and application of Islamic doctrine. The essays in this
volume provide focused examinations of the internal dynamics of
intellectual and institutional elements of Islamic law in modern
Indonesia in its recent formations. The first five chapters address
issues relating to Islamic legal theory, both its historical
development over the past century and analysis of the work of
specific groups of contemporary scholars, jurists, and activists.
The final seven chapters contain studies of more concrete
manifestations of Islamic law in modern Indonesia, including court
systems, positive law, the drafting of new "Islamic" legislation,
and contemporary debates over the implementation of the Shari'a.
Taken together these essays offer a series of substantive
introductions to important developments in both the theory and
practice of law in the world's most populous Muslim society.
Providing a detailed and comparative assessment of the humanitarian
responses to a series of major disasters in Asia over the past two
decades, including massive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and
tsunamis, this book explores complex and changing understandings
and practices of relief, recovery, and reconstruction. These
critical investigations raise questions about the position and
responsibilities of a growing range of stakeholders, and provide
in-depth explorations of the ways in which local communities are
transformed on multiple levels - not only by the impact of disaster
events, but also by the experiences of rebuilding. This timely
volume highlights how the experiences of Asia can contribute
towards post-disaster responses globally, to safeguard future
communities and reduce vulnerabilities. This is a valuable resource
for academic researchers interested in post-disaster
transformations and development studies, practitioners in NGOs, and
government officials dealing with disaster response and disaster
risk reduction.
This book seeks to open new lines of discussion about how Islamic
law is viewed as a potential tool for programs of social
transformation in contemporary Muslim society. It does this through
a critical examination of the workings of the state shari'a system
as it was designed and implemented at the turn of the twenty-first
century in Aceh, Indonesia. While the empirical details of these
discussions are unique, this particular case presents a remarkable
site for investigating the broader issue of the impact of
instrumentalist, future-oriented visions of Islamic law on modern
Muslim calls for the state implementation of Islamic law. In
post-tsunami/post-conflict Aceh, the idea of shari'a as an exercise
in social engineering was amplified through resonance with an
increasingly pervasive rhetoric of 'total reconstruction'. Based
upon extensive fieldwork as well as critical readings of a wide
range of archival materials, official documents, and local
publications this work focuses on the institutions and actors
involved with this contemporary project for the state
implementation of Islamic law. The individual chapters are
structured to deal with the major components of this system to
critically examine how these institutions have taken shape and how
they work. It also shows how the overall system was informed not
only by aspects of late twentieth-century da'wa discourses of
Islamic reform, but also modern trends in sociological
jurisprudence and the impact of global models of disaster relief,
reconstruction, and development. All of these streams of influence
have contributed significantly to shaping the ways in which the
architects and agents of the state shari'a system have attempted to
use Islamic legislation and legal institutions as tools to steer
society in particular desired directions. This is an open access
title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and
offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access
locations.
Indonesia has been home to some of the most vibrant and complex
developments in modern Islamic thought anywhere in the world.
Nevertheless little is known or understood about these developments
outside South East Asia. By considering the work of the leading
Indonesian thinkers of the twentieth century, Michael Feener, an
intellectual authority in the area, offers a cogent critique of
this diverse and extensive literature and sheds light on the
contemporary debates and the dynamics of Islamic reform. The book
highlights the openness to, and creative manipulation of, diverse
strands of international thought that have come to define Islamic
intellectualism in modern Indonesia. This is an accessible and
interpretive overview of the religious and social thought of the
world's largest Muslim majority nation. As such it will be read by
scholars of Islamic law and society, South East Asian studies and
comparative law and jurisprudence.
Islam in World Cultures analyzes differences in Islamic culture and
practice by looking not simply at matters of doctrine, but also at
how Islam interacts with local cultures. Contemporary treatments of
Islam focus on the Middle East; they treat the beliefs and people
of that region as representing all of Islam. At most they emphasize
the differences between Muslim groups-Sunni vs. Shia, for
instance-while overlooking the even greater differences that result
from region-specific cultural and political pressures. Islam in
World Cultures gathers the work of ten eminent scholars, each of
whom has expertise in the Muslim culture of a particular country or
geographical area. Individual chapters explore contemporary
developments in the Islamic experience in Turkey, Iran, Pakistan,
Central Asia, China, Indonesia, South Africa, Ethiopia, and the
United States. This broad treatment provides an introduction to the
full range of issues relating to Islam in the context of
globalization. A full chapter of annotated references and
electronic links, organized to relate to each chapter A glossary of
key terms, with emphasis on comparative usage and how common terms
differ in definition from place to place
Cosmopolitanism has emerged as a key category in Islamic Studies,
defining models of Muslim mobility, pluralism and tolerance that
challenge popular perceptions of religious extremism. Such
celebrations and valorisations of mobility and trans-regional
consciousness, however, tend to conflate border-crossing with
opportunity and social diversity with ethical progress. At the same
time, they generally disregard the ways in which such forms of
cosmopolitanism have been entwined with structures of domination,
economic control and violence. This volume addresses these issues
in ways that help to contextualize contemporary issues such as the
global refugee crisis in relation to longer histories of Muslim
mobility and coercion. Featuring new historical and ethnographic
research on China and Southeast Asia, this book explores how power
and violence have shaped the experiences of Sufis and
state-builders, as well as refugees and rebels, contributing to a
more nuanced understanding of Islamic cosmopolitanism.
Indonesia has been home to some of the most vibrant and complex
developments in modern Islamic thought anywhere in the world.
Nevertheless little is known or understood about these developments
outside South East Asia. By considering the work of the leading
Indonesian thinkers of the twentieth century, Michael Feener, an
intellectual authority in the area, offers a cogent critique of
this diverse and extensive literature and sheds light on the
contemporary debates and the dynamics of Islamic reform. The 2007
book highlights the openness to, and creative manipulation of,
diverse strands of international thought that have come to define
Islamic intellectualism in modern Indonesia. This is an accessible
and interpretive overview of the religious and social thought of
the world's largest Muslim majority nation. As such it will be read
by scholars of Islamic law and society, South East Asian studies
and comparative law and jurisprudence.
Over the last few decades historians and other scholars have
succeeded in identifying diverse patterns of connection linking
religious communities across Asia and beyond. Yet despite the
fruits of this specialist research, scholars in the subfields of
Islamic and Buddhist studies have rarely engaged with each other to
share investigative approaches and methods of interpretation. This
volume was conceived to open up new spaces of creative interaction
between scholars in both fields that will increase our
understanding of the circulation and localization of religious
texts, institutional models, ritual practices, and literary
specialists. The book's approach is to scrutinize one major
dimension of the history of religion in Southern Asia: religious
orders. "Orders" (here referring to Sufi ?ariqas and Buddhist
monastic and other ritual lineages) established means by which
far-flung local communities could come to be recognized and engaged
as part of a broader world of co-religionists, while presenting
their particular religious traditions and their human
representatives as attractive and authoritative to potential new
communities of devotees. Contributors to the volume direct their
attention toward analogous developments mutually illuminating for
both fields of study. Some explain how certain orders took shape in
Southern Asia over the course of the nineteenth century,
contextualizing these institutional developments in relation to
local and transregional political formations, shifting literary and
ritual preferences, and trade connections. Others show how the
circulation of people, ideas, texts, objects, and practices across
Southern Asia, a region in which both Buddhism and Islam have a
long and substantial presence, brought diverse currents of internal
reform and notions of ritual and lineage purity to the region. All
chapters draw readers' attention to the fact that networked persons
were not always strongly institutionalized and often moved through
Southern Asia and developed local bases without the oversight of
complex corporate organizations. Buddhist and Islamic Orders in
Southern Asia brings cutting-edge research to bear on conversations
about how "orders" have functioned within these two traditions to
expand and sustain transregional religious networks. It will help
to develop a better understanding of the complex roles played by
religious networks in the history of Southern Asia.
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