This volume contains selected papers from a conference held in April 2005 at the Asia Research Institute in Singapore, featuring contributions from seven non-Muslim and four Muslim authors, thus providing both outsider and insider dimensions to the study of Islam.
Preparing conference proceedings is always challenging given the usually disparate nature of the papers. Professors Reid and Gilsenan have done their editorial task well, ensuring that this volume coheres around several characteristic features and themes.
First is a didactic function. In the introductory chapter, Reid points out that Asia, as ‘the home of the majority of the Islamic faithful is also the world's major laboratory of religious pluralism’ (p. 1). Those ruling regimes throughout history that accommodated Asian pluralism flourished, while those that tried to impose an exclusivist approach to religious faith struggled and were eventually discredited. So, as ‘diversity is being required of all societies as a price of survival in a globalised world, the historic lessons of plural Asian societies are particularly precious’ (p. 5).
Several authors caution against identifying religious factors as the root cause of modern problems. Turner states that ‘political Islam is the political consequence of the social frustrations, following from the economic changes of the global neo-liberal experiments of the 1970s and 1980s’ (p. 57). Metcalf, Ali and Reid make comments in a similar vein.
There are both synchronic and diachronic dimensions to this volume, providing a valuable depth to discussion. Several authors look back to colonial times. Kaptein observes that Dutch policy in the Netherlands East Indies at the turn of the twentieth century was one of both non-interference in practice of the Islamic faith and support for Islamic facilities and institutions. Özcan comments that British non-interference in the religious practices of Muslims in India earned them the favour of some Meccan jurists who declared that British India was part of dar al-Islam. This policy had a particular unanticipated result, according to Metcalf, who observes that: ‘it was the framework of British, rule, where “religion” was regarded as a domain of freedom for colonised subjects that increasingly encouraged Muslims to insist ever more that theirs was a “religious” and not a “political” cause’ (p. 84).
A further characteristic of this volume is its hard-hitting critique of both Muslim and non-Muslim individuals and political groups. Tibi takes to task certain Islamic liberals who are the darlings of the West, especially Tariq Ramadan and Abdulaziz Sachedina. He also targets Yusuf al-Qaradawi: ‘The influential contemporary Islamist … the heir of Qutb though mistakenly classified by some Western Orientalists as a voice of “liberal Islam”, flatly dismisses democracy as un-Islamic and [is] therefore to be rejected’ (p. 36). Those who claim that Islamic self-critique is a contradiction in terms should take note of Tibi's chapter. At the same time, he is equally critical of ‘Western cultural relativists who condemned European universalism while overlooking the absolutism of the others’ (p. 31), citing the ‘philo-Islamic Americans, John Esposito and John Voll’ (p. 37). Later in the volume, Liow provides an insightful evaluation of the Malaysian government programme of Islamisation that ‘has uncovered disturbing cleavages and generated negative undercurrents across Malaysia's plural society as it struggles to sustain the Reformasi drive and expand politico-discursive space’ (p. 184).
This volume also wisely takes account of Islam in both majority and minority situations. Saeed contributes a valuable chapter focusing on debates among Muslim scholars and jurists down the ages regarding whether Muslims should remain in minority situations under non-Muslim rule. Özcan and Metcalf consider varying angles on the huge Islamic minority in colonial India. Detailed studies of Islam as a majority are provided by Ali, who considers Pakistan, and Kaptein, Feener, Fealy and Liow, all of whom focus on the Malay-Indonesian world, covering both the colonial period and today's scene. Feener and Fealy provide particularly valuable and critical insights into issues of great import for today's Indonesia, one of the most dynamic and promising laboratories for Islamic reformist and pluralist thinking. Malaysia with its 60:40 population split for Muslims:non-Muslims, serves as a key barometer for measuring Islamic pluralism in the modern world. Liow's study raises important concerns because of ‘the emergence of Islam as a hegemonic force in Malaysian politics over the past two decades’ (p. 168).
As to whether others will learn the lessons of plural Asian societies as hoped for by Reid, the volume falls down in one key respect, namely, the total absence of more strident, ‘legalistic and literalist’ (p. 8) Muslim voices who may not be comfortable with the pluralism espoused by this volume, but who themselves constitute part of that very pluralism. Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult to get such voices to participate in conferences of the kind that gave birth to this volume.
All chapters in this volume, from the strongest (that of Tibi) to the weakest (that of Ali), provide a wealth of information about Islam's engagement with pluralism in diverse locations across the centuries. This work should serve as an important reference point for students of Islam in Asia for many years to come.
