Farish A Noor
Biographic Data
| ID | 547909 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Farish A Noor |
| GIVEN NAMES | Farish A |
| FAMILY NAME | Noor |
| SIGNATURE | NOOR F A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Nanyang Technological University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3446-7579 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 60 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 34 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Bricolage, Power and How a Region Was Discursively Constructed
The trope of the Native American in nineteenth-century British and American accounts of South East Asia
The nineteenth century witnessed the expansion of Western colonial power and influence across both mainland and maritime South East Asia, along with the publication of a growing number of books about the region and its peoples by Western scholars, travellers and colonial administrators. This was also a time when pseudo-scientific theories of racial difference were rife and deemed respectable in Western academic and political circles. This article…
Denying and Deflecting the Racism of Empire
Hugh Charles Clifford (1866-1941) was a colonial functionary who served in various capacities in British Malaya, notably in the kingdom of Pahang (as colonial agent, 1887-1888; Superintendent (1889) and Resident (1896-1900, 1901-1903). Apart from his duties as a colonial administrator, Clifford was also the author of numerous works of fiction that were set in the kingdom and was thus an active contributor to the colonial imaginary. This paper loo…
Discovering ‘Religion
This paper seeks to show how the example of colonial writings in Southeast Asia display, but also complicate, some already identified patterns in how religion, and the world religions paradigm (WRP), alongside such discursive terms as ‘superstition’, were applied to the religious practices and worldviews of indigenous Southeast Asians through the nineteenth century. Such figures as Sir Stamford Raffles and John Crawfurd, amongst others, from both…
The Appendices of Empire
Among the many outcomes of the critique of Orientalism and the writings that emerged from the colonial era is the view that most, if not all, works that were published during the era of Empire are tainted by racial prejudice and Orientalist tropes and stereotypes of the non-Western Other. While this may be the case, this paper argues that there are still many reasons for postcolonial scholars to read such works today, from an informed and critica…
The Uses of Magic
Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society - Volume 94, Part 2, No. 321, December 2021
Racial Difference and the Colonial Wars of 19th Century Southeast Asia
Mea Culpa
That nineteenth-century colonial-era writings have been rightly criticized for their Orientalist bias is no longer a new idea, thanks to the work done by scholars like Edward Said. But they leave us with the question of how they can and should be read by scholars today, what information can be derived from them, and how and why these works are still seen by some as being among the foundational texts of South East Asian studies. In this paper I ar…
Mapping Cultural Nationalism
How “fake news” was a tool of nineteenth century colonialism and conquest
The abuse of news to distort public perceptions is as old as the popular press, says FARISH A. NOOR.If by “fake news” we are talking about the distortion or the selective framing of facts, then I d
The Discursive Construction of Southeast Asia in 19th-Century Colonial-Capitalist Discourse
The Discursive Construction of Southeast Asia in 19th Century Colonial-Capitalist Discourse
The nations of Southeast Asia today are rapidly integrating economically and politically, but that integration is also counterbalanced by forces ranging from hyper-nationalism to disputes over cultural ownership throughout the region. Those forces, Farish A. Noor argues in this book, have their roots in the region's failure to come to a critical understanding of how current national and cultural identities in the region came about. To remedy that…
Discursive Construction of Southeast Asia in 19th-Century Colonial-Capitalist Discourse
You are under arrest
In the year 1907 the colonial entrepreneur and expert on tin-mining in British Malaya, CG Warnford-Lock, wrote thus in his book Mining in Malaya for Gold and Tin: From a labour point of view, there are practically three races: the Malays, the Chinese and the Tamils. By nature, the Malay is an idler, the Chinaman is a thief and the Indian is a drunkard. Yet each, in his special class of work, is both cheap and efficient, when properly supervised. …
Popular Religiosity in Indonesia Today
The phenomenon of popular Islam is seen everywhere in the Muslim world today, and expresses itself via a host of means ranging from fashion to architecture as well as new cultural norms that are deemed Islamic. In the case of Indonesia, the expansive growth of the ‘halal market’--pioneered by Islamic fashion and cosmetics-- has been a powerful variable factor, accounting for the emergence of a new Indonesian Muslim middle-class that has aspiratio…
Popular Religiosity in Indonesia Today
The phenomenon of popular Islam is seen everywhere in the Muslim world today, and expresses itself via a host of means ranging from fashion to architecture as well as new cultural norms that are deemed Islamic. In the case of Indonesia, the expansive growth of the ‘halal market’--pioneered by Islamic fashion and cosmetics-- has been a powerful variable factor, accounting for the emergence of a new Indonesian Muslim middle-class that has aspiratio…
The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS 1951–2013
The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS is the biggest opposition party in Malaysia today and one of the most prominent Islamist parties in Southeast Asia. This work recounts the historical development of PAS from 1951 to the present, and looks at how it has risen to become a political movement that is both local and transnational, tracking its rise from the Cold War to the age of the War on Terror, and its evolving ideological postures - from anti-c…
The Malaysian Islamic Party 1951-2013
The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS is the biggest opposition party in Malaysia today and one of the most prominent Islamist parties in Southeast Asia. This work recounts the historical development of PAS from 1951 to the present, and looks at how it has risen to become a political movement that is both local and transnational, tracking its rise from the Cold War to the age of the War on Terror, and its evolving ideological postures - from anti-c…
The Malaysian General Elections of 2013
This paper looks at the Malaysian General Election campaign of 2013, and focuses primarily on the 1Malaysia project that was foregrounded by the administration of Prime Minister Najib Razak. It compares the 1Malaysia project with other projects aimed at nation-building, such as the Wawasan 2020 project of former Prime Minister Mahathir and the Islam Hadari project of former Prime Minister Badawi; and asks if 1Malaysia was truly an attempt at buil…
The 13th Malaysian General Elections from a Sabah Perspective
This article looks at the campaign for the 13th Malaysian election as conducted in Sabah, and will offer some observations on the local issues that were deemed particularly important by Sabah voters. It will also address the changing forms of mass mobilisation, issue-framing, and the rise of Sabah-centric politics in the state, all of which may have played a part in deciding the outcome of the election results in that state
Islam on the Move
Then I prayed, "Oh God, please make me happy like them"': The conversion narrative of Ustaz Talib Zulham 118 'Oh how the girls were screaming for me!':The conversion narrative of Ustaz Haji Ataullah Muhammad Ramzan 122 'I realised I was Indian as well': The conversion narrative of Ustaz Dr
Racial Profiling’ Revisited
The 1915 Singapore Indian Sepoy mutiny caught the British colonial authorities by surprise and led to significant damage to the environs of Singapore and the loss of lives. This article looks at the mutiny of 1915 and locates it in the broader context of related developments in other parts of the empire, and argues that it was an instance when ethnic and religious loyalties superseded loyalty to the empire. Though the mutiny was eventually put do…
On the Permanent Hajj
The Tablighi Jama'at ranks as one of the biggest missionary movements in the contemporary Muslim world and it has spread its network of itinerant members right across Asia. This paper looks at the spread of the Tablighi Jama'at in and across South East Asia in particular, tracing its early arrival in the 1950s to the present. The author identifies it as one of the many currents of globalization that has brought the region closer together in a bor…
Riots, Pogroms, Jihad
The Madrasa in Asia
The Madrasa in Asia
Islam on the Move
Then I prayed, "Oh God, please make me happy like them"': The conversion narrative of Ustaz Talib Zulham 118 'Oh how the girls were screaming for me!':The conversion narrative of Ustaz Haji Ataullah Muhammad Ramzan 122 'I realised I was Indian as well': The conversion narrative of Ustaz Dr
The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS 1951–2013
The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS is the biggest opposition party in Malaysia today and one of the most prominent Islamist parties in Southeast Asia. This work recounts the historical development of PAS from 1951 to the present, and looks at how it has risen to become a political movement that is both local and transnational, tracking its rise from the Cold War to the age of the War on Terror, and its evolving ideological postures - from anti-c…
Blood, Sweat and Jihad
How Islamist politics in Malaysia leapt to a different register Kemenangan Islam tidak akan datang dengan sendirinya. Allah telah menentukan bahawa kejayaan dalam kehidupan dunia adalah hasil yang berterusan. (1) Ustaz Yusof Rawa, President of PAS, 29 April 1983 After the Malaysian elections of December 1999, PAS emerged as the strongest opposition party in the country with the largest number of opposition seats in Parliament (27). For the first …
Looking forreformasi
1999). Looking for reformasi: The discursive dynamics of the reformasi movement and its prospects as a political project. Indonesia and the Malay World: Vol. 27, No. 77, pp. 5-18
You are under arrest
In the year 1907 the colonial entrepreneur and expert on tin-mining in British Malaya, CG Warnford-Lock, wrote thus in his book Mining in Malaya for Gold and Tin: From a labour point of view, there are practically three races: the Malays, the Chinese and the Tamils. By nature, the Malay is an idler, the Chinaman is a thief and the Indian is a drunkard. Yet each, in his special class of work, is both cheap and efficient, when properly supervised. …
The Malaysian General Elections of 2013
This paper looks at the Malaysian General Election campaign of 2013, and focuses primarily on the 1Malaysia project that was foregrounded by the administration of Prime Minister Najib Razak. It compares the 1Malaysia project with other projects aimed at nation-building, such as the Wawasan 2020 project of former Prime Minister Mahathir and the Islam Hadari project of former Prime Minister Badawi; and asks if 1Malaysia was truly an attempt at buil…
Pathans to the East! the Development of the Tablighi Jama'at Movement in Northern Malaysia and Southern Thailand
Research Article| May 01 2007 Pathans to the East! the Development of the Tablighi Jama'at Movement in Northern Malaysia and Southern Thailand Farish A. Noor Farish A. Noor Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2007) 27 (1): 7–25. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2006-040 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Farish A. Noor; Path…
The 13th Malaysian General Elections from a Sabah Perspective
This article looks at the campaign for the 13th Malaysian election as conducted in Sabah, and will offer some observations on the local issues that were deemed particularly important by Sabah voters. It will also address the changing forms of mass mobilisation, issue-framing, and the rise of Sabah-centric politics in the state, all of which may have played a part in deciding the outcome of the election results in that state
Islam et politique en Malaisie
Tandis que bien des gouvernements de pays à population majoritairement musulmane se heurtaient, dans les années 80, à des oppositions et à des mobilisations islamiques souvent violentes et y répondaient eux-mêmes par la violence, la Malaisie a su éviter cette spirale. Cela est dû à l'alliance, étonnamment durable, entre le Dr. Mahathir, tenant d'un islam moderniste et pragmatique, et Anwar Ibrahim, entré en politique par la voie de l'islamisme ra…
On the Permanent Hajj
The Tablighi Jama'at ranks as one of the biggest missionary movements in the contemporary Muslim world and it has spread its network of itinerant members right across Asia. This paper looks at the spread of the Tablighi Jama'at in and across South East Asia in particular, tracing its early arrival in the 1950s to the present. The author identifies it as one of the many currents of globalization that has brought the region closer together in a bor…
Innocents Abroad
This paper examines some recently published travelogues which have brought together a number of travel narratives written by Western women who travelled to South East Asia in the nineteenth century. It argues that the editors of these travelogues have glossed over the issues of race, class, gender, and power-relations during that period of Western imperialism in South East Asia in order to present a 'sanitized' version of white women's travels. T…
Looking forreformasi
1999). Looking for reformasi: The discursive dynamics of the reformasi movement and its prospects as a political project. Indonesia and the Malay World: Vol. 27, No. 77, pp. 5-18
Islam in an Era of Nation States
Since the late 1970s, Southeast Asia's Muslim population has experienced an unprecedented religious revival. This resurgence has created a new kind of Islamic discourse, one oriented to the needs of a broad public rather than to narrow circles of religious adepts. This text examines the history, politics and meanings of this resurgence in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. It explores the implications for Southeast Asia, the larger Muslim w…
From Majapahit to Putrajaya
The kris is the legendary weapon of the Malay peoples, used throughout the archipelago. This paper examines the evolution of the kris over the centuries. The central argument is that in the development of the kris we can also trace the civilizational development of the Malays. The paper sets the evolution of the kris in the context of social–cultural and political change in the Malay archipelago from the fourteenth century to the present, focusin…
Islam et politique en Malaisie
Tandis que bien des gouvernements de pays à population majoritairement musulmane se heurtaient, dans les années 80, à des oppositions et à des mobilisations islamiques souvent violentes et y répondaient eux-mêmes par la violence, la Malaisie a su éviter cette spirale. Cela est dû à l'alliance, étonnamment durable, entre le Dr. Mahathir, tenant d'un islam moderniste et pragmatique, et Anwar Ibrahim, entré en politique par la voie de l'islamisme ra…
Blood, Sweat and Jihad
How Islamist politics in Malaysia leapt to a different register Kemenangan Islam tidak akan datang dengan sendirinya. Allah telah menentukan bahawa kejayaan dalam kehidupan dunia adalah hasil yang berterusan. (1) Ustaz Yusof Rawa, President of PAS, 29 April 1983 After the Malaysian elections of December 1999, PAS emerged as the strongest opposition party in the country with the largest number of opposition seats in Parliament (27). For the first …
A Second Chance for Malaysia's »Moderate Islam« Project?
Pathans to the East! the Development of the Tablighi Jama'at Movement in Northern Malaysia and Southern Thailand
Research Article| May 01 2007 Pathans to the East! the Development of the Tablighi Jama'at Movement in Northern Malaysia and Southern Thailand Farish A. Noor Farish A. Noor Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2007) 27 (1): 7–25. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2006-040 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Farish A. Noor; Path…
Madrasa in Asia
The Madrasa in Asia
The Madrasa in Asia
Re-orienting the ‘West’? The Transnational Debate on the Status of the ‘West’ in the Debates among Islamist Intellectuals and Students from the 1970s to the Present
This paper will look at the process of transnational transfer of ideas, beliefs and value-systems, with a special emphasis on the transfer of Islamist ideas and ideals through the vector of student movements and organisations that were set up in Western Europe and North America as well as the rise of a new generation of Islamist intellectuals in Malaysia in the late 1960s for whom the idea of the ‘West’ was turned on its head and re-cast in negat…
The Tablighi Jama‘at as Vehicle of (Re)Discovery
On the Permanent Hajj
The Tablighi Jama'at ranks as one of the biggest missionary movements in the contemporary Muslim world and it has spread its network of itinerant members right across Asia. This paper looks at the spread of the Tablighi Jama'at in and across South East Asia in particular, tracing its early arrival in the 1950s to the present. The author identifies it as one of the many currents of globalization that has brought the region closer together in a bor…
Riots, Pogroms, Jihad
Racial Profiling’ Revisited
The 1915 Singapore Indian Sepoy mutiny caught the British colonial authorities by surprise and led to significant damage to the environs of Singapore and the loss of lives. This article looks at the mutiny of 1915 and locates it in the broader context of related developments in other parts of the empire, and argues that it was an instance when ethnic and religious loyalties superseded loyalty to the empire. Though the mutiny was eventually put do…
Islam on the Move
Then I prayed, "Oh God, please make me happy like them"': The conversion narrative of Ustaz Talib Zulham 118 'Oh how the girls were screaming for me!':The conversion narrative of Ustaz Haji Ataullah Muhammad Ramzan 122 'I realised I was Indian as well': The conversion narrative of Ustaz Dr
The Malaysian General Elections of 2013
This paper looks at the Malaysian General Election campaign of 2013, and focuses primarily on the 1Malaysia project that was foregrounded by the administration of Prime Minister Najib Razak. It compares the 1Malaysia project with other projects aimed at nation-building, such as the Wawasan 2020 project of former Prime Minister Mahathir and the Islam Hadari project of former Prime Minister Badawi; and asks if 1Malaysia was truly an attempt at buil…
The 13th Malaysian General Elections from a Sabah Perspective
This article looks at the campaign for the 13th Malaysian election as conducted in Sabah, and will offer some observations on the local issues that were deemed particularly important by Sabah voters. It will also address the changing forms of mass mobilisation, issue-framing, and the rise of Sabah-centric politics in the state, all of which may have played a part in deciding the outcome of the election results in that state
The Malaysian Islamic Party 1951-2013
The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS is the biggest opposition party in Malaysia today and one of the most prominent Islamist parties in Southeast Asia. This work recounts the historical development of PAS from 1951 to the present, and looks at how it has risen to become a political movement that is both local and transnational, tracking its rise from the Cold War to the age of the War on Terror, and its evolving ideological postures - from anti-c…
Popular Religiosity in Indonesia Today
The phenomenon of popular Islam is seen everywhere in the Muslim world today, and expresses itself via a host of means ranging from fashion to architecture as well as new cultural norms that are deemed Islamic. In the case of Indonesia, the expansive growth of the ‘halal market’--pioneered by Islamic fashion and cosmetics-- has been a powerful variable factor, accounting for the emergence of a new Indonesian Muslim middle-class that has aspiratio…
Popular Religiosity in Indonesia Today
The phenomenon of popular Islam is seen everywhere in the Muslim world today, and expresses itself via a host of means ranging from fashion to architecture as well as new cultural norms that are deemed Islamic. In the case of Indonesia, the expansive growth of the ‘halal market’--pioneered by Islamic fashion and cosmetics-- has been a powerful variable factor, accounting for the emergence of a new Indonesian Muslim middle-class that has aspiratio…
The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS 1951–2013
The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS is the biggest opposition party in Malaysia today and one of the most prominent Islamist parties in Southeast Asia. This work recounts the historical development of PAS from 1951 to the present, and looks at how it has risen to become a political movement that is both local and transnational, tracking its rise from the Cold War to the age of the War on Terror, and its evolving ideological postures - from anti-c…
The Discursive Construction of Southeast Asia in 19th-Century Colonial-Capitalist Discourse
The Discursive Construction of Southeast Asia in 19th Century Colonial-Capitalist Discourse
The nations of Southeast Asia today are rapidly integrating economically and politically, but that integration is also counterbalanced by forces ranging from hyper-nationalism to disputes over cultural ownership throughout the region. Those forces, Farish A. Noor argues in this book, have their roots in the region's failure to come to a critical understanding of how current national and cultural identities in the region came about. To remedy that…
Asian Studies and History (26 works) · Political science (24 works) · History (22 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Law (18 works) · Politics (15 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Ancient history (13 works) · Archaeology (13 works) · Colonialism (13 works)