Alternative Voices in Muslim Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia has long been regarded as a region peripheral to Muslim communities compared to the Middle East as the 'center' of Islam, despite the fact that Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-majority country and Islam is the region's most widely practiced religion, by about 42 percent of the population, with majorities in Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, and Indonesia. One possible cause of this neglect is the fact that Southeast Asia has for centuries seen syncretic manifestations of Islamic rituals (Saravanamuttu 2010: 3), which do not correspond to the standard image of Islam. In fact, the region houses a significant diversity in cultures, customs, and historical patterns that have traditionally precluded the emergence of a unified religious realm. The same situation can be observed with other religions, such as Catholicism, other Christian denominations, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and animism, as well as local religions (Schottmann and Camilleri 2013: 5)

Buddhism · Context (archaeology · Hinduism · Islam · Multiculturalism · Political science · Population · Secularism · Sociology · Asian Studies and History · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies

• Islam and Politics in Southeast Asia

  Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid•Contemporary Southeast Asia•2010

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