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1. Book Launch: Lineages of the Literary: Tibetan Buddhist Polymaths of Socialist China

Author:
Nicole Willock and Gray Tuttle
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
In the aftermath of the cataclysmic Maoist period, three Tibetan Buddhist scholars living and working in the People’s Republic of China became intellectual heroes and were renowned as the “Three Polymaths”: Tséten Zhabdrung (1910–1985), Mugé Samten (1914–1993), and Dungkar Lozang Trinlé (1927–1997). Lineages of the Literary, by Nicole Willock, reveals how the Three Polymaths negotiated the political tides of the twentieth century, shedding new light on Sino-Tibetan relations and Buddhism during this turbulent era. An interdisciplinary work spanning religious studies, history, literary studies, and social theory, Lineages of the Literary offers new insight into the categories of religion and the secular, the role of Tibetan Buddhist leaders in modern China, and the contested ground of Tibet.
Topic:
Religion, History, Leadership, Literature, Secularism, Buddhism, and Social Theory
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Tibet

2. Hindutva in India: Rise of Bigotry against Muslims

Author:
Inayat Kalim, Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi, and Areeja Syed
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
The preface of the Indian Constitution declares India a sovereign, democratic, republic, and socialist state. Later on through the 42nd amendment, socialist and secular terms were incorporated into the constitution. Indian social order is known to be a multi-cultural and multi- religious society on account of an assortment of castes, religions, and cultures. Within all that disparities, Muslims form the main minority in the state. However, a clear-cut pluralistic discrepancy between the theory and practice of the Indian constitution is obvious. Indian Muslims are deprived of cultural, religious, and political rights due to the escalation of Hindutva policies throughout the Modi reign. The continued Kashmir dispute and the recent Pulwama attack intensified India- Pakistan animosity and the root cause seems to be the rise of Hindutva in India. For that reason, the authors delve into the matter and strive to present a descriptive analysis on the rise of Hindutva in India and the illicit silence of the international actors on this grave Indian fanaticism.
Topic:
Civil Society, Religion, Minorities, Discrimination, and Secularism
Political Geography:
India and Asia

3. Southeast Asia’s Troubling Elections: Nondemocratic Pluralism in Indonesia

Author:
Edward Aspinall and Marcus Mietzner
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
Though pluralism and democracy are generally seen as being mutually supportive, recent developments in Indonesia suggest that they can also be in tension. Over the last five years, an old social cleavage separating pluralists from Islamists has been reactivated. In the 2019 presidential election, the incumbent, Joko Widodo, won by increasing support from religious minorities and traditionalist Muslims; his authoritarian-populist challenger, Prabowo Subianto, was backed by groups promoting a greater role for Islam in political life. Empowered by this socioreligious polarization, Widodo’s government has relied on increasingly illiberal measures to contain the populist-Islamist alliance, undermining some of Indonesia’s democratic achievements in the process.
Topic:
Religion, Democracy, Secularism, and Pluralism
Political Geography:
Indonesia and Asia

4. Indonesian Muslims in a Globalising World: Westernisation, Arabisation and Indigenising Responses

Author:
Martin van Bruinessen
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
In the two decades since the fall of the Suharto regime, one of the most conspicuous developments has been the rapidly increasing influence of religious interpretations and practices emanating from the Middle East and more specifically the Gulf states, leading observers to speak of the “Arabisation” of Indonesian Islam. In the preceding decades, the state had strongly endorsed liberal and development-oriented Muslim discourses widely perceived as “Westernised” and associated with secularism and Western education. Indonesia’s unique Muslim traditions have in fact been shaped by many centuries of global flows of people and ideas, connecting the region not just with the Arab heartlands of Islam and Europe but South Asia and China. What is relatively new, however, is the presence of transnational Islamist and fundamentalist movements, which weakened the established nation-wide Muslim organisations (Muhammadiyah, NU) that had been providing religious guidance for most of the 20th century. The perceived threat of transnational radical Islam has led to renewed reflection on, and efforts to rejuvenate, indigenous Muslim traditions.
Topic:
Islam, Religion, transnationalism, and Secularism
Political Geography:
United States, China, Indonesia, Asia, and Southeast Asia

5. Comparing the Governance of Islam in Turkey and Indonesia: Diyanet and the Ministry of Religious Affairs

Author:
Martin van Bruinessen
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
In spite of their overwhelmingly Muslim populations, Indonesia and Turkey are formally secular states though of different kind. However, both allocate a surprisingly high proportion of the state budget to the administration of Islam, considerably higher than most countries where Islam is the state religion. In Turkey during the years 1950-2000 and in Indonesia during the New Order period (1966-1998), the state invested heavily in the education of “enlightened” religious personnel and the dissemination of religious views that were compatible with the drive for modernisation and development. Turkey’s Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) controls a huge bureaucracy through which the state interacts with the pious conservative part of the population. Schools for the training of prayer leaders addressed the needs of the same segment of the population and were intended to facilitate the integration of these conservatives into the project of secular modernisation. However, these institutions had the unforeseen effect of enabling the social mobility of once marginalised conservatives, allowing them to gradually gain control of part of the state apparatus. Mutatis mutandis, very similar developments can be observed in Indonesia, where the Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA) and the Council of Islamic Scholars (MUI) were expected to provide development-friendly religious guidance and prevent undesirable expressions of religiosity. After the fall of the Suharto regime, the MUI made itself independent of the government and instead became a vehicle through which various conservative religious groups strove to influence government policies, with various degrees of success.
Topic:
Islam, Religion, Social Movement, Secularism, and Modernization
Political Geography:
Europe, Indonesia, Turkey, and Asia

6. ENGAGING RELIGION WITH PRAGMATISM: THE SINGAPORE STATE’S MANAGEMENT OF SOCIAL ISSUES AND RELIGIOUS TENSIONS IN THE 1980s

Author:
Mohammad Alami Musa
Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
The Singapore state’s relationship with religion has been one of pragmatism, rooted in the realities of the country’s multi-racial and multi-religious society. This was clearly evident in the 1980s when Singapore was confronted with many challenging issues of morality and the practice of religion. On the one hand, the secular state viewed religion as a positive force in society and adopted a policy of neutrality and non-interference in matters of religion. On the other hand, it did not hesitate to intervene in the realm of religion when public order, security and economic survival were threatened. This is consistent with the view that to survive against the odds Singapore needs a strong, centralised government that subordinates all institutions, spiritual and temporal. The state’s intervention in the religious domain in the 1980s should be understood in the context of the government’s primary interest to ensure that society possessed the values that were necessary for economic progress and development. When increased religiosity and religious activism threatened social stability and encroached into the political space to challenge state sovereignty, the state moved to assert its authority to ensure that the practice of religion did not jeopardise the permanent interests of society (i.e. public order and long-term economic prosperity). The state’s exercise of authority could be justified by the social contract that citizens had presumably entered. The state’s assertion of authority was manifested in the late 1980s, which witnessed decisive action by the government to clarify the parameters of religion’s role in society. It led to the institutionalisation of principles of governance in managing religious life within a plural, secular Singapore. The state’s pragmatic approach in managing its relations with religion persists till today, giving space to religion generally but asserting its authority when the need to preserve social peace arises.
Topic:
Race, Religion, Multiculturalism, Institutionalism, Decentralization, and Secularism
Political Geography:
Asia and Singapore

7. Turkey's Islamists: From Power-Sharing to Political Incumbency

Author:
Bell Ozkan
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
ARI Movement
Abstract:
The complex relationship between political Islam and the Turkish state – from political exclusion in the early Republican era, to power-sharing in the post-World War II multi-party era, to political incumbency in the 2000s – was crowned by AKP’s landslide electoral victory in 2002. The author debunks two myths regarding this relationship: first, that Kemalism enjoyed a monopoly of political power for decades and second, that Islamists achieved victory in 2002 after being the regime’s sole opposition. According to the author, Turkey’s failed Middle East policy can be attributed to AKP’s misconception that its Islamic counterparts would achieve power after the Arab uprisings just as they had done in Turkey in 2002.
Topic:
Religion, Elections, Democracy, Domestic Politics, and Secularism
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, and Asia

8. IDENTITY PROBLEMS IN TURKEY: ALEVIS AND AKP

Author:
Özgür ÜŞENMEZ-Levent DUMAN
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternative Politics
Institution:
Department of International Relations, Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey
Abstract:
As successive Turkish governments have attempted, AKP too is trying to solve the perennial Alevi problem as part of its broader agenda regarding the question of minorities. However, this paper argues that there are two fundamental obstacles facing Turkey's conservatives in reaching a meaningful solution. First, there is the ontological issue that AKP itself does not represent a radical break with the country's tumultuous past in terms of perception toward Alevis. Secondly, there is the ideological issue that the Sunni majority, who are at the core of AKP's concept of oppressed Muslims, are hardly sympathetic to Alevi rituals or omplaints. Decades long effects of Turkish-Islamic synthesis did not bode well for that effort also. So, any recognition of equal status on religious grounds for Alevis would create a backlash for the ruling party among its rural electorate.
Topic:
Human Rights, Religion, United Nations, and Secularism
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Asia, and Ankara