Suchergebnisse

This article discusses the world's most oppressed people, the Muslim Rohingya of Burma (Myanmar) through the lens of "state symbologies and critical juncture". It further argues the amalgamation of Burmese-Buddhist ethno-nationalism and anti-Muslim hate speech have become elements of Burma's state symbology and components. Colonialism established conditions in which ethno-religious conflict could develop through policies that destroyed the civic religious pluralism characteristic of pre-colonial states. Burmese Buddhist ethno-religious nationalism is responsible for a series of communal conflicts and state repression because it did not recognize Muslims and other minorities as full and equal participants in the post-colonial national project. Therefore, the cycles of violence and the complexities of inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations indicate that Burmese political culture has become increasingly violent and genocidal.

Relationships between Islam and local cultures, post-coloniality, the construction of National Islams and nationalisms are extraordinarily complex. They pose complex academic, theological and political problems. This paper considers examples from the province of West Java in post-colonial Indonesia. It will be concerned with the ways in which elements of local West Javanese/Sundanese culture are rejected by Islamist nationalists but at the same time incorporated into a regional variant of the culture friendly Islam Nusantara formulated by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) in 2015. See Chamami (2015) and Woodward (2018). It also suggests that what Philosopher of Science Karl Popper termed the "situational logic" of Islam Nusantara is based on principles that have driven the construction of what Historian Marshal Hodgson (1974) termed Islamicate Civilizations since they emerged in the sixth century. Thorough consideration of these questions requires an overarching analytic and theoretical framework. Without one, we can produce disconnected, fragmentary analyses with limited practical applications. This paper is an attempt to establish such a framework. Building on Berger's constructivist approach to the Sociology of Religion, it draws on seemingly divergent themes in the academic discourse about religion/society/state relationships in hope that the resulting synthesis will be of greater analytic utility and practical applicability than the sum of its parts. Empirically it focuses on West Java, Sundanese culture and emergence of alternative National Islams in contemporary Indonesia. It also makes comparative references to neighbouring countries, especially Malaysia. Theoretically, it is transdisciplinary, combining approaches from Cultural Anthropology, History, Political Science and Religious Studies. Given the current state of intra-Islamic political and religious discourse, it also necessarily focuses on debates between Sufi oriented "traditionalists" and Salafi oriented "modernists" that have been a major feature of colonial and post-colonial Muslim discourse for more than a century. It argues that alternative National Islams are shaped by a combination of theological debates and religion/state/society dynamics.

"Crusade" is the movement of Europeans from the Middle Ages to conquer the holy land of Jerusalem from the hands of Muslims who have ruled for centuries there. This is a classic model of religious warfare. Crusaders increasingly colour the conversation of Muslims in terms of war, peace and global politics. The description of the crusade on Muslim militants and the president of the United States has led to the proliferation of crusading rhetoric even in a country like Indonesia where nota is not involved at all in the Middle East war in the 13th century. This article examines the problem of using crusades and semantic relations with the word Zionism in present-day Indonesia.

This paper presents a semantic and symbolic analysis of the concept and presentation of the concept of Islam Nusantara and the ways in which it evokes meaning and emotion to counter trans-national violent extremist movements including al-Qaeda and ISIS, based on Salafi-Wahhabi ideologies. It is based on a frame based content analysis of religious and political themes ofIslam Nusantra. I focus primarily on two films produced by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) to promote this concept: the near feature length (83 minutes)The Blessing of Islam Nusantara (Oceans of Revelation: Islam as a Blessing for All Creation) and the much shorter (8 minutes) Launching the Film The Blessing Islam Nusantara. The first draws on elements of Sufism, Javanese and to a lesser extent other Indonesian cultures to construct a vision of Islam directly countering that of both violent and non-violent Salafi-Wahhabi extremists. The second promotes the film and Ansor's (the NU youth organization) potential for combatting violent extremism. Theoretically, I rely on insights by Goffman's observations concerning the ways in which semantic frames, and more specifically reframing, can alter dominance hierarchies in discourse systems and Sperber's demonstration that symbolization is a cognitive process that evokes as well as communicates meaning and emotion.

The political experience in Indonesia is used to illustrate the profound implications of interpretations of Islamic law for political development in Muslim nations. The enthusiasm for democracy following the collapse of ex-President Suharto's authoritarian "New Order" regime is described, along with the emergence of political parties, a growing educated middle class, & the potential for a type of "identity politics" similar to that which influenced the failure of Indonesia's first experiment with parliamentary democracy in the 1950s. Five key religious orientations within Indonesia's Muslim community are described as Indigenized Islam; traditional Sunni Islam; Islamic modernism; political, anti-Western Islam; & neomodernism. Each orientation is examined, noting that neomodernism encompasses democracy & religious/cultural pluralism, & stressing the nation's "many Islams" & varied commitments to Islamic law, democracy, & pluralism. Prospects for the future are discussed. J. Lindroth