Secularism, Religion, and Democracy in Southeast Asia

by Vidhu Verma (Editor)

Overview

Until the 1990s, secularism was understood largely as exclusion of religion from the public domain. However, in the last two decades, the world has witnessed the return of religion as a medium and subject of national, regional, and global politics. With such a shift, the previously unquestioned Western values of modernity and secularism find themselves at loggerheads with the increasing assertion of religious identity, which results in difference-based conflicts. This antagonism also gives rise to a vibrant, religiously pluralistic civil society and speaks of a post-secular turn in modern Southeast Asian democracies. Secularism, Religion, and Democracy in Southeast Asia tries to understand the rise of religion in modern democracies and how everyday economic, social, and political conditions aid this post-secular phenomenon in Southeast Asia. Setting itself apart from most studies of religion in Southeast Asia through its regional focus, this volume explores the ideas, practices, state responses, and anxieties related to the religious–secular divide in this geopolitical region.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199098767
Publisher:	OUP India
Publication date:	08/24/2019
Series:	Religion and Democracy: Reconceptualizing Religion, Culture, and Politics in a Global Context
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Vidhu Verma, Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University,Aakash Singh Rathore, Professor and International Fellow, Centre for Ethics and Global Politics-LUISS, Rome

Vidhu Verma is currently Professor and has been Chairperson at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She has also been Chairperson of the Gender Sensitization Committee against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) and the Centre for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion (CSDE). She was also Director of Educational Records Research Unit (ERRU), School of Social Sciences, JNU.Her areas of research include Comparative Political Theory, feminist political theory, State and civil society, affirmative action policies and social justice in India. She has recently edited 'State in India: Ideas, Norms and Politics (2018) and Unequal Worlds (2015). She has co-edited and contributed to a volume on 'Empire of Disgust' (2018). She is the author of three books including "Non-discrimination and Equality in India: Contesting boundaries of Social Justice" (2012)

Table of Contents

AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Secularism, Religion and Democracy in South-east Asia: Contesting Perspectives by Vidhu Verma1. A Problem of Representation: Buddha Dhamma, the Religion of Buddhism, and Liberal Secular Political Economy by Timothy Fitzgerald2. Ambivalence, Accommodation, Antipathy and Anxiety: Religion and Singapore's Secular Democratic Order by Thio Li-ann3. Political Islam and Democracy in Malaysia by Kamarulnizam Abdullah4.The Secular and the Religious: Secularization and Shariatization in Indonesia by Syafiq Hasyim5 Religious Minorities in Southeast Asia: The Ahmadiyya and Why Tolerance Matters by Amy L. Freedman6 Piety, Purity and Nationalism: The Convergence of Nation and Islam in Contemporary Indonesia by Mary E. McCoy7 Protecting the sasana through law: Radical Buddhism and religious liberty in Myanmar's democratisation process by Iselin Frydenlund8 Secularism and ethno-religious nationalist hegemony in Malaysia by Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid and Zairil Khir JohariIndexAbout the Editor and Contributors