Shi'ism In South East Asia: Alid Piety and Sectarian Constructions

by Chiara Formichi (Editor), Michael Feener (Editor)

Overview

This is the first work available in any language to extensively document and critically discuss traditions of 'Alid piety and their modern contestations in the region. The concept of 'Alid piety allows for a reframing of our views on the widespread reverence for 'Ali, Fatima and their progeny that emphasizes how such sentiments and associated practices are seen as part of broad traditions shared by many Muslims, which might or might not have their origins in a specifically Shi'a identity. In doing so, it facilitates the movement of academic discussions out from under the shadow of polemical sectarian discourses on 'Shi'ism' in Southeast Asia. The chapters include presentations of new material from previously unpublished early manuscript sources from Muslim vernacular literatures in the Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Acehnese and Bugis languages, as well as rich new ethnography from across the region. These studies engage with cultural, intellectual, and performative traditions, as well as the ways in which 'Alid piety has been transformed in relation to more strictly sectarian identifications since the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190613433
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/11/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Chiara Formichi is Assistant Professor in Southeast Asian Humanities at Cornell University. Her work centres on political Islam and nationalism, secularism as a marker of modernity, and issues of sectarianism, orthodoxy and pluralism. She is the author of Islam and the Making of the Nation: Kartosuwiryo and Political Islam in 20th century Indonesia (2012), and edited Religious Pluralism, State and Society in Asia (2013).
Michael Feener is Research Leader of the Religion and Globalization cluster at the Asia Research Institute, and Associate Professor of History at the National University of Singapore. His books include: Shari'a and Social Engineering: The Implementation of Islamic Law in Aceh, Indonesia (2013), and Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia (2007).

Table of Contents

Part 1: Historical Foundations 1. Debating 'Shi?ism' in the History of Muslim Southeast Asia R. Michael Feener&Chiara Formichi 2. Shi?a Devotion to the Ahl al-Bayt in Historical Perspective Bianca Maria Scarcia Amoretti 3. Shi?ism in Thailand: From the Ayutthaya Period to the Present Christoph Marcinkowski Part 2: Literary Legacies 4. Soldier and Son-in-law, Spreader of the Faith and Scribe: Representations of ?Ali in Javanese Literature Ronit Ricci 5. Fa?ima in Nusantara Wendy Mukherjee 6. Penghulu Segala Perempuan: Fa?ima in Malay Didactic Texts for Women Mulaika Hijjas 7. ?Alid Piety in Bugis Texts on Proper Sexual Arts Faried F. Saenong 8. Sex to the Next World: Holy Descent and Restorative Sex for the Mualad Teren Sevea Part 3: Modalities of ?Alid Piety and Cultural Expressions in the Modern Period 9. 'They are the Heirs of the Prophet': Discourses on the Ahl al-Bayt and Religious Authority among the Ba ?Alawi in Modern Indonesia Ismail Fajrie Alatas 10. Locating the Descendants of ?Ali in Southwest Aceh: The Places of ?Alid Piety in Late 20th-century Seunagan Daniel Andrew Birchok 11. ?Alid Piety and State-sponsored Spectacle: Tabot Tradition in Bengkulu, Sumatra R. Michael Feener 12. Burlesquing Mu?arram Processions into Carnivalesque Boria Jan van der Putten 13. A Ta?ziya from 21st-century Malaysia: Faisal Tehrani's Passion Play Karbala? E. P. Wieringa Part 4: Contemporary Developments 14. Aspects of Shi?ism in Contemporary Indonesia: A Quest for Social Recognition in the Post-Suharto Era (1998-2008) Umar Faruk Assegaf 15. One Big Family? Dynamics of Interaction among the 'Lovers of the Ahl al Bayt' in Modern Java Chiara Formichi R. Michael Feener is Research Leader of the Religion and Globalization cluster at the Asia Research Institute, and Associate Professor of History at the National University of Singapore. His books include: Shar??a and Social Engineering: The Implementation of Islamic Law in Aceh, Indonesia (2013), Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia (2007), From the Ground Up: Perspectives on Post-Tsunami and Post-Conflict Aceh (with Patrick Daly&Anthony Reid, 2012), Mapping the Acehnese Past (with Patrick Daly&Anthony Reid, 2011), Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia (with Terenjit Sevea, 2009), Islamic Law in Contemporary Indonesia: Ideas and Institutions (with Mark Cammack, 2007), Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives (2004). Chiara Formichi is Assistant Professor in Southeast Asian Humanities (Islam) at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the relationship between Islam and the state, and the impact of this relationship on Asia's diverse societies; her publications have approached the theme from three border-crossing perspectives: political Islam as a nationalist ideology, secularism as a marker of socio-political modernity, and issues of sectarianism, orthodoxy and religious pluralism. Her publications include the monograph Islam and the making of the nation: Kartosuwiryo and political Islam in 20th century Indonesia (2012, KITLV), the edited volume Religious Pluralism, State and Society in Asia (2013, Routledge), and a number of book chapters and journal articles (Indonesia Journal, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Die Welt des Islams). Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti is Professor of Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Humanities at University of Rome 'La Sapienza'. Her research spans from Medieval studies to contemporary phenomena, but she has mostly written about minorities in the Islamicate world focusing on women and Shi?ism. Recent publications on this topic are 'La devozione nei confronti di figure femminili nel medioevo islamico sciita. Qualche osservazione sul caso di Fatima bint Musa', in A. Mazzon, ed., Scritti per Isa. Raccolta di studi offerti a Isa Lori Sanfilippo (Rome, 2008) and 'How to Place Women in History: Some Remarks on the Recent Shiite Interest in Women's Shrines', Oriente Moderno, 89 (2009). Christoph Marcinkowski is Principal Research Fellow and Co-Chair (Publications) at the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS), a Kuala Lumpur-based think tank. His work focuses on Islamic and Security Studies. He has published ten books, among them Religion and Politics in Iraq (2004), The Islamic World and the West (2009) and Shi?ite Identities (2010), as well as about 100 articles and book chapters. Currently, he is working on Malaysia and the European Union and two more volumes on Shi?ite organisations in Germany and the European Union, respectively. Ronit Ricci is lecturer at the Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University. She received a BA in psychology and Indian Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and MA degrees in clinical child psychology and Indian Studies from the same university. Her Ph.D in Comparative Literature was completed at the University of Michigan in 2006. Her research interests include Javanese and Tamil literary cultures, translation studies, book history and Islam in South and Southeast Asia. She recently completed a book manuscript titled Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia. Wendy Mukherjee is a Visiting Fellow at The Australian National University. She obtained her Ph.D from the Australian National University with a thesis on the early modern novel in Sundanese, West Java. Her publications include Modern Sundanese Poetry (Jakarta, 2001), and 'The Love Magic of Khadijah Terong of Penyengat', Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 31, (1997), an article on pre-modern constructions of the Muslim feminine in Indonesia. Mulaika Hijjas is from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and obtained her first degree from Harvard University. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University where she gained an M.Phil in classical and medieval Islamic history. Her Ph.D from the School of Oriental and African Studies was on Malay narrative poetry from the court of Penyengat, in what is now Indonesia. She was recently awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship intended for early career academics to gain experience of teaching and research. Her publications have appeared in Tenggara and Indonesia and the Malay World, and are forthcoming in South East Asia Research and the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. Faried F. Saenong graduated from the State Islamic University (UIN) Jakarta (BA, 1999), and obtained two MAs from the University of Leiden in 2005, and the University of Manchester in 2006, respectively. The current subject of his research as Ph.D candidate in the Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, at the Australian National University, is Islam in Eastern Indonesia with a regional focus on South Sulawesi. His interest covers Islamic studies, Qur'an and ?ad?th studies, Southeast Asian Islam and Indonesian studies. Teren Sevea is an Assistant Professor at the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses upon the history of religion and Islam in modern South and Southeast Asia, and Islamic connections in the early modern and modern Indian Ocean. He is also the co-editor of a volume entitled Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia Ismail Fajrie Alatas is a student at the Joint Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his BA (Hons) in History from the University of Melbourne, Australia and his MA also in History from the National University of Singapore. His research focuses on Hadhrami sayyids in post-colonial Indonesia especially their Sufi brotherhood, the ?ar?qa ?Alawiyya. He is also interested in historiography, time and multiple temporalities, as well as the construction of space. Daniel Andrew Birchok is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio. He is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively entitled The Pasts of Islam: Rethinking Islamic Locality in an Indonesian Province, based on over two years of archival and ethnographic research in Aceh, Indonesia. Jan van der Putten is Associate Professor at the Department of Malay Studies of the National University of Singapore, where he teaches Malay Literature. His research interests lie in traditional Malay writing, especially writings that originate from Riau. He also researches popular forms of expression in Malay, such as magazines, comics and films. His recent publications include (co-edited with Mary Kilcline Cody) Lost Times and Untold Tales from the Malay World (Singapore, 2009), and 'Negotiating the Great Depression: The Rise of Popular Culture and Consumerism in Early-1930s Malaya', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 41 (2010). Edwin Wieringa is Professor of Indonesian Philology and Islamic Studies and Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Cologne. Amongst his most recent publications is a volume edited with Arndt Graf and Susanne Schröter, Aceh: Culture, History, Politics (Singapore, 2010); essays published include 'Some Complexities of the Malay Circumfixed ke-EL-an form kematian', in Jelani Harun and Ben Murtagh, ed., Crossing the Sea of Malay Literature: A Collection of Essays in Honour of Professor V.I. Braginsky (Kuala Lumpur, 2010), 'Michaela Mihriban Özelsel's Pilgrimage to Mecca: A Journey to her Inner Self' in James Hodkinson and Jeffrey Morrison, ed., Encounters with Islam in German Literature and Culture (New York, 2009), and 'Some Javanese Characteristics of a Qur'an Manuscript from Surakarta' in Stefanie Brinkmann and Beate Wiesmüller, ed., From Codicology to Technology: Islamic Manuscripts and their Place in Scholarship (Berlin, 2009). Umar Faruk Assegaf is currently a graduate student in the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University (ANU). Under supervision of Professor James Fox and Dr. Greg Fealy, he is conducting research on the progress of Shi?ism in Indonesia. He is a journalist of the National News Agency of ANTARA since 1987, and he was posted as a correspondent in the Middle East to cover the aftermath of the Iraq-Iran war. There, he became acquainted with a number of Indonesian students who have since returned to become Shi?i preachers in Indonesia.

Editorial Reviews

"A study of Shi'ism in Southeast Asia has been a long time coming The organization is logical, by subject area, the essays are well structured and well written, and the overall text is well edited. The contributors represent a truly international scope, with scholars from Australia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States."—Howard M. Federspiel, Pacific Affairs

"In sum, this volume represents major advances in the field and should be of vital interest to both scholars of Southeast Asian Islam as well as of Shi'ism in general."—American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

"This path-breaking work makes an important contribution to understanding the complexities of religion in a part of the Muslim world that is still only peripherally studied. Highlighting the intensive and extensive contacts between the Lands below the Winds and the so-called Islamic heartlands in the Middle East, this volume will advance both these fields of academic inquiry. The editors have ensured a comprehensive coverage and a welcome counternarrative to writings in Southeast Asian languages on Shi'ism which have become ideologically polarised. Against the background of growing sectarian tensions in the wider Muslim world, this book is also timely and will help map the intricacies of the relationship between Southeast Asia's Sunni and Shi'i Muslims in the past and the present." — - Carool Kersten, Senior Lecturer in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World at King's College London and author of Islam in Indonesia: The Contest for Society, Ideas and Values

From the Publisher