An accessible, transregional exploration of how Islam and Asia have shaped each other's histories, societies and cultures from the seventh century to today.

By the fourteenth century the Islamic faith had spread via maritime trade routes to Southeast Asia where, over the next seven hundred years, it would have a continuing influence on political life, social customs, and the development of the arts. Sultans, Shamans, and Saints looks at Islam in Southeast Asia during four major eras: its arrival (to 1300), the first flowering of Islamic identity (1300–1800), the era of imperialism (1800–1945), and the era of independent nation-states (1945–2000). Ranging across the humanities and social sciences, this balanced and accessible work emphasizes the historical development of Southeast Asia’s accommodation of Islam and the creation of its distinctive regional character. Each chapter opens with a general background summary that places events in the greater Asian/Southeast Asian context, followed by an overview of prominent ethnic groups, political events, customs and cultures, religious factors, and art forms. Sultans, Shamans, and Saints will be of great value to students and researchers specializing in the study of Islam and the comparative study of Muslim societies and culture. It will also be useful to those with a world-systems approach to the study of history and globalization.

Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, a distinct form of Islamic thought and practice developed among Muslim trading communities of the Indian Ocean. Sebastian R. Prange argues that this 'Monsoon Islam' was shaped by merchants not sultans, forged by commercial imperatives rather than in battle, and defined by the reality of Muslims living within non-Muslim societies. Focusing on India's Malabar Coast, the much-fabled 'land of pepper', Prange provides a case study of how Monsoon Islam developed in response to concrete economic, socio-religious, and political challenges. Because communities of Muslim merchants across the Indian Ocean were part of shared commercial, scholarly, and political networks, developments on the Malabar Coast illustrate a broader, trans-oceanic history of the evolution of Islam across monsoon Asia. This history is told through four spaces that are examined in their physical manifestations as well as symbolic meanings: the Port, the Mosque, the Palace, and the Sea.

This book explores the dynamic interaction between economic life, society and civilisation in the regions around and beyond the Indian Ocean during the period from the rise of Islam to 1750. Within a distinctive theory of comparative history, Professor Chaudhuri analyses how the identity of different Asian civilisations was established. He examines the structural features of food habits, clothing, architectural styles and housing; the different modes of economic production; and the role of crop raising, pastoral nomadism, and industrial activities for the main regions of the Indian Ocean. In an original and perceptive conclusion, the author demonstrates how Indian Ocean societies were united or separated from one another by a conscious cultural and linguistic identity. However, there was a deeper structure of unities created by a common ecology, technology, technology of economic production, traditions of government, theory of political obligations and rights, and a shared historical experience. His theory enables the author to show that the real Indian Ocean was an area that extended historically from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to the sea which lies beyond Japan.

Originates from the twelfth International Workshop on Southeast Asian Studies, 'The Arabs in Southeast Asia (1870-1990)' organized by KITLV and IIAS, Leiden, 8-12 December 1997.

Acknowledgments p. vii Orthographic Note p. viii 1 Southeast Asia and the Middle East: Charting Directions Eric Tagliacozzo p. 1 I The Early Dimensions of Contact 2 Finding Java: Muslim Nomenclature of Insular Southeast Asia from Sþrvijaya to Snouck Hurgronje Michael Laffan p. 17 3 The Hajj, Islam, and Power among the Bugis in Early Colonial Riau Timothy P. Barnard p. 65 4 The Origins and Contributions of Early Arabs in Malaya Mohammad Redzuan Othman p. 83 II The Colonial Age 5 The Middle East Connection and Reform and Revival Movements among the Putihan in 19th-century Java M.C. Ricklefs p. 111 6 The Skeptic's Eye: Snouck Hurgronje and the Politics of Pilgrimage from the Indies Eric Tagliacozzo p. 135 7 Challenging Inequality in a Modern Islamic Idiom: Social Ferment amongst Arabs in Early 20th-century Java Sumit K. Mandal p. 156 8 Southeast Asian Debates and Middle Eastern Inspiration: European Dress in Minangkabau at the Beginning of the 20th Century Nico J.G. Kaptein p. 176 III The First Half of the 20th Century 9 Topics and Queries for a History of Arab Families and Inheritance in Southeast Asia: Some Preliminary Thoughts Michael Gilsenan p. 199 10 From Golden Youth in Arabia to Business Leaders in Singapore: Instructions of a Hadrami Patriarch Ulrike Freitag p. 235 11 M. Asad Shahab: A Portrait of an Indonesian Hadrami Who Bridged the Two Worlds Mona Abaza p. 250 IV Into Modernity 12 Jihad and the Specter of Transnational Islam in Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Comparative Historical Perspective John T. Sidel p. 275 13 Some Comparative Notes on Three Muslim Rebellion Movements in Southeast Asia (Burma, Thailand, and the Philippines) Moshe Yegar p. 319 14 Political Islam in Post-Soeharto Indonesia: The Contest between "Radical-Conservative Islam" and "Progressive-Liberal Islam" M. Syafi'i Anwar p. 349 Contributors p. 386 Index.

Well over half of the world's Muslim population lives in Asia. Over the centuries, a rich constellation of Muslim cultures developed there and the region is currently home to some of the most dynamic and important developments in contemporary Islam. Despite this, the internal dynamics of Muslim societies in Asia do not often receive commensurate attention in international Islamic Studies scholarship. This volume brings together the work of an interdisciplinary group of scholars discussing various aspects of the complex relationships between the Muslim communities of South and Southeast Asia. With their respective contributions covering points and patterns of interaction from the medieval to the contemporary periods, they attempt to map new trajectories for understanding the ways in which these two crucial areas have developed in relation to each other, as well as in the broader contexts of both world history and the current age of globalization.

Islamic South Asia has become a focal point in academia. Where did Muslims come from? How did they fare in interacting with Hindu cultures? How did they negotiate identity as ruling and ruled minorities and majorities? Part I covers early Muslim expansion and the formative phase in context of initial cultural encounter (app. 700-1300). Part II views the establishment of Muslim empire, cultures oscillating between Islamic and Islamicate, centralised and regionalised power (app. 1300-1700). Part III is composed in the backdrop of regional centralisation, territoriality and colonial rule, displaying processes of integration and differentiation of Muslim cultures in colonial setting (app. 1700-1930). Tensions between Muslim pluralism and singularity evolving in public sphere make up the fourth cluster (app. 1930-2002).

The first volume to explore Muslim piety as a form of economy, this book examines specific forms of production, trade, regulation, consumption, entrepreneurship and science that condition – and are themselves conditioned by – Islamic values, logics and politics. With a focus on Southeast Asia as a site of significant and diverse integration of Islam and the economy – as well as the incompatibilities that can occur between the two – it reveals the production of a Muslim piety as an economy in its own right. Interdisciplinary in nature and based on in-depth empirical studies, the book considers issues such as the Qur’anic prohibition of corruption and anti-corruption reforms; the emergence of the Islamic economy under colonialism; ‘halal’ or ‘lawful’ production, trade, regulation and consumption; modesty in Islamic fashion marketing communications; and financialisation, consumerism and housing. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and religious studies with interests in Islam and Southeast Asia.

How do Muslims relate to Islam in societies that experienced seventy years of Soviet rule? How did the utopian Bolshevik project of remaking the world by extirpating religion from it affect Central Asia? Adeeb Khalid combines insights from the study of both Islam and Soviet history to answer these questions. Arguing that the sustained Soviet assault on Islam destroyed patterns of Islamic learning and thoroughly de-Islamized public life, Khalid demonstrates that Islam became synonymous with tradition and was subordinated to powerful ethnonational identities that crystallized during the Soviet period. He shows how this legacy endures today and how, for the vast majority of the population, a return to Islam means the recovery of traditions destroyed under Communism. Islam after Communism reasons that the fear of a rampant radical Islam that dominates both Western thought and many of Central Asia’s governments should be tempered with an understanding of the politics of antiterrorism, which allows governments to justify their own authoritarian policies by casting all opposition as extremist. Placing the Central Asian experience in the broad comparative perspective of the history of modern Islam, Khalid argues against essentialist views of Islam and Muslims and provides a nuanced and well-informed discussion of the forces at work in this crucial region.