Race, Religion, and Nation

DEMANDS FOR SOCIOPOLITICAL REFORMS—GOOD GOVERNANCE, fair elections, equality before the law, inclusive nation building, and religious freedom—have increased in Malaysia since the late 1990s.

The sacking of charismatic deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim in 1998, the Asian economic crisis, and the reverberating effects of the Reformation Movement in neighboring Indonesia all contributed to the emerging intensity of calls for reform. These demands, emanating from political parties and civil society organizations, have increasingly challenged the hegemony of the electoral authoritarian government. This growing reform movement developed in the midst of several decades of Islamic resurgence that precipitated a stronger presence of Islam in the public and cultural spheres.¹ The ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO)–led National Front coalition and the Anwar Ibrahim–led opposition coalition staged two highly competitive national elections in 2008 and 2013.² However, it is not the opposing coalition-based formations but, rather, the crosscutting commitments to civil liberties, minority rights, and Malay and Muslim preeminence that are most significant for understanding sociopolitical dynamics in Malaysian society (cf. Weiss 2006). That is, the constituent minority parties in both coalitions share an interest in civil liberties and equal rights, while UMNO and PAS (Parti Islam SeMalaysia; Islamic Party of Malaysia), members of opposing electoral coalitions, coalesce around Malay and/or Muslim hegemony. The cultural politics are more fundamental and not easily contained within electoral politics. A new political anthropology is well equipped to deal with cultural politics and transformations in power relations (Ozyürek 2006, 22). Sharia dynamics in Malaysia are evident in the diverse ways in which political parties and nongovernmental organizations have engaged with the Islamic discursive tradition and created multiple mixtures of sharia conceptions with other ideas and practices.

More on the topic Race, Religion, and Nation:

1. PART I RACE, RELIGION AND NATIONALISM
2. Order, Religion, and Nation
3. Secularism, Nation-State, Religion
4. Getting history wrong is an essential factor in the formation of a nation,' wrote Ernest Renan, basing this observation on his analysis of the nation-building experience in nineteenth-century Europe.1
5. PART I EMPIRE, RACE AND ETHNICITY
6. Race and Violence in Portuguese America
7. Physical and Symbolic Violence, or Slavery and Race
8. Violence, Slavery and Race in Early English and French America
9. Live fast and die young, or slow and steady wins the race?
10. If you ask a Maori in, for example, a settlement such as Ruatoria where Maoris constitute a majority of the population, what he understands by religion, expect him to scratch his head in thought, before at length replying ‘Whose religion?’
11. As far back as we can trace it, Roman religion was multi-cultural. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that in terms of religion and other cultural components early Rome was influenced by Etruscans, Greeks and even Carthaginians.
12. There are two main questions to address before attempting to write an account of Italic religion: how do we define “Italic religion”, and is there sufficient evidence to discuss it?
13. Peace and Peacemaking Despite Nation-States