R. Michael Feener
R. Michael Feener is Professor of Cross-Regional Studies at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, and an Associate Member of the History Faculty at the University of Oxford. He was formerly Research Leader of the Religion and Globalisation Research Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, Associate Professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore, and the Sultan of Oman Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. He has also taught at Reed College and the University of California, Riverside, and held visiting professor positions and research fellowships at the Universidad de Macau, Harvard, Kyoto University, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), the University of Copenhagen, The Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art (Honolulu), and the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden, the Netherlands. He has published extensively in the fields of Islamic studies and Southeast Asian history, as well as on post-disaster reconstruction, religion and development. He is currently PI and Director of the Maritime Asia Heritage Survey: https://maritimeasiaheritage.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Supervisors: Merlin Swartz (Boston University) and Robert Hefner (Boston University)
Address: Professor R. Michael Feener
Kyoto University
Center for Southeast Asian Studies
46 Yoshida shimoadachicho, Sakyo-ku
Kyoto 606-8304
JAPAN
Supervisors: Merlin Swartz (Boston University) and Robert Hefner (Boston University)
Address: Professor R. Michael Feener
Kyoto University
Center for Southeast Asian Studies
46 Yoshida shimoadachicho, Sakyo-ku
Kyoto 606-8304
JAPAN
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Monographs by R. Michael Feener
Based upon extensive fieldwork as well as critical readings of a wide range of archival materials, official documents, and local publications this work focuses on the institutions and actors involved with this contemporary project for the state implementation of Islamic law. The individual chapters are structured to deal with the major components of this system to critically examine how these institutions have taken shape and how they work. It also shows how the overall system was informed not only by aspects of late twentieth-century da'wa discourses of Islamic reform, but also modern trends in sociological jurisprudence and the impact of global models of disaster relief, reconstruction, and development. All of these streams of influence have contributed significantly to shaping the ways in which the architects and agents of the state shari'a system have attempted to use Islamic legislation and legal institutions as tools to steer society in particular desired directions.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
Based upon extensive fieldwork as well as critical readings of a wide range of archival materials, official documents, and local publications this work focuses on the institutions and actors involved with this contemporary project for the state implementation of Islamic law. The individual chapters are structured to deal with the major components of this system to critically examine how these institutions have taken shape and how they work. It also shows how the overall system was informed not only by aspects of late twentieth-century da'wa discourses of Islamic reform, but also modern trends in sociological jurisprudence and the impact of global models of disaster relief, reconstruction, and development. All of these streams of influence have contributed significantly to shaping the ways in which the architects and agents of the state shari'a system have attempted to use Islamic legislation and legal institutions as tools to steer society in particular desired directions.
Books by R. Michael Feener
Featuring new historical and ethnographic research on China and Southeast Asia, this book explores how power and violence have shaped the experiences of Sufis and state-builders, as well as refugees and rebels, contributing to more nuanced understandings of Islamic cosmopolitanism. For more on this volume at the Edinburgh University Press blog, see https://euppublishingblog.com/2018/10/04/challenging-cosmopolitanism/.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Contents
Contributors
Chapter 1 - Hijra, Ḥajj, and Muslim Mobilities: Considering Coercion and Asymmetrical Power Dynamics in Histories of Islamic Cosmopolitanism
R. Michael Feener & Joshua Gedacht
Chapter 2 - Islamicate Cosmopolitanism from North Africa to Southeast Asia
Bruce B. Lawrence
Chapter 3 - Sufi Cosmopolitanism in the Seventeenth-Century Indian Ocean: Shariʿa, Lineage, and Royal Power in Southeast Asia and the Maldives
Andrew Peacock
Chapter 4 - Shrines, Sufis, and Warlords in Early Modern Java
Simon Carlos Kemper
Chapter 5 - Variations of ‘Islamic Military Cosmopolitanism’: The Survival Strategies of Hui Muslims during the Modern Period
Tatsuya Nakanishi
Chapter 6 - Writing Cosmopolitan History in Nineteenth-Century China: Li Huanyi’s Words and Deeds of Islamic Exemplars
Jessica Chen
Chapter 7 - The ‘Shaykh al-Islām’ of the Philippines’ and Coercive Cosmopolitanism in an Age of Global Empire
Joshua Gedacht
Chapter 8 - Bordering Malaya’s ‘Benighted Lands’: Frontiers of Race and Colonialism on the Malay Peninsula, 1887-1902
Amrita Malhi
Chapter 9 - Afghanistan’s Cosmopolitan Trading Networks: A View From Yiwu, China
Magnus Marsden & Diana Ibañez-Tirado
Index
Longitudinal studies from more than two decades of major disasters allow the reader to see how accumulated experiences of reconstruction influence the shape of projects responding to subsequent events
Draws on contributions from academics and humanitarian practitioners with years of on-the-ground experience
Discusses new forms of humanitarianism and their intersection with development projects emerging in contemporary Asia
Provides long-term analyses of post-disaster transformations, including the consequences of massive physical rebuilding, social restructuring and economic development
Contributors are: Dina Afrianty, R. Michael Feener, Kristina Groβmann, Reza Idria, David Kloos, Antje Missbach, Benjamin Otto, Jan-Michiel Otto, Annemarie Samuels and Eka Srimulyani.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Historical Foundations
1. Debating ‘Shiʿism’ in the History of Muslim Southeast Asia — R. Michael Feener & Chiara Formichi
2. Shiʿa Devotion to the Ahl al-Bayt in Historical Perspective — Bianca Maria Scarcia Amoretti
3. Shiʿism 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 ʿAli in Javanese Literature — Ronit Ricci
5. Fāṭima in Nusantara — Wendy Mukherjee
6. Penghulu Segala Perempuan: Fāṭima in Malay Didactic Texts for Women — Mulaika Hijjas
7. ʿAlid 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 ʿAlid 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 Bā ʿAlawī in Modern Indonesia — Ismail Fajrie Alatas
10. Locating the Descendants of ʿAli in Southwest Aceh: The Places of ʿAlid Piety in Late 20th-century Seunagan — Daniel Andrew Birchok
11. ʿAlid Piety and State-sponsored Spectacle: Tabot Tradition in Bengkulu, Sumatra — R. Michael Feener
12. Burlesquing Muḥarram Processions into Carnivalesque Boria — Jan van der Putten
13. A Taʿziya from 21st-century Malaysia: Faisal Tehrani’s Passion Play Karbalāʾ — E. P. Wieringa
Part 4: Contemporary Developments
14. Aspects of Shiʿism 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
Highlights
Of use to the general reader seeking a broad introduction to modern Islam
More than just an examination of a set of religious beliefs, this work emphasizes the social dynamics of both majority and minority Islamic cultures
A glossary of key terms, with emphasis on comparative usage and how common terms differ in definition from place to place
Unfortunately the sources for this story are scattered, since Aceh’s own records have not well survived the ravages of climate, civil war and eventual foreign conquest. To recover its cosmopolitan history an unparalleled range of sources and skills had to be brought together. Aceh’s central role in the creation of Malay literature out of Arabic, Persian, Indian and Indonesian elements had to be explored with reference to texts surviving in a dozen world libraries (Teuku Iskandar, Amirul Hadi). The rich archeological record, neglected through the long years of conflict, had again to be brought into play (Daniel Perret), and the extensive relations of the Aceh sultanate with the Ottoman Empire (Ismail Göksoy and Ismail Kadı, Andrew Peacock & Annabel Gallop), Portugal (Jorge Alves), England (Annabel Gallop), and the Netherlands (Sher Banu and Jean Taylor) had to be explored, chiefly in European archives by experts in these respective fields. The result of this combined work in this volume is the most comprehensive picture so far of sources for the history of Aceh.
Based upon extensive fieldwork as well as critical readings of a wide range of archival materials, official documents, and local publications this work focuses on the institutions and actors involved with this contemporary project for the state implementation of Islamic law. The individual chapters are structured to deal with the major components of this system to critically examine how these institutions have taken shape and how they work. It also shows how the overall system was informed not only by aspects of late twentieth-century da'wa discourses of Islamic reform, but also modern trends in sociological jurisprudence and the impact of global models of disaster relief, reconstruction, and development. All of these streams of influence have contributed significantly to shaping the ways in which the architects and agents of the state shari'a system have attempted to use Islamic legislation and legal institutions as tools to steer society in particular desired directions.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
Based upon extensive fieldwork as well as critical readings of a wide range of archival materials, official documents, and local publications this work focuses on the institutions and actors involved with this contemporary project for the state implementation of Islamic law. The individual chapters are structured to deal with the major components of this system to critically examine how these institutions have taken shape and how they work. It also shows how the overall system was informed not only by aspects of late twentieth-century da'wa discourses of Islamic reform, but also modern trends in sociological jurisprudence and the impact of global models of disaster relief, reconstruction, and development. All of these streams of influence have contributed significantly to shaping the ways in which the architects and agents of the state shari'a system have attempted to use Islamic legislation and legal institutions as tools to steer society in particular desired directions.
Featuring new historical and ethnographic research on China and Southeast Asia, this book explores how power and violence have shaped the experiences of Sufis and state-builders, as well as refugees and rebels, contributing to more nuanced understandings of Islamic cosmopolitanism. For more on this volume at the Edinburgh University Press blog, see https://euppublishingblog.com/2018/10/04/challenging-cosmopolitanism/.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Contents
Contributors
Chapter 1 - Hijra, Ḥajj, and Muslim Mobilities: Considering Coercion and Asymmetrical Power Dynamics in Histories of Islamic Cosmopolitanism
R. Michael Feener & Joshua Gedacht
Chapter 2 - Islamicate Cosmopolitanism from North Africa to Southeast Asia
Bruce B. Lawrence
Chapter 3 - Sufi Cosmopolitanism in the Seventeenth-Century Indian Ocean: Shariʿa, Lineage, and Royal Power in Southeast Asia and the Maldives
Andrew Peacock
Chapter 4 - Shrines, Sufis, and Warlords in Early Modern Java
Simon Carlos Kemper
Chapter 5 - Variations of ‘Islamic Military Cosmopolitanism’: The Survival Strategies of Hui Muslims during the Modern Period
Tatsuya Nakanishi
Chapter 6 - Writing Cosmopolitan History in Nineteenth-Century China: Li Huanyi’s Words and Deeds of Islamic Exemplars
Jessica Chen
Chapter 7 - The ‘Shaykh al-Islām’ of the Philippines’ and Coercive Cosmopolitanism in an Age of Global Empire
Joshua Gedacht
Chapter 8 - Bordering Malaya’s ‘Benighted Lands’: Frontiers of Race and Colonialism on the Malay Peninsula, 1887-1902
Amrita Malhi
Chapter 9 - Afghanistan’s Cosmopolitan Trading Networks: A View From Yiwu, China
Magnus Marsden & Diana Ibañez-Tirado
Index
Longitudinal studies from more than two decades of major disasters allow the reader to see how accumulated experiences of reconstruction influence the shape of projects responding to subsequent events
Draws on contributions from academics and humanitarian practitioners with years of on-the-ground experience
Discusses new forms of humanitarianism and their intersection with development projects emerging in contemporary Asia
Provides long-term analyses of post-disaster transformations, including the consequences of massive physical rebuilding, social restructuring and economic development
Contributors are: Dina Afrianty, R. Michael Feener, Kristina Groβmann, Reza Idria, David Kloos, Antje Missbach, Benjamin Otto, Jan-Michiel Otto, Annemarie Samuels and Eka Srimulyani.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Historical Foundations
1. Debating ‘Shiʿism’ in the History of Muslim Southeast Asia — R. Michael Feener & Chiara Formichi
2. Shiʿa Devotion to the Ahl al-Bayt in Historical Perspective — Bianca Maria Scarcia Amoretti
3. Shiʿism 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 ʿAli in Javanese Literature — Ronit Ricci
5. Fāṭima in Nusantara — Wendy Mukherjee
6. Penghulu Segala Perempuan: Fāṭima in Malay Didactic Texts for Women — Mulaika Hijjas
7. ʿAlid 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 ʿAlid 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 Bā ʿAlawī in Modern Indonesia — Ismail Fajrie Alatas
10. Locating the Descendants of ʿAli in Southwest Aceh: The Places of ʿAlid Piety in Late 20th-century Seunagan — Daniel Andrew Birchok
11. ʿAlid Piety and State-sponsored Spectacle: Tabot Tradition in Bengkulu, Sumatra — R. Michael Feener
12. Burlesquing Muḥarram Processions into Carnivalesque Boria — Jan van der Putten
13. A Taʿziya from 21st-century Malaysia: Faisal Tehrani’s Passion Play Karbalāʾ — E. P. Wieringa
Part 4: Contemporary Developments
14. Aspects of Shiʿism 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
Highlights
Of use to the general reader seeking a broad introduction to modern Islam
More than just an examination of a set of religious beliefs, this work emphasizes the social dynamics of both majority and minority Islamic cultures
A glossary of key terms, with emphasis on comparative usage and how common terms differ in definition from place to place
Unfortunately the sources for this story are scattered, since Aceh’s own records have not well survived the ravages of climate, civil war and eventual foreign conquest. To recover its cosmopolitan history an unparalleled range of sources and skills had to be brought together. Aceh’s central role in the creation of Malay literature out of Arabic, Persian, Indian and Indonesian elements had to be explored with reference to texts surviving in a dozen world libraries (Teuku Iskandar, Amirul Hadi). The rich archeological record, neglected through the long years of conflict, had again to be brought into play (Daniel Perret), and the extensive relations of the Aceh sultanate with the Ottoman Empire (Ismail Göksoy and Ismail Kadı, Andrew Peacock & Annabel Gallop), Portugal (Jorge Alves), England (Annabel Gallop), and the Netherlands (Sher Banu and Jean Taylor) had to be explored, chiefly in European archives by experts in these respective fields. The result of this combined work in this volume is the most comprehensive picture so far of sources for the history of Aceh.
This article was written as part of a broader research project on Religion and NGOs in Asia. We are grateful to the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion in International Affairs at the Henry Luce Foundation for their generous support of this research. We would also like to thank Philip Fountain and other members of the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute for stimulating conversations that have informed our thinking in this article, and the anonymous reviewers for PIDS who have helped us to improve on earlier drafts.
tsunami | Sumatra | Aceh | postdisaster recovery | hazards
The Islamization of these societies, and their inclusion into an expanding constellation of Muslim societies in the medieval and early modern periods, was facilitated by intensifications of activity along the maritime trading routes linking Southeast Asia to ports on the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Swahili Coasts with those of India and China over the medieval and early modern periods. Over the course of this history, the expansion of Islam in the region was not dominantly directed from any single source but rather the result of diverse, interlaced strands of commercial and cultural circulations that connected the region to multiple points in an expanding Muslim world—adopting local traditions to produce diverse and dynamic vernacular forms of Islamic cultural expression.
“Navigating a world of religious NGOs:
Ethnography, abstraction, and views of the horizon,”
Geography Compass 11(10) · October 2017;11:e12328
Since the turn of the twenty-first century, there has been a prodigious production of typological studies seeking to “map” religious NGOs. In this paper, our intention is not to construct yet another new map of religious NGOs, or even to map these earlier mappings. Rather we would like to open up here some new conversations about the ways in which we might better understand, appreciate, and build upon work that has been done to date on NGOs at the intersection of religion and development. In doing this, we explore some alternative technologies for the navigation of this brave new world.
Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12328
Questions explored in these papers address the extent to which the involvement of religious individuals and institutions in development leads different levels of state authority to reconsider their own responsibilities for social welfare and their governance of religious organizations. The contributions to the discussions collected here also examine factors affecting the involvement of diverse institutions in social service provision and inform particular ways of conceptualizing what it means to be needy, and who are worthy recipients of aid? The complexities of this can be seen, for example, in the ways in which particular programs either accept, negotiate or contradict the state discourses of social welfare, popular religious understandings of charity and merit accumulation, and/or ‘global’ discourses on poverty, inequality, and development. Through engaging these issues, the discussions of contemporary case studies presented in this volume critically explore the changing faces of religious giving in China, and the broader social, religious, institutional, and political implications of these ongoing transformations.
The book’s approach is to scrutinize one major dimension of the history of religion in Southern Asia: religious orders. “Orders” (here referring to Sufi ṭarīqas and Buddhist monastic and other ritual lineages) established means by which far-flung local communities could come to be recognized and engaged as part of a broader world of co-religionists, while presenting their particular religious traditions and their human representatives as attractive and authoritative to potential new communities of devotees. Contributors to the volume direct their attention toward analogous developments mutually illuminating for both fields of study. Some explain how certain orders took shape in Southern Asia over the course of the nineteenth century, contextualizing these institutional developments in relation to local and transregional political formations, shifting literary and ritual preferences, and trade connections. Others show how the circulation of people, ideas, texts, objects, and practices across Southern Asia, a region in which both Buddhism and Islam have a long and substantial presence, brought diverse currents of internal reform and notions of ritual and lineage purity to the region. All chapters draw readers’ attention to the fact that networked persons were not always strongly institutionalized and often moved through Southern Asia and developed local bases without the oversight of complex corporate organizations.
Buddhist and Islamic Orders in Southern Asia brings cutting-edge research to bear on conversations about how “orders” have functioned within these two traditions to expand and sustain transregional religious networks. It will help to develop a better understanding of the complex roles played by religious networks in the history of Southern Asia.
Featuring new historical and ethnographic research on China and Southeast Asia, this book explores how power and violence have shaped the experiences of Sufis and state-builders, as well as refugees and rebels, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of Islamic cosmopolitanism.
Table of Contents:
1 Hijra, Hajj and Muslim Mobilities: Considering Coercion
and Asymmetrical Power Dynamics in Histories of Islamic
Cosmopolitanism
R. Michael Feener and Joshua Gedacht
2 Islamicate Cosmopolitanism from North Africa to Southeast Asia 30
Bruce B. Lawrence
3 Sufi Cosmopolitanism in the Seventeenth-century Indian Ocean:
Sharia, Lineage and Royal Power in Southeast Asia and the
Maldives
A. C. S. Peacock
4 The White Heron Called by the Muezzin: Shrines, Sufis and
Warlords in Early Modern Java
Simon C. Kemper
5 Variations of 'Islamic Military Cosmopolitanism': The Survival
Strategies of Hui Muslims during the Modern Period
Tatsuya Nakanishi
6 Writing Cosmopolitan History in Nineteenth-century China: Li
Huanyi's Words and Deeds of Islamic Exemplars
J. Lilu Chen
7 The 'Shaykh al-Islam of the Philippines' and Coercive
Cosmopolitanism in an Age of Global Empire
Joshua Gedacht
8 Bordering Malaya's 'Benighted Lands': Frontiers of Race and
Colonialism on the Malay Peninsula, 1887-1902
Amrita Malhi
9 Afghanistan's Cosmopolitan Trading Networks: A View From
Yiwu, China
Magnus Marsden and Diana Ibanez-Tirado