Religion and Nationalism in southeast Asia

摘要

In May 2017, the establishment of a wilayat (province) by militants who pledged allegiance toISIS shook not only the Philippines and its neighbors but also the rest of the world. TheMerdeka Center, a Malaysian opinion research firm, published a study on extremism inNovember 2018. Their reports noted that support for global and regional terror groups suchas Jemaah Islamiyah was present across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippinesand thatintolerance amongMuslim respondentstoward other religious groups washigh in allcountries except Thailand 1 . Even before the establishment of the wilayat hit the headlines,Joseph Chinyong Liow, the author of “Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia,” hadexamined the relation between religion and political violence in these four countries. Thisbook was also the first major scholarly book in the 21 st century to undertake a comparativestudy of religion and nationalism in Southeast Asia after Fred von der Meden’s work with thesame title was published in 1963. Liow’s work is quite ambitious in that it tries to overcomethe excessive focus of Area Studies on parochial details. At the same time, it tries to avoid theovergeneralization we see in the flourishing terrorism research that tends to regard religiousextremism as an explanatory factor. The major contribution of this book is that, whileexplaining the complex political and social context of each case, it also materializesa comparative study.