Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia

The Contributors

thE ContrIbutorS r. mIChAEL FEEnEr’s research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of Islam in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, he was trained in Islamic Studies and foreign languages at Boston University, Cornell, and the University of Chicago, as well as in Indonesia, Egypt, and Yemen. He is concurrently Associate Professor of History at the National University of Singapore and Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute. His current research project is a study of Shari‘a implementation in contemporary Aceh. DAuD ALI lectures in early and medieval Indian History at SOAS. His areas of research have been the evolution of religious practices and ideas in classical and medieval India, the growth and spread of courtly culture, and the relationship between ethics, politics and aesthetics among Indian elites in early medieval India. He is author of Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India (2004). He has also co-authored, with Ronald Inden and Jonathan Walters, Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practice in South Asia (2000), and edited Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia (1999). SEbAStIAn r. PrAngE currently holds the President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Department of History, University of British Columbia. He obtained his doctorate from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. His research centres on the economic and social organization of Muslim trading communities on the Malabar Coast. This research is an expression of his wider interest in the formation of commercial and religious networks in the pre-modern Indian Ocean. torStEn tSChAChEr is lecturer at the Department of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures at Heidelberg University. His research focuses on the history and religiosity ofTamil-speaking Muslim communities, utilizing textual as well as anthropological approaches. His recent publications include “Tamil”, in Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, edited by Kees Versteegh, Vol. 4 (2008) and “Zwischen ‘Rasse’ und Religion: Debatten über Islam and Ethnizität unter tamilischen Muslimen in Singapur”, in ix x The Contributors Religionsinterne Kritik und religiöser Pluralismus im gegenwärtigen Südostasien, edited by Manfred Hutter (2008). ronIt rICCI received an MA in Indian Languages and Literatures from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. 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 as well as in modern Malay media. His recent publications include: “Between Iron Formalism and Playful Relativism: Five recent studies in Malay writing”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 38, no. 1 (2007): 147–63, and “Malay Cosmopolitan Activism in Post-War Singapore” (co-authored with T.P. Barnard), in Paths Not Taken: Political Pluralism in Post-War Singapore, edited by Michael D. Barr and Carl A. Trocki (2008). kEES VAn DIJk was a researcher at the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies from 1968 to 2007. He holds a chair as Professor of the history of Islam in Indonesia at Leiden University since 1985. He studied Non-Western Sociology at Leiden University, and during his study specialized in Indonesian Studies. He obtained his PhD at Leiden University in 1981 with a thesis entitled Rebellion under the banner of Islam: the Darul Islam in Indonesia (1991). Among his publications are: A Country in Despair: Indonesia between 1997 and 2000 (2001) and The Netherlands Indies and the Great War, 1914–1918 (2007). IqbAL SIngh SEVEA is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Contemporary Islam Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dr Sevea received his doctorate from the University of Oxford and a Masters in African and Asian History from the School of Oriental and African Studies. His research interests include modern Islamic thought, political Islam, and Muslim networks between South and Southeast Asia. He is currently working on a book tracing the engagement of South Asian Muslim intellectuals with trends in modern political thought. tErEnJIt SEVEA is a PhD Candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include nineteenth century South and Southeast Asian peripatetic Sufis, and Muslim South and Southeast Asian intellectual connections. His articles include “Islamist Questioning and Colonialism: Toward an Understanding...