Alternative Voices in Muslim Southeast Asia: Discourse and Struggles ed. by Norshahril Saat and Azhar Ibrahim (review)

A major pitfall which many editors of volumes on Islam in Southeast Asia have failed to avoid is the recurring problem of essentialisation. Tapping on their own research expertise and bias, both local and foreign scholars have produced admirable works that capture specific segments and chunks within the whole array of topics that could be categorised under the cluster of Islam and Muslims in Southeast Asia. With Southeast Asia becoming ever more diverse in the light of globalisation and the region becoming increasingly integrated with the world economy via such projects as China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), one could not be faulted for expecting a smorgasbord of offerings depicting the vast expanse of Muslim cosmopolitanism in Southeast Asia. Bearing such an eye-catching title which begins with the word 'Alternative,' thus conveying the impression of bringing out hitherto neglected narratives and analyses of subaltern Muslim communities and figures of Southeast Asia, Norshahril Saat and Azhar Ibrahim's edited volume looks enticingly promising on first impression. One could imagine the appeal such a volume would have if it had explored such terra incognita as Muslims of Indochina and Timor Leste, resurgent sufi congregations in Southern Thailand of the types investigated by Chiengmai-based Christopher Joll, and Malaysia's and Indonesia's Chinese Muslims of the sort studied by Hew Wai Weng of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). Such adventurous detour allows us to debunk politically driven stereotypes, for example by disentangling us from the typical Malay aka pribumi-Chinese conflict paradigm of both Malaysia's and Indonesia's ethno-religious politics.

Alas, the geographical essentialisation of Muslim Southeast Asia to only Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore is disappointing to say the least, but is then probably not altogether unexpected, coming from a group of scholars who share past and present affinity if not professional affiliation with the Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore. Treated as practically synonymous with the Malay world, not only is the volume's conception of a Muslim Southeast Asia bereft of any examples from the 'unMalay' world, but Alternative Voices in Muslim Southeast Asia also marginalises voices whose discursive location are found beyond the cognitive domain of 'progressive Islam'—the overarching theme that occupies Norshahril Saat and Azhar Ibrahim in this book and which they take for granted as the proxy for whatever is worthy of the label 'alternative voice' among Southeast Asian Muslims. The strand of thought calling itself 'progressive Islam,' while appearing in many aspects to be a post-colonial phenomenon as much as it is a reaction against the dominance of conservative stripes of Islam following the religious resurgence that enveloped Muslim Southeast Asia in the 1970s–80s, shares ancestral linkages with the Kaum Muda (Young Faction) movement of early twentieth century, as chronicled by Azhar Ibrahim in Chapter Four. However, if Kaum Muda's ideological rival was the then Kaum Tua (Old Faction), latter-day progressive Muslims have had to contend not only with the traditionalist ulama (religious scholars) who customarily control the Islamic officialdom of Muslim-majority countries, but they have also had to compete with thinkers from the ultra-conservative Wahhabi-Salafi school ascendant in contemporary Southeast Asia, even lately penetrating Islamic religious bureaucracies in Malaysia. Both conservative trends, namely the traditionalist school and the increasingly influential Wahhabi-Salafi puritanical strand, despite their separate intellectual genealogies,¹ are wont to label progressive Muslims as purveyors of 'liberal Islam,' which within mainstream Southeast Asian Islam carries negative connotations implying deviation from the righteous path. These liberal-conservative tensions are brought out in Noor Aisha Abdul Rahman's Chapter 5 on Singapore and Norshahril Saat's Chapter 8 on Malaysia. Further, progressive Muslims are likened to the Mu'tazilites, the rationalist school once dominant in the early ninth century who, because of their fascination with Greek philosophy, prioritised usage of the reason...