00074918.2013.809849

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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

Encountering Islam: The Politics of Religious

Identities in Southeast Asia

Endy Bayuni

To cite this article: Endy Bayuni (2013) Encountering Islam: The Politics of Religious Identities in Southeast Asia, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 49:2, 249-250, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2013.809849

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2013.809849

Published online: 26 Jul 2013.

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Book reviews 249

Since the collapse of Indonesia’s New Order regime, in 1998, democracy has contributed to the country’s new regional outlook, in which it has resisted pres-sures from its ASEAN colleagues to undertake meapres-sures that it has deemed undemocratic. The government’s quick response to the 2004 tsunami and the

peaceful resolution of the Aceh conlict have given Indonesia an increased inter -national stature and respect. Meanwhile, democratic Indonesia’s status as one of the strongest economies in ASEAN reinforces the Asian-values argument. By pro-posing to establish a security community within the association, Indonesia has attempted a far higher level of norm-setting than have any of its peers. Under-standably, this proposal has met with considerable resistance from ASEAN’s more authoritarian members.

This book is a good starting point for those seeking an overview of ASEAN. Nevertheless, Southeast Asia, as a very dynamic region, constantly develops, and, in some cases, deteriorates, which makes the book feel dated on more current issues. The democratic transition in Myanmar in the last few years certainly sug-gests a brighter future than that presented in chapter 6, and ASEAN’s latest vision for beyond the Bali Concord II, aptly coined the Bali Concord III, is especially prominent in its absence.

In spite of these limitations, the book provides an excellent and in-depth his-tory and analysis of ASEAN from its inception until the turn of the last decade. Additional reading is recommended for an understanding of the latest issues and state of affairs in ASEAN and in Southeast Asia in general.

Ditya Agung Nurdianto ANU

Hui Yew-Foong (ed.) (2012) Encountering Islam: The Politics of Religious Identities in Southeast Asia, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, pp. x + 401. Paper: $32.90.

Culture wars are not the monopoly of the West; they also happen in modern Mus-lim societies, including Indonesia, where, as they do in the West, they pit

con-servatives against liberals. Religion – or, more speciically, Islam – animates all of

these battles, but the ideological line divides not so much Islam and secularism as it does their strict conservative and more liberal interpretations.

Encountering Islam: The Politics of Religious Identities in Southeast Asia, edited by Hui Yew-Foong, may not frame the culture-wars debate among Muslims in the region, but the book’s three chapters on Islam in Indonesia can be more eas-ily understood if read from the differing perspectives of the conservative–liberal political spectrum.

Sukarno was the liberal Muslim while Mohammad Natsir espoused a more con-servative brand of Islam, as they engaged in long-running intellectual discourses about Islam’s place in the emerging independent nation (chapter 8). Muslim con-servatives in contemporary Indonesia are pushing for a ban on Ahmadiyah, while their more liberal brothers seek to defend its rights as guaranteed by the constitution

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250 Book reviews

(chapter 9). The Fatayat represented the liberal side of the pornography-law debate; their sisters in the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Prosperous Justice Party) the conserv-ative side (chapter 10).

The key players here are all Muslims. One could hardly call the liberal Muslims secular, or, worse, describe the battle as between Muslims and seculars, or kair

(inidels). Rather, all three chapters see Muslims debating with fellow Muslims,

particularly about the relationship between Islam and the state. They illustrate the presence of different strands of Islam in Indonesia, which had already engaged in a healthy discourse on the topic before the country’s independence, in 1945. This debate suffered, however, under Sukarno’s dictatorship and, later, under Soehar-to’s policy of repressing political Islam.

Now, with more freedom and democracy, Indonesians are once again debating the issue. The violence that often accompanies some of the debates is unfortunate and should be dealt with, but it would be wrong to stop the discussions alto-gether. In a more open and free environment, these conversations would ensure that Indonesia developed and modernised in a way and at a pace that its people would be most comfortable with. The pornography-law debate shows that there

are suficient forces on the liberal and conservative sides to keep Indonesia on a

moderate path.

Endy Bayuni The Jakarta Post

Amitav Acharya (2012) The Making of Southeast Asia: International Relations of a Region, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, and Institute of

Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, pp. xviii + 350. Paper: $49.90.

This comprehensive study is an updated and expanded version of the author’s The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 2000). It adds to the original a solid overview of the international-relations policies that have shaped Southeast Asia since 1945, and an account of the devel-opments since the Asian crisis of the late 1990s. Its point of departure is that regions in general – and this region in particular – are socially constructed and that the international relations of Southeast Asia, of which the sum constitutes more than its parts, come from within instead of being imposed from the outside. Focusing primarily on regional politics, Acharya’s book also refers to eco-nomic developments such as export orientation and liberalisation, the ASEAN Free Trade Area, and bilateral free-trade agreements with states outside Southeast Asia. Useful and necessary as these observations are, they neither challenge the received wisdoms of the economic literature on the region nor raise new thoughts about the relationship between regional politics and economic performance. The book’s attempt to bridge area studies with the study of international relations is more innovative, placing ‘regionness’, or regional identity, at the core of what constitutes Southeast Asia. It demonstrates how important it is to view Indonesia,