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For countries with religiously diverse populations that have a record of tense relations with each other, the notion of a covenantal pluralism, if successfully established and entrenched as an orga...

This paper discusses the nature of local permutations of transnational Muslim networks in Thailand's southern Muslim-majority provinces and assesses their impact on creed, custom, and conflict in the region. More specifically, the paper interrogates the agenda and methods of idea and norm-propagation on the part of these agents and networks, and their evolving role, as well as the structures and conduits through which they operate and mobilize. In so doing, it finds a tremendously fluid and dynamic terrain in southern Thailand, where narratives, representations, and expressions of Islamic doctrine, legitimacy, and authority, are increasingly heavily contested within the Muslim community as a whole. In addition, the paper investigates the transnational dimensions of on-going violence in the southern provinces. Here, it argues that there is little by way of substantive evidence of any sustained penetration of the conflict in southern Thailand by external actors. No doubt, many have attempted to draw conclusions to the contrary, but their evidence and arguments, not to mention analytical methodology, are tenuous at best.

The politicisation of Islam has become a key feature of the Malaysian political terrain, and finds dominant expression in the so-called ‘Islamisation race’ between UMNO and PAS. This article analyses the religio-political dialectics and responses that defined the UMNO–PAS rivalry during the 22-year administration of Mahathir Mohamad. It focuses primarily on the contradictions and inconsistencies that have riddled strategies undertaken by UMNO to undermine PAS during this period. It suggests that UMNO's representation of PAS as parochial fundamentalists belies the fact that the struggle to define the role of Islam in contemporary Malaysia has created fissures within UMNO itself, resulting in an incoherent strategy against the Islamic opposition that serves only to intensify rather than check the process of the politicisation of Islam initiated by PAS.

Fundamentalism is a behavioural question, a psychology which cannot be fought with armadas, but only with other ideas. King Hassan II When the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail Abraham Maslow This article assesses the Malaysian government's confrontation with Islamic militancy in its domestic political sphere. It suggests that while the operational capacity of the Malaysian state and security forces has successfully and effectively crippled militant Islamic organisations on the home front, the long‐term success in the battle against Islamic militancy lies not in operational capacity but in the realm of the ideological contest, and it is here that the current focus on the intensification of state control and surveillance as the best means to counter militant Islam may well prove to be a misplaced strategy that will undermine the key objective of undercutting sympathy and support for those militant groups purporting to engage in an Islamic struggle. It further suggests t...

Few would disagree that Islam has become a major force in Malaysian politics. Be that as it may, scholarship on political Islam in Malaysia has mostly centred on detailing the umno–pas confrontation. While it is important to understand the depths of this phenomenon of politicised Islam, it is equally vital that attempts be made to relate it to broader socio-political tectonics in the complex Malaysian landscape in order to better appreciate the nature and trajectory of the politicisation of Islam in Malaysia. Focusing on pas as the institutional manifestation of politicised Islam in Malaysia, this paper advances two arguments. First, pas has been successful insofar as it has managed to relate Islam to the pressing issues of the day. Second, the best electoral performances turned in by pas have all coincided with problems with umno and the broader coalition. Islam then, appears to be less vital to the politics of pas than is widely perceived.

This chapter investigates at closer analytical quarters the phenomenon of Islamization in Malaysia and the creation of institutions of Islamic governance by the UMNO-led Malaysian government in a process that can aptly be described as the “bureaucratization” of Islam. This process is important, for it effectively put in place the levers of Islamist governance in Malaysia, eventually facilitating the “Islamic state” proclamations by some of UMNO’s senior leaders. The chapter also identifies and discusses in greater detail two prevailing contradictions that arose out of this move to bureaucratize Islam, the first between federal and state administrations, and the second between civil and religious law.

This chapter explores expressions of Muslim militancy and extremism as they have emerged in Malaysia. While small in numbers and increasingly enervated as an ideology, militant extremism is nevertheless an important expression of Islamism that has occasionally surfaced in Malaysia and influenced thinking on trends and patterns. The chapter scrutinizes the Malaysian government’s confrontation with Islamic militancy in its domestic political sphere by investigating its operational and ideological countermeasures against the backdrop of an escalating Islamist political discourse. The chapter further discusses the Islamic factor in Malaysian foreign policy as another means by which the UMNO-led government bolsters its Islamic credentials, and it looks at how PAS has developed its own foreign policy agenda for similar purposes.