Malaysia’s 13^th general election is imminent and the opposition coalition (Pakatan Rakyat) is fragile. Inside the coalition, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and the secularist Democratic Action Party have little in common. PAS itself is split along generational lines and ideologically divided between reform-oriented pragmatists and hard-line Islamists. The youth wing of PAS is increasingly vocal in accusing the party of having abandoned key principles in the “Islamic struggle.” Based on anthropological fieldwork, Dominik Müller will review how PAS Youth members are contesting the party’s future in both political and cultural terms.

In Muslim politics in Malaysia, does increasing recourse to popular culture augur an incipient “post-Islamist” turn? Young Muslim activists in PAS are using YouTube and Facebook, commercial brands, celebrity personalities, and rock music to disseminate their call to “purify the struggle” for an Islamic state or “caliphate.” Do these “secular” media dilute if not drown out the politico-religious message? Or, given their popular appeal, do they render it all the more convincing? And with what implications for Islam and politics—in Malaysia and, analogously, elsewhere in the Muslim world?

Dominik Müller obtained his doctorate summa cum laude in 2012 from Frankfurt University, where he works as a research associate in the Department of Anthropology. His dissertation on Islam, politics, and youth in Malaysia will be published in 2013. His research project at Stanford, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), examines patterns of socio-legal change in the Malay world.

Since the resignation of Indonesia’s authoritarian president Suharto in 1998, the country has made great strides in consolidating a democratic government. But it is by no means a model of tolerance. The rights of religious minorities are routinely trampled. Regulations against blasphemy and proselytizing are routinely used to prosecute minorities including atheists, Ahmadiyah, Bahais, Christians, and Shias. As of 2012 Indonesia had over 280 religiously motivated regulations restricting minority rights. 

Hard-line groups such as the Islam Defenders Front use narrow interpretations of local and national legislation as a key tool to suppress minorities. In 2006 two ministers in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's cabinet jointly decreed stricter legal requirements for building a house of worship. The decree is enforced only on religious minorities, often when Islamists pressure local officials to refuse to authorize the construction of Christian churches or to harass those worshiping in “illegal” churches. More than 430 such churches have been closed since. Violent attacks on religious minorities have become more frequent—from 216 cases in 2010, to 244 in 2011, to 264 in 2012. What explains this record of intimidation? Can it be stopped, and if so, how?

Andreas Harsono is widely published. He co-wrote In Religion's Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia (Human Rights Watch, 2013). His commentaries appeared in 2012 in outlets ranging from The New York Times to The Myanmar Times. Other writings include My “Religion” Is Journalism (2010), a collection of his Indonesian-language essays. In 2003 he helped establish the Pantau Foundation, which trains Indonesian journalists and defends media freedom. In 1999 he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship on Journalism at Harvard. He co-founded the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Bangkok,1998), the Institute for the Study of the Free Flow of Information (Jakarta, 1995), and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (Jakarta, 1994). Earlier in his career he edited Pantau, a monthly Indonesian magazine on journalism and the media. Still earlier he worked as a reporter for The Nation (Bangkok) and The Star (Kuala Lumpur). He describes himself as a “journalist-cum-activist”—an identity richly illustrated by his career.

Related Resources

Indonesia: Religious Minorities Targets of Rising Violence (HRW, press release)

Indonesia: Rising Violence Against Religious Minorities (HRW, slideshow)

In Religion’s Name: Abuses Against Religious Minorities in Indonesia (HRW, report)

The Europe Center invites you to attend this special event with opening remarks by co-hosts Amir Eshel, Abbas Milani, and Tobias Wolff

All interested faculty and students from all fields are invited to to join us for this open discussion. Thoughts and comments are welcome from all angles of analysis and about the myriad contexts and consequences of the years of the Rushdie affair: historical and present-day religion and its intersection with politics, the poetics of Rushdie’s new book, principles of free speech, authorial ethics and responsibility, international law, extra-juridical and political protections and persecutions, and the way the conflict was brought to a close with models and challenges for post-conflict reconciliation.

Co-sponsored by the Stanford Initiative for Religious and Ethnic Understanding and Coexistence, supported by the President’s Fund, The Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Religious Studies Department, and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies

Using Legal Frameworks to Foster Social Change: A Panel Discussion with the Fall 2012 Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford

November 14, 2012 12:45pm - 2:00pm

Room 280A

The Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law and the Center on the Legal Profession invite you to a panel discussion with the three Fall 2012 Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford (SEERS), fellows who are visiting Stanford as part of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).

Mazibuko Jara, chair of South Africa's National Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Equality (NGCLE), as well as the founder and first chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which combines social mobilization and targeted litigation to protect the rights those living with HIV; Emily Arnold-Fernandez, founder of Asylum Access, an international organization dedicated to securing refugees' rights by integrating individualized legal assistance, community legal empowerment, policy advocacy, and strategic litigation; and Zainah Anwar, one of the founding members of Sisters in Islam (SIS), an NGO that works on women's rights in Islam based in Malaysia, will discuss their career paths and their experiences in using legal frameworks to effect social change.

Link for RSVP: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/law/forms/SEER.fb