Islamic Narrative and Authority in Southeast Asia

Islamic Narrative and Authority in Southeast Asia
From the 16th to the 21st Century
Gibson, Thomas
Hardcover
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BOOK SUMMARY
The roots of contemporary Islamic militancy in Southeast Asia lie in the sixteenth century, when Christian Europeans first tried to dominate Indian Ocean trade. Through a detailed analysis of sacred scriptures, epic narratives and oral histories from the

BOOK SYNOPSIS
The roots of contemporary Islamic militancy in Southeast Asia lie in the sixteenth century, when Christian Europeans first tried to dominate Indian Ocean trade. Through a detailed analysis of sacred scriptures, epic narratives and oral histories from the region, this book shows how Southeast Asian Muslims combined cosmopolitan Islamic models of knowledge and authority with local Austronesian models of divine kingship to first resist and then to appropriate Dutch colonial models of rational bureaucracy.� At the beginning of the twenty-first century, these models continue to shape regional responses to contemporary trends such as the rise of global Islamism.�

BOOK REVIEWS
Gibson's book is an ambitious and successful attempt to formulate structural models for the interpretation of Islamic history in Southeast Asia over five centuries. It is a major achievement that will be taken up by students of Islam and of Asian history.--Peter van der Veer, University Professor, University College, Utrecht University

"This innovative and important work critically examines the interaction of overlapping spheres of symbolic knowledge in the historical development of a major Muslim community in Indonesia. Through meticulously tracing the permutations of indigenous Austronesian conceptions of authority, Islamic understandings of learning and charisma, and bureaucratic models of knowledge and power, Gibson demonstrates the continuing relevance of each of these dimensions in contemporary Makassarese Muslim responses to both Indonesian national 'reformation' (Reformasi) and Islamic religious revival in the era of globalization. Drawing expertly on sources in both Makassarese and modern Indonesian as well as Dutch colonial archives, Gibson draws detailed pictures of a series of shifts in the equilibrium between these modes of religious and political authority over the past four centuries. It is an ambitious book."--R. Michael Feener, Associate Professor of History, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

This is a work of impressive scope, reaching far across time and space, yet remaining carefully grounded in the ethnography of South Sulawesi. At a time when overgeneralizations about Islam abound, it is extremely useful to have a perspective from a place that, while seemingly marginal to the heartlands of the Muslim world, is also the product of a thoroughly cosmopolitan history.--Webb Keane, Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan; Author of Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society and Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter

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MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 1403979839
ISBN(13-digit): 9781403979834
Dewey Decimal: 297.09598
Library of Congress: 2007061159
Book Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 253

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