Religious Diversity in Muslim-majority States in Southeast Asia: Areas of Toleration and Conflict

This volume is essential reading for understanding the dynamics of state-religious interaction in Muslim majority nations and the crucial role civil society organizations play in negotiating interfaith toleration." - Emeritus Professor Virginia Hooker FAHA, Department of Political & Social Change

College of Asia & the Pacific, The Australian National University

"A most welcome contribution to the academic discourse of political Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia! For this volume focuses not on Islamic resurgence as many others have done, but on the impact of Islamic resurgence upon its non-Muslim minority counterparts - Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and also the Syiah Muslims - in the two plural societies, and the varying responses of those minorities, themselves often fragmented, to Islamic resurgence. The rich case studies highlight the changing character of politics in the two countries and their capacities to deal with religious diversity, an aspect of politics often ignored because of the usual concern for economic and political institutional capacities. The juxtaposition of Malaysian and Indonesian cases in a single volume and comparisons of contrasting developments in the two countries, challenges readers not to resort to easy conclusions and overgeneralizations about rising inter-religious tensions, but to give more scholarly attention to this politics-religion diversity nexus." - Emeritus Professor Francis Loh Kok Wah, Department of Political Science, Universiti Sains Malaysia