SEMINAR: CMSS Religion, State and Society Seminar: Salafi Islamisation and Authoritarian Governance in Malaysia

Salafi Islamisation and Authoritarian Governance in Malaysia

Lily Zubaidah Rahim, Department of Government & International Relations, University of Sydney

WHEN: 4.30pm – 6pm WHERE: Room 2.63 Political Science Conference Room, Social Sciences Building, UWA ENTRY: Free REGISTRATION: Register via Eventbrite for any or all seminars.

Abstract

Malaysia is fragmenting under the weight of salafi Islamisation and authoritarian governance - threatening the country’s secular democratic constitutional foundations. Resistance to the increasingly authoritarian Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition government, however, has been fragmented. Political and constitutional crises have been strongly fuelled by repeated electoral setbacks suffered by the long-serving BN government. After the loss of five states to the opposition coalition in 2008, the ruling BN coalition suffered a further battering by losing the popular vote to the opposition Pakatan Raykat (People’s Alliance, henceforth Pakatan) coalition in 2013. In response to these electoral challenges and legitimacy deficits, the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) led BN coalition government, religious bureaucracies and state ulama have intensified their longstanding campaign to Islamise the state and society. This campaign has emboldened the Islamist opposition party, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, (PAS) to introduce hudud (Islamic penal code) law despite hudud’s violation of the spirit and letter of the secular Federal Constitution. These ruptures have been complicated further by corruption scandals implicating Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Alarmed by these regressive trends, elements within the ruling establishment and democratic civil society have mobilised to clamour for substantive political, policy and institutional reform and resist UMNO’s increasing reliance on salafi Islamisation. This presentation examines Malaysia’s socio-political and economic convulsions within the broader context of the politicisation of religion and race by a regime mired in legitimacy crises. It critically analyses the way by which salafi Islamisation and authoritarian governance have incrementally destabilised the secular and democratic constitutional foundations and institutions of the Malaysian state.

About Lily Zubaidah Rahim

Lily Zubaidah Rahim is an A/Professor at the Department of Government and International Relations, the University of Sydney. She is a specialist in authoritarian governance, democratisation and citizenship rights in Southeast Asia and the Muslim world. Her books include The Singapore Dilemma: The Political and Educational Marginality of the Malay Community, (Oxford University Press) and Singapore in the Malay World: Building and Breaching Regional Bridges (Routledge), Muslim secular democracy (Palgrave Macmillan) and Faithful Contestations: The Democratic Learning Curve of Islamists (under review). Lily is completing a book on authoritarian governance in Singapore.

At the University of Sydney, Lily leads the multi-disciplinary ‘Religion, State and Society’ (RSS) Network which has organized three international symposiums.

She has served as a consultant to the Asia-Europe Foundation on inter-faith dialogue in Southeast Asia and been commissioned by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and the United Nations Human Rights Commission to prepare reports on minorities in Southeast Asia. Lily is currently the President of the Malaysia and Singapore Society of Australia (MASSA) – the peak academic association on Malaysia and Singapore studies in Australia. Her book ‘The Singapore Malay Dilemma’ (Oxford Uni. Press) is widely recognized as a seminal work on the Muslim community in Singapore and has been translated to the Malay language by the Malaysian National Institute of Translation. Lily’s sole-authored journal article ‘Governing Muslims in Singapore’s Secular Authoritarian State’ was short-listed for the Boyer Prize by the Australian Journal of International Affairs (AJIA).

CMSS’s Religion, State & Society Seminars explores the role of religion in shaping lived experiences of Muslims in the contemporary globalised world. This involves exploring the interaction between Muslims and non-Muslim in political, social, cultural and economic spheres at local, national and global levels.

Leading academics and researchers in the field will present papers on various topics, including terrorism and radicalisation, gender issues, democratisation, secularism, and so on.

MORE INFO Azim Zahir Research Assistant & PhD Candidate Centre for Muslim States & Societies E: [email protected] P: (08) 6488 4554/M: 0417800303