Piety, Politics, and Everyday Ethics in Southeast Asian Islam: Beautiful Behavior

by Robert Rozehnal (Editor)

Overview

This book explores the diversity and dynamism of Islam in Southeast Asia through the concept of adab, or beautiful behavior. Amid the complexity of Islamic civilization, adab provides Muslims with a shared sense of sacred history, identity, and morality. In the context of Islamic ethics, adab defines the rules of personal and public etiquette: good manners, proper conduct, civility and humaneness.

Featuring the interdisciplinary research of nine prominent scholars of Islam, the book offers new perspectives on adab's multiple meanings and myriad applications for Muslim communities in Malaysia and Indonesia. The chapters examine a wide range of texts, spotlighting the writings of prominent Muslim thinkers, and contexts, focusing on the everyday experiences of lay Muslims. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and methodological lenses, the essays reveal how beautiful behavior impacts local institutions, cultural practices, and religious imaginations via politics and law, spirituality and piety, ethics and experience.

With its careful textual analysis, detailed case studies, and attention to historical continuities and disjunctures, Piety, Politics and Everyday Ethics in Southeast Asian Islam is essential reading for students and scholars interested in global Islam and the lived, local dynamics of Muslim Southeast Asia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350041714
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/07/2019
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Robert Rozehnal is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion Studies at Lehigh University, USA. He is Founding Director for the Center for Global Islamic Studies, Lehigh University, USA, and author of Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in 21st Century Pakistan (2007) and Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (forthcoming).

Table of Contents

Contributors
List of figures
Introduction, Beautiful Behavior in Practice: Expressions of Adab in Southeast Asian Islam, Robert Rozehnal (Lehigh University, USA)
Part One: Texts and Contexts
1. The Interplay Between Adab and Local Ethics and Etiquette
in Indonesian and Malaysian Literature, Muhammad Ali (University of California, Riverside, USA)
2. "Young people are seeking their blessings": Islamic Life courses,
Explorative Authority, and the Possibilities of Worldly Adab in Rural Aceh, Daniel Andrew Birchok (University of Michigan-Flint, USA)
Part Two: Politics and Law
3. Adab and the Culture of Political Culture, Thomas Pepinsky (Cornell University, USA)
4. Sharia, Adab and the Malaysian State, Timothy P. Daniels (Hofstra University, USA)
Part Three: Piety and Authority
5. Women's Adab in the Pesantren: Gendering Virtues and Contesting Normative Behaviors, Nelly van Doorn-Harder (Wake Forest University, USA)
6. Politicians, Pop Preachers, and Public Scandal: A Personal Politics of Adab, James B. Hoesterey (Emory University, USA)
Part Four: Performance and Experience
Adab and Embodiment in the Process of Performance: Islamic Musical Arts in Indonesia, Anne K. Rasmussen (College of William and Mary, USA)
7. Smoke, Fire and Rain in Muslim Southeast Asia:
Environmental Ethics in the Time of Burning, Anna M. Gade (University of Wisconsin, USA)
Index

Editorial Reviews

"The importance of this book is twofold: it is both a scholarly and a moral endeavor. The contributors assert an important interpretation of the Islamic world of Southeast Asia, yet also suggest the possibility for a shift in the Western perspective of Islam more generally. This book creatively lays the groundwork for what must become a fresh beginning in Islamic studies" --Mark Mancall, Emeritus Professor of Modern World History, Stanford University, USA

"This is a timely and important collection on a theme that is under-discussed in Southeast Asian studies on Islam." --Eric Tagliacozzo, Professor of History, Cornell University, USA

From the Publisher