Events

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Michael Feener, Asia Research Institute and Department of History, National University of Singapore.

ABSTRACT

The perceived ‘Arabization’ of Indonesian Islam of the past decades is countered not only by nativist responses advocating local cultural expressions of Islam but also by transnational movements emerging from Turkey and celebrating the Ottoman past while strongly criticizing fundamentalist and radical (Salafi and Ikhwani) Islam. Both the Gülen movement and the Naqshbandiyya Haqqaniyya Sufi order are conservative modernizers that hold on to pre-modern moral values even while engaging actively in the secular public sphere and presenting a modern, tolerant and open-minded form of Islam. Both are inspired by Sufi movements that once Islamized large parts of Southeast Europe and West Asia, thus consolidating Ottoman military and political expansion. The presentation will focus especially on the engagement of the Gülen movement with Muslim and non-Muslim societies in Southeast and East Asia.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Martin van Bruinessen is emeritus professor of Comparative Studies of Modern Muslim Societies at Utrecht University, and currently a senior visiting research fellow at ARI. He an anthropologist with a strong interest in politics, history and philology, and much of his work straddles the boundaries between these disciplines. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Kurdistan (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria) and in Indonesia and has taught on subjects ranging from Ottoman history and sociology of religion to theories of nationalism, at universities in Yogyakarta (IAIN Sunan Kalijaga), Berlin (Freie Universität) and Paris (Langues O’), besides Utrecht. His most recent publications include Producing Islamic Knowledge: Transmission and Dissemination in Western Europe (with Stefano Allievi, Routledge, 2011), Contemporary Developments in Indonesian Islam: Explaining the ‘Conservative Turn’ (ISEAS, 2013), and two collections of articles in Indonesian, Kitab Kuning, Pesantren dan Tarekat (Gading, 2012) and Rakyat Kecil, Islam dan Politik (Gading, forthcoming in 2013).

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you RSVP Mr Jonathan Lee via email: jonathan.lee@nus.edu.sg