Chair: Caroline Plüss, University of Hong Kong

This panel explores the interplay of cultural identities with national and Islamic identities. The cases examined in this panel include both local and translocal dimensions. The panel is explicitly designed to explore similar processes in distinct regions within Asia and from distinct perspectives. However, common themes include the social processes of secularization, modernization, nation-building, and globalization. The papers engage different methodologies and perspectives including historical, textual, and ethnographic.

The case of Hong Kong Muslims investigates these issues as they are as expressed in participation in common associations. Of particular interest is whether a Muslim identity or myriad ethnic identities are paramount. The Indonesian case studies the activities of an Indonesian student organization in Egypt. Specific attention will be paid to its use of the Internet to shape an Indonesian national identity in terms of a traditionalist Islamic one and to re-invent traditionalist Islam for a globalizing era. From central China, comes the case of women’s mosques and the on-going negotiation between segregation and autonomy. In the context of gendered nationalism, the women’s mosques are central in the re-invention of a female religious culture. Whereas the Chinese cases concern Muslim minorities and the Indonesian case concerns a Muslim majority, the Malaysian case concerns the identity of non-Muslim indigenes in the context of national efforts to link "authentic" Malay identity with Islam. The diverse examples explored in this panel will allow for an interdisciplinary discussion of the elements of Islamic identity in Asia.

Caroline Plüss, University of Hong Kong

This presentation, based on on-going socio-historical research, will discuss the interplay of ethnic, national, religious and secular identities of Hong Kong Muslims. Hong Kong’s Islamic communities have evolved against the background of a highly secular society, which exerted similar influences and constraints upon all sections of Hong Kong Muslims. On the other hand, these communities are characterized by a remarkably high degree of ethnic and religious diversity, which created barriers amongst them. The secular background, together with the rich ethnic and religious diversity, raises the questions of: (a) how Hong Kong Muslims identified themselves in terms of being practitioners of a common faith; and (b) what were the referents they used to do so. Particularly interesting are the divisions between Muslims from South Asia and China, who have been separated by far more than language barriers. The factors that motivated the changing self-perceptions of Hong Kong Muslims will be explored through a discussion of common associations. The motivations of getting involved in common associations, of abstaining, or of being hindered from doing so, will explain how over the last one hundred and fifty years a variety of factors—namely ethnic belonging, business networks, nationalism, secularization, and concern over religious education—shaped the identities of Hong Kong Muslims. The interplay of these referents show not only how the Islamic communities adapted to the Hong Kong environment, but also allows us to observe novel forms of conferring sense to the question of what it means to be a Muslim in Hong Kong.

Robert Dentan, State University of New York, Buffalo

Orang Asli, Mon-Khmer-speaking indigenes of the Malaysian peninsula, are caught on the horns of two Malaysian political dilemmas, neither one of their own making. The first is that the dominant people of the peninsula, "Malays," maintain their dominance by the fiction of their indigeneity, "native Malaysians" as opposed to more recent immigrants like Chinese, Indians, and Indian-Portuguese; thus the very existence of Orang Asli as a separate people is subversive and the government policy is assimilation of Orang Asli into the "Malay community." The second dilemma is that the Malaysian Constitution both guarantees religious freedom and establishes the Malay religion, Islam, as the "national religion." Any criticism of assimilationist policies can be construed as a criticism of Islam or of Malay hegemony. Either criticism is illegal. But most Orang Asli are not Muslims and passively resist Islamicization. This paper explores how these dilemmas play out in Orang Asli politics.

Maria Jaschok, Oxford University

This presentation examines how the unique religious symbolism of women’s mosques best expresses the specificity of Chinese Hui Muslim women’s determined aspiration for equality, and the evolution of one of Chinese ‘Indigenous feminisms.’ Situating the historical origin of women’s segregated religious institutions in late-Ming when the Chinese Islamic diaspora fought for survival, and in women’s contribution to the cause of ethnic/religious minority identity and solidarity, a dominantly secular culture is seen as posing perplexing questions over the place and nature of religious feminism today. Moreover, at the same time as a modernizing and diversifying Chinese society grants opportunities, if circumscribed, to religious women to choose among co-existing, even conflictual, paths to modernity, re-connection with international Islam complicates internal discourses on women’s rights, national belonging and ethno-religious solidarity. The presentation focuses on the agency of believing women who define their identity within structural tensions that implicate religion, ethnicity and state-underwritten secular ideals of liberation and progress. Areas of discussion: (1) gendered nationalism: Chinese Muslim women’s ‘aberration’ from international Islamic orthodoxy benefits from state opposition to foreign intervention, producing a mutually advantageous alliance; (2) negotiating between segregation and autonomy: women’s continuous process of bargaining with (male) fellow-Muslims and a divided Islamic patriarchy to safeguard their historical, and contested, rights to mosques of their own; (3) re-inventing a female religious culture: the tension between independence and reform as women religious leaders weigh their varying degrees of institutional autonomy against the religious and social costs of a largely stagnant tradition of female religious education.

Ronald Lukens-Bull, University of North Florida