Malaysia’s 13^th general election is imminent and the opposition coalition (Pakatan Rakyat) is fragile. Inside the coalition, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and the secularist Democratic Action Party have little in common. PAS itself is split along generational lines and ideologically divided between reform-oriented pragmatists and hard-line Islamists. The youth wing of PAS is increasingly vocal in accusing the party of having abandoned key principles in the “Islamic struggle.” Based on anthropological fieldwork, Dominik Müller will review how PAS Youth members are contesting the party’s future in both political and cultural terms.

In Muslim politics in Malaysia, does increasing recourse to popular culture augur an incipient “post-Islamist” turn? Young Muslim activists in PAS are using YouTube and Facebook, commercial brands, celebrity personalities, and rock music to disseminate their call to “purify the struggle” for an Islamic state or “caliphate.” Do these “secular” media dilute if not drown out the politico-religious message? Or, given their popular appeal, do they render it all the more convincing? And with what implications for Islam and politics—in Malaysia and, analogously, elsewhere in the Muslim world?

Dominik Müller obtained his doctorate summa cum laude in 2012 from Frankfurt University, where he works as a research associate in the Department of Anthropology. His dissertation on Islam, politics, and youth in Malaysia will be published in 2013. His research project at Stanford, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), examines patterns of socio-legal change in the Malay world.

Since the resignation of Indonesia’s authoritarian president Suharto in 1998, the country has made great strides in consolidating a democratic government. But it is by no means a model of tolerance. The rights of religious minorities are routinely trampled. Regulations against blasphemy and proselytizing are routinely used to prosecute minorities including atheists, Ahmadiyah, Bahais, Christians, and Shias. As of 2012 Indonesia had over 280 religiously motivated regulations restricting minority rights. 

Hard-line groups such as the Islam Defenders Front use narrow interpretations of local and national legislation as a key tool to suppress minorities. In 2006 two ministers in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's cabinet jointly decreed stricter legal requirements for building a house of worship. The decree is enforced only on religious minorities, often when Islamists pressure local officials to refuse to authorize the construction of Christian churches or to harass those worshiping in “illegal” churches. More than 430 such churches have been closed since. Violent attacks on religious minorities have become more frequent—from 216 cases in 2010, to 244 in 2011, to 264 in 2012. What explains this record of intimidation? Can it be stopped, and if so, how?

Andreas Harsono is widely published. He co-wrote In Religion's Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia (Human Rights Watch, 2013). His commentaries appeared in 2012 in outlets ranging from The New York Times to The Myanmar Times. Other writings include My “Religion” Is Journalism (2010), a collection of his Indonesian-language essays. In 2003 he helped establish the Pantau Foundation, which trains Indonesian journalists and defends media freedom. In 1999 he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship on Journalism at Harvard. He co-founded the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Bangkok,1998), the Institute for the Study of the Free Flow of Information (Jakarta, 1995), and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (Jakarta, 1994). Earlier in his career he edited Pantau, a monthly Indonesian magazine on journalism and the media. Still earlier he worked as a reporter for The Nation (Bangkok) and The Star (Kuala Lumpur). He describes himself as a “journalist-cum-activist”—an identity richly illustrated by his career.

Related Resources

Indonesia: Religious Minorities Targets of Rising Violence (HRW, press release)

Indonesia: Rising Violence Against Religious Minorities (HRW, slideshow)

In Religion’s Name: Abuses Against Religious Minorities in Indonesia (HRW, report)

The Europe Center invites you to attend this special event with opening remarks by co-hosts Amir Eshel, Abbas Milani, and Tobias Wolff

All interested faculty and students from all fields are invited to to join us for this open discussion. Thoughts and comments are welcome from all angles of analysis and about the myriad contexts and consequences of the years of the Rushdie affair: historical and present-day religion and its intersection with politics, the poetics of Rushdie’s new book, principles of free speech, authorial ethics and responsibility, international law, extra-juridical and political protections and persecutions, and the way the conflict was brought to a close with models and challenges for post-conflict reconciliation.

Co-sponsored by the Stanford Initiative for Religious and Ethnic Understanding and Coexistence, supported by the President’s Fund, The Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Religious Studies Department, and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies

Using Legal Frameworks to Foster Social Change: A Panel Discussion with the Fall 2012 Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford

November 14, 2012 12:45pm - 2:00pm

Room 280A

The Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law and the Center on the Legal Profession invite you to a panel discussion with the three Fall 2012 Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford (SEERS), fellows who are visiting Stanford as part of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).

Mazibuko Jara, chair of South Africa's National Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Equality (NGCLE), as well as the founder and first chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which combines social mobilization and targeted litigation to protect the rights those living with HIV; Emily Arnold-Fernandez, founder of Asylum Access, an international organization dedicated to securing refugees' rights by integrating individualized legal assistance, community legal empowerment, policy advocacy, and strategic litigation; and Zainah Anwar, one of the founding members of Sisters in Islam (SIS), an NGO that works on women's rights in Islam based in Malaysia, will discuss their career paths and their experiences in using legal frameworks to effect social change.

Link for RSVP: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/law/forms/SEER.fb

Abstract:

Zainah Anwar will speak on the necessity and possibility of reform in the way Islam is understood and used as a source of law and public policy in Muslim contexts. From Sisters in Islam in Malaysia and its ground-breaking work at the national level to Musawah, the global movement for equality and justice, Muslim women activists today are at the forefront in challenging the use of Islam to justify continued discrimination against women and violations of fundamental liberties. They are producing new feminist knowledge, combining Islamic principles, human rights, constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination, and women's lived realities to break the constructed binary between Islam and human rights, and the disconnect between law and reality. They are publicly challenging traditional religious authorities with alternative understandings of Islam in ways that take into consideration changing times and context. Anwar will share the experience of Sisters in Islam and the global movement it initiated, their work and challenges, and the resulting public contestations and  hope for change. 

About the Speaker: 

Zainah Anwar is currently a visiting Social Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford for fall 2012 through CDDRL’s Program on Social Entrepreneurship. Anwar is a founding member of Sisters in Islam (SIS) and currently the director of Musawah based in Malaysia, the global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. She is at the forefront of the women’s movement pushing for an end to the use of Islam to justify discrimination against women. The pioneering work of SIS in understanding Islam from a rights perspective and creating an alternative public voice of Muslim women demanding equality and justice led it to initiate Musawah in 2009. This knowledge-building movement brings together activists and scholars to create new feminist knowledge in Islam to break the binary between Islam and human rights and the disconnect between law and reality.  

Anwar also writes a monthly newspaper column on politics, religion and women’s rights, called Sharing the Nation. She is a former member of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia. Her book, Islamic Revivalism in Malaysia: Dakwah Among the Students, has become a standard reference in the study of Islam in Malaysia.

Ever since December 1999, when Greece lifted its longstanding veto and Turkey became an EU candidate state, Greece and Turkey have attempted to overcome animosity and mistrust and resolve their perennial disputes. I argue that despite significant improvements at the level of economic, energy cooperation and minority rights, no breakthrough has been achieved on high-politics issues. The intractable Cyprus question has remained the biggest burden to any reconciliation attempt. Positive spillover of functional cooperation cannot by itself overcome the legacy of decades of acrimonious relations and accumulated disputes. Greece’s mounting economic and social crisis and Turkey’s new foreign policy activism can pose additional obstacles to the resolution of longstanding disputes, absent determined leadership on both sides. Only strong, visionary leadership on both sides can help overcome the pending stalemate.

Ioannis Grigoriadis is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) and Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). He received his M.A. in International Affairs from the School of International & Public Affairs at Columbia University, and his Ph.D. in Politics from the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London. He specializes in European, Middle Eastern and comparative politics with a particular focus on energy politics, nationalism, and democratization. Among his publications are “Redefining the Nation: The Shifting Boundaries of the ‘Other’ in Greece and Turkey” (in Middle Eastern Studies, 2011), “Europe and the Impasse of Centre-Left Politics in Turkey: Lessons from the Greek Experience” ( in Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2010), Trials of Europeanization: Turkish Political Culture and the European Union (2009), “Friends No More?: The Rise of Anti-American Nationalism in Turkey” (in Middle East Journal, 2010),  “Islam and Democratization in Turkey: Secularism and Trust in a Divided Society” (in Democratization, 2009), and “On the Europeanization of Minority Rights Protection: Comparing the Cases of Greece and Turkey” (in Mediterranean Politics, 2008)

Part of the 2011-12 lecture series on Greece and Turkey, sponsored by The Mediterranean Studies Forum and the Europe Center

Timed between the election's first and second rounds, this discussion brings together noted scholars and authors with unique and deep insight into contemporary French political culture.

Co-sponsored by the Europe Center and the French Culture Workshop

A brief write-up of this discussion titled "French vote a rejection of Sarkozy, panelists say" can be found in the May 7, 2012 edition of the Stanford Daily.

Event Summary:

Arthur Goldhammer opens the panel by arguing that the first round of the French presidential elections, not the second, are "the real story." For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, divisions between left and right were less pronounced than between the top two tiers of candidates (Hollande/Sarkozy, and Melénchon/Le Pen) especially regarding their attitudes toward European integration, globalization, and the Euro. Goldhammer points out that given France's role as a top global investor as well as a leading destination for foreign investment, the anti-globalization stance of the second tier candidates is unrealistic, although it enjoyed broad support at the polls. Sarkozy responded to this show of support by attacking the Shengen agreement and other aspects of the EU in a bid to win votes, while Hollande kept a low profile on the same issues. If Hollande wins, Goldhammer predicts, he will be tested by the markets and the global financial industry. He also points out that the Socialist and UNP parties are both internally divided on important issues.  If Sarkozy loses and decides to leave politics, Goldhammer predicts a power struggle for leadership of the party.

Laurent Cohen-Tanugi predicts that if Hollande wins, the outcome will be a statement against Sarkozy more than one in favor of Hollande. He echoes Arthur Goldhammer's concern about a strong market reaction to a victory by Hollande, who has positioned himself as pro-growth and has sanctioned Sarkozy for his strict austerity measures. Cohen-Tanugi adds that Hollande's focus is on domestic politics, and that he lacks significant international experience. Whoever wins, he cautions, France is in for difficult times.

Jimia Boutouba describes the rise of the extreme right – which has invoked nostalgia for a pre-globalization era - leading up to the elections. This rise has been dominated by Marine Le Pen and the Front National, which vows to defend the "French way of life" and (like Sarkozy as the election neared) has made anti-immigration rhetoric a key component of its platform. Le Pen, however, has attracted many first time, rural, and female voters, and has been successful in setting the tone and the agenda of national politics. Boutouba sees several problems with this trend toward defining the nation by what it opposes (Islam, globalization, international finance, etc), and warns it can be very disruptive to the political system, pointing to the recent fall of the Dutch government. More significantly, the anti-immigrant tone of the discourse discourages second and third generation descendants of immigrants from voting or participating in the political process.

A question and answer session following the roundtable addressed such questions as: Have both Hollande and Sarkozy radicalized their rhetoric and proposals to win support from far right and far left voters? Will the taxes and government spending (which is already very high in France, at 57%) promised by some politicians choke private sector growth? Which candidate will be most attractive to this new generation of French college graduates? What are the main differences between the three potential leaders currently jockeying for control of Sarkozy's party? To what extent would a Hollande presidency be beholden to Communists, Greens, and other extreme left parties? How will a Hollande presidency affect France's involvement with NATO, and relations with the United States? What are the prospects for the future of the Euro?