Over 215 million Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region, but despite their number and proximity to record growth and opportunity in greater Asia, their experience has been one of persistent, widespread socioeconomic and political decline. 

A new book, Modes of Engagement: Muslim Minorities in Asia, published by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and distributed through The Brookings Institution, offers leading research on this topic and places it in a geographic perspective. Edited by Rafiq Dossani, a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation and Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School of Public Policy, the book paves new paths to understanding the paradox of Muslim minorities in Asia. 

Dossani was at Stanford University for nearly fifteen years as a senior research scholar at Shorenstein APARC and as the executive director of the South Asia Initiative, studying the plight of Muslims and higher education in India, among other topics. The book is a result of a seminar series with the book’s contributors.

“Since the 1970s, especially in China, Asia’s growth rate has been unprecedented within Asia’s own history,” Dossani says. Mainstream Asia has seen a rise in job opportunities and income levels, and as a result, an individual ability to accumulate wealth and commit resources to long-term investments, such as education and innovation activities.

However, not all people have found benefit from this modern, economic transformation. Most notably, Muslims have seen a severe decline in their social and political space, as well as a narrowing of their identity.

Analysts find this surprising because history reflects a narrative that says Muslims should have profited along with the rest. “It wasn’t expected that Muslims would lose out in the countries in which they were minorities,” he says.

The volume investigates this puzzle through three case studies: the Philippines, India, and China. In each country, Muslims are at least 5 percent of the population, the largest number being in India. Dossani weaves together common threads that define the Muslim minority experience. Similarities include the impact of state-led ethnic nationalism and forced assimilation. He also writes that Muslims have been unable to use protest to secure any significant, long-term gains.

Given this dire reality, what prospects lie ahead for Muslim minorities? In conversation, Dossani suggests a few policy priorities gathered from the case studies featured in the volume.

Democracy is not the answer

Democracy, a form of governance that is often championed for its equal civic participation, has not facilitated a level playing field for Muslims when theory dictates it should.

“Democracy is not the answer to handling these problems,” says Dossani, emphasizing, “it is a most inadequate answer.”

This situation is evident in the case of India where Muslims have probably done the worst, compared to the Philippines, which also shares a legacy of colonial rule and transition to democracy.

Muslims in India, who have attempted to elevate their interests on the national stage, are stopped by coalition politics. Larger interests of the group can subsume their own, encroached upon further by caste issues, language barriers and other dividing factors. China’s Hui have found a significantly better experience than the Uyghurs, who were separated from mainland China early on and excluded from opportunities afforded there (the Uyghurs reside in a northwest region, Xinjiang). In the case of India, Muslims make up only ten to fifteen percent of the population in almost every state, thus their voice fails to find leverage in the political sphere, and effectively lose out.

Furthermore, democracy is not a panacea when states are vulnerable.

“When you have very weak and fragile states, where intuitions are subject to capture easily, democracy doesn’t work,” Dossani explains. Muslim minorities are unable to gain clout because the majorities, and elites attempting to fill a power vacuum, crowd them out.

Thus, collective interest and concerted efforts on the part of governmental and non-governmental organizations – a larger nexus of individuals working toward common goals – are essential to create momentum and staying power behind Muslim issues.

“You need civil society where it explicitly deals with the issues of minority populations and tries to convince the national government and state governments that improving the lots of minorities should be a national project with commitment to their improvement,” he says.

Development as a way forward

Some national projects were developed to openly address Muslim issues, but this led other internal ethnic and religious groups to ask, “Why are you appeasing the Muslims?”

Especially since 9/11, governments have increasingly come under pressure. Stigmas that narrow Muslim identity into “extremists” and “terrorists” are more progressively shared, making it near impossible for governments to explicitly offer a helping hand to Muslims without domestic backlash. 

But even with the odds against them, Muslim minorities still have a way forward.

In the three countries studied, Muslims have found traces of success, and in other Asian nations such as Sri Lanka and Nepal, there has been considerable accommodation of Muslims. Across all circumstances, “Muslims have done best in countries where the state has focused on education for all,” Dossani says.

Instead of providing ethnic-based aid, governments should focus on resource availability as a main qualifier for assistance. State-sponsored education and health care initiatives that capture the poorest populations help Muslims who inherently fall into this category. 

“Any wise government would say ‘look we want to connect education to development and focus on the poorest, no matter who they are.’ If they do that, Muslims will automatically get their fair share,” he says. The Philippines has already recognized this reality, and begun to implement development projects that naturally include Muslims.

Regime change can also motivate Muslim accommodation, either directly or indirectly, as is likely in the case of India.

Newly appointed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, although said to have an anti-Islamic stance in the past with the Bharatiya Janata Party, may in fact create policies that favor Muslims because it fits in with a grander vision of national growth. 

Referring to Prime Minister Modi, Dossani says, “It’s not clear that he cares about Muslims, but in some ways, he cares about development.

“At some point, any development-conscious person will realize that no country can progress if 15 percent of the country hangs behind.”

Diaspora matters

The swell of migration in the globalized era has made the formation of diaspora communities, dispersed populations outside of country of origin, a common phenomenon. Muslim minorities are a large part of this movement, seeking opportunity and using their ethnic or religious connections to establish a new life elsewhere.

Muslims of Asian origin are located beyond Asia – in the Middle East, North Africa and Southern Europe, among other areas. But despite being removed from their native soil, an allegiance and interest in the homeland typically remains.

“Diaspora exists in a very big way,” Dossani explains. Their influence should not be underestimated, both financially and politically. The Muslim diaspora provides an important channel of support that helps struggling Muslim populations.

Remittances from relatives overseas can bring in substantial transfers of money and support to populations that may not otherwise have enough resources, or be supported by the government. For several years now, one of the single largest inflows of money into the Philippines has been from these outside sources. India’s Muslim diaspora has a strong diasporan foundation with codified institutions set-up to organize relations. China’s experience is less documented, Dossani says, although he conjectures that some diasporan support exists, whether formally or informally.

Diaspora organizations, often led and supported by expatriates, appear to be growing worldwide, and can play a crucial role in the formation of Muslims’ global identity and network of support. Neighboring countries with Muslim majorities, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, have also offered themselves as diplomatic partners in resolving conflicts over Muslims’ conditions, given their own long histories of addressing them internally.

Research associate Kenji E. Kushida argues that Japan's top political leadership during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis actually handled the situation more effectively than originally thought. Otherwise, the incident could have been much worse due to Japan's long-existing lack of emergency preparation.

Faced with an unprecedented disaster in postwar Japan, then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his Democratic Party of Japan government handled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster better than originally perceived, according to new Stanford research.

It could have been far worse.

That's the conclusion of research associate Kenji Kushida of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He wrote in the journal Japanese Political Economy that Kan's party had to overcome bureaucratic problems and a lack of emergency planning, both of which they inherited after winning a landslide victory in 2009. The Fukushima nuclear crisis in March 2011 occurred when the plant was hit by a tsunami that resulted from a 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Tohoku, Japan, which claimed more than 15,000 lives.

Three of the plant's six nuclear reactors melted down and more than 300,000 people were evacuated. At the time, the Democratic Party of Japan and TEPCO, the private company that operated the power plant, were criticized for their responses.

"Japan's political leadership, and particularly Prime Minister Kan, has been blamed widely for worsening the crisis as the nuclear disaster unfolded," Kushida said. "However, an objective analysis of events as they transpired suggests that the political leadership, newly in power after over 50 years of virtually uninterrupted rule by its opposition, had inherited a very difficult situation, with vested interests, lack of emergency planning and insufficient bureaucratic capacity."

Kushida examined reports by Japanese government commissions, independent committees, a private investigation, TEPCO, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, among others. He also conducted interviews with key observers.

'Saved Japan'

Based on his research, Kushida said he believes that Japan's political leadership reined in a disaster that could have spiraled out of control on a far larger scale.

"Rather, Prime Minister Kan, often accused of excessive micro-management and a  counterproductive management style, was actually responsible for a government stance and concrete actions that, in some sense, saved Japan from a far worse disaster," he said.

In the article, Kushida said it was difficult for the general public, inside and outside Japan, to gauge how Japan's government was responding. "In the media confusion surrounding the nuclear accident, and subsequent politicized debates over the Tohoku disaster, the (Japanese) general public was left largely confused," he wrote.

Critiques focused on delays in declaring the emergency and evacuations, chaotic press conferences, micro-management and a slow response to hydrogen explosions at the plant.

But Kan, Kushida wrote, understood the broad risk to Japan if the Fukushima crisis got even worse. So he wrested control of the situation from TEPCO and the bureaucracy. Japan does not have martial law.

"Kan played a critical role in shifting the government's nuclear response into emergency mode," which allowed, for example, sustained water-cooling of the hot reactors, according to Kushida.

Kushida noted that the Democratic Party of Japan ran its 2009 election campaign on "seizing power from the bureaucracies" – giving rise to the criticism during the Fukushima event that it lacked the ability to coordinate such expertise in emergency situations.

"The DPJ's inexperience governing the country was clearly manifested in policy paralysis during its early days in power, suggesting that the party might not have the capacity to deal with Japan's largest postwar natural disaster and nuclear accident," Kushida wrote.

On the other hand, he added, the DPJ inherited a government and nuclear industry structure from the Liberal Democratic Party, which had enjoyed virtually uninterrupted power in Japan from 1955 until 2009. It was the LDP, not the DPJ, that had created the policies, units and procedures that were called upon in the Fukushima disaster.

Kushida found that Japan's existing government structures were not up to the challenge of dealing with Fukushima – no matter which political party was in power.

"Existing procedures and organizations were drastically inadequate for planning and executing an evacuation, and the government suffered shortcomings in information gathering, expertise, and on-the-ground response during the crisis," he wrote.

Kushida said that Kan's leadership was "beneficial in that he took control of a situation in which the locus of responsibility became ambiguous during the crisis and he solved several serious information and coordination problems."

As for blaming Kan's style, Kushida said that strong leadership was precisely what Japan needed at the time: "He did not measurably worsen the crisis, although his relatively abrasive leadership style (for Japanese norms or expectations, at least) alienated many with whom he worked."

Kushida said that much of the "blame-game" after the crisis was a result of the Liberal Democratic Party using Fukushima against the Democratic Party of Japan for electoral gain. In 2012, the LDP regained power based on this strategy.

American perspective

The lessons of Fukushima apply to America's nuclear industry and political leadership as well, Kushida said.

"The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is more independent from industry than Japan's regulators at the time, but the American political leadership needs to continue applying sustained pressure and attention to ensure that it remains as neutral and objective as possible," he said in an interview.

Kushida suggested that America's political leadership should diligently examine the repeated extensions of the maximum lifespan of nuclear power plants, the increased risk of nuclear power plant inundation due to climate change, and the need for contingency plans when cascading events overwhelm nuclear plant operators. 

He also pointed to the importance of input from outside the established nuclear engineering community on key issues.

Kushida, who grew up in Tokyo, describes himself as "very deeply attached to Japan." When the 2011 disaster hit, he was in the United States attending graduate school – and felt helpless.

"I desperately wanted to do something to help, and over time it became clear that my potential contribution with the greatest impact would be an objective analysis," he said.

Kushida's initial research grew out of a conference report that he wrote for Shorenstein APARC director Gi-Wook Shin.

Today, Japan's 48 nuclear reactors all remain offline for safety checks. Now in power, the Liberal Democratic Party plans to have them reactivated once the Nuclear Regulation Agency confirms their compliance with the new safety standards introduced after the Fukushima nuclear crisis. Prior to the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, Japan had generated 30 percent of its electrical power from nuclear reactors.

Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.

CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart writes in The American Interest that a strong and rising China, as well as a weak an unstable one, should concern the United States. But perhaps most troubling is the uncertainty about which scenario will eventually play out, and Washington’s strategic orientation toward Europe and the Middle East.

CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart writes in The American Interest that the United States should be concerned about both a strong and rising China, as well as a weak and unstable one. But perhaps most troubling of all, she writes, is the uncertainty about which scenario will eventually play out – and Washington’s strategic orientation toward Europe and the Middle East.

“Today opinions range between nervous hope that everything will turn out all right to outright fear that things will be worse than we can possibly imagine,” she says. “Part of the fear stems from the fact that that the U.S. and China are both literally and figuratively worlds apart, with vastly different political and cultural histories.”

Regardless of these vast differences and uncertainties in China, Zegart argues, Asia will be the most important strategic region for American national security in the 21^st century.