Conference, Symposium, and Panel Reports

Voices of Islam in Europe and Southeast Asia

This workshop, co-organized by the Regional Studies Program, Walailak
University, Thailand, and the Department of Cross-cultural and Regional
Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and conceived of early in
2005, took place a little over a week before the eruption of the “cartoon con-
troversy,” which brought the issue of the relationship between Europe and the
so-called “Muslim world” to the fore as never before. From January 20-22,
2006, a group of almost thirty Muslim and non-Muslim specialists working
in Islamic studies and on the study of Muslim societies from fifteen countries
in Europe and Southeast Asia gathered in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Thailand,
to discuss the diverse “Voices of Islam” in these two regions. The workshop
was held in southern Thailand, where, in the ethnic Malay-majority border
provinces, a violent insurgency over the last two years has claimed over 1,000
lives and has heightened tensions between the local Muslim population and
the Thai state. Some observers have explained the intensification of the con-
flict as being due to the infiltration of foreign Islamist militants and the influ-
ence of extremist Islamic discourses of struggle. 

The workshop focused on two major themes: how events following the
September 11 attacks have affected the nature of Islamic studies in Europe
and Southeast Asia, and how changes in Islamic studies are impacting upon
Muslims and their understanding of Islam in these two regions. While the
workshop presentations were given mainly in English (with a small number
of papers presented in Thai and Malay), a simultaneous interpreting service
was available for local Thai Muslim (as well as non-Muslim) participants,
who attended the workshop in significant numbers.

A wide variety of papers were presented. However, if one theme could
summarize the tone of the three days, it is that 9/11 has engendered a chang-
ing paradigm in these regions’ Islamic studies programs, even though many
of the changes may already have been underway prior to the attacks. In the
case of Southeast Asia, governments and the media in the region have attrib-
uted the Muslim extremists’ ideology, at least partly, to the influence of



Islamic education institutions. This has resulted in increased official pres-
sure, both from within the region and without, being placed on these institu-
tions to demonstrate their “moderate Islam” credentials and their relevance
to the nation’s development goals, in particular the degree to which they pro-
vide their students with the skills required by the job market. At the same
time, the Islamic education institutions themselves are seeking to develop
their material and academic resources to equip their students with knowl-
edge that is relevant to the modern world. 

The workshop highlighted the great variety in standards in Islamic edu-
cation in Southeast Asia. Papers on Cambodia, southern Philippines, and
southern Thailand – where Muslims are a minority – highlighted the rela-
tively disadvantaged state of Islamic education there, particularly in the
madrasahs, as compared to their counterparts in the Muslim-majority coun-
tries of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. In the latter, not only are there
greater material resources available, but there is also a richer variety of
approaches to the study of Islam. Moreover, in these countries the social sci-
ences have been integrated with Islamic studies to a far greater degree. 

A theme that numerous papers touched on was the relationship of
Islamic education to identity. Pondok schools, for example, have a long his-
tory of playing a significant role in preserving traditional Malay identity in
southern Thailand. The pressures to modernize traditional Islamic education
thus directly impact upon the ability of these schools to maintain this role.
In certain cases, decoupling Islamic education from traditional culture may
have led to a greater emphasis on scripturalist interpretations of Islam that
lack cultural contextualization. 

This may also be a factor that has contributed to the so-called
“Arabization” of Southeast Asian Islam, a phenomenon seen particularly in
southern Thailand and Malaysia. Azyumardi Azra (rector, Indonesia’s State
Islamic University) and Omar Farouk (Hiroshima City University, Japan),
talked about the necessity of maintaining and developing a “Southeast Asian
Islam,” even while modernizing traditional education. But what form of
Southeast Asian Islam? For a number of the workshop participants from
southern Thailand and Malaysia, the “Islamization of knowledge” still
appears to be a desirable and viable project. But for Azra, “all knowledge is
already Islamic”; what is required, rather, is to develop theories that take into
account the particularities of Muslim “social and cultural realities.”

Even in Malaysia, materially the most modern of Southeast Asia’s
Muslim-majority countries, the relationship between Islam and identity is
never far away. Several presentations discussed Islam Hadhari, the Malay-

Conference, Symposium, and Panel Reports 143



144 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:1

sian government’s latest campaign to promote a modern Muslim identity for
Malaysia’s Malay population. Interestingly, in Indonesia the question of
Islam and identity seems to be much less problematic than elsewhere.

Islam and identity was also the theme of a number of papers on Islam in
Europe. One challenge posed to Islamic education in Europe today is that of
catering, on the one hand, to Muslim migrants seeking to retain their (or their
children’s) Islamic identity in a culturally and religiously “foreign” environ-
ment, and, on the other, meeting the needs of a general non-Muslim public
seeking to understand Islam at a time when religions – even “civilizations”
– have become intensely politicized.

The area focus for much of the study of Islam in Europe, as Mathias
Diederich (University of Khartoum, Sudan) pointed out, is the Middle East,
not Southeast Asia. Yet links between the study of Islam in these two regions
do exist. Dick van der Meij’s (Indonesia Netherlands Islamic Studies
Program [INIS]) paper showed how Indonesian Muslims studying Islam in
universities in the Netherlands (particularly under INIS) are influencing
Islamic studies in Indonesia – for example, in the training of staff and stu-
dents at the State Institutes for the Study of Islam (IAIN), the State Islamic
University of Indonesia (UIN), and the State Colleges for the Study of Islam
(STAIN). This rich and mutually beneficial interaction between Islamic
studies in Europe and Southeast Asia, and indeed between Muslims and
non-Muslims, is but one example that refutes the unfortunately popular
argument of the “clash of civilizations” between “Europe” / the West and
Islam – and that deserves greater recognition.

The workshop was made possible by a generous grant from the Asia-
Europe Foundation, as well as additional financial assistance from the
Rockefeller Foundation (Southeast Asia Regional Program), the Royal
Netherlands Embassy (Bangkok), and the Japan Foundation (Bangkok). The
workshop proceedings are available upon request.

Patrick Jory
Coordinator, Regional Studies Program

School of Liberal Arts, Walailak University
Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Thailand