Piety, Politics, and Everyday Ethics in Southeast Asian Islam: Beautiful Behavior

(Hardback)

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This book explores the diversity and dynamism of Islam in Southeast Asia through the concept of adab, or beautiful behavior. Amid the complexity of Islamic civilization, adab provides Muslims with a shared sense of sacred history, identity, and morality. In the context of Islamic ethics, adab defines the rules of personal and public etiquette: good manners, proper conduct, civility and humaneness. Featuring the interdisciplinary research of nine prominent scholars of Islam, the book offers new perspectives on adab's multiple meanings and myriad applications for Muslim communities in Malaysia and Indonesia. The chapters examine a wide range of texts, spotlighting the writings of prominent Muslim thinkers, and contexts, focusing on the everyday experiences of lay Muslims. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and methodological lenses, the essays reveal how beautiful behavior impacts local institutions, cultural practices, and religious imaginations via politics and law, spirituality and piety, ethics and experience. With its careful textual analysis, detailed case studies, and attention to historical continuities and disjunctures, Piety, Politics and Everyday Ethics in Southeast Asian Islam is essential reading for students and scholars interested in global Islam and the lived, local dynamics of Muslim Southeast Asia.

Reviews

The importance of this book is twofold: it is both a scholarly and a moral endeavor. The contributors assert an important interpretation of the Islamic world of Southeast Asia, yet also suggest the possibility for a shift in the Western perspective of Islam more generally. This book creatively lays the groundwork for what must become a fresh beginning in Islamic studies * Mark Mancall, Emeritus Professor of Modern World History, Stanford University, USA *
This is a timely and important collection on a theme that is under-discussed in Southeast Asian studies on Islam. * Eric Tagliacozzo, Professor of History, Cornell University, USA *

Author Bio

Robert Rozehnal is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion Studies and the founding director of the Center for Global Islamic Studies at Lehigh University, USA. He is the co-chair of the Islamic Mysticism program unit at the American Academy of Religion, and author of Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in 21st Century Pakistan (2007) and Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (forthcoming).