Latin Timur: Representing a Central Asian Emir in Fifteenth-Century Europe, written by Goddard, Geoffrey

Reviewed by: Alternative Voices in Muslim Southeast Asia: Discourse and Struggles ed. by Norshahril Saat and Azhar Ibrahim Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid Alternative Voices in Muslim Southeast Asia: Discourse and Struggles Edited by NORSHAHRIL SAAT AND AZHAR IBRAHIM. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2020. 230pp. ISBN 978-981-4843-80-5 A major pitfall which many editors of volumes on Islam in Southeast Asia have failed to avoid is the recurring problem of essentialisation. Tapping on their own research expertise and bias, both local and foreign scholars have produced admirable works that capture specific segments and chunks within the whole array of topics that could be categorised under the cluster of Islam and Muslims in Southeast Asia. With Southeast Asia becoming ever more diverse in the light of globalisation and the region becoming increasingly integrated with the world economy via such projects as China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), one could not be faulted for expecting a smorgasbord of offerings depicting the vast expanse of Muslim cosmopolitanism in Southeast Asia. Bearing such an eye-catching title which begins with the word 'Alternative,' thus conveying the impression of bringing out hitherto neglected narratives and analyses of subaltern Muslim communities and figures of Southeast Asia, Norshahril Saat and Azhar Ibrahim's edited volume looks enticingly promising on first impression. One could imagine the appeal such a volume would have if it had explored such terra incognita as Muslims of Indochina and Timor Leste, resurgent sufi congregations in Southern Thailand of the types investigated by Chiengmai-based Christopher Joll, and Malaysia's and Indonesia's Chinese Muslims of the sort studied by Hew Wai Weng of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). Such adventurous detour allows us to debunk politically driven stereotypes, for example by disentangling us from the typical Malay aka pribumi-Chinese conflict paradigm of both Malaysia's and Indonesia's ethno-religious politics. Alas, the geographical essentialisation of Muslim Southeast Asia to only Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore is disappointing to say the least, but is then probably not altogether unexpected, coming from a group of scholars who share past and present affinity if not professional affiliation with the Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore. Treated as practically synonymous with the Malay world, not only is the volume's conception of a Muslim Southeast Asia bereft of any examples from the 'unMalay' world, but Alternative Voices in Muslim Southeast Asia also marginalises voices whose discursive location are found beyond the cognitive domain of 'progressive Islam'—the overarching theme that occupies Norshahril Saat and Azhar Ibrahim in this book and which they take for [End Page 225] granted as the proxy for whatever is worthy of the label 'alternative voice' among Southeast Asian Muslims. The strand of thought calling itself 'progressive Islam,' while appearing in many aspects to be a post-colonial phenomenon as much as it is a reaction against the dominance of conservative stripes of Islam following the religious resurgence that enveloped Muslim Southeast Asia in the 1970s–80s, shares ancestral linkages with the Kaum Muda (Young Faction) movement of early twentieth century, as chronicled by Azhar Ibrahim in Chapter Four. However, if Kaum Muda's ideological rival was the then Kaum Tua (Old Faction), latter-day progressive Muslims have had to contend not only with the traditionalist ulama (religious scholars) who customarily control the Islamic officialdom of Muslim-majority countries, but they have also had to compete with thinkers from the ultra-conservative Wahhabi-Salafi school ascendant in contemporary Southeast Asia, even lately penetrating Islamic religious bureaucracies in Malaysia. Both conservative trends, namely the traditionalist school and the increasingly influential Wahhabi-Salafi puritanical strand, despite their separate intellectual genealogies,1 are wont to label progressive Muslims as purveyors of 'liberal Islam,' which within mainstream Southeast Asian Islam carries negative connotations implying deviation from the righteous path. These liberal-conservative tensions are brought out in Noor Aisha Abdul Rahman's Chapter 5 on Singapore and Norshahril Saat's Chapter 8 on Malaysia. Further, progressive Muslims are likened to the Mu'tazilites, the rationalist school once dominant in the early ninth century who, because of their fascination with Greek philosophy, prioritised usage of the reason...

Before there were Malay-Muslim sultanates, there were Malay Hindu-Buddhist empires such as Srivijaya and Langkasuka. However it did not bring glory to Malay civilisation as Islam did. Only after the coming of Islam, philosophy, science and other intellectual accomplishments started to flourish in the Malay world (Al-Attas MN. Islam dalam Sejarah dan Kebudayaan Melayu. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, 2014). All these accomplishments were possible since Islam had liberated the Malay mind from the polytheistic belief and idol worships to tawhidic worldview. Islam had not only played a significant role in the formation of Malay civilisation but also the construction of the new Malay culture and identity. Islamic principles and values had been assimilated into the existing Malay customs such as wedding ceremony, (Mohd. Shuhaimi Ishak, Osman Chuah Abdullah: Islam and the Malay world: an insight into the assimilation of Islamic values. World J Islam Hist Civilization 2(2):58–65, 2012). The unique relationship between Malay and Islam had been acknowledged in Article 160 in Malaysia Federal Constitution which defined Malay as a person who professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language and conforms to Malay customs. With this definition, Islam as a religion therefore has become one of the three pillars to describe Malayness, other than Malay language and Malay Raja (Shamsul AB. Islam in an era of nation states: politics and religious renewal in Muslim Southeast Asia. Hawaii University Press, Honolulu, 1997). This institutionalised identity gradually reduces the role of Islam to simply a guardian of Malay ethnicity.

This study investigates Hamka’s reformist epistemology by examining the modernist genealogies and hermeneutical strategies that shaped his intellectual project in the Malay Indonesian world. While previous scholarship has highlighted Hamka as a literary figure, nationalist thinker, or religious leader, limited attention has been given to the systematic ways in which he internalized, adapted, and transformed the rational modernism of Muhammad Abduh into a distinct framework of Islamic renewal. Addressing this gap, the study aims to identify the intellectual transmission of Abduh’s ideas into Hamka’s corpus, analyze the interpretive principles embedded in Tafsir al Azhar and related writings, and explain how these principles contributed to the emergence of a localized yet cosmopolitan modernist discourse. Methodologically, the research employs qualitative textual analysis, intellectual genealogy, and historical contextualization using primary sources from Hamka’s tafsir, essays, speeches, and archival materials, complemented by secondary analyses of Southeast Asian reform movements. The findings reveal that Hamka developed a reformist epistemology grounded in rational inquiry, ethical intentionality, and the rejection of uncritical conformity, while simultaneously constructing a vernacularized model of Islamic modernity attuned to Malay Indonesian socio cultural realities. This synthesis produced a transformative religious discourse that reshaped educational, doctrinal, and public life across the region. The study contributes theoretically by repositioning Hamka within the global trajectory of Islamic modernism and demonstrating how peripheral intellectual spaces generate original models of reform. Its implications extend to contemporary debates on Islamic hermeneutics, religious authority, and the ongoing negotiation of modernity in Muslim Southeast Asia.

This chapter defines world literature, following D. Damrosch, as works circulating beyond their linguistic and cultural point of origin. The designation Muslim Southeast Asia as employed here refers to Muslim communities across the region, where they are concentrated first and foremost in present-day Indonesia and Malaysia. Within literary networks it was Arabic literature that provided the conduit – through its themes, genres, and language – for a religious and cultural transformation of great magnitude: Islamization. The spread of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay region was a complex process which has been much debated by scholars, both local and foreign. The chapter presents an example of a textual corpus that has certainly travelled far beyond its place of origin: the Islamic Book of One Thousand Questions. The adoption and adaption of an Arabic world literature into Malay, Javanese, Bugis, Achehnese, and other Southeast Asian languages entailed change, innovation, and ingenuity.

Speak in professional terms, a museum about Lithuanian book, which is undergoing the period of establishment, is a kind of a book museum, a new kind of the museum at all, and can be called Lithuanian book museum. Its main objective should be to collect, store, preserve, research and exhibit such a complex and multiform phenomenon as Lithuanian book, revealing its main features from the historical as well as from the modern point of view. The exposition should reflect the overall cycle of book existence in the society, that part of Lithuanian cultural and material life, which should witness the appearance of the book, its development and existence dating back to the first facts of documentary communication until the present day. What is Lithuanian book, what is the 19th century Lithuanian book, what should the exposition contents of this particular historical period in Lithuania be? Lithuanian book embraces all the printed matter in all the languages (not only in Lithuanian) published in the territory of Lithuania, including manuscripts as well, especially for the analysis of the very early stages of book development. Thus, matter, published in Lithuania and beyond its borders, to satisfy the needs of Lithuanian inhabitants with heterogeneous cultural background and language and different religious beliefs. The 19th century Lithuanian book is a complicated subject both for researchers of book history and founders of book museums as well. Historiography of book research has an agreed structural division of Lithuanian book identifying books in Lithuanian and foreign language, Minor Lithuania’s and Great Lithuania’s and emigrants’ books. This division seems to be suitable for the exposition in a book museum. Having existed in different conditions and having their own peculiarities the books of emigrants and those of Minor and Great Lithuania could be exhibited separately on their own, presenting the history of book in a chronological order. Creating the 19th century Great Lithuania book exposition, special attention should be made to the periods of book development and its peculiarities. The bottom line of the 19th century book history is the year of 1795, when Lithuania was integrated into Russian Empire after the third division of Polish-Lithuanian State and the country experienced the occupation period of over a hundred years. The development of the book as well as the overall life in the state was under the influence of dynamic and complicated political, economic and cultural changes. The policy of tolerance towards political and cultural identity on the newly annexed territory was changed into the policy „of destruction and annihilation of the origins“, which used to differentiate the territory from Russia, or „reestablishment“ of them. The consequence of this were the crucial changes in control and surveillance measures of the printed matter, the restriction on the usage of the Polish and Lithuanian languages and the introduction of the Russian language into the public life of the country. At the same time Lithuanian as well as other European countries were experiencing the period of rebirth and revival. The beginning of ethno-cultural movement modified the approach towards national languages and the publication of books in those languages. The top part of 19th century book development is the year of 1904. That time saw the abolishment of the ban on printed matter in Latin script, the latter fact having had the fatal influence on the existence of the book in the second part of the 19th century. The 40-year ban on printed matter sets itself apart in the development of the book and should comprise a separate part in the exposition of the 19th century book of Great Lithuania.

The spread of Islam in the Malay Archipelago (henceforth Nusantara) contributed to the activity of al -Quran translation in Malay civilisation. The society started to learn about Islam and the syariah that encouraged them to be close to al-Quran and translate it into the local language. Al-Quran was translated into Malay language in many ways. This study is a study of text aimed at identifying the translated works of al-Quran in Malay language beginning from the 17th century to the 20th century and to investigate its design and chronology. This qualitative study takes a descriptive approach and inculcates the historical method involving heuristics, critique of sources, interpretation and historiography in data collection and data analysis. The research findings show that 21 al-Quran translations into Malay language have been produced since the 17th century in Nusantara. Most of the al-Quran translated works were approached by interpretive translation rather than literal translation. The design of al-Quran translation into Malay language had developed in line with the times, beginning with classical Malay language using the jawi (Arabic) script, until the modern Malay language using romanised script. The concise translation style was seen to dominate the layout of al-Quran translations into Malay language. The al-Quran translation activity was not without controversy, until it led to several works being banned from publication. The rapid translation activity shows the enthusiastic efforts by society in Nusantara in transferring religious knowledge into guidance for daily life.

This article examines how Islam is represented in Western media and how Southeast Asian Muslim communities interpret and respond to these representations. Using Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of cultural hybridity, this study explores the intersection between Western media narratives about Islam and the regional cultural contexts of Muslims in Southeast Asia. Representations of Islam in Western media often contain orientalist bias and symbolic simplifications that shape the global public’s perception of Muslims. However, Muslims do not always accept these depictions unquestioningly. Traditionally, Muslims in Southeast Asia have negotiated meaning and constructed new identities that combine Islamic traditions with modern values. This study employs a qualitative–hermeneutic approach by analyzing Western digital media texts including online news outlets (BBC, CNN) and popular audiovisual platforms (Netflix, YouTube) alongside Muslim audience responses collected from social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. The findings demonstrate the formation of a dynamic hybrid identity resulting from the interaction between Western media portrayals and Southeast Asian Muslim socio-religious practices in the digital era. This raises epistemological challenges in understanding religious authority and symbolic meaning in online spaces. Therefore, a more critical and contextual approach is needed in rereading the representation of Islam within the global media landscape.

Book Review of the edited compilation by Miichi, Ken, and Omar Farouk (eds) (2015), Southeast Asian Muslims in the Era of Globalization. New York: Palgrave and Macmillan, ISBN: 978-1-137-43680-1, xii + 271 pages

For centuries, what is now commonly referred to in the Cold War-inflected English parlance as “Southeast Asia” has been connected to various regions of the world -- from the transmission of Islam from diverse places in the Middle East, South Asia, and China, to engagements with European colonialism and, more recently, post-independence foreign relations in various regional, multilateral, and global contexts. From the eighth century Muslim traders were traversing the ports of what is now called Southeast Asia, and by the turn of the fourteenth century there is evidence for indigenous Muslim communities.[1] Such economic, cultural, and religious exchange over the centuries has not, despite the warnings of some globalization theorists, led to a homogenization of Southeast Asia, much less a homogenization of Islamic ideas and practices. Rather than coming as a single homogenous and authoritative source, the spread of Islam – and Muslim leaders -- across mainland and island Southeast Asia came from many directions and influences from Mecca and Medina to the Swahili Coast, Yemen, India, the Persian Gulf, Patani networks, and as far as China. Whereas some transmission of Islamic ideas from the Middle East (often led by Southeast Asians, or Jawi, pilgrims, scholars, and travelers who return home) have led to contentious debates and power struggles in particular moments and places, such as the struggle between “old” and “young” movements among Minangkabau in West Sumatra, more recently Southeast Asia – especially Muslim Southeast Asia – has experienced other forms of cultural influence and exchange with East Asian countries like Japan and Korea as well as Western countries from the United States to former European colonial powers.[2] As a nation-state, Indonesia has also begun to come to terms with Chinese Muslims as part of the long histories of Islam and Muslims in the archipelago. Along the way, Southeast Asia’s ethnic communities have retained a sense of cultural, national, and religious identities that are influenced, yet never entirely determined, by outside forces.
 
 [1] Feener 2019, “Islam in Southeast Asia to c. 1800,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.40
 [2] For Malaysia, see Michael G. Peletz, Sharia Transformations: Cultural Politics and the Rebranding of an Islamic Judiciary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020). For the influence of K-Pop, see Ariel Heryanto, Identity and Pleasure: The Politics of Indonesian Screen Culture (Singapore: NUS Press, 2014).

Until the early nineteenth century, all book and print production processes in all parts of the world succeeded or failed as a result of manual labour. Hands, not powered machines, engraved wood blocks and plates, cut punches and cast, composed and inked type. Hands worked paper mills and different kinds of xylography and letter-press, using many different sorts of material. Hands hung drying paper and silk, and bound the products. Across Europe, men and women lived and often suffered from the making of lead-based type and rag-based paper and from the exertions of pulling the letter- and rolling presses. Many operatives worked in small, hot and unpleasant printing rooms. In all parts of the world, eyes as well as hands suffered from the demands of microscopic cutting and refining of wood blocks and copper and other metal plates. Unlike the coming of print (wood blocks in second-century East Asia and thirteenth-century Europe; moveable type in eleventh-century China and fifteenth-century Europe), the second mechanized, industrial revolution in book production was experienced worldwide in one century. It was, nonetheless, hugely variable in its regional adoption and impact. This nineteenth-century transformation has been identified with publishing capitalism, and yet its history is many-faceted, with complicated antecedents. Technological bravura led the revolution, its products sometimes dismissed as industrial literature. Thomas Carlyle (and cultural pessimists around the globe) denounced the new machinery as mechanizing minds, devaluing literature and learning, and replacing craftsmanship (in writing as well as in publishing) by the robotic and the mass-produced. The unprecedented cheapness of industrially printed materials encouraged more people to read but also developed a greater sense of the indeterminacy and anonymity of the reading public.

Thomas Bowrey, who was an employee of the British colonial government, visited the Malay-speaking region at the end of the 17th century and published a dictionary of Malay (1701) which consists of 12,683 headwords. It is one of the oldest and largest collections of data on this language, which was the first language of the people he came into contact with while travelling through the Malay Peninsula, spending most of his time in harbours along its west coast. Malay, which was spoken in the various trading centres of this area (e.g. Penang, Malacca), had long previously begun to develop into a form of lingua franca during Bowrey’s stay there due to the fact that traders, especially those from Arabic countries (beginning in the 12th century), China (from the 15th century onwards), Portugal (since 1511), the Netherlands (since 1641), and less so from England, came into contact with Malays speaking their local dialects in the various trading posts in Malaya and probably began to become acquainted with the trade-language variant. Thus, Bowrey must have observed and recorded elements of both. The data he collected is not limited to Malay variants spoken in coastal areas, but includes material from dialects which he encountered during his travels throughout the Malay Peninsula, though without, however, describing the locations in which he took notes on the lexicon and clauses. Not all of his material was written into manuscript form during his stay in Southeast Asia. A large part of his notes taken in situ were prepared for publication during his long journey home. His notes, which were used to print his dictionary, are in part kept in British libraries. Most of the material accessible to the public was studied during the preparation of this thesis. Earlier works on this dictionary are quite limited in scope. They deal with very specific aspects such as the meanings of headwords found between the letters A and C (Rahim Aman, 1997 & 1998), and the work of Nor Azizah, who deals with the lexical change found in Bowrey’s dictionary between D and F, and syntactic and sociolinguistic aspects (Mashudi Kader, 2009), and collective nouns by Tarmizi Hasrah (2010). This study will discuss Bowrey’s dictionary as a whole in order to describe its contribution to our knowledge of linguistic and non-linguistic facts in 17th century Malaya. Besides analysing Malay synchronically, this thesis also deals with historical-comparative questions and asks whether Bowrey contributes to our knowledge of the changes to the Malay language between the 17th and 21st centuries. In order to answer the research questions, this study not only relies on the dictionary in its entirety, but also on the notes found in British libraries as well as other material on early Malay, such as the Pigafetta list (1523), Houtman (1598–1603), and the Wilkinson dictionary (1901) as a complement to Bowrey’s dictionary; at the same time, the Malay Concordance Project (online), the SEAlang Project (online), Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (online), and Kamus Dewan Edisi Keempat (2007) will represent modern Malay. It should be borne in mind that in contrast to the Thomas Bowrey dictionary (TBD), Kamus Dewan Edisi Keempat (KDE4) does not hold information on colloquial forms of Malay, many of which reflect features of lingua franca Malay. This study is divided into two different branches, namely the consideration of synchronic aspects and historical comparative aspects. Finally, this study concludes that the Malay language in Thomas Bowrey’s dictionary is heavily influenced by both external and internal factors prevalent to the 17th century. The Malay language recorded in the Thomas Bowrey dictionary is very similar to modern Malay. The similarities between the Malay language of the 17th century and the Malay language of today are considerable, even though there are, of course, still some notable variances.

This paper presents the findings of a study conducted to investigate the impact of the adoption of the eleven official languages and related democratic policies on the production of books in indigenous languages as well as the role of public libraries in promoting the use of books written in indigenous languages. The study reveals that. despite the provisions of the New Constitution regarding language. it seems that the publishing houses have not made much effort to reduce the predominant status traditionally enjoyed by Afrikaans and English in the South African publishing industry. The findings also show that most libraries have collections published mainly in English and Afrikaans. In addition. it was found that books in indigenous languages made up less than 1% of the collections of most of the responding libraries. The results of this study portray a poor state of publishing in indigenous South African languages. It is recommended that every effort should be made to promote the use of these languages more widely and government support be solicited.

How can we recreate conditions for a relationship based on reciprocity and mutuality between Europe and Africa? How do we repair this relationship? Beginning with these questions, this contribution analyses museum and cultural cooperation between Cameroon and Europe from the 1960s to the present day. Building on Kwame Nkrumah’s and Ade Ajayi’s concepts of decolonization and “Reparation” (with a capital R) on the one hand, and Aimé Césaire’s and Philipp Schorch and Noelle Kahanu’s concepts of cooperation on the other, the chapter interrogates legal and institutional mechanisms of this cultural cooperation such as the formal agreements on which it is based, as well as participating institutions and their impact in Cameroon today. By addressing museums as one of the many legacies of (post)colonial relations between Cameroon and Europe, the chapter aims to contribute to the debate on the future of the colonial legacy in Cameroon.

Since the late 1970s, Southeast Asia's Muslim population has experienced an unprecedented religious revival. This resurgence has created a new kind of Islamic discourse, one oriented to the needs of a broad public rather than to narrow circles of religious adepts. This text examines the history, politics and meanings of this resurgence in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. It explores the implications for Southeast Asia, the larger Muslim world, and the West. The opening chapters document relations between the state and prominent Islamic political organizations. A second group of essays brings the level of documentation and analysis one step closer to the grass roots operation of or Islamic movements. The final group shifts the description and analysis to the most basic level - the grass-roots reception of institutional discourse and the target of reformist and resurgent activity.

The article examines Soviet-Egyptian relations from the beginning of 1957 (the completion of the Suez crisis) to the Autumn 1961, when the XXII Congress of the CPSU took place. The Egyptian vector of Soviet foreign policy is sufficiently studied in modern historiography. Soviet-Egyptian relations were the object of study of such researchers as A. Vasilyev, A. Fursenko, Y. Primakov, S. Sinayskiy, M. Gat, J. D. Glassmen, R .Ginat, I. Ginor and others. However, today far from all aspects of the problem are examined, especially concerning 1957-1961. The purpose of this article is to fill in the some gaps in modern historiography. We need to highlight the Egyptian factor in the policy of the USSR regarding the Syrian, Iraqi and Lebanese crises of 1957-1958; the supply of arms to the Arab States during that period; economic and cultural cooperation between countries. The aim of the article is analysis the policy of the Soviet Union regarding Egypt from the end of the Suez crisis, which radically strengthened the interaction between the two powers, until the XXII Congress of the CPSU (October 1961), which fixed the final normalization of Soviet-Egyptian relations. After the Suez crisis, the USSR significantly expanded the range of cooperation with Egypt. The aim of the Soviet Union was to consolidate and strengthen its influence in the Arab world on the wave of propaganda success after the Suez crisis. In general, the Khrushchev leadership managed to achieve the set tasks. Moscow focused on exporting arms and expanding economic assistance. Because of the emerging of the United Arab Republic and the Panarabist and anti-communist policy of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in the late 1950s, the ideological contradictions between the two states had worsened. Despite ideological disagreements with the President of the United Arab Republic, during the series of Middle Eastern crises of 1957-1958, the Kremlin invariably took the side of Arab nationalists to protect them from the actions of other states. The volume of military and financial and technical assistance to Cairo has also steadily increased, despite any ideological contradictions. Due to the new wave of socialist transformations in Egypt, the disintegration of the UAR and the beginning of the persecution of Communists and Kurds in the Iraq, the disagreements gradually came to naught, was recorded by the 22nd CPSU Congress in October 1961.