Muslims In Singapore Research Articles

Community Empowerment Through Social-Business Programs in Qurban Activities in North Sumatera

Community service activities, known as Abdimas, are executed through targeted social campaigns directed at Muslims in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. These individuals actively engage in the qurban program in North Sumatra, adopting the sacrificial entrustment scheme. The primary objective of this community service initiative is to empower local goat breeders and facilitate the equitable distribution of sacrificial meat within various regions of North Sumatra, encompassing Tebing Tinggi, Medan, and Deli Serdang. The employed methodology for this community service endeavor adheres to participatory action research (PAR), emphasizing active involvement from diverse stakeholders to effectively attain communal development objectives. The outcomes of the social campaign revealed the enthusiastic participation of 700 Qurbani performers, with 70% originating from Singapore and the remaining 30% hailing from Malaysia and Indonesia. The sacrificial ritual involved 700 goats, resulting in the production of approximately 7,500 packs of sacrificial meat. The subsequent distribution of qurban proceeds engaged village heads, hamlet heads, and local communities in the Tebing Tinggi, Medan, and Deli Serdang areas. This article sheds light on the positive contributions of Abdimas activities, emphasizing the empowerment of local goat breeders and the fostering of community solidarity through the support of the qurban program.

Framing the Muslim subject, contesting the secular citizen: Tablighi Jamaat and the (trans)nationalization of Islam in Singapore

AbstractThis paper explores how the (trans)nationalization of Islam can lead to differential understandings of the Muslim subject and secular citizen in Singapore. (Trans)nationalization problematizes the state‐led regulation of religion by revealing the complexities that emerge when religious subject positions are indexed to citizenship status. Islamic expression is closely regulated in Singapore, meaning the Singaporean Muslim subject is framed by the state in secular‐first terms. Complicating this framing is the presence of Bangladeshi migrant workers, who, by virtue of their visa and residency statuses, are viewed as transient members of society and denied access to citizenship. Non‐citizenship causes a variety of Islamic expressions to become viable pathways to religious subject formation, including those associated with Islamic missionary movement, Tablighi Jamaat. By claiming these subject positions, Bangladeshi Tablighis become vectors through which Singapore's Muslim spaces are exposed to transnational Islamic influences, causing the mosque to be imbued with divergent, and sometimes contested, meanings and attributions of value.

WAQF AND LEGACY OF ALTRUISM IN SINGAPORE: CHALLENGES AND DEVELOPMENT

The success story of waqf development in Singapore has been significantly acknowledged. The successful experience warrants for learning models for comparative experiences among other Muslim countries in Asia. This study document and analyze to share two main research objectives related to the Waqf practices. First, it aims to explore and elaborate on the dynamics of waqf administration and property development in Singapore. Second, analyzes the significance of past altruistic waqf landmark activities towards the Muslim community in Singapore. Based on prior studies, this research phenomenon has yet to be addressed and highlighted in any previous study. A qualitative approach with a case study research design is applied in this research. In-depth semi-structured interview sessions with 4 private mutawallis are complemented with reviews of relevant documents. This study finds that external factors, including mandatory acquisition by the government, higher living costs, and several legal restrictions represent the main challenges to the waqf sector in the country. On other hand, effective governing roles played by MUIS as waqf authority in the country enable the initiative of new waqf type and redevelopment of existing waqf properties. In the present time, these endowed properties provide benefits not only for the Muslim community in Singapore but also to significant other beneficiaries outside Singapore. The findings of this study indicate that the legacy of waqf inspires altruism in the modern Singaporean Muslim community. It becomes the basis for contemporary waqf practice among Muslims in Singapore and assists them to be a self-sustaining passionate and harmonic community.

Transformation of Myanmar Muslim Community: Singapore as a Role-Model

This study looks into Myanmar and Singapore, holding the latter as the role model for the former. Even though both countries are homelands to minority Muslims, the situation of Muslims and other minority groups in Myanmar is not as contented as that of the Muslims in Singapore. Singapore has upheld the religion and Asian values despite her achievements in modern developments. Singapore’s steps towards maintaining racial harmony within the minority groups and between government and the minorities can be emulated by Myanmar. Through qualitative analysis of the historical accounts and library materials, the paper unveils that the present plight of the Muslims and the Rohingya like minorities in Myanmar only started with the coming of military junta into power in 1962. Racial and nationalist movements initiated by the military government eradicated the Muslim identity depriving them from the rights of citizenship. The findings also suggest ways on how Muslims in Myanmar can ignite their dying flame of patriotism, learn to re-integrate with others and contribute towards national pride and nation building. Adding onto this analysis, the multi-religious policies of Singapore and its founder Lee Kuan Yew are analyzed from archives and media materials in order to set an example for Myanmar policy makers.

Controlling Message and Messenger: Singapore’s Ongoing Efforts to Bureaucratize Islam

This paper argues that ongoing efforts by the Singapore Government to further bureaucratize Islam are driven by a combination of the specific, unique structure of the political organization of Singapore; combined with idiosyncratic historical events inclusive of separation from Malaysia and the race riots of the 1960s. The impact of the specific characteristics of the Singapore body politic are at times underplayed, but their context is critical to understanding the relationship between religion and state in this island nation. The primary differential characteristics include centralization of power, communitarianism, and a strong bias towards non-assimilation. This creates a construct very different from the Western, “melting pot” conceptualization of a multi-racial, multi-cultural society. The paper next outlines the various mechanisms of bureaucratization and subsequent control over both the message and the messenger, inclusive of the Singapore Muslim Identity Scheme (SMI), the Asatizah Recognition Scheme (ARS), centralized control of the Kutbha, the Curriculum Development Plan (CDP), and current efforts to establish Islamic institutions of higher learning within Singapore.

“World‐class Muslims”: Examining the Discursive Construction of a Singapore Muslim Identity

The Muslim WorldVolume 109, Issue 3 p. 417-430 Miscellaneous “World-class Muslims”: Examining the Discursive Construction of a Singapore Muslim Identity Muneerah Ab Razak, Muneerah Ab Razak National University of Singapore, Middle East InstituteSearch for more papers by this author Muneerah Ab Razak, Muneerah Ab Razak National University of Singapore, Middle East InstituteSearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 August 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12300Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume109, Issue3Special Issue: Conceptualising the Umma July 2019Pages 417-430 RelatedInformation

‘Diagnosing “extremism”: the case of “Muscular” Secularism in Singapore’

ABSTRACTThis paper makes three main arguments: first, religious extremism is best understood in context. This stance is adopted in diagnosing the specific case of Islamic extremism in the globalized, multi-religious city-state of Singapore, which, having departed from Malaysia only 54 years ago, is still a relatively young polity. Second, the paper argues that to identify and cope with Islamic extremism, the Singapore State should be more explicit and firm in its articulation of what the current author calls a “Muscular Secularism” policy. Third, the paper argues that at this historical juncture in Singapore’s history – with politicized and often violent interpretations of Islam very much in the news worldwide – a more explicit and similarly unapologetic articulation of what may be called a “reconciled” Singaporean Muslim Identity is needed. Forging such an identity though is an understandably sensitive issue that must be left to the Singaporean Muslim community and its leaders. The challenge is to fashion a Singaporean Muslim Identity that would be theologically sound, but integrated within the secular, globalized, multicultural context of modern Singapore. Such a reconciled Singapore Muslim Identity would meanwhile complement efforts to fashion a more clearly articulated and strongly promoted wider Singaporean Identity and Master Narrative.

Islam Dan Keharmonian Kaum Di Singapura

This Paper aims to find out on the response of Singapore as a multi-racial country and religion towards the Muslims and its role in taking care of its racial harmony in Singapore. This mix of methods of qualitative and quantitative through the approach of direct observation has found that the government of Singapore gave a good attention for Islam. This happens in such ways that the law named AMLA and muslims in Singapore take part in keeping the racial harmony in many ways such as involving in IRO organization, choosing An-Nadhah mosques as a racial harmony centre, encouraging the dialogues between religion and the muslims. Most important role in MUIS is as official instituion to have such harmony by having seminars and khutbah as well as application of downloaded information in curriculum development based on racial harmony. As the result, it is hopeful to let this be as a research for other countries that has a different system that is similar to Singapore for the sake of a better harmony.

Homophobic Muslims: Emerging Trends in Multireligious Singapore

AbstractThis article examines the recent emergence of homophobia among Muslims in Singapore. While Islamic scriptures were used to justify homophobia, interpretations of these holy texts regarding non-normative sexualities have always been diverse. The anti-homosexuality exegesis of Islamic scriptures gained traction in a particular constellation of contemporary politics. When the state broached a discussion over whether a colonial-era law criminalizing homosexuality should be repealed, evangelical Christians were the first to vigorously support the retention of the law. Evangelical Christian homophobic discourses were soon reproduced by Muslims, whose own conservatism has been rising in recent years. Longstanding state biases against Muslims (who are mostly lower-working-class Malays), however, restricted the expression of their religious conservatism, which makes it useful for them to perform good citizenship by standing alongside evangelical Christians (mostly middle-class Chinese). This article demonstrates that Muslim homophobia has complex roots and explanations that cannot be reduced solely to Islam.

Boycotts as moral protests in Malaysia and Singapore

This article examines boycott movements in Malaysia and Singapore as expressions of popular Islam, with the Israeli–Gaza conflicts of 2008 and 2014 as case studies. The study of Muslims in Malaysia and Singapore is important for a number of reasons. First, it highlights the complexities of the global discourse on boycotting among Muslim communities. It not only shows the degree of the Muslims’ collective action on the ground but also the conversations among the elites. Second, it demonstrates the diverse manifestations of religiosity within differing socio-political conditions. Owing to their unique position as a minority population in a Sinicized environment, located in between Malay and Muslim dominated countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, Malay Muslims in Singapore are often juxtaposed against a barometer of the Malay Other. Music, movies, popular trends and terminologies coined across the Causeway often find their way into the everyday lexicon of Muslims in Singapore. While these popular cultural expressions might seem free flowing and amorphous, one cannot neglect the roles of states in influencing the practice of popular Islam.

Renationalisation of space in everyday life in Singapore

As globalisation becomes more and more familiar in our everyday lives, one readily visible phenomenon is the increasing number of migrants from outside the borders of nation states. This influx of migrants inevitably makes societies more complicated racially and culturally, and a ‘multi-racial’ or ‘multi-cultural’ society is no longer the monopoly of migrant societies such as the United States or Australia. This spread of multi-racial and multi-cultural societies in the world, however, does not mean that we have achieved racial and cultural co-existence (among nationals, and needless to say between host society and migrants) without hierarchies. In the face of a constant flow of migrants, both the host states and host societies need to control migrants, to ensure that migrants will co-exist with the host society as the host society wishes. Hierarchy and difference need to be created and maintained by the host society to control the influx of migrants in their everyday life. This paper explores how Singapore society draws a border between itself and female migrant domestic workers. For this purpose, it examines both everyday discourses of Singaporean employers about female migrant domestic workers and the efforts of the Singapore Muslim Converts’ Association to teach such workers to become ‘good Muslims'.

Governing Muslims in Singapore's secular authoritarian state

The governance of Muslims in Singapore has been strongly shaped by the secular authoritarian state's commanding influence over Islamic institutions, such as the main religious bureaucracy Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (the Islamic Religious Council), and reliance on draconian legislation, such as the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (MRHA), the Sedition Act and the Internal Security Act. Inter alia, these laws attempt to inoculate religion against politics, regulate religious activity and restrain the development of an autonomous Muslim civil society. The contradictions associated with the MRHA and no-tudung (‘headscarf’) policy are analysed within the framework of the authoritarian state's assertive secularism. The significance of localised socio-economic and political grievances in motivating a small number of Singaporean Muslims in supporting radical Islamist ideology is also considered.

THE RELIGIO-POLITICAL ACTIVISM OF ULAMA IN SINGAPORE

The article attempts to understand the relationship between Muslim religious scholars and the government in Singapore and argues that it has worsened since the city-state became independent in 1965. It explores the declining religious influence of the ulama by assessing their role and contribution to the enactment of the 1966 Muslim Personal Law which governs several aspects of Muslim life in Singapore and the 1998 amendment of the earlier law. It seeks to understand various contributory factors for this waning influence, namely the ulama's role in increased religiosity amongst Muslims in Singapore, the government's changing attitude towards Islam, and the evolving perceptions amongst some ulama about their role and influence within Singapore's Muslim community. It will also show how the ulama have tried to reclaim their religious influence.

Defensive or offensive dining? Halal dining practices among Malay Muslim Singaporeans and their effects on integration

Anthropologists and sociologists have, in recent years, paid attention to different aspects of halal food production and consumption. However, very few studies have focussed on the impact that halal food, its certification and halal dining practice have on socialisation, particularly for Muslims living in multicultural societies in Southeast Asia. Nasir and Pereira’s study (2008) is one of these exceptions. They studied the attitudes of Singaporean Malay Muslims towards halal food as well as the strategies they adopt when forced to share nonhalal dining environments. These authors have described such strategies as ‘defensive dining’ and have argued that, through them, Muslims in Singapore are able to fully partake in the multicultural life of the city state as well as integrate within the mainstream, mainly Chinese, society. This article discusses how my observations and fieldwork raise some questions about such overtly positive conclusions. Indeed, I suggest that to understand the impact that such ‘dining strategies’ may have on the integration of Singaporean Malay Muslims, we should not only observe the Malay Muslims’ viewpoint but also consider the impact such practices have on non‐Muslims, in particular the Chinese majority, as well as the role that stereotypes have in Singapore.

Integration, minorities and the rhetoric of civilization: the case of British Pakistani Muslims in the UK and Malay Muslims in Singapore

This article discusses, through a comparative approach, the experience of young Muslims in Singapore and the UK as far as integration is concerned. The paper suggests that one of the main issues faced by young Muslims, in both countries, is how they are represented and understood. Indeed, British South Asian Muslims as well as Malay Muslim Singaporeans are still living in a dynamic of postcolonialism. The heritage of British colonialism still, although latently, works through the creation of categories and classifications of how identity should be defined. In both the cases of British South Asian Muslims and Singaporean Malay Muslims, there is often an unspoken request for the imagined ethnic minority to mimic the ‘achiever’ majority. It is in this dynamic that we can recognize what I have called a ‘rhetoric of civilization’.

(Re)imagining the Muslim Identity in Singapore

AbstractThis paper discusses how the Singapore government attempted to (re)imagine the Muslim identity in Singapore based on the crisis of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) arrests in 2002. The paper argues that the government sought to resolve and manage the crisis using the combined apparatuses of the mass media, education and administrative regulations. The paper further analyses the constraints and challenges faced by the government in the process of (re)constructing and sustaining the Singapore Muslim identity. The attempt by the Singapore government provides a useful example of how the government of a multi‐ethnic, multi‐religious and multi‐lingual country has responded to internal terrorist threats by (re)imagining the Muslim identity, and the problems and controversies such a (re)imaging process generates.

Embedding Security into Free Trade: The Case of the United States — Singapore Free Trade Agreement

Nations have no permanent alliances, just permanent interests. --Castlereagh The United States-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (USSFTA) is the result of the overlapping interests of the two countries seeking to embed security into trade ties. Since 2005, the Bush administration been pushing for the linking of the two in various meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). (1) Unlike other free trade agreements, it goes beyond the economics; the security relationship between the two countries had been forging for at least a decade and half, but since 11 September 2001 it become the driver for the bilateral relations between the two. Singapore and the United States continue to support the multilateral trade liberalization of the World Trade Organization (WTO), but also see bilateral free trade areas (FTAs) as complementary building blocks, not stumbling blocks, for an eventual single world market. Even more curious is that the usual motivation for reducing tariffs, removing non-trade barriers, and promoting fair access to each other's goods, services, and financial markets does not seem to apply. The two countries have had the lowest tariff rates on the planet: Singapore been the most free entrepot in the world, which imposes duties only on four items--beer, stout, samsoo, and medical samsoo (Wong 2004, p. 15). At the conclusion of negotiations in mid-2003, the bilateral trade stood at US$39 billion and at the end of the first year of the FTA in action, the amount climbed to US$40 billion; the US investment in Singapore reached US$33 billion; and some 1,500 US multinationals were based in the city-state. (2) Moreover, Jeffrey Schott pointed out that when a small country signs an FTA with the United States (whose economy is 130 times Singapore's, according to the World Bank's 2006 World Development Indicators), economic gains are in favour of the smaller partner (Schott 2004, pp. 369-81). In terms of growth prospects, Singapore, an economy of US$90 billion gross domestic product (GDP) and 4 million inhabitants, offers its government-linked and private firms little room for further market expansion (Wong 2004, pp. 10-11). Going global is not an option; it is the only way for Singapore to survive. For the United States, the FTA as an enterprise makes little economic sense; it created an asymmetry of opportunities for the trade in goods and services in favour of the city-state. The United States just become Singapore's newest hinterland, (3) arguably the most important one. It offered Singapore greater market access than ASEAN's major economies combined. For Singapore, been the foremost preoccupation since independence and has been the city-state's credo in its foreign [economic] policy (Leifer 2000, p. 68). Deputy Prime Minister (also Minister for Defence) Tan was more emphatic: Without security, there can be no economic development. Conversely, stability and security are in serious jeopardy without economic development. This is the basis for the priority that Singapore placed on ensuring our defence and security since the earliest days of our independence. (4) Region-wide insecure environment lurks from Singapore's Muslim neighbours, the Taiwan straits, the Korean peninsula, China-Japan, Korea-China, and Japan-Korea animus in Northeast Asia to the Spratly islands disputes in the South China Sea and frequent border clashes and territorial claims over natural resources in Southeast Asia. These have instilled a deep sense of vulnerability in Singaporeans and in turn increased a genuine concern for their survival as a state and as a free trading economy. For these reasons, Singapore embedded its security needs into trade activities from the outset of the statehood. With the best harbour and transportation hub facilities in the region, Singapore offered its neighbours unfettered access. …

From Local Practice to Transnational Network — Saints, Shrines and Sufis among Tamil Muslims in Singapore

AbstractPractices of saint-veneration among Muslims are often perceived as thoroughly localized traditions, which cannot be transplanted to other localities. For this reason, much of the scholarship on the diasporic Muslim communities has assumed that practices of saint-veneration would decline in the Diaspora. Yet, most of this scholarship focused on the relatively young Muslim communities in Western countries. This paper aims to assess this theory by investigating saint-veneration among Tamil Muslims in Singapore, who have been a part of Singaporean Muslim society since the early nineteenth century. It will argue that, contrary to current theories, saint-veneration among Tamil Muslims did not decline among the Singaporean Tamil Diaspora. Rather, Tamil Muslims participated in creating a landscape of shrines in the city by inking their practices with those of other Muslim communities, while at the same time maintaining attachments to saints and shrines back in India.

Religious Schools: For Spirit, (f)or Nation

In this paper I draw attention to the study of ‘unofficially sacred’ sites in geographies of religion, which provide significant insights into the construction of religious identity and community, and the intersections of sacred and secular. I show that such sites deserve as much attention as places of worship (the more conventional focus in the geographical study of religion) in our understanding of the place of religion in contemporary urban society. In particular, using the case of Islamic religious schools in Singapore, I examine how Muslim identities and community are negotiated within multicultural and multireligious contexts, and particularly within one in which there is a highly ‘educative’ state [Gramsci, 1971 Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (International Publishers, New York)] that seeks to guide nation formation and the manufacture of consensus, and which strives to achieve a secular, modernist vision of society, characterized by economic progress and development. The specific analysis focuses, first, on the role of the state in the social construction of ‘schools’—particularly the ways in which state-constructed definitions of multiculturalism, multiracialism, multireligiosity, and modernity shape Singapore schools and education. Second, I examine the ways in which religious schools ( madrasahs) are a means by which some Singapore Muslims maintain and enhance their religious life. Further, I analyze state–religion relations, state strategies of nation-building, strategies of identity and community construction among Muslims in Singapore, as well as the fractured nature of the Muslim community by studying the divergent meanings invested in schools by state and religious groups.

Singapore Muslims: The Quest for Identity in a Modern City-State

The plight of ethno-religious minorities the world over can be meaningfully appraised by reference to the political context and circumstances within which such minorities operate. These include factors such as a country's history and religious demography, the state of majority-minority relations, geo-politics, the extent of development and modernization, and governmental policies. Thus, when one studies the case of Singapore's principal religious minority group, the Muslims, these imperatives need to be understood, if not appreciated. Studying the state of affairs of Singapore's Muslim community (the majority of whom are ethnic Malays) can perhaps also offer some insights about the relative impact of modernization and globalization upon ethno-religious, particularistic tendancies, and how modern multi-ethnic states today go about balancing competing minority ethno-religious pulls on the one hand, and forging a common national identity and consciousness, on the other. This paper highlights some salient features of Singapore's Muslim minority, including their socio-economic challenges and goes on to discuss their autonomous attempts to preserve and promote their ethno-religious identity in secular, modern Singapore. In spite of constituting only about a quarter of the total population, the case of the Muslim Malays receives added significance given their constitutional position as the indigenous people of Singapore, and the Republic's location in the Malay-Muslim world of South-east Asia.