Gender and Islam in Southeast Asia

Emerging from a 2005 conference at the University of Passau (Germany), Susanne Schroter’s edited volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, from anthropologists and historians to literary scholars and Muslim female activists, to examine this complex subject. The book is organized into four country-specific sections on Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, respectively. The fifth and final section, consisting of only one chapter, adds a transnational dimension by analyzing the Tablighi Jama‘at. Despite the volume’s breadth of disciplinary and geographic contributions, its authors share a common project: the recuperation of Muslim women’s history, and especially female Muslim agency, amidst the rise of Islamization in Southeast Asia. In her introductory essay, Schroter works to unite the country-specific contributions under a broader regional framework. She argues that whereas Islam in Southeast Asia has traditionally been “moderate, especially with regard to its gender orders” (p. 7), the recent “upsurge of neo-orthodox Islam poses a threat” (p. 37) to women’s rights. With characterizations of conservative Muslims as “religious zealots” (p. 16) and “hardliners” (p. 19), she presents Islamization as a process in which “orthodox” Muslims, often with international ties, have imperiled the moderate Islam of traditional Southeast Asia and the liberal Islam of Muslim reformers. The majority of the volume’s contributors embrace this framing narrative. On the one hand, this global story enables them to shine new light on the region’s pressing debates over Islam and gender. Yet, on the other hand, the framework consistently places female agency in absolute distinction with so-called orthodox Islam, thereby eclipsing a more complicated landscape of ethical contestation and cultural difference. Building on Schroter’s framework, the book’s opening section on Indonesia features four chapters, each of which emphasizes challenges Muslim women face in asserting their rights an identities in various Indonesian Islamic spheres. To begin, Nelly van Doorn-Harder investigates the Harmonious Family Program of ‘Aisyiyah, Muhammadiyah’s sister organization, as “a tool to transmit the reformist views on gender and women’s position within marriage” ...