Date and Time: 16:00-, September 27th, 2016
Place: Tonan-tei (Room No. 201),CSEAS, Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, Kyoto University

Speaker: Dr. Shanon Shah, Researcher at William Temple Foundation, London
Title: Authoritarianism, nationalism and lived Islam in Malaysia

Summary:
Recent international headlines about Malaysia have highlighted an escalating, gigantic corruption scandal involving high level government leaders while discussions about this within Malaysia are severely suppressed by draconian legislation. Amid this backdrop, there are efforts to strengthen the position of Islam by the state Islamic bureaucracy, political parties such as the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), the government-controlled media and various Muslim non-state actors. These efforts to elevate Islam are often meshed with Malay nationalist rhetoric and are also hostile towards various groups that the Islamic establishment finds threatening – including Shi’a Muslims, Christians, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders (LGBTs), and Muslim women who defy specific Islamic interpretations on modest dressing. This seminar will focus upon some responses by the Malaysian Muslim public to counter the imposition of these politicised understandings of Islam. It argues that their responses offer a glimpse of the tensions between certain lived experiences of Islam and efforts to impose particular versions of Islam upon the population. It thus provides a perspective of lived religion within an authoritarian context where religion is strongly regulated and politicised.

About the speaker:
Dr. Shanon Shah is the researcher at William Temple Foundation and associate researcher at Inform in UK. He is also a singer-songwriter, playwright and journalist in Malaysia. He is now working on issues relating to gender, sexuality and Islam.

Moderator: Tsukasa Iga (ext. 7164) , JSPS Fellow, CSEAS