Farish A. Noor

The 13th Malaysian General Elections from a Sabah Perspective

Abstract This article looks at the campaign for the 13th Malaysian election as conducted in Sabah, and will offer some observations on the local issues that were deemed particularly important by Sabah voters. It will also address the changing forms of mass mobilisation, issue-framing, and the rise of Sabah-centric politics in the state, all of which may have played a part in deciding the outcome of the election results in that state.

An Imperial Divorce: The Division of South and Southeast Asia in the Colonial Discourse of the Nineteenth Century

It is commonplace to use terms such as South Asia and Southeast Asia; and the usage of such terms is evident in both academic and non-academic discourse. From international relations to political science to history to the media and popular entertainment, both terms have been in use for decades and have currency of their own. We write and talk about things such as South Asian music and Southeast Asian cuisine, and intuitively we understand what such terms mean, as their meaning has been set in the respective discourses they find themselves in.

The Tablighi Jama`at in West Papua, Indonesia: The Impact of a Lay Missionary Movement in a Plural Multi-religious and Multi-ethnic Setting

This chapter sets out to examine the short history of the Tablighi Jama`at in West Papua, the easternmost province of present-day Indonesia, and how it managed to expand its network of activities there. The Tabligh is a transnational Islamic missionary movement that has been described as possibly the world’s largest transnational Muslim network for faith renewal. In previous publications, I have looked at the development of the Tabligh’s vast network of mosques, religious schools, missionary centers, and itinerant missionary networks in Java, Madura, Malaysia, and Thailand. I have noted both the determination and resilience of the movement when it comes to expanding the magnitude of its activities across the world with scant regard for geo-political limitations and/or the logic of national territorial loyalties.

‘Racial Profiling’ Revisited: The 1915 Indian Sepoy Mutiny in Singapore and the Impact of Profiling on Religious and Ethnic Minorities

The 1915 Singapore Indian Sepoy mutiny caught the British colonial authorities by surprise and led to significant damage to the environs of Singapore and the loss of lives. This article looks at the mutiny of 1915 and locates it in the broader context of related developments in other parts of the empire, and argues that it was an instance when ethnic and religious loyalties superseded loyalty to the empire. Though the mutiny was eventually put down and those responsible dealt with, it left the colonial authorities with the lingering problem of how to reconcile the political, ethnic and religious loyalties of colonial subjects who were in fact complex cosmopolitans, and whose own subjectivities were shaped by considerations other than those of the Empire. This remains a question that has to be addressed today, in a world where modern post-colonial states are likewise unable to deal with the multiple loyalties and identities of their own citizens.