The Bureaucratization of Islam and its Socio-Legal Dimensions in Southeast Asia

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dominik M. Müller
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Asian Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 290540325

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

This project, hosted by the MPI for Social Anthropology (2016-19) and FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (2019-23), ethnographically explored state-Islam-society relations in five countries (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines). It observed dynamics between state-sponsored attempts to influence Islamic discourses and Muslim lifeworlds and interlocked attempts by non-state actors to influence the state’s governance of Islam. It focused particularly on interactions and interface situations between Islamic bureaucracies and non-state groups. The project viewed the Bureaucratization of Islam (BoI) not only as a formalization, expansion and differentiation of state-Islamic institutions, or as a control and co-optation strategy, but also as a sociocultural phenomenon that transcends its formal boundaries and – as the sub-projects showed – to very different locally-specific extents affects the meanings of Islam, plays a role in social changes and conflicts, and may inform subject (trans)formations, while simultaneously creating spaces for action. The BoI implies negotiations of the state’s classificatory power and is simultaneously characterized by uncontrollable forces and unintended consequences. Across the studied settings, the BoI appeared multi-directional, internally contested, and standing in a dialectical relationship with efforts towards a “de-bureaucratization” or changed “re-bureaucratization” of Islam. The doctoral students conducted field orientation trips and 11 months of fieldwork – F.A. Aziz on the inner workings of the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos and its politics of halal certification, T.G. Biró on attempts by Malaysia’s Islamic bureaucracy for “re-educating” transgender people, and R. Engchuan on Indonesian “film communities” who develop artistic narratives about self-determined religiosity beyond state intrusion. The project held workshops with partners in Oxford, Singapore, and Harvard. Müller conducted research in Brunei and Singapore, examining the national branding of state forms of Islam and contrasting approaches to governing Islamic plurality and disputed traditions. The conceptualizing work has been continually questioned and modified based on the research and project discussions. The relevance of the project’s results is not limited to Southeast Asia, as future research can also engage its theoretical and methodological output in other (trans-)regional contexts.

Publications

• 2018. The Bureaucratization of Islam and its Socio-Legal Dimensions in Southeast Asia: Conceptual Contours of a Research Project, MPI for Social Anthropology Working Paper 187. *open acc.*
  Müller, D.
  
• BUREAUCRATIC ISLAM COMPARED: CLASSIFICATORY POWER AND STATE-IFIED RELIGIOUS MEANING-MAKING IN BRUNEI AND SINGAPORE. Journal of Law and Religion, 33(2), 212-247.
  Müller, Dominik M.
  
• Hybrid Pathways to Orthodoxy in Brunei Darussalam: Bureaucratised Exorcism, Scientisation and the Mainstreaming of Deviant-Declared Practices. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 37(1), 141–183.
  Müller, Dominik M.
  
• The Bureaucratisation of Islam in Southeast Asia: Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 37(1), 3–26.
  Müller, Dominik M. & Steiner, Kerstin
  
• Pluralist Constitutions and the Southeast Asian Context. Pluralist Constitutions in Southeast Asia.
  Neo, Jaclyn L & Son, Bui Ngoc
  
• A Political Dance in the Rain. Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 176(1), 7-36.
  Engchuan, Rosalia Namsai
  
• Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura, in Encyclopedia of Islam, Brill. 113–15.
  Müller, Dominik M.
  
• Beyond the Sharia State: Public Celebrations and Everyday State-Making in the Malay Islamic Monarchy of Brunei Darussalam. Asian Journal of Law and Society, 9(3), 418-439.
  Müller, Dominik M.
  
• Routledge Handbook of Islam in Southeast Asia. Routledge.
  Aljunied, Khairudin
  
• Education and Power in Contemporary Southeast Asia. Routledge.
  Tayeb, Azmil; Metro, Rosalie & Brehm, Will