Piety, Politics, and Everyday Ethics in Southeast Asian Islam: Beautiful Behavior

Robert Rozehnal, Editor

Paperback

9781350170124

This book explores the diversity and dynamism of Islam in Southeast Asia through the concept of adab, or beautiful behavior. Amid the complexity of Islamic civilization, adab provides Muslims with a shared sense of sacred history, identity, and morality. In the context of Islamic ethics, adab defines the rules of personal and public etiquette: good manners, proper conduct, civility and humaneness. 

Featuring the interdisciplinary research of nine prominent scholars of Islam, the book offers new perspectives on adab's multiple meanings and myriad applications for Muslim communities in Malaysia and Indonesia. The chapters examine a wide range of texts, spotlighting the writings of prominent Muslim thinkers, and contexts, focusing on the everyday experiences of lay Muslims. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and methodological lenses, the essays reveal how beautiful behavior impacts local institutions, cultural practices, and religious imaginations via politics and law, spirituality and piety, ethics and experience. 

With its careful textual analysis, detailed case studies, and attention to historical continuities and disjunctures, Piety, Politics and Everyday Ethics in Southeast Asian Islam is essential reading for students and scholars interested in global Islam and the lived, local dynamics of Muslim Southeast Asia.

Contents

Part One: Texts and Contexts

1. The Interplay Between Adab and Local Ethics and Etiquette in Indonesian and Malaysian Literature

2. "Young People are Seeking their Blessings": Islamic Life Courses, Explorative Authority, and the Possibilities of Worldly Adab in Rural Aceh

Part Two: Politics and Law

3. Adab and the Culture of Political Culture

4. Sharia, Adab and the Malaysian State

Part Three: Piety and Authority

5. Women's Adab in the Pesantren: Gendering Virtues and Contesting Normative Behaviors

6. Politicians, Pop Preachers, and Public Scandal: A Personal Politics of Adab

Part Four: Performance and Experience

7. Adab and Embodiment in the Process of Performance: Islamic Musical Arts in Indonesia

8. Smoke, Fire and Rain in Muslim Southeast Asia: Environmental Ethics in the Time of Burning