Voices of Islam in Europe and Southeast Asia

Abstract

This workshop, co-organized by the Regional Studies Program, Walailak
University, Thailand, and the Department of Cross-cultural and Regional
Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and conceived of early in
2005, took place a little over a week before the eruption of the “cartoon controversy,”
which brought the issue of the relationship between Europe and the
so-called “Muslim world” to the fore as never before. From January 20-22,
2006, a group of almost thirty Muslim and non-Muslim specialists working
in Islamic studies and on the study of Muslim societies from fifteen countries
in Europe and Southeast Asia gathered in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Thailand,
to discuss the diverse “Voices of Islam” in these two regions. The workshop
was held in southern Thailand, where, in the ethnic Malay-majority border
provinces, a violent insurgency over the last two years has claimed over 1,000
lives and has heightened tensions between the local Muslim population and
the Thai state. Some observers have explained the intensification of the conflict
as being due to the infiltration of foreign Islamist militants and the influence
of extremist Islamic discourses of struggle.
The workshop focused on two major themes: how events following the
September 11 attacks have affected the nature of Islamic studies in Europe
and Southeast Asia, and how changes in Islamic studies are impacting upon
Muslims and their understanding of Islam in these two regions. While the
workshop presentations were given mainly in English (with a small number
of papers presented in Thai and Malay), a simultaneous interpreting service
was available for local Thai Muslim (as well as non-Muslim) participants,
who attended the workshop in significant numbers.
A wide variety of papers were presented. However, if one theme could
summarize the tone of the three days, it is that 9/11 has engendered a changing
paradigm in these regions’ Islamic studies programs, even though many
of the changes may already have been underway prior to the attacks. In the
case of Southeast Asia, governments and the media in the region have attributed
the Muslim extremists’ ideology, at least partly, to the influence of ...