Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first work available in any language to extensively document and critically discuss traditions of 'Alid piety and their modern contestations in the region. The concept of 'Alid piety allows for a reframing of our views on the widespread reverence for 'Ali, Fatima and their progeny that emphasises how such sentiments and associated practices are seen as part of broad traditions shared by many Muslims, which might or might not have their origins in a specifically Shi'a identity. In doing so, it facilitates the movement of academic discussions out from under the shadow of polemical sectarian discourses on 'Shi'ism' in Southeast Asia. The chapters include presentations of new material from previously unpublished early manuscript sources from Muslim vernacular literatures in the Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Acehnese and Bugis languages, as well as rich new ethnography from across the region. These studies engage with cultural, intellectual, and performative traditions, as well as the ways in which 'Alid piety has been transformed in relation to more strictly sectarian identifications since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
Trade Review'This path-breaking work makes an important contribution to understanding the complexities of religion in a part of the Muslim world that is still only peripherally studied. Highlighting the intensive and extensive contacts between the Lands below the Winds and the so-called Islamic heartlands in the Middle East, this volume will advance both these fields of academic inquiry. The editors have ensured a comprehensive coverage and a welcome counternarrative to writings in Southeast Asian languages on Shi'ism which have become ideologically polarised. Against the background of growing sectarian tensions in the wider Muslim world, this book is also timely and will help map the intricacies of the relationship between Southeast Asia's Sunni and Shi'i Muslims in the past and the present.' - Carool Kersten, Senior Lecturer in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World at King's College London and author of Islam in Indonesia: The Contest for Society, Ideas and Values
