In recent years the largest Muslim-majority country, Indonesia, has seen the growth of contrary trends: a peaceful movement for democracy led and supported mostly by Muslims but also incidents of terrorism and signs of paramilitarism linked mainly to radical Islamists. Prof. Hefner will examine the role of Indonesia's Islamic madrasas in both cases, assess the likely future of Indonesian Muslim politics, and explore the implications of Indonesia's experience for the wider Muslim world.

Robert W. Hefner has directed the program on Islam and civil society at Boston University since 1991. He has conducted research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for over three decades, and has authored or edited a dozen books and several major policy reports. His most recent books include, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (edited with Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton University Press, 2007); ed., Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton, 2005); and Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, 2000). He is the invited editor of the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800, and is now writing a book for the Carnegie Corporation on Islamic education and democratization in Indonesia.

In his annual testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in March 2006, then - Pacific Commander Admiral William Fallon characterized Southeast Asia as "in the front line of the War on Terrorism." While some in the region welcomed this indication of official American interest, many would have wished to be singled out for more positive reasons. Yet, for many Americans, it took an event as dramatic as the Bali bombings of October 2002 to realize that there were more Malay-speaking Muslims in Southeast Asia than Arabic-speaking ones in the Middle East. Using the little-known sultanate of Brunei as a point of departure, Ambassador Christy will analyze how political Islam in the Malay Muslim world has changed, and how one American diplomat went about shaping US policies to respond to these changes.

Ambassador Gene Christy is a career foreign service officer. At the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI, he teaches in the National Security Decision-Making Department, including courses on Asian security perspectives and on Southeast Asia. In Washington D.C. he worked in the State Department on island Southeast Asia issues (2001-02 and 1985-89) and as director for Asia at the National Security Council (2000-01). His diplomatic posts in Southeast Asia prior to serving as ambassador to Brunei included Kuala Lumpur in the 1990s, Jakarta in the 1980s, and Surabaya in the 1970s.

This is the Southeast Asia Forum's eighth seminar of the 2006-2007 academic year.

The islamization process in Pakistan is at the core of the contradictions and identity conflict of Pakistan. It is the permanent attempt to rewrite the history whose founding fathers intended to make the homeland for the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent, much the against the will of the clergy. However it is also an instrument of perpetuation in power of a largely secular military, which constantly manipulates Islamic symbols.

Although widely discussed, the process of islamization in Pakistan has remained relatively limited. No elected legislature went beyond the expression of the idea of the supremacy of the Islamic law. No elected legislature ever passed a somewhat substantial provision. Despite an increasingly strong, or at least vocal religious pressure, the constitution and the legislation of the Pakistani state are still based on a compromise between modernist institutions and ever more pressing religious demands, yet still limited. The supremacy of the Sharia is regularly reaffirmed, yet its implementation does not progress.

The presentation will analyze the impact of the islamization policies, less however on the legal and constitutional system than on the economic, political and social life of Pakistan. Starting from the observation that the islamization process is more limited that it may seem, the presentation will draw on to say that this process reinforces more than it challenges the existing political and social order, and its most salient political expression, the current military regime, by preventing, on the one side the emergence of any real alternative political project and, although in a more pragmatic manner, by bringing back in mainstream politics the fraction of the social body which could possibly be tempted by more radical means of actions.

In this perspective, four dimensions will be more specifically studied: 1) The evolution of the role of religious movements and parties within the Pakistani state; 2) The relationship between these same religious movements and parties and the Pakistani establishment; 3) The specific role of the madrasas in this relation; 4) The relation the religious parties entertains with democracy.

Frederic Grare is a visiting scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He will lead a project assessing U.S. and European policies toward Pakistan and, where appropriate, recommending alternatives with Ashley J. Tellis and George Perkovich. Grare will focus on the tension between stability and democratization in Pakistan, including challenges of sectarian conflict, Islamist political mobilization, and educational reform. Grare also will facilitate interactions between U.S. experts and officials and European counterparts on the main policy challenges in South Asia.

Grare is a leading expert and writer on South Asia, having served most recently in the French embassy in Pakistan and from 1999 to 2003 in New Delhi as director of the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities. Grare has written extensively on security issues, Islamist movements, and sectarian conflict in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He also has edited the volume, India, China, Russia: Intricacies of an Asian Triangle.

His most recent publications include: "India, China, Russia: Intricacies of an Asian Triangle, with Gilles Boquerat"(eds), (New Delhi, India Research Press, 2003); "Pakistan and the Afghan Conflict, 1979-1985: At the Turn of the Cold War" (Karachi, Oxford University Press, 2003); "Political Islam in the Indian Subcontinent: The Jamaat-i-Islami" (New Delhi, Manohar, 2001)

Grare has an advanced degree from Paris Institut d'Etudes Politiques and received his Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International Studies.

Dr. Grare's talk is the first seminar of the winter quarter South Asia Colloquium Series.