Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam was published by Stanford University Press in November 2009. But the story behind the book dates back five years to November 2004. It was then that Donald K. Emmerson and Daniel M. Varisco agreed to disagree.

Emmerson spoke on "Islamism: What Is to Be Said and Done?" (video link and discussion) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC on 30 November 2009.

Varisco, a Hofstra University anthropologist with expertise on Islam and the Middle East, had invited Emmerson to join a panel on "Islam and Political Violence: The ‘Ismhouse' of Language" at the 2004 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association.

Emmerson was pleased to accept. Not since graduating from high school in Beirut had he lived in the Middle East. He had specialized instead on Indonesia, famously known as having more Muslims than any other country, yet spatially and spiritually peripheral to the Middle Eastern locations of Mecca, Medina, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Emmerson relished the chance to interact with experts whose knowledge of Muslim societies had been acquired mainly in Arab settings. He also shared Varisco's interest in discussing the controversial and contested meanings of the words "Islamism" and "Islamist." Since 9/11 these terms had become increasingly common in English-language discourse on Islam, Muslims, and violence by Muslims claiming to be acting in the name of their religion.

On the panel, before some two hundred MESA attendees, Varisco and Emmerson politely disagreed. Varisco argued that "Islamism" and "Islamist" were invidious terms that falsely linked Islam to terrorism. For the sake of consideration and accuracy, he said, they should not be used. Without advocating self-censorship, he defended his refusal to use "Islamism" or "Islamist" in his own writing and teaching.

"Inventing Islamism: The Violence of Rhetoric" is the title of Varisco's MESA paper as it appears in the book. "Why," he asks, "do we need a term that uniquely brands Muslims as terrorists rather than just calling them terrorists and militants, the way we could easily do for followers of any religion or any ideology? As scholars and students of religion, should we not be doing all we can to refute the notion that Islam is intrinsically more violent than other religions?" (Islamism, p. 33.)

Emmerson agreed with Varisco that the terms "Islamism" and "Islamist" were often used to conflate Islam, Muslims, and violence. But Emmerson argued that the words were not so uniformly and falsely invidious as to warrant their deletion. In his view, in addition to referencing radical views and acts, the terms usefully named a variety of mostly peaceful ways of expressing and advancing subjective interpretations of Islam in public life. Phrases such as "democratic Islamism" and "moderate Islamists," hr argued, were already fairly common in scholarship and the media. His chapter is entitled, accordingly, "Inclusive Islamism: The Utility of Diversity."

After the session at MESA, Varisco, Emmerson, and copanelist Richard C. Martin, an Islamic studies professor at Emory University, spoke of someday turning the discussion into a book. Busy with other projects, they postponed this one, but eventually took it up again as an experiment with an unusual format: As a neutral party, Martin (with the later addition of one of his graduate students, Abbas Barzegar) would edit the book, which would open with chapters by Emmerson and Varisco stating their views. Scholars of Islam from around the world would be invited to comment briefly on the dispute. More than a dozen experts in or from the Middle East, North Africa, North America, and Southeast Asia contributed remarks, which fill the middle of the book. Varisco and Emmerson end the volume with chapters that update and extend their respective arguments in response to each other's and the commentators' views.

An anonymous reviewer of the manuscript for Stanford University Press suggested that Islamism as a phenomenon was on the decline, implying that the relevance of Islamism would follow suit. In Emmerson's opinion, this may not happen soon. Juxtapositions of Islam, Muslims, and violence continue to occur in a range of Muslim-majority countries. At the same time, a great variety of Muslim leaders and organizations committed to peace, dialogue, and democracy continue to demonstrate the civility of Islam as they understand it. This rich spectrum of motives and associations will continue to challenge analysts around the world -- scholars, journalists, and policymakers alike.

Is Islam a religion of peace? War? Neither? Both? In the case of those Muslims who do carry out acts of violence or intolerance in the name of Islam, should their claims to have been motivated by religious imperatives be accepted as true, rejected as false, or bracketed as subjective? How considerate and how accurate is it to assert that any Muslim who engages in terrorism must not be a true Muslim? What is a "true Muslim"? By whose standards?

Is it appropriate to argue, with Emmerson, that to speak of "Islamic terrorism" wrongly and hurtfully implies that terrorism is intrinsic to Islam as a religion, whereas the notion of "Islamist terrorism" merely links such violence to one among many possible ways of interpreting Islam as an ideology? Or should these distinctions about words be ignored in favor of actions, including possible revisions of American policy, that can help to diminish the incidence of supposedly religious violence, whatever its actual nature may be?

In months and years to come, Muslims accused of having planned or committed violence against American targets will be judged in a series of civilian and military trials here in the United States. The defendants will likely include high-profile individuals such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, charged with plotting 9/11, and Nidal Malik Hassan, accused of the November 2009 rampage at Fort Hood. Some of the accused may admit responsibility for acts of violence and portray what they did as required by Islam. Some may accuse the US government of waging war against Islam. Some may claim innocence, or attribute what they did to personal reasons unrelated to religion. Stimulated by these proceedings, commentators on the Internet, in the press, and on talk shows can be expected to debate "Islamic terrorism" versus "Islamophobia."

Quite apart from whether fresh acts of terror occur, interest in the questions that Islamism features seems, at least to Emmerson, unlikely to decrease.

The Asia Society has organized a Task Force on U.S. Policy toward Burma/Myanmar, co-chaired by retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark and Holsman International Chair (and former USAID Administrator) Henrietta H. Fore.  The panel comprises a dozen or so individuals from various occupations and backgrounds, including SEAF's director, Donald K. Emmerson.  Assisting the Task Force is an also diverse Advisory Group of some thirty experts in Southeast Asian and other countries.  The Asia Society expects to release the Task Force's final report early in 2010.  

The timing of the study is of interest in view of the Obama administration’s willingness to meet with Myanmar’s rulers. 

America’s top diplomat on Asia is Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell.  Deputy Assistant Secretary Scot Marciel covers Southeast Asian and ASEAN affairs.  In early November 2009 the two men traveled to Myanmar.  There they met not only with the iconic opposition figure and Nobel Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, but also with Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein.  The latter meeting was the highest-level contact between the two governments since 1995.  An even higher-level meeting was being planned for later in November at a US-ASEAN summit in Singapore, which would bring President Obama face to face with Myanmar’s head of state, Senior General Than Shwe.

Further enhancing the timeliness of the Task Force’s work is the announced prospect of national elections in Myanmar in 2010.  No independent observers expect the exercise to bring about anything resembling liberal democracy.  But some hold out hope that the balloting could yield a marginally more representative and accountable system. 

In early November 2009 it remained to be seen whether the current shifting of American policy toward dealing directly with the Burmese junta would prove effective in nudging its leaders toward political reform, or not. 

The Task Force’s report, scheduled for release early in 2010, should at least provide food for policymaking thought, as U.S. officials continue to review what has been and could be done with regard to a regime that has so far resisted both isolation and engagement.

Past, present, and future Southeast Asianists linked to SEAF have ignored the hoary joke about the contest whose first prize is one week in Philadelphia and whose second prize is two weeks in that city.  Several of them are on the program of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) to be held, yes, in Philadelphia on 25-28 March 2010.

Inaugural Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow (2007-08) Robert W. Hefner (Boston University) will preside over the proceedings in Philadelphia as the elected president of the AAS.  He will also lead a Presidential Rountable entitled “After Reformasi:  Trends in Southeast Asian Muslim Politics and Culture.” 

Current APARC Shorenstein Fellow (2009-2010) James Hoesterey (University of Wisconsin-Madison) has organized a panel with the intriguing title “Red, White, and Green?  Islam in Indonesian National Politics and Political Culture.”

Former LKC NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow (2008-09) Mark Thompson (University of Erlangen) has prepared a panel entitled “Comparing Across Southeast Asia:  Regional Patterns of Politics.”

Former Shorenstein Fellow (2003-04) Erik Kuhonta (McGill University) has put together a “border crossing” panel on “Class and Democracy in Asia.”

Future SEAF Visiting Scholar (Spring 2010) Marshall Clark (Deakin University) will head a panel on “Regionalism in Asia.”

As of this writing—27 October 2009—the full roster of all Annual Meeting panelists and roundtablers was not yet available.  So the list above does not include SEAF-associated scholars who will appear on panels or roundtables that they have not themselves organized.  (These scholars include, e.g., SEAF’s director, Don Emmerson, who will chair and discuss “Democracy and Identity in Southeast Asia.”) 

Nor, of course, do the above names include SEAF visitors and alumni who are on the programs of other upcoming professional meetings.  Two in this category who come to mind are Christian von Luebke and John Ciorciari.

Current German Science Foundation Visiting Scholar (2009-2011) and former Shorenstein Fellow (2008-09) Christian von Luebke is co-organizing a panel at the 6th Conference of the European Association for South East Asian Studies (EuroSEAS), to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, 26-28 August 2010.  The panel’s provisional title is “The Challenge Within:  Indonesian Politics between Center and Periphery.”  Christian’s paper will focus on the politics of public-sector reform.

Former Shorenstein Fellow (2007-08) John Ciorciari (University of Michigan) will present a paper at the International Studies Association’s annual convention in New Orleans in February 2010.  Entitled “Theories of Institutions in Indian Foreign Policy,” the paper will apply to Indian evidence some of the ideas he developed in his revised dissertation on Southeast Asia.  (For more on John’s work, see “Where Did They Go and What Have They Been Up To?  John Ciorciari” elsewhere in the NEWS on this website.)

Contrary to the old joke, and in light of the talents and knowledge represented by the SEAF-linked scholars slated to speak at the AAS in Philadelphia, that city in late March is assuredly worthy of being at least a two-week first prize.  And if you’re in a travel-planning mode, consider New Orleans in February and Gothenburg in August as well.

Edited by SEAF Director Don Emmerson and co-published in 2008-09 by APARC at Stanford and ISEAS in Singapore, Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia continues to attract attention. Excerpted below are two differing but equally thoughtful recent reviews:

Noel M. Morada is a professor of political science at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and director of the Philippines Progamme in the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) at the University Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Writing in Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies, 23: 2 (2008), pp. 119-122, Prof. Morada found the title of Hard Choices “apt” because its authors “ask hard questions—including philosophical ones—on the merits and demerits of pushing for a more ‘people-centered’ ASEAN, the challenges and constraints in implementing Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principles in the region, as well as the possible directions that ASEAN may take in the near future.”

A “good thing” about the book, in his view, “is that the reader is left to make his or her own conclusions” about “the issues and arguments” that it presents. He notes the variety of backgrounds of the authors: from scholars based far from Southeast Asia, through local analysts on Track II, to an official from inside the ASEAN secretariat itself. Their chapters, in his judgment, contribute significantly to current debates about what balance that ASEAN should strike between “state-centered and society-centered conceptions of security,” including “the dilemmas and constraints” that state and societal actors face in pursuing a more “participatory” kind of regionalism in Southeast Asia.

Among the issues featured in Hard Choices, Morada cites “the thorny problem of intervention in the domestic affairs of [ASEAN] members,” including the challenge to regionalism posed by Myanmar’s rulers, and whether or not the ASEAN Charter can facilitate a response or may itself be an obstacle to reform. While highlighting the relative optimism of Mely Caballero-Anthony’s chapter on non-traditional security, he finds a consensus among the book’s authors that “ASEAN’s traditional norms—i.e., state sovereignty and non-interference—still rule.”

Prof. Morada ends his review thus: “This should be a required reading for graduate students specializing in Southeast Asia and a must have for ASEAN specialists and observers. More importantly, civil society groups would benefit immensely from reading this volume as part of their education about ASEAN, on which many remain uninformed. Many of my friends in the academic community in the region have in fact been quite disappointed with many civil society groups who simply want to push their agenda but have not done their homework on the workings of ASEAN. This book should help enlighten them further.”

Lee Jones is a lecturer in the Department of Politics at the College of Queen Mary, University of London.

Writing for a future issue of the ASEASUK Newsletter, a publication of the Association of Southeast Asian Studies in the United Kingdom, Dr. Jones, unlike Prof. Morada, misses a firmer editorial hand. “Theoretical engagement is relatively sparse,” writes Jones, “and the book would have benefited from an overarching framework to help structure and guide the contributions. Particularly given many contributors’ focus on Myanmar, ASEAN’s policies towards it, and ASEAN’s recent institutional evolution, an early chapter agreeing [to] a collective account of these matters would have left more space for analysis and argumentation.”

Jones singles out the chapter by “veteran official Termsak Chalermpalanupap” as “a highly informative overview of ASEAN’s institutional development which will be useful for all students of ASEAN.” Chapters by Simon Tay (on air pollution) and Michael Malley (on nuclear energy) are also praised by Jones as demonstrating that “democratisation does not (as other contributors imply) automatically produce either more liberal policies or enhanced regional cooperation.” On the contrary, writes Jones, “democratisation can give vent to illiberal, nationalist and uncooperative sentiments, particularly when dominated (as ASEAN polities are) by cynical oligarchs. It is disappointing, therefore, that none of the chapters engages in systematic analysis of the domestic social forces at work in ASEAN states.”

“On balance,” for Jones, “the evidence in Hard Choices seems to favour the pessimist viewpoint. The basis for concluding that civil society has shattered elites’ monopoly on policymaking is rather weak. None of the pro-intervention authors sufficiently counter[s] the pragmatist challenge that ASEAN coherence could not withstand the adoption of a more liberal-interventionist posture. However, this is a contingent judgment which should not lead us simply to endorse the status quo. … [T] he fate of individual countries and the overall direction and content of ASEAN regionalism depends ultimately on the struggles of ASEAN’s own citizens.

Concludes Jones: “A clear-sighted analysis of the respective strengths and weaknesses of the force of movement and reaction, without succumbing to the defeatism of endorsing authoritarianism or the romanticism of believing that democratic institutions alone imply the victory of civil society (or that ASEAN can do much to create such institutions), is therefore vital for understanding the region’s prospects.”