1st Edition

Islam and Popular Culture in Indonesia and Malaysia

Edited By Andrew N. Weintraub Copyright 2011
    280 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    280 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Home to approximately one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population, Indonesia and Malaysia are often overlooked or misrepresented in media discourses about Islam. Islam is a religion but there is also a popular culture, or popular cultures of Islam that are mass mediated, commercialized, pleasure-filled, humorous, and representative of large segments of society. During the last forty years, popular forms of Islam, targeted largely towards urbanized youth, have played a key role in the Islamisation of Indonesia and Malaysia. This book focuses on these forms and the accompanying practices of production, circulation, marketing, and consumption of Islam. Dispelling the notion that Islam is monolithic, militaristic, and primarily Middle Eastern, the book emphasizes its dynamic, contested, and performative nature in contemporary South East Asia. Written by leading scholars alongside media figures, such as Rhoma Irama and Ishadi SK, the case studies although not focused on theology per se, illuminate how Muslims (and non-Muslims) in Indonesia and Malaysia make sense of their lives within an increasingly pervasive culture of Islamic images, texts, film, songs, and narratives.

    Acknowledgements  Contributors  List of Figures  Conventions and Orthography  1. Introduction - Andrew N. Weintraub  Part I: Commercial, educational, government, and religious institutions  2. Negotiating Mass Media Interests and Heterogeneous Muslim Audiences in the Contemporary Social-Political Environment of Indonesia - Ishadi S.K.  3. Multiple Islams, Multiple Modernities: Art Cinema in between Nationhood and Everyday Islam in Bangladesh and Malaysia - Zakir Hossain Raju  4. Upgraded Piety and Pleasure: The New Middle Class and Islam in Indonesian Popular Culture - Ariel Heryanto  Part II: Social processes of media production, circulation, and reception  5. Music, Islam, and the Commercial Media in Contemporary Indonesia - R. Anderson Sutton  6. The Internet, Cyber-Religion, and Authority: The Case of the Indonesian Liberal Islam Network - Muhamad Ali  7. "Sex Sells, or Does It?" Discourses of Sex and Sexuality in Popular Women’s Magazines in Contemporary Indonesia - Sarah Krier  Part III: Islamic perspectives on film, music, and literature  8. (Un)framing Muslim Sexuality in Dina Zaman’s I Am Muslim - Washima Che Dan  9. Sexing Islam: Religion and Contemporary Malaysian Cinema - Noritah Omar  10. Musical Modernity, Islamic Identity, and Arab Aesthetics in Arab-Indonesian Orkes Gambus - Birgit Berg   11. Music as a Medium for Communication, Unity, Education, and Dakwah - Rhoma Irama (translated by Andrew N. Weintraub)  Part IV: Representations, values, and meanings  12. Taking Liberties: Independent Filmmakers Representing the Tudung in Malaysia - Gaik Cheng Khoo  13. Holy Matrimony? The Print Politics of Polygamy in Indonesia - Suzanne Brenner  14. Pop, Politics, and Piety: Nasyid Boy Band Music in Muslim Southeast Asia - Bart Barendregt  Index

    Biography

    Andrew N. Weintraub is Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He is the author of Dangdut Stories: A Social and Musical History of Indonesia’s Most Popular Music; Power Plays: Wayang Golek Puppet Theater of West Java and co-editor of Music and Cultural Rights.

    "At a time when Islam in the western popular imagination and media is associated with terrorism and fundamentalism, this collection’s careful categorisation of groups and practices within everyday Islam conceived as dynamic, contested, and performative is to be welcomed.... It is to be hoped that this volume will reach beyond academe to people who have been ignorant of the variations of Islam in everyday life in Southest Asia." -- Felicia Hughes, University of London, Aseasuk News (no.51: Spring, 2012)