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.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction 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 3. Multiple Islams, Multiple Modernities: Art Cinema in between Nationhood and Everyday Islam in Bangladesh and Malaysia 4. Upgraded Piety and Pleasure: The New Middle Class and Islam in Indonesian Popular Culture Part II: Social processes of media production, circulation, and reception 5. Music, Islam, and the Commercial Media in Contemporary Indonesia 6. The Internet, Cyber-Religion, and Authority: The Case of the Indonesian Liberal Islam Network 7. "Sex Sells, or Does It?" Discourses of Sex and Sexuality in Popular Women’s Magazines in Contemporary Indonesia Part III: Islamic perspectives on film, music, and literature 8. (Un)framing Muslim Sexuality in Dina Zaman’s I Am Muslim 9. Sexing Islam: Religion and Contemporary Malaysian Cinema 10. Musical Modernity, Islamic Identity, and Arab Aesthetics in Arab-Indonesian Orkes Gambus 11. Music as a Medium for Communication, Unity, Education, and Dakwah Part IV: Representations, values, and meanings 12. Taking Liberties: Independent Filmmakers Representing the Tudung in Malaysia 13. Holy Matrimony? The Print Politics of Polygamy in Indonesia 14. Pop, Politics, and Piety: Nasyid Boy Band Music in Muslim Southeast Asia
About the Author :
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.
