Islamic legitimacy in a plural Asia / edited by Anthony Reid and Michael Gilsenan.

"First published in2007. Transferred to Digital Printing 2009."--T.p. verso of paperback

Includes index.

Introduction : Muslims and Power in a Plural Asia / Anthony Reid -- Muslims under Non-Muslim Rule : Evolution of a Discourse / Abdullah Saeed -- Islam and Cultural Modernity : In Pursuit of Democratic Pluralism in Asia / Bassam Tibi -- The Crisis of Religious Authority : Education, Information and Technology / Bryan Turner -- Attempts to Use the Ottoman Caliphate as the Legitimator of British Rule in India / Azmi Ozcan -- An Argumentative Indian : Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, Islam, and Nationalism in India / Barbara Metcalf -- Grateful to the Dutch government : Sayyid 'Uthman and the Sarekat Islam in 1913 / Nico Kaptein -- Power and Islamic Legitimacy in Pakistan / Imran Ali -- Constructions of Religious Authority in Indonesian Islamism : 'The Way and the Community' Re-imagined / Michael Feener -- The Political Contingency of Reform-Mindedness in Indonesia's Nahdlatul Ulama : Interest Politics and the Khittah / Greg Fealy -- Political Islam in Malaysia : Legitimacy, Hegemony, and Resistance / Joseph Liow.

A global debate has emerged within Islam about how to coexist with democracy. Even in Asia, where such ideas have always been marginal, radical groups are taking the view that scriptural authority requires either Islamic rule (Dar-ul-Islam) or a state of war with the essentially illegitimate authority of non-Muslims or secularists. This book places the debate in a specifically Asian context. It draws attention to Asia (east of Afghanistan), as not only the home of the majority of the world's Muslims but also Islam's historic laboratory in dealing with religious pluralism. In Asia, pluralism is not simply a contemporary development of secular democracies, but a long-tested pattern based on both principle and pragmatism. For many centuries, Muslims in Asia have argued about the legitimacy of non-Islamic government over Muslims, and the legitimacy of non-Muslim peoples, polities and rights under Islamic governance. This book analyses such debates and the ways they have been reconciled, in South and Southeast Asia, up to the present. The evidence presented here suggests that Muslims have adapted flexibly and creatively to the pluralism with which they have lived, and are likely to continue to do so. -- Publisher description.