Islam and Popular Culture in Indonesia and Malaysia
Sermon-filled soap operas, rock music played by veiled women, Muslim magazines, newspapers, and portals, consumption of special Ramadan foods at McDonald’s, and the rippling effects of Prophet cartoons saturate the mediascape of the contemporary Malay world. Home to approximately one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population, Indonesia and Malaysia are often overlooked or misrepresented in media discourses about Islam. Ideas, sounds, images, gestures, and meanings about Islam abound in contemporary popular cultural forms including film, music, television, radio, comics, fashion, magazines, and cyberculture. In the last two decades, mass-mediated forms of Islam, targeted largely to urbanized youth, have played a key role in the Islamisation of Indonesia and Malaysia. This conference will address the relationship between Islam and popular culture in the Malay world. These forms and accompanying practices of production, circulation, marketing, and consumption of Islam will be the focus of analysis.
This interdisciplinary conference addresses the following questions: Under what historical and social conditions have popular culture and Islam become mutually constitutive as sites for defining Islam in the Malay world? What forms does Islam take in popular culture? What meanings about Islam do audiences derive from popular culture? Central to these questions are the role of mass media in (1) constituting Muslim identities, especially among youth; (2) defining publics according to gender and class; (3) promoting certain kinds of Islamic practices and values while submerging others; (4) creating alternative media spaces; (5) shaping perceptions of Islam, both within and outside the Malay world, among non-Muslims. Particularly important to the conference is the relationship between Islam and Malay identity, viz a viz long-standing debates about language, culture, race, and ethnicity in the Malay world.
A recent New York Times Book Review issue featured essays in addition to book reviews on the topic of Islam (January 6, 2008). Despite the timeliness and significance of this issue, there was not a single article about Islam in Asia, not to mention Islam in Indonesia, the country with the largest population of Muslims in the world. The proposed conference will help to dispel notions that Islam is monolithic, militaristic, and primarily middle Eastern. By focusing on popular culture, we will emphasize the dynamic, contested, and performative nature of Islam in contemporary Indonesia and Malaysia.
Conference Framework
The conference will consist of an introductory dialogue, a film, a music concert, and twelve presentations constituting six panels (1.5 hours each). Conference themes include, but are not restricted to:
1. Historical and Comparative Perspectives on Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia;
2. Muslim Identities in a Changing World;
3. Defining Publics through Mass Media;
4. Contemporary Discourses about Islam and the Nation-State;
5. Alternative Media: Technologies, Discourse, and Practice;
6. Shaping Perceptions about Islam among non-Muslims.
Outcomes
The goals of the conference are to (1) stimulate dialogue about Islam and Popular Culture and (2) to produce an edited volume of these papers in a volume entitled Islam and Popular Culture in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Sponsored by: School of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Provost, University Center for International Studies, Global Studies Program, Asian Studies Center, Indo-Pacific Council, Department of Music, Women's Studies Program, Department of Anthropology, Film Studies Program, Department of English, Cultural Studies Program, Consortium for Education Resources on Islamic Studies (CERIS), and Ohio University's Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Silkscreen Festival, and Falcon Interactive (Indonesia).