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BOOK REVIEW : Islam and the State in Myanmar
Edited by Melissa Crouch (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016)
Ongoing Muslim–Buddhist tensions in Southeast Asia may turn aggressive in thenear future and lead to the rise of an Asian Islamophobia in the form of Buddhist religious nationalism. This phenomenon, already a reality in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, is spreading elsewhere. The intimidation in those states of Muslim minority communities could make the Buddhist minority communities inMalaysia, Indonesia and Brunei vulnerable to retaliatory Muslim ethno-racism and discrimination.
The rise of religious nationalisms in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia needs to be understood against the backdrop of colonial era politics in the region which dismantled patterns of coexistence between the local Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus despite differences based in languages and affiliations. The last of the Dhammarajas of Sri Lanka Sri Vikrama Rajasinha (1780–1832) and Burma Thibaw Min (1859–1916) were exiled by the British to colonial India. The last Mughal emperor was exiled to Rangoon, Burma. They all died outside their kingdoms. The small Indo-Malay kingdoms were dismantled, which prompted many of the Southeast Asian ulema to flee, some to the Hijaz. These events Shattered Muslim–Buddhist relations, which have remained largely unrepaired and a factor behind the emerging Buddhist–Muslim turmoil in Asia.
The arguments of the essays in the book under review need to be read also against the background of local histories and networks in the Southeast Asia–Indian Ocean region as a whole. There are sectarian tensions and differences, with political and territorial effects, in the Buddhist, Muslim, and other religious communities. And there are narratives or myths that opposed communities have retained about each other which recent scholarship has challenged or shown to be false.2 Readers of the book under review will also need some knowledge of recent history. Useful in this respect are Jean A. Berlie, The Burmanization of Myanmar’s Muslims (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2008), and Kin Oung, Who Killed Aung San? (Bangkok: White Lotus, [1993] 1996).
Melissa Crouch deserves high appreciation for putting together a collection of properly academic studies on the state of Islam in Myanmar, which is currently under intense international scrutiny on account of the Rohingya crisis. The book opens with a comprehensive introduction by the editor which sets out the Muslim mosaic in Myanmar. This mosaic comprises four groups: 1) Indian Muslims known as Chulias, Kaka and Pathans, who were brought in by British colonizers to administer the colony. They resided largely in the colonial capital city of Yangon which at one time was 56% Indian; 2) the Pathi or Zerbadee ar the Burmese–Muslim offspring of the intermarriage of Persian/Indian Muslim men and Burmese/other women. They see themselves as different from other Muslim groups both racially and culturally and as closer to Buddhist Burmese, both ethnically and culturally; 3) Panthay or Hui Muslims of Chinese background also remain culturally Chinese, engaging in business and trading occupations. They mostly migrated from the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan during the thirteenth century and again in 1949 when fleeing Chinese communist persecution. They have largely settled around the northern city of Mandalay; and
4) the Rohingya, now numbering around one million, are natives of the Rakhine state, formerly the Arakan Kingdom. The Rohingya, also known as the Arakan Muslims, have a long historical presence in the modern nation-state of Burma. In her second essay in the book, ‘Personal Law and Colonial Legacy: State– Religion Relations and Islamic Law in Myanmar’, Crouch goes beyond the earlier studies of Moshe Yegar and M. B. Hooker. She examines in particular the status of Muslim Personal Law in Myanmar’s legal system. The book is reviewed by Dr. Imtiyaz Yusuf, Mahidol University, E-mail: imtiyaz.yus@mahidol.ac.th
