Nationalist and ethnic conflict can take many forms, from genocidal violence and civil war to protest movements and peaceful squabbles in democracies. Nationalist Passions poses a stark challenge to extreme rationalist understandings of political conflict. Stuart J. Kaufman elaborates a compelling theory of ethnic politics to explain why ethnic violence erupts in some contexts and how peace is maintained in others. At the core of Kaufman's theory is an assertion that conflicts are initiated due to popular "symbolic predispositions"—biases of all kinds—and perceptions of threat.Kaufman puts his theory to the test in a range of conflicts. He examines some highly violent episodes, among them the Muslim rebellion in the southern Philippines beginning in the 1970s; the civil war in southern Sudan that began in the 1980s; and the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Kaufman also analyzes other situations in which leaders attempted to tame the violence that nationalist passions can generate. In India, Mahatma Gandhi mobilized an overtly nonviolent movement but failed in his efforts to prevent the rise of Muslim-Hindu communal violence. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk ended apartheid, but not without terrible cost—more than fifteen thousand people died while the negotiations were under way. In Tanzania, however, Julius Nyerere led one of the few ethnically diverse countries in the world with almost no ethnic violence. Nationalist Passions is essential reading for policymakers, international aid workers, and all others who seek to find the best possible outcomes for future internal and interstate clashes.

This collection brings together top scholars to discuss the significance of violence from a global perspective and the intersections between the global structures of violence and more localized and intimate forms of violence. Activists and academics consider questions such as; are there situations in which violence should be politically supported? Are non-violent or anti-war movements in the US able to effectively respond to violence? Do we need to rethink our understanding of both 'religion' and 'secularism' in light of the current world situation? Have new paradigms been developed in response to violence? The essays in this collection offer inclusive analysis of particular situations and creative alternatives to the omnipresence of violence.

This book is with a contemporary focus. Author, Dr. Max Gross’s purpose is to use history to explain today’s Islamic insurgencies in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines and to offer perspectives for the future. Muslim Archipalego’s unique contribution is that it brings together in one reference a mass of information on the insurgencies in Southeast Asia. The country accounts are detailed and thorough as to events, organizations, dates, and participants. The chronological context provides Dr. Gross the opportunity to give insights about historical casualty. His accounting highlights the interaction of the insurgencies within Southeast Asia and their international connection outside the region. The detailed presentations in the chapters on Indonesia and Philippines are especially fruitful. Included in this nearly 280 page book are detailed four-color regional maps, charts, and historical photos spread throughout the text. An extensive bibliography and index are included.

Maritime piracy continues to persist as a significant phenomenon manifesting a range of social, historical, geo-political, security and economic issues. Today, the waters of Southeast Asia serve as the dominant region for the occurrence of piracy and the challenges it poses to regional security and Malacca Straits security. As a second installment within the Series on Maritime Issues and Piracy in Asia by the International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden University, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, the authors of this volume add fresh perspectives to the ongoing debate about piracy, the threat of maritime terrorism, and the challenge of securing the Malacca Straits today.

Presents a multidimensional perspective of globalisation in Southeast Asia. Looks at political, economic, security, social, and cultural dimensions of globalisation and local responses, showing evidence of complex interfacing between the global and the local, championing the need for a multidisciplinary approach to globalisation studies.

""Islam and Women" is a very broad topic and as complex as the lives of women that it encompasses in a broad swath of the world. In its wide-ranging coverage of issues subsumed under this umbrella topic, this volume is purposefully multi-disciplinary. The chapters are authoritative contributions from well-known scholars who are at the cutting-edge of scholarship on inter alia Qur'anic hermeneutics and hadith studies, women's legal and social rights, women's scholarly, cultural, economic, and political activities in the pre-modern and modern Islamic societies, the rise of Islamic feminism and women's activism and movements in a number of contemporary Muslim-majority countries and regions, including Egypt and North Africa, Turkey, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region, South and Southeast Asia, and in Muslim-minority contexts in western Europe, the United States, and China. The politicized portrayal of Muslim women, especially of those who wear the headscarf (hijab), in the global Western-dominated media and the weaponization of their bodies in certain kinds of political and feminist discourses also receive attention. These chapters delineate a broad spectrum of views on these key issues that are prevalent inside and outside of academia and provide sophisticated and careful analysis of textual sources and of broad sociological and political trends. Many of these essays emphasize above all the diversity present in Muslim women's lives, both in the pre-modern and modern periods, and pay close attention to the historical and political contexts that shaped their lives and framed the thinking and actions of key female figures throughout Islamic history. Such an approach results in fine-grained macro- and micro-studies of Muslim women's lives that problematize reified assumptions of gender and agency in the context of Muslim-majority societies"--