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As an increasingly conservative wave of Islam engulfs the globe, literalist Salafi interpretations of the faith have become prevalent in Malaysia. While there are several Islamic schools of thought in the country, including those deemed ""deviant"", the loudest voices are always the more extreme.Over the past year, there has been increasing recognition of women's roles as recruiters, financiers and influencers for radical Islamic groups. More women have been arrested for their support for and involvement in the Islamic State (IS), but much of the focus has been on their desire to marry a jihad.
In 1990, the Malaysian state of Johor—along with Singapore and the Indonesian island of Batam—launched the Growth Triangle to attract foreign direct investment. For Johor, this drive was very successful, transforming its economy and driving up income levels. Today, Johor is one of Malaysia’s “developed” states, housing large clusters of electrical and electronics, food processing, and furniture producing firms. While welcome, this structural transformation has also entailed important challenges and strategic choices. After three decades, Johor’s manufacture-for-export model is under question, as it faces increasing competition and flat-lining technological capabilities. In respon...
Malaysia pledged to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 in relation to its 2005 GDP figure. The sectors listed as the main focus of this effort included: energy, industrial processes, waste, agriculture, land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF). Several initiatives under myriad governments have been launched to reduce Malaysia’s climate change impacts; among those has been the emphasis on renewable energy (RE). Malaysia’s current energy mix relies heavily on coal and natural gas. Long-entrenched subsidies on these energy sources, coupled with greatly depreciating prices make it difficult for new RE producers to enter the market and increase their market sh...
Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore contemplates and re-centres Singapore women in the overlapping discourses of family, home, ecology and nation. For the first time, this collection of ecofeminist essays focuses on the crafts, minds, bodies and subjectivities of a diverse group of women making kin with the human and non-human world as they navigate their lives. From ruminations on caregiving, to surreal interspecies encounters, to indigenous ways of knowing, these women writers chart a new path on the map of Singapore’s literary scene, writing urgently about gender, nature, climate change, reciprocity and other critical environmental issues. In a climate-changed world where vital connections are lost, Making Kin is an essential collection that blurs boundaries between the personal and the political. It is a revolutionary approach towards intersectional environmentalism.
Southeast Asian Affairs, first published in 1974, continues today to be required reading for not only scholars but the general public interested in in-depth analysis of critical cultural, economic and political issues in Southeast Asia. In this annual review of the region, renowned academics provide comprehensive and stimulating commentary.
This book examines the extent to which peacebuilding processes such as disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration are possible in the attempt to demilitarize Nigeria’s oil region and establish a stable post-conflict environment for nurturing durable peace. The book argues that the failure of the peacebuilders to address the structural tensions at the heart of insurgency, along with competition for access to the material benefits of peacebuilding, have revived violence at repeated intervals that punctuates the progression of peace. The author’s analysis shows how the interventions pursued by peacebuilders have been successful in stabilizing the oil region by taking arms from insurgent...
The concept of fandom, which contributes to the construction of fan fiction, provides fresh insights into the seemingly inexplicable and irrational popularity of disgraced political celebrities. Political fandom provides the critical framework for contextualizing the continuing popularity of political social media influencers such as Najib Razak within an environment of populist politics. Political fandom comprises fans and anti-fans, each of whom is capable of critical reasoning regardless of conclusions drawn. The presence of anti-fans of an influential figure speaks not to the waning of popularity, but rather, the continuing relevance of that figure within socio-political spaces. Malaysia...
The results of Malaysia’s 14th General Elections of May 2018 were unexpected and transformative. Against conventional wisdom, the newly reconfigured opposition grouping Pakatan Harapan (PH) decisively defeated the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN), ending six decades of uninterrupted dominant one-party rule. Despite a long-running financial scandal dogging the ruling coalition, pollsters and commentators predicted a solid BN victory or, at least, a narrow parliamentary majority. Yet, on the day, deeply rooted political dynamics and influential actors came together, sweeping aside many prevailing assumptions and reconfiguring the country’s political reality in the process. In order to understand the elections and their implications, this edited volume brings together contributions from ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute researchers and a group of selected collaborators to examine the elections from three angles: campaign dynamics; important trends among major interest groups; and local-level dynamics and developments in key states. This analytical work is complemented by personal narratives from a selection of GE-14 participants.
Here was Once the Sea features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction guest edited by Rina Garcia Chua, Esther Vincent Xueming, and Ann Ang. While many of these works are comprised mostly of anglophone texts, which reflects the aspirations of regional writers to speak across borders and to the globe at large, several native languages appear on these pages. Here, Southeast Asia refers to the constituent nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), namely, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as their associated diasporas. The writers and the peoples of the region live and remember more profoundly than we know. ...
Until approximately two decades ago, the Democratic Action Party (DAP) struggled to make inroads in Johor due to: (1) the unique historical developments in the state, which benefited its primary opponent Barisan Nasional (BN), and (2) the decentralized party structure in Johor with party branches serving as the main player responsible for grassroots mobilization and campaigning, which resulted in an underdeveloped and less cohesive state party structure. Despite Lee Kaw playing a crucial leadership role for the nascent party to take root in the state, Johor remained in the periphery during the initial decades of the party’s establishment. The party managed to achieve some electoral success...