8 th Euroseas conference Vienna, 11–14 August 2015

— Hanta U’a Pua (Bima’s Maulid Festival): The Many Versions of Celebrating and Praising the Prophet
Muhammad Adlin Sila (Indonesian Ministry for Religious Affairs) 
Locally, the Hanta U’a Pua festival is not only seen as an historical re-enactment, but also sacred as it was initiated in 
the month of Rabi’ al-Awwal of the Islamic lunar calendar, the month of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. Prager 
(2010) postulated that the festival was ‘abandoned’ in the 1940s due to the activities of Muhammadiyah members who 
were disgruntled with the royal-led-festival because of ‘its pagan overtone’. The festival was revived following the elec-
tion of Ferry Zulkarnaen, the descendant of Bima’s last Sultan Muhammad Salahuddin, as Bima district head (Ind.: 
Bupati) (2005-2010) (Prager, 2010: 13). In this paper, however, I argue that the festival was discontinued due to the 
dissolution of the Bima Sultanate, the sole sponsor of the festival in the late 1940s, and to the political rivalry between 
the Sultan and the Raja Bicara during that period. I found that the revival of the festival was made possible because of 
the key role of Siti Maryam, founder of the royal customary council, Majelis Hadat Dana Mbojo. This paper will show 
how Siti Maryam, as the accepted heir of Bima Sultanate, constructs the meaning of the Hanta U’a Pua festival in ac-
cord with her account of the key role of Dato di Banda in the entry of Islam to Bima in the present.
I describe the festival of Hanta U’a Pua in conjunction with the associated rituals of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth-
day conducted in the palace of Bima Sultan and Kampung Melayu. Beginning by recounting the history of the festival 

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and its relation to the presence of Malay people and Kampung Melayu, I will then describe the common admiration 
of the Bima people towards Dato di Banda and Kampung Melayu. The next section will explain the celebrations of the 
Prophet’s birthday in Bima palace and Kampung Melayu followed by the discussion of Mawlid texts recited widely in 
Bima. I follow with the description of the Hanta U’a Pua festival in a chronological order. It is also necessary to discuss 
the dynamics of local politics surrounding the revival of the festival and the role of Majelis Hadat Dana Mbojo. The 
final section examines the local dimension of traditionalist Islam and reformist Islam in relation to religious harmony 
in Bima.
— Between Toleration and Exclusion: Negotiating Muslims’ Identity and Ritual in Bali, Indonesia 
Bowo Sugiarto (Tilburg University)
The revitalization of adat (custom) and religion in Bali, Indonesia since the fall of Suharto that aims to strengthen 
Balinese identity generates the public space arrangement in Bali solely based on Balinese Hinduism. In fact, the reaf-
firmation of such Balinese identity encompassing the elements of tradition, ethnicity, and religion has strengthened 
when Balinese society has become more diverse in terms of its citizens’ ethnicity and religion. That public space ar-
rangement has imposed religious minorities to rethink over requirements of their religious rituals in accordance with 
the majority’s norms. The reclaiming of Balinese identity has been undertaken by defining the other. The categories of 
the other are migrant and adherent of a religious minority. Defining the other not only practiced in public discourse, 
but also implemented in public policy. This article gives special attention to Muslims as a minority in order to describe 
the obstacle in accessing public space in a particular event, that is Nyepi (silence day) celebration. The effect of Nyepi 
commemoration to the performance of Friday congregational prayer is that Muslims should perform the prayer in a 
mosque by appropriating the majority’s norm or rethink over the requirement of the prayer. Nevertheless, the accom-
modation of majority’s norms and religious practices by Muslims is not a recent phenomenon in Bali. Even though it 
is debatable that the case should be considered as a toleration or an exclusion, it would likely contribute to the forma-
tion of distinctive Balinese Muslim’s identity.
— Language Teaching in Muslim Minority Indonesian Pesantren: Between Modernity and Tradionality
Ismail Wekke (State Islamic College of Sorong)
Pesantren (Islamic boarding school) contribute to religious teaching since its establishment. To acquire skill in re-
ligion understanding, it is a need to master Arabic language. Therefore, this research would explore how pesantren 
practice teaching and learning in enhancing students’ language skill. This study was carried out in Muslim minority of 
Indonesia. Field research was conducted in three areas of Muslim minority. They are Denpasar, Bali; Manado, South 
Sulawesi, and Sorong, West Papua. Findings revealed that language teaching in Muslim minority institution tried to 
combine modern and traditional approach. Through arrangement of these strategies, they deliver learning experi-
ences in providing language skills. The most powerful media in lengthening class process to practice is school envi-
ronment. Some techniques were bringing to support the program, such as whiteboards placed in some public places. 
The sociocultural of minority provide students a spirit to which interactively shape their spirit. The Arabic program 
which incorporate to formal education support capacity development. In addition, in it is a way to strengthen and 
evolve identities which is a need to demonstrate within multicultural society. Finally, this study recommends a need 
to explore Arabic teaching to support in progress for Islamic studies.
Panel: Politics and Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia 
convener: Saskia Schäfer (Columbia University)
discussant: Felix Tan (Singapore Institute of Management)
panel abstract
The four papers in this panel investigate how the resurgence of Islamic piety in Indonesia and Malaysia has shaped 
state-society relations. The changing political context in Indonesia since the country’s transition to democracy in 
1998 has impacted the ways religious symbols and discourses are adopted and deployed by civil society actors, reli-
gious authorities, and local level leaders. In Malaysia, the tendency for the government to favor pro-Islamic policies 

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fuels ethnic and religious tensions. Drawing on findings from an original dataset, Michael Buehler identifies concrete 
mechanisms that explain the local-level variance in the adoption of Islamic inspired laws in Indonesia. Shahirah 
Mahmood draws on extensive field interviews and documentary research to trace the evolution of Muslim women’s 
activists’ opinions on sexual morality and femininity. In particular, she describes how shaping political identity of the 
ideal Muslim woman explains the differences in behavior across Muslim women’s organizations towards the 2008 
Pornography Law. The two papers by Saskia Schaefer and Azmil Tayib investigate minority relations with the state. 
Focusing on the persecution of Ahmadiyya, a Muslim minority community in Indonesia, Saskia Schaefer examines 
how the Council of Indonesian Islamic Scholars (MUI) and politicians renegotiate their relationship with religious 
communities that have been denounced as heretics. Azmil Tayib draws on comparative insight of two non-Islamic 
communities in Indonesia and Malaysia to assess how political context and local power struggles impact the persis-
tence of Islamic education.
— Re-Negotiating Islam and the State: The MUI and the Indonesian Ahmadiyya
Saskia Schäfer (Columbia University)
In Indonesia, a strong shift in the relationship between political and religious authorities is under way, most clearly 
illustrated by the rising importance and authority of the Council of Indonesian Islamic Scholars (MUI). After the fall 
of Suharto, hope and optimism were widespread in Indonesia, but voters soon realised that the politicians available 
were mostly tied to the old network of Suharto cronies. Trust in politicians in Indonesia deteriorated and has plunged 
further during the complications of the 2014 presidential elections. Simultaneously, rapid economic change has been 
widening the gap between rich and poor, thus further destabilising development towards democracy in the sense of 
the widest possible political participation. This has opened a gap of authority that the MUI readily fills. We can ob-
serve a fast transformation of the state-religion relationship.
Within a general global rise of acknowledged intimacy between religion and political structures (e.g. Butler, Mendieta, 
& VanAntwerpen, 2011; Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, & VanAntwerpen, 2011; Habermas, 2008) the Indonesian model 
of empirical secularity as well as various local normative outlooks on secularism are changing rapidly. The scholarly 
work on secularism and secularity has begun to dismantle the dichotomous view on religion and secularism as op-
posing worldviews (Mahmood, 2010) and is turning to questions of how religion can be productively integrated into 
political systems. However, while the past understanding of secularity and secularism as first and foremost referring 
to a separation of state institutions and religion as has been problematised and re-thought in recent scholarship (Asad, 
2003), (Casanova, 2011), (Taylor, 2011), it has yet to be conceptualised in a manner that allows for a comparative 
perspective (Caeiro & Peter, 2012).
 The case of the Indonesian Ahmadiyya, a Muslim community declared non-Islamic by the MUI, banned by several 
district laws, and persecuted by self-declared moral police thugs, offers a helpful analytical entry point to the public 
and discursive renegotiations between political and religious authorities: how do the MUI and local as well as national 
politicians relate? Where do they emphasise their cooperation? And what do these empirical findings tell us about the 
relationship between religious and political authorities?
— Blurring of Lines: Islamic State versus Secularism in Malaysia and Indonesia 
Felix Tan (Singapore Institute of Management)
This paper explores the implementation of shari’a (Islamic law) and how it has, at times, stood in contradiction to the 
civil courts in Malaysia and Indonesia. This paper also examines the arguments surrounding the formation of an Is-
lamic state. In Malaysia, there seem to be a creeping Islamisation of the judiciary and a further implementation of the 
shari’a, despite a separation of civil courts and Islamic courts. In Indonesia, on the other hand, the inclusion of shari’a 
in the constitution has been rejected time and again. Indonesia’s staunch belief in the pancasila doctrine has created 
a sentiment among many that a specific religion should not take precedent over another. This paper will, therefore, 
examine issues that have been central to public debate, such as religious conversions and apostasy cases in Malaysia. 
In Indonesia, this paper will explore the often-tense relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, especially with 
regard to the civil and legal rights of minorities. In doing so, this paper will also analyse the implementation of the 
shari’a law in places, such as Aceh, and how that has affected the society at large.

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— Image of Tolerance: Islamic Education in Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia and Sarawak, Malaysia
Azmil Tayeb (Australian National University)
The paper examines the idea of tolerance in a multi-religious society. In particular, it focuses on the relational dy-
namics between Muslim minority group and Christian majority group in a region situated within a Muslim-majority 
country. I am using Sarawak in Malaysia and Nusa Tenggara Timur in Indonesia as my case studies. I am looking at 
the issue from the perspective of Islamic education, in which how Islamic schools manage to persist in a non-Islamic 
environment and how the local advocates for Islamic education deal with the imbalance in power relations. I am also 
interested in the influence from the central government on the local religious dynamics, namely in imposing its brand 
of orthodoxy and its role in defusing or inflaming the pre-existing religious tensions.
— A Moral Economy of Policing Muslim Queer in Indonesia 
Ferdiansyah Thajib (Free University Berlin)
Considerable attention has been paid to Indonesia due to the increasing production of Islamic legal draftings against 
homosexual behavior and identity in the country, mainly in the wake of the latest installment of Sharia law in Aceh 
Province (09/2014) and the recent fatwa of Indonesian Ulema Council (04/2015). Many observers refer to the demise 
of the authoritarian regime of Suharto in 1998 as the turning point for loosening of political constraints that has en-
abled ‘undemocratic’ or even ‘homophobic’ standings to flourish. In this article I want to explore beyond these lim-
ited representations by arguing the importance of examining how currently homosexuality is constructed amidst the 
complex intersection of religious, ethnic and national discourses about identity. Furthermore, I argue that the social 
anxieties of Post-reformasi experience due to the political and economic destabilization in the country have continu-
ously been reproduced by elite actors (including governmental and religious leadership) in their attempts to further 
particular ends by posing the gay-issue as threats to (the ever-shifting) normative/moral orders.
Panel: Contemporary Research on Vietnamese Buddhism 
conveners: Hai Dinh (National University, Vietnam), Alexander Soucy (Saint Mary’s University)
panel abstract
Buddhism has been the object of study since the mid-nineteenth century. However, there have been significant biases 
from the beginning, and many of these have persisted. One bias has been a favouring of text over practice, while an-
other has been the favouring of some countries and cultures over others. The biases are rooted in colonial discourses, 
Victorian interests and Christian biases in the study of religions in general. Buddhism in Vietnamese is not primarily 
a textual tradition, so has not produced a large corpus of Buddhist treatise. It has not been primarily organised into 
schools and has tended to be more syncretic, which has led it to be dismissed as “not really Buddhism”. The result 
is that Vietnamese Buddhism has been largely ignored in favour of studies of Buddhism in India, China, Tibet and 
Japan.
The papers in this panel will seek to address this imbalance by looking at Vietnamese Buddhism in all its dimensions. 
It will include papers from a full range of disciplines in order to explore the complexities of Vietnamese Buddhism in 
the past and today. Vietnamese Buddhism, since the 1960s, has become globalised and transnational. The papers in 
this panel will therefore reflect this by looking at Vietnamese Buddhism both in its homeland as well as overseas, prac-
ticed by ethnic Vietnamese as well as by Westerners following Vietnamese teachers. The result will be a fuller under-
standing of Vietnamese Buddhism and bring together some of the main scholars working on Vietnamese Buddhism.
— ‘My White Ashes Will Fill the Hole Left by Injustice’: The Buddhist Heritage of Thích Quang Duc
Elise DeVido (Duke Kunshan University)
On July 12, 2014, National Martyrs Day, the government of Vietnam held a ceremony at the National Martyrs Cem-
etery in Quang Tri Province to commemorate the 1963 self-immolation of Thích Quang Duc. How did a relatively ob-
scure Buddhist monk from Khánh Hòa province become the most powerful symbol of the Buddhist Struggle Move-
ment in Vietnam and a National Martyr of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam? Based on Vietnamese written sources, 

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interviews, and fieldwork, this paper concentrates on Thích Quang Duc’s life and Buddhist heritage. More broadly, the 
life-story of Thích Quang Duc is a window onto a great transformational period in Vietnam’s Buddhist history, from 
the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. The paper introduces the distinctive Buddhist heritage of Phú Yên 
and Khánh Hòa provinces that shaped Thích Quang Duc. Based upon recent biographical materials, the paper then 
presents a biographical overview of him, including his family background, his Buddhist training, and his wide variet-
ies of activities over his lifetime, including his participation in the “Buddhist Renovation Movement” of the 1930s-40s. 
The paper also considers the influence of Thích Quang Duc’s masters and teachers, in particular, his maternal uncle, 
who raised him from age seven and imparted to him knowledge of sutras, the vinaya, geomancy, and meditation and 
healing practices. In addition, this paper evaluates several recent Vietnamese historiographical interpretations regard-
ing his Buddhist heritage that may have molded Thích Quang Duc’s personality and motivation for self-immolation.
— The Mixing Beliefs in Contemporary Vietnamese Buddhism: A Case Study of Earth God, God of Wealth and 
Maitreya – God of Wealth
Hai Dinh (National University, Vietnam)
Maitreya, one of the most important symbols of Buddhism, is found in two incarnations: Buddha and Boddhisattva. 
Besides the role of a Boddhisattva, which was formed in early Buddhism, Maitreya is the Future Buddha in Mahayana 
Buddhism. He is also known as Buddhist “savior”. In Vietnam’s recent history symbolic elements of Maitreya have 
mixed with Earth God and God of Wealth to form a new symbol: Maitreya as a God of Wealth. The image of Mai-
treya has, therefore, acculturated with indigenous beliefs to form new symbolic meanings that were adapted to local 
religious practice. The new symbols still remain inside Buddhist shrines or go beyond border of Buddhism, as in Viet-
namese modernity in case of Maitreya-God of Wealth. The symbol of Maitreya, Earth God or God of Wealth is indica-
tive of the process of religious changes taking place in Vietnam. This paper will explore the role and position of each 
symbol in contemporary Vietnamese culture, where it remains and interrelationships with the original culture where 
it was formed. Understanding the religious and social factors of each symbol from ancient times to the contemporary 
period helps us to comprehend the two most important faces in religious change: The social facts (as seen through 
Durkheim’s viewpoint) and the behavior meaning (seen through Weber’s viewpoint).
— Venerating Ho Chí Minh in a Vietnamese Buddhist Pagoda in Post-Socialist Poland
Gertrud Huewelmeier (Humboldt University Berlin)
Since doi moi, the onset of market reforms in 1986, religion has been thriving in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. 
Religious practices, part of spiritual and economic well-being, play a crucial role among diasporic Vietnamese as 
well, in particular among former students and contract workers in “socialist brotherlands”, namely East Germany, 
the Czech Republic and Poland. Religious sites such as Vietnamese Buddhist pagodas are newly constructed in these 
post socialist countries, and various religious practices such as spirit possession cults are part of the everyday life of a 
number of Vietnamese. While ancestral altars are established in most private homes, the veneration of national heroes 
such as the Hùng Kings, the ancestors of the Vietnamese nation, is a recently invented ritual by the Vietnamese state 
and its national leaders and hence is also performed in post-socialist settings. Further, as the veneration of Ho Chí 
Minh takes place in some pagodas in contemporary Hanoi, my paper, based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, 
explores the establishment of an altar dedicated to “Uncle Ho” in a Vietnamese Buddhist pagoda near “commodity 
city”, a global trade center in the peri-urban area of Warsaw/Poland.
— Thích Thiên Ân and the Presentation of Vietnamese Zen to the West
Alexander Soucy (Saint Mary’s University)
Scholarship on Vietnamese Buddhism has been sparse, but much of the description of Vietnamese Buddhist history 
before Cuong Tu Nguyen’s seminal work Zen in Medieval Vietnam has focussed on Zen lineages, despite the incon-
gruity between these descriptions and the devotional and ritualistic way that Buddhism has been practiced on the 
ground. The first – and for many years the only – book in English about Vietnamese Buddhism was written by Thích 
Thiên Ân, who was also the first Vietnamese monk to emigrate to the United States. His work Buddhism and Zen in 
Vietnam was written after emigrating to the United States and reflects his efforts to establish himself as a Zen master 
for American students in a Western context. It is therefore more reflective of his need to adapt to his new surroundings 

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at a time when there was no Vietnamese community in the United States and drew heavily from his experiences as a 
student in Japan. This paper will explore the life of Thích Thiên Ân and his writings and activities before and after his 
move to the U.S. in order to understand how imperatives arising from Western imaginaries of Buddhism have played 
a role in the transformations of overseas Vietnamese Buddhism.
XI. Art, Literature and Music
Panel: Art as Power: On Changes within the Performing Arts in Relation to  
Political Power in Southeast Asia 
convener: Stephanie Khoury (Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre)
panel abstract
Formal and informal power-brokers in the Southeast Asian region have historically relied on performing arts as one 
of the tools to symbolically assert their authority. Court dramas, elite poetry circles, religious musics, and other ar-
tistic forms have been mechanisms of legitimatization used by the people or institutions who were mastering these 
arts, either by their personal practices or by a form of authority over the artists performing them. In environments of 
power, such performing arts commonly have a place in the definition of geographical and social spaces. Throughout 
the 20th century, as power recognition shifted from being religiously based to more of a market-based economy with 
rationalbureaucratic/nationalistic structures, the whole definition of leadership has changed. So have the systems of 
performing arts supporting these political or religious authoritative structures.
Through processes of secularization and the emergence of concepts of intangible patrimony, local cultural politics 
and individual masters have reaffirmed control over arts, apprenticeships and training centers. As artistic changes 
have taken place to maintain the relevance of art forms amidst a context of changing forms of power, the artists have 
experienced collateral effects. On the one hand, there has been an artistic liberation as norms and codes could be used 
out of context and experimented with, leading to their integration into the emerging contemporary art scene. On the 
other hand, traditional (or traditionalized) forms are increasingly trapped within constraints fixing them as markers 
of cultural identity.
This panel will reflect on the use of performing arts in the affirmation or strengthening of a form of political power for 
past or current leaders or as means to contest local forms of established authority. Such consideration leads us to dis-
cuss the contemporary performance of such arts and how the transformation of authority has impacted their artistic
expression. We invite papers that deal, through an analytical lens, with the relations between changes in performing 
arts and changes in power, from the perspectives of the impacts of politics on arts or in terms of what changes in per-
formances indicates about changes in politics.