The bureaucratization of Islam in Southeast Asia: A retrospective research group project

Governments across Southeast Asia have empowered various state-funded bodies in their attempts to politically shape and regulate Islam-related discourses and practices. Simultaneously, non-state actors seek to influence state governance of Islam in their countries, resulting in mutual attempts at engagement, education and sometimes change across the often blurred boundaries of state and non-state spheres. Based on a research group project I led from 2016 to 2023, I will elaborate on this bureaucratization and stateization of Islam in Southeast Asia, primarily using examples from Brunei and Singapore. The talk will also include reflections on my experience of designing and leading such a group project, the roles it played in the development of my career as a young researcher (i.e. how the project came about, what followed, what it enabled and hindered, etc.), and on what I might do differently in retrospect, in the hope that some of these reflections may be useful to the early-career researchers participating in the seminar.

Dominik Müller is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.