Islam, Education and Reform in Southern Thailand: Tradition and Transformation

Islam, Education and Reform in Southern Thailand: Tradition and Transformation
Date of publication:  2009
Publisher:  Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
Number of pages:  219
Code:  BM376

Reviews

"An increasing amount of research is now coming out on southern Thailand, but Joseph Liow's Islam, Education and Reform in Southern Thailand: Tradition and Transformation, is the first full-length monograph in English to focus on the state of Islamic education in the region today. Liow's study is a detailed introduction to the subject. The research for Liow's Islam, Education and Reform in Southern Thailand was conducted under extremely trying circumstances. Apart from the difficulty of an outsider carrying out research on such a sensitive subject, the security situation in the region during the period in which fieldwork was carried out was extremely tense. The author is to be congratulated for producing a work of such rich empirical value, especially under such circumstances. It will be the standard reference book on the subject for some time to come" (The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology).

About the publication

"This is a remarkable piece of scholarship that illuminates general and specific tendencies in Islamic education in South Thailand. Armed with an enormous amount of rich empirical detail and an elegant writing style, the author debunks the simplistic Orientalist conceptions of Wahhabi and Salafi influences on Islamic education in South Thailand. This work will be a state-of-the-art source for understanding the role of Islam and the ongoing conflict in this troubled region of Southeast Asia. The book is significant for those scholars who are attempting to understand Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, and also for those who want deep insights into Islamic education and its influence in any area of the Islamic world." - Raymond Scupin, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Lindenwood University, USA
           "Few books address the sensitive issue of Islamic education with empathy as well as critical distance as Joseph C. Liow's Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand. He examines global networks of religious learning within a local Thai as well as regional Asian context by brilliantly revealing the intersections between religion, politics and modernity in an accessible and illuminating manner. Traditional educational institutions rarely receive such sensitive and balanced treatment. Liow's book is a tour de force and mandatory reading for policy-makers, academics and all of those interested in current affairs." - Ebrahim Moosa, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Department of Religion, Associate Director, Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC), Duke University, USA
           "Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand is Joseph Chinyong Liow's critical attempt to map out the reflexive questioning, locations of authority, dynamics and contestations within the Muslim community over what constitutes Islamic knowledge and education. Through the optics of Islamic education in Southern Thailand, Liow manages to brilliantly portray the ways in which Muslim minority negotiate their lives in the local context of violence and the global context of crisis of modernity." - Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Senior Research Scholar, Thailand Research Fund, Author of The Life of this World: Negotiated Muslim Lives in Thai Society
          

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