Modes of governance : religion and governance in Southeast Asia's muslim states.

This dissertation proves that the Muslim states of Southeast Asia, namely Malaysia or Indonesia, have become less secular with time since independence, and it is due to the common quest to contain political Islam. To arrive at that, a secularism spectrum is created to determine the states' secularity as well as to illustrate their shifts in secularity, taking into account the nature of existing secularism theories. Among the variety of theories available, Rajeev Bhargava's secularism models were chosen to determine the secularity of the states as they are religiously neutral concepts and provide sufficient categories for classification. Malaysia, with Islam as state religion, has become less secular since the late-1970s because of the ruling nationalist party's attempt to contain political Islam through its state Islamization program, which manifested into the intolerance and persecution of Muslim minority sects. Indonesia began as a 'religious' secular state through Pancasila, but became less secular as the nationalist presidents 'legitimize' certain religions while persecuting the others in 1965, in an initial attempt to contain Islamists through its institution of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The containment of political Islam, and subsequently other religions had ironically made Indonesia less secular.Master of Science (International Relations