Toward Explaining Communal and Ethnonational Resurgence and Separatism

Abstract

Liberalism and the Quest for Islamic Identity in the Philippines, by Kenneth E. Bauzon. Published by the Acorn Press, Durham, NC, in association with Duke University Islamic and Arabian Development Studies, 1991, pp. xx + 219. Ethnicity, Pluralism and the State in the Middle East, edited by Milton J. Esman and Itamar Rabinovich. Published by Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1988, pp. viii + 296. Ethno-National Movements of Pakistan, by Tahir Amin. Published by Institute of Policy Studies, Islamabad, Pakistan, 1988, pp. xxix + 285. Most of the scholarly writings on Muslim minorities have focused on the socioeconomic and political issues and religious concerns that tend to divide these minorities from the mainstream of their respective societies. Particular emphasis is often given to the religious nature of the conflict between the Muslim minority and the non-Muslim majority communities, especially as it relates to the pracesses of socioeconomic change and modernization in the larger society. This conflict is also explained in terms of integration versus separatism, universalism versus particularism, and secularism versus communalism. Theorists of the civil society persuasion have looked at the politics of minority unrest as essentially a product of socioeconomic changes brought about by the processes of modernization, including social mobilization, and the expansion of education and mass communication. Hence, according to this perspective, ethnic and religious particularism in postcolonial societies is a necessary concomitant of modernity. The statist view, on the other hand, regards the politics of religious and ethnic separatism as a function of public policies. Nothing is predetermined and inevitable; public policies can restructure and reshape the environment within which communal and ethnonational movements can either flourish or disappear ...