Religious Minorities in Asia: Assessing Legal and Social Approaches to Diversity

This project proposes to investigate ethno-religious diversity at the intersection of government policies, social attitudes, and historical legacies. And it envisages to do so capitalizing on the PI’s scholarly engagement with the relationship between state and religion, her in-depth knowledge of Southeast Asia, and her more recently acquired expertise on Hong Kong’s religious landscape.During the next four years, I propose comparing religious minorities in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, focusing on Muslim and Buddhist groups. Malaysia’s population is 60% Muslim, 19% Buddhist and 9% Christian; Singapore counts 42% Buddhists, 15% Muslims, and 5% Christians; Hong Kong’s majority religion is Buddhism with 21% of the population, followed by Christianity (11%) and Islam (3%).The reasons for comparing Hong Kong and Singapore seem clear from the outset (city-sized territory; controlled democracy; Chinese-dominant population; secular state). Malaysia is instead a large country, where Islam is the religion of the state, and its population is predominantly Malay. Yet these three cases share a common colonial experience under the British Crown which contributed to the shaping of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious population.But whilst Malaysia and Singapore made “management” of diversity a key aspect of their policies since colonial times (albeit with different priorities and outcomes), Hong Kong only drafted a law on religious freedoms or against ethnic discrimination within the legal frame of its return to China in 1997. As inter-religious and inter-ethnic relations remain a crucial policy-aspect for Asian and Western countries, it is important to understand how laws and social behavior contribute to (or hamper) the formation of a society which is not only “diverse”, but truly “pluralistic”.Embracing Michael Peletz’s understanding of “pluralism” as diversity which is “accorded legitimacy”, this project proposes to delve into the question of where the legitimizing agency rests. Should governments provide a clear and strong legal framework protecting the rights of minority citizens? Should citizens demonstrate their civic maturity by individually acknowledging and respecting differences?This will be achieved combining in-depth analyses of legal provisions and practices related to religious freedoms, with an assessment of social practices of “pluralism” (as legitimized diversity) based on ethnographic material, interviews, and media sources. These data will then be analyzed in historical perspective, giving special consideration to the transition to independent nation-states.