As the recent unrest in Northern Ireland reminds us, sectarian differences have long been a significant factor in local, regional, national, and international politics. In the study of Islam and Muslim societies, much of the academic focus on the politics of sectarianism has concentrated on the Middle East. How are Muslim sectarian differences manifested and deployed beyond this region?
We have been pleased to welcome Alexander Arifianto and Saleena Saleem as guest editors of this special issue of Religion, State & Society on ‘Sectarianisation in Southeast Asia and beyond’. Alexander Arifianto is a Research Fellow at the RSIS at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Saleena Saleem is completing her PhD at the University of Liverpool. They build on the sectarianisation thesis of Hashemi and Postel (Citation2017) to argue that sectarian divisions should not be taken for granted as inevitable but are instead manufactured and manipulated by states or other actors for political reasons. Sectarianisation is a dynamic process by which even small doctrinal nuances between theologically proximate groups can be inflated to the scale of politically significant sectarian differences. This special issue considers a range of cases, in Southeast Asia (Malaysia and Indonesia) as well as Turkey. Through its distinctive comparative approach, the special issue broadens and sharpens our understanding of how religious rivalries can be confected for political gain.