Globalization and Its Impact on the Muslim Minority in Cambodia

Abstract

Works on Southeast Asia tend to overlook or downplay the role of Muslim communities, especially those at the margins.² Hot topics like terrorism, militancy, radical Islam and Islamic violence dominate academic writings and media attention. Although these are legitimate subjects the tendency to simply focus on these issues at the expense of trying to understand the other, broader perspectives that characterize Islam in Southeast Asia can be misleading. The place of Muslim minorities in Mainland Southeast Asia too is usually disregarded or unrecognized and even when it is given attention, this is invariably to highlight an ongoing crisis like the conflict in the Muslim-dominated provinces of Southernmost Thailand or the Rohingya resistance in Myanmar. The tendency to portray particular problems affecting Muslim communities in specific contexts like the crisis in Southern Thailand as being directly linked to Islam also distorts realities. At the very least, it unfairly associates Islam with violence or presents it in a negative light. The Muslim minorities in Mainland Southeast Asia have been regarded as being problematic, controversial or undesirable.