Religious Diversity in Singapore

Religious Diversity in Singapore PDF Author: Lai Ah Eng
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9812307540
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 781

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Book Description
Religious and ethno-religious issues are inherent in many multiethnic and multi-religious societies. Singapore society is no exception. It has long been multiethnic, multicultural and multi-religious, being at the crossroads of many major and minor civilizations, cultures and traditions, and its religious diversity continues to develop in the current contexts of growing religiosity, religious change and conflict often in the name of religion. Despite this background, there is lack of in-depth knowledge, nuanced understanding and regular dialogue about religions and the meanings of living in a multi-religious world. This volume covering major themes of Singapore's religious landscape, religion in schools and among the young, religion in the media, religious involvement in social services, and interfaith issues and interaction fills important gaps in the knowledge and understanding of Singapore's religious diversity and complexity. A collective effort of researchers and practitioners, it is a timely and useful reference for scholars, decision-makers, leaders and practitioners as well as for concerned citizens and followers.

Religious Diversity in Singapore

Religious Diversity in Singapore PDF Author: Lai Ah Eng
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9812307540
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 781

Get Book

Book Description
Religious and ethno-religious issues are inherent in many multiethnic and multi-religious societies. Singapore society is no exception. It has long been multiethnic, multicultural and multi-religious, being at the crossroads of many major and minor civilizations, cultures and traditions, and its religious diversity continues to develop in the current contexts of growing religiosity, religious change and conflict often in the name of religion. Despite this background, there is lack of in-depth knowledge, nuanced understanding and regular dialogue about religions and the meanings of living in a multi-religious world. This volume covering major themes of Singapore's religious landscape, religion in schools and among the young, religion in the media, religious involvement in social services, and interfaith issues and interaction fills important gaps in the knowledge and understanding of Singapore's religious diversity and complexity. A collective effort of researchers and practitioners, it is a timely and useful reference for scholars, decision-makers, leaders and practitioners as well as for concerned citizens and followers.

Navigating Differences

Navigating Differences PDF Author: Terence Chong
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 9814881619
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 3

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Book Description
Ethnic and religious differences, a widening socio-economic divide, tension between foreigners and locals. These are some of the contemporary challenges to integration in Singapore. How we navigate them will determine the type of society we become. This book gathers the best social scientists in Singapore to examine issues of ethnicity, religion, class, and culture in order to understand the many different fault lines that run across the multicultural city-state. These essays are written in an engaging manner and are designed to present the authors’ expertise to a wider audience.

Muslims in Singapore

Muslims in Singapore PDF Author: Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135275955
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
This book examines Muslims in Singapore, analysing their habits, practices and dispositions towards everyday life, and also their role within the broader framework of the secularist Singapore state and the cultural dominance of its Chinese elite, who are predominantly Buddhist and Christian. Singapore has a highly unusual approach to issues of religious diversity and multiculturalism, adopting a policy of deliberately ‘managing religions’ - including Islam - in an attempt to achieve orderly and harmonious relations between different racial and religious groups. This has encompassed implicit and explicit policies of containment and ‘enclavement’ of Muslims, and also the more positive policy of ‘upgrading’ Muslims through paternalist strategies of education, training and improvement, including the modernisation of madrassah education in both content and orientation. This book examines how this system has operated in practice, and evaluates its successes and failures. In particular, it explores the attitudes and reactions of Muslims themselves across all spheres of everyday life, including dining and maintaining halal-vigilance; education and dress code; and practices of courtship, sex and marriage. It also considers the impact of wider international developments, including 9/11, fear of terrorism and the associated stigmatization of Muslims; and developments within Southeast Asia such as the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist attacks and the Islamization of Malaysia and Indonesia. This study has more general implications for political strategies and public policies in multicultural societies that are deeply divided along ethno-religious lines.

Singapore, Spirituality, and the Space of the State

Singapore, Spirituality, and the Space of the State PDF Author: Joanne Punzo Waghorne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350086576
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
This book examines spirituality in Singapore, showing how important the city state is for understanding contemporary global configurations of urban space, religion, and spirituality. Joanne Punzo Waghorne highlights how the formal religious spaces-temples, churches, and mosques-have been confined to allotted sites on the map of Singapore, whereas various “spiritual” organizations, particularly of Hindu origins and headed by a guru, still continue to operate as “societies” classified by the government with other “clubs.” These unconventional religiosities are not confined but ironically make their own places, meeting in ostensive secular venues: high-rise flats, malls, businesses, and community centers, thus existing in the overall space of religion, commerce, and the state. The book argues that State of Singapore also operates between the secular and the religious, constructing an overarching spatial regime that both accommodates and yet rivals the alternate spheres that spiritual movements construct under its umbrella. Both spatial configurations challenge the presumed relationships between myth and reality, religion and commerce, the ethereal and the concrete, the sacred and the secular, on the levels of self, community, and polity. Singapore, now deemed a model for urban development in Asia, also offers an understanding of a new post-secularity and perhaps reveals where the urbanized world is headed.

State, Society, and Religious Engineering

State, Society, and Religious Engineering PDF Author: Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9812308652
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The book looks at how religion in Singapore is being subjected to the processes of modernisation and change. The Singapore State has consciously brought religion under its guidance. It has exercised strong bureaucratic and legal control over the functioning of all religions in Singapore. The Chinese community and the Buddhist Sangha have responded to this by restructuring their temple institutions into large multi-functional temple complexes. There has been quite a few books written on the role of the Singapore State but, so far, none has been written on the topic - the relationship between state, society and religion. It will help to fill the missing gap in the scholarly literature on this area. This is also a topic of great significance in many Asian, particularly Southeast Asian, countries and it will serve as an important book for future reference in this area of research and comparative studies.

Religious Diversity in Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Religious Diversity in Southeast Asia and the Pacific PDF Author: Gary D. Bouma
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048133890
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Religious diversity is now a social fact in most countries of the world. While reports of the impact of religious diversity on Europe and North America are reasonably well-known, the ways in which Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific are religiously diverse and the ways this diversity has been managed are not. This book addresses this lack of information about one of the largest and most diverse regions of the world. It describes the religious diversity of 27 nations, as large and complex as Indonesia and as small as Tuvalu, outlining the current issues and the basic policy approaches to religious diversity. Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands are portrayed as a living laboratory of various religious blends, with a wide variance of histories and many different approaches to managing religious diversity. While interesting in their own right, a study of these nations provides a wealth of case studies of diversity management – most of them stories of success and inclusion.

Rationalizing Religion

Rationalizing Religion PDF Author: Chee-Kiong Tong
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047419693
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Disputing the secularization hypothesis, this book examines the relationship between religion and modernity, detailing and explaining religious conversion, revivalism, and religious competition in Singapore.There is intellectualization of religion, a shift from unthinking acceptance to rationalized religions.

Management of Success

Management of Success PDF Author: Terence Chong
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian
ISBN: 9814279854
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 669

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Book Description
Rev. ed. of: Management of success, the moulding of modern Singapore.

The Politics of Multiculturalism

The Politics of Multiculturalism PDF Author: Robert W. Hefner
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824824877
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Few challenges to the modern dream of democratic citizenship appear greater than the presence of severe ethnic, religious, and linguistic divisions in society. With their diverse religions and ethnic communities, the Southeast Asian countries of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia have grappled with this problem since achieving independence after World War II. Each country has on occasion been torn by violence over the proper terms for accommodating pluralism. Until the Asian economic crisis of 1997, however, these nations also enjoyed one of the most sustained economic expansions the non-Western world has ever seen. This timely volume brings together fifteen leading specialists of the region to consider the impact of two generations of nation-building and market-making on pluralism and citizenship in these deeply divided Asian societies. Examining the new face of pluralism from the perspective of markets, politics, gender, and religion, the studies show that each country has developed a strikingly different response to the challenges of citizenship and diversity. The contributors, most of whom come Southeast Asia, pay particular attention to the tension between state and societal approaches to citizenship. They suggest that the achievement of an effectively participatory public sphere in these countries will depend not only on the presence of an independent "civil society," but on a synergy of state and society that nurtures a public culture capable of mediating ethnic, religious, and gender divides. The Politics of Multiculturalism will be of special interest to students of Southeast Asian history and society, anthropologists grappling with questions of citizenship and culture, political scientists studying democracy across cultures, and all readers concerned with the prospects for civility and tolerance in a multicultural world.

Managing Diversity in Singapore

Managing Diversity in Singapore PDF Author: Mathew Mathews
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 1783269553
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Singapore society is increasingly becoming diverse. During the first few decades of nation building, policies were designed to homogenise aspects of Singaporean society while enshrining principles to allow restricted amounts of diversity. Fast forward to the present, and fifty years after independence, the number of areas where diversity is profoundly apparent remains copious, and its manifestations more varied. This book provides an updated account on the tensions posed by diversity in Singapore and how this is being managed, primarily by the state through policies and programmes but also by communities who attempt to negotiate these tensions. Such an enquiry is crucial especially at this juncture when the nation is finding ways to embrace the different forms of diversity brought about through external impetuses, as well as manage internal reactions from the various communities. The book chapters highlight important considerations if Singapore's diversity management strategies will hold promise for the future. Contents: Introduction:Diversity in Singapore: Historical Foundations and Current Realities (Mathew Mathews)Manifestations and Management of Multicultural Singapore — Race, Language and Religion:Navigating Disconnects and Divides in Singapore's Cultural Diversity (Lai Ah Eng and Mathew Mathews)Singlish as Style: Implications for Language Policy (Lionel Wee Hock Ann)Keeping Harmony in Singapore: An Examination of the Inter-racial and Religious Confidence Circles (IRCCs) in Singapore (Mathew Mathews and Danielle Hong)The Management of New Religious Movements in Singapore (Shane Pereira)New Tensions when Global Meets Local: Social Class, Liveable Space, Bicultural Ideologies, and New Media Forms:Two Stories on Class in Singapore: Diversity or Division? (Tan Ern Ser and Tan Min Wei)Which Class and What Squeezes? Relationships with Well-being, National Pride and Inequality (Ho Kong Weng)Creating a Liveable City for Whom? A Critical Examination of Singapore's Recent Urban Transformation (Pow Choon-Piew)Are We There Yet? A Review of the Bicultural Studies Programme (Chiang Wai Fong and Low Yen Yen)Regulating the Big and Micro Screens: Managing Censorship in Films and YouTube in Singapore (Liew Kai Khiun)Diversity in the Cross Sections of Society: Workplace, Family, and the Armed Forces:Transmigrants and the Flow of Human Capital: Wither Integration? (Faizal Bin Yahya)Singapore Families: Stability and Diversity in Challenging Times (Stella R Quah)National Service: The Holy Grail in the Management of Social Diversity (Leong Chan-Hoong, Yang Wai Wai and Jerrold Hong)Conclusion (Chiang Wai Fong)About the ContributorsIndex Readership: Academics, researchers and students studying Singapore society, public policy and sociology; general readers and professionals interested in diversity management.