TAPSA Talk: Hanisah Binte Abdullah Saini, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
In the early decades of the 20th century, the expanding colonial administration in British Malaya provided attentive reports on cases of conversion into Islam. This was despite a longstanding policy against intruding into matters of religion and customs, which were left entirely to indigenous elites. This paper asks: Why was the colonial administration concerned about conversions into Islam, and how did this reflect the state’s evolving policy on religion and customs more generally? Examining administrative memos, newspaper reports, and personal correspondences, this paper situates the colonial state’s anxiety with religious conversion against compounding stresses faced by a rapidly expanding administration.
Dates:
Thursday, February 7, 2019 – 5:00pm
Foster 103 (1130 East 59th Street)