The Re-organization of Islam in Cambodia and Laos

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to examine the role of Islam in present-day Cambodia and Laos. Specifically, the paper tries to focus on how the re-organization of Islam in Cambodia has been negotiated and how that process has affected the role of the Muslims in the contemporary Cambodian polity. The paper begins with a discussion of the profile of the Muslims and then goes to examine the various contexts that the Muslims have had to cope with in recent Cambodian history such as the two decades of civil war, the intervention of the United Nations and the re-introduction of democracy in Cambodia. Subsequently, the nature of Islamic reconstruction in post-1993 Cambodia will be analyzed. In the case of Laos, only a brief examination of the profile of the Muslim community will be made. It will be obvious in the paper that the role of Islam in Cambodia and to a lesser extent Laos, has been very much determined by contextual factors which may have little to do with Islam but the internal religious motivation of the Muslims has also been significant to impel them to reorganize themselves using Islam as the basis. For Cambodia particularly, the reorganization of Islam is not only attributable to the structural changes that have taken place in the kingdom since 1993 but has also been driven by the phenomenon of Islamic revivalism.