Postgraduate researchers at CIMOW
- Saira Aquil
Prof Greg Barton
Nation building in the post Taliban Afghanistan
Saira is joining Monash University as a PhD student in May, 2008. She will be researching the nation building process in the post Taliban Afghanistan. This research will critical analyse the approaches, methods, and strategic tools employed by the international actors to achieve their short and long term goals in the nation-building project. We shall also try to explore the successes and the failures of the nation-building project but most of all the complexities of nation building process in the post Taliban Afghanistan. This research is also an attempt to develop a theoretical understanding of the nation building concept in the context of Post Taliban Afghanistan.
- Iftikhar Arman
Prof Marika Vicziany and Prof Greg Barton
Radical Islamist movements and the terrorist threat in Bangladesh
Iftikhar’s research examines the madrassa system in Bangladesh and ways in which radical Islamist movements are seeking to promote jihadi thought and recruit cadre for future terrorist activism.
- Derya Dilara Akguner
Prof Greg Barton
Understanding the experiences of Jewish and Christian minority communities in modern Turkey
Dilara has recently returned to Melbourne, having previously been working for six years in Istanbul, Turkey. Dilara’s research will examine the experiences of Jewish and Christian minorities in contemporary Turkey and current initiatives to facilitate better relations between these small communities and mainstream Turkish society.
- Linda Hindasyah
Prof Greg Barton and Dr Julian Millie
Syariat Islam, Conflict, and Religious Violence.
Linda’s study focuses on how these three components relate each other. How does syariat Islam work in several areas in Indonesia which has already implemented it by developing local regulations in connection with syariat Islam? Does syariat Islam and the calling for its implementation by several Muslim groups in Indonesian society contribute to religious violence which happens in Indonesia? What are the methods used by these Muslim groups in relation to promote and call for the implementation of syariat Islam? Do these Muslim groups have the role in creating religious violence conflicts in Indonesia?
- Jonathan Samuel Lyons
Professor Emeritus Gary Bouma and Prof Greg Barton
War without End? A Social Historiography of 1000 Years of Anti-Islam Discourse
War without End? A Social Historiography of 1000 Years of Anti-Islam Discourse will explore the West’s wilful forgetting of the Arab legacy through the prism of those social groups and institutions whose interests have been advanced most by the alternate history that remains embedded to this day. The result is an enduring anti-Muslim discourse virtually impervious to serious challenge despite its obvious shortcomings and distortions as historical narrative. Yet unpacking this discourse by tracing the social and institutional bases of significant distortions across a long timeline can explain the deep and abiding interest in its success. It also reveals how the West has come to define itself, shaping its very conceptions of religious identity, war, commerce, territory, science, philosophy, poetry, and culture in general. Author and journalist Jonathan Lyons has spent his professional and personal life exploring the shifting boundaries between East and West. After more than 20 years as an editor and foreign correspondent – mostly in the Soviet Union and the Muslim world – for Reuters, he is now pursuing his doctorate in sociology at Monash. He is a recognized commentator on Iran and the politics of Islam Mr Lyons has had foreign reporting assignments in Jakarta, Tehran, Istanbul, Ankara, and Moscow. Before taking up his post in Indonesia in 2006, Lyons worked for five years in Reuters’ Washington office, most recently as Deputy Editor for general and political news for the Americas. His new book, House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Invented the West, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press. He is also the co-author, with Geneive Abdo, of Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in 21st-Century Iran (Henry Holt, 2002).
- Joshua Roose
Prof Greg Barton, Dr Dharma Arunachalam and Dr Peter Lentini
Australian born Muslims challenging a dominant negative discourse
Young Muslim Australians occupy a highly challenging social position. In the public sphere young Muslims face an often overtly hostile government that has continuously problematised Muslims and Islam, tabloid media that has disproportionately focused upon the Muslim population and an often uninformed or ignorant wider community. Simultaneously young Muslims are faced with a community leadership that is ill-equipped in many ways to deal with the challenges facing Muslim Australians. As a result of these observations. The key research question being addressed here is:Are young Australian born Muslims challenging dominant negative political discourse and portrayals and if so, how?
- Sven Alexander Schottmann
Prof Greg Barton, Prof Marika Vicziany and Dr Julian Millie
The ‘Islamic State’ and the ‘New Malays’: Islam in the politics of Mahathir Mohamad
Apart from celebrating fifty years of independence, the most vital question before multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and most significantly, multi-religious, Malaysia concerns its status as a Muslim-majority country. Is it indeed already an Islamic State, as declared by the government in late 2001, or does the constitution actually call for a secular Malaysia, albeit with Islam elevated to the status of official religion? This thesis analyses the engagement of Mahathir Mohamad with Islam and politics over a period spanning more than sixty years.
- David Tittensor
Prof Greg Barton and Dr Pete Lentini
New Islamic philanthropy and the vision of social development through self-development: a study of the Gülen Movement’s investment in schools and colleges in Turkey and Central Asia.
This study seeks to understand the motivation, vision, thinking and social networks that lie behind the social movement associated with the moderate Turkish Islamic intellectual Fethullah Gülen and its development of more than 700 secular day schools, and tens of colleges and universities, beginning in the 1980s in Turkey and in the early 1990s in Central Asia, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and now across Asia, Africa and the western hemisphere.
- Rachel Woodlock
Professor Emeritus Gary Bouma and Prof Greg Barton
Australian-born Muslims sense of self
Rachel's PhD research looks at how Australian-born Muslims define themselves and their place in society, as part of a broader Linkage project looking at the hopes and aspirations of Australian Muslims. She recently conducted research on Muslim settlement in rural Victoria. Rachel is a researcher in the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University.
- Mokhammad Yahya
Prof Greg Barton and Dr Julian Millie
Islamic Revivalism/ Fundamentalism and Political Islam in Indonesia
Yahya’s research explores and describes the forms of political Islam and Islamic revivalism (belief and practices) and how are these forms lived and manifested. It examines their ideological expressions and the ways in which they maintain their religious identity. It wrestles with the question: Are the current forms of Islamic revivalism a result of a spiritual reinvigoration of religious faith and commitment or merely the consequence of material change? It explores the factors and instruments that facilitate or constrain the development or maintenance of these religious strands, what worldviews are reflected in them and the response of the state to the political Islam and the new wave of Islamic fundamentalism