Rite to religious flourishing: progressive muslims' bafflement over the salience of ritualism amongst fellow Muslims in Singapore

• Main Author: Acmal Zuheyr Iefan Abdul Wahid
• Other Authors: -
• Format: Thesis-Master by Coursework
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
• Subjects: Social sciences::Political science
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/157300
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Muslims in Singapore have long been associated with tropes about them being insular, irrational and prone to creeping extremism, all of which animate state scrutiny over the community - especially in the area of rituals. While Muslims generally attempt to dissociate these religious practices which they deem important from the tropes mentioned above, one particular group of Muslims try to do so by relegating the importance of rituals in religion instead. They are the progressive Muslims. In their bafflement over the persistence of ritualism within their community, these progressives often unwittingly resort to the negative stereotypes above. Consequentially, their insider status lend further credibility to such tropes - especially with regards to wider Muslim preoccupation with rituals. Given such, this paper pushes back against these dominant narratives that reduce religious ritualism to polarising identity politics and dogma. In doing so, it investigates the sense of bafflement progressive Muslims often express in face of persistent ritualism amongst the community. Employing discourse analysis on three ostensibly progressive texts, this dissertation finds that a religious minority syndrome in the context of secularism can possibly account for such progressive Muslim bafflement which hinders empathy, deeper mutual understanding and genuine religious dialogue.