Nation, State, and Umma: Constructing Identity in Islamic Secession Conflicts A.J.

Nolte

Abstract: This paper seeks to create a research design whereby the inter-relationship between a pan-Islamic identity the umma and various national identities may be examine . Secession movements within the Muslim world in which identity contestation is a na tural part of the conflict provide a natural context for such an investigation. The paper recommends a mixed-methods approach comprised of content analysis and in-d epth case studies, to determine the degree and variety of contestation between t hese two identities in secession crises. Cases are evaluated based on their abil ity to provide a balanced picture of the question, and their applicability to th e question at hand. Ultimately, the paper concludes that such a research design is feasible, and the project worthy of further study. Introduction: Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, prophecies of the d emise of the nation-state system were common, and as the twenty-first century da wns, they seem to grow more common still. Yet, despite widespread reports of it s demise, the uneasy accord between nation and state remains. New states, such a s East Timor and Eritrea have joined the sovereign state order while others, fro m Somaliland to Western Sahara, Quebec to West Papua, seek admission by secessio n. Though the state appears in retreat in its ancient European heartland, it is worth noting that, even in the European Union, the state is the basic unit at w hich members must be admitted, and political integration remains patchy and relu ctant. All of this, however, does not leave the nation-state without challenges . Individual states face challenges to their sovereignty from external actors ( other states, multi-national corporations) and internal threats to their cohesio n (secession movements, lack of institutional capacity). The increasingly inter dependent global economy places a strain on the ability of many states to preser ve their boundaries, and across the world, regional organizations have begun to vie for the loyalty which states attempt so jealously to guard. Aside from all of these concrete threats, states often face ideological competitors for that very loyalty. For Muslim states, it is possible that their religion itself constitutes such an ideological threat. To be sure, all religi ons, to one extent or another, threaten the totalizing desire of the state. In fact, if we take the peace of Westphalia as the beginning point of the state sys tem, as most scholars of international politics are wont to do, then its first r eal antagonist came in religious form. The Roman Catholic Church, seeing in Wes tphalia the potential death of its already tattered claim to universal authority in Christendom, declared the treaty to be "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unj ust, damnable, reprobate, inane, and empty of meaning and effect for all time." (Philpott, 2001, page 87). Roman Catholicism has accommodated itself to the nat

ion-state system since this time, but, as Daniel Philpott argues in the end of h is book 'Revolutions in Sovereignty', Catholicism's view of a fixed, static, div ine order apart from the state may represent a still enduring challenge to the n ation-state system (Philpott, 2001, page 261-262). For all the difficulties Roman Catholicism may pose to the nation-state system, that posed by Islam may be greater. This threat is not limited to the r ise of international Islamist terrorism at the end of the twenty-first century. It is debatable, and outside the scope of this paper, how true to Islam some of the jihadists' interpretations are to the heart of their religion. Yet clearly and discernibly lodged near the core of the faith is the concept of the umma. Umma, as used by Muslims, is not an easily defined concept. Benedict Anderson c lassifies it as a concept of sacred authority not dissimilar from Christendom, w hich is a good beginning (Anderson, 2006, pages 11-12). There are three distinct differences between the concepts of umma and Ch ristendom however. First, Christendom was animated by the Roman Catholic Church , a real and discernable religious structure held in tension with kings and othe r proto-state leaders. In Islam, the caliphate, while technically existing unti l the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, lost potency centuries before. In any event, the Caliphate never held the same level of religious authority as the pap acy, partially because Islam itself has less of a concept of structural authorit y than do the historic Christian churches which existed in the age of Christendo m. Second, political authority was construed differently in Christendom than it is in the umma. For Christians, the church and the state were seen as distinct , though sometimes overlapping institutions. This was particularly true in the west, where the Roman Catholic Church outlasted the empire, but did not seek dir ect rule of it. In Islam, and in the umma, the political and religious spheres were unified in the person of the Caliph, though, of course, his authority was n ot as absolute, in either sphere, as that of the bishop of Rome grew in the west ern church. Finally, and perhaps most consequentially, we may truly speak of Christe ndom in the past tense. Whether we speak of an Andersonian change in the imagin ation, or a revolution in sovereignty such as Philpott envisions, or view the em ergence of the western state as a result of its war-making potential as does Cha rles Tilly, Christendom fell to the hammer blows of the Reformation, Thirty Year s War and Peace of Westphalia, and was replaced by the nation-state system. Som e argue that the change was quick, while others see it taking centuries, but tha t it has happened is undeniable. In Islam, by contrast, a universal political i dea retains the power to move populations, and words such as Umma and Caliphate still conjure intense loyalty, and politically effective loyalty it would seem, among devout believers. This is not a difficult fact to ascertain. The occupat ion of the Palestinian territories often moves Muslims in completely unrelated r egions of the world to protests so fierce as to affect the foreign policy of the ir states. A statement to the Pope about Islam, cartoons in Denmark seen as der ogatory toward the Prophet Mohammed and even statements by televangelists about him, can spark riots halfway around the world. It is interesting to contrast th is with, for example, art exhibits depicting a crucifix in a jar of urine or sta tues of the Virgin Mary made out of elephant dung, or the treatment of Christian s in countries such as China, Burma, Egypt or Pakistan, none of which have creat ed the same level of outcry in Christian countries. Clearly, there is a sense o f Muslim unity which accedes that felt by Christians in its political potency, a nd which is tied to the sense of Islamic nationhood or "umma". For Muslim state leaders, the concept of "umma" must be a decidedly mixe d blessing. While at times state leaders have successfully harnessed this broad sense of Islamic nationhood to distract their populations from unfavorable dome stic conditions at home, more often than not, this universalism is troublesome t o them. States, jealous of their prerogatives, are skeptical of such universal loyalties, which might ultimately weaken their foundations. Nationalists might be expected to share this skepticism. Some of these national leaders are grappl ing with the state in which their nation is contained, hoping to make their nati ons into states. Others are state leaders themselves, attempting to use nationa

lism to strengthen the bonds of the state or, in effect, make their states into nations. Whatever their imperatives, nationalists operating in a Muslim context must ultimately see the umma as a rival. Though there is considerable debate a bout the sources of nations and nationalism and the relationship between nations and states (see the literature review below), nations, like states, require the loyalty of their people, and claim and jealously. With its claims to universal ism, the umma has the potential to weaken the drive of nationalists to hold this claim. How Muslim state leaders and state-level nationalists have dealt with th is inherent danger from their own religion is the subject of this research desig n. In particular, I aspire to examine the tripartite struggle between state, na tion and umma. To do this, I intend to focus on a flash point for state and nat ional conflict, within an Islamic context. No where is the state's struggle for nationality and the nation's struggle for statehood more clearly demonstrated t han in secession crises. Examining the way in which states respond to secession movements within their borders shows us the level of confidence they feel in th eir own nationhood, the ways in which they construe it and the lengths they are willing to go to protect it. Examining the way in which Muslim states have resp onded to secession movements will demonstrate how Muslim states self-identify an d the lengths to which they are willing to go to protect that identity, and may shed light on the ways in which they have grappled with the Islamic universalism inherent in the concept of umma. Literature review: It is perhaps best to begin the literature review discussion of the pape r with some discussion of what, exactly, is meant by "Islam". In this respect, there are two extremes to be avoided. The first is to discuss Islam as some mon olithic and unitary force expressed in the same way in all the contexts in which it occurs. As the cases explored in this study will demonstrate clearly, Islam varies widely from nation to nation and state to state, and sometimes within th ese two categories. Yet, in the same way that we must avoid the "monolithic ori entalism" of which Edward Said is so wary, so too we must avoid his deep skeptic ism about our ability to speak of Islam at all. Said, in 'Orientalism, skirts d angerously close to arguing that members of one culture cannot say anything usef ul about another. His skepticism, in the Muslim context at least, seems rebuked by the fact that over a billion Muslims not only imagine themselves part of a c ommunity, the umma, but share common characteristics, a common ethical system an d a strong and, as was mentioned in the introduction to this study, politically powerful and relevant identification with one another. Thus, for the purposes o f this paper, Islam is understood as an inter-subjective identity constantly cre ated and recreated by the world's Muslims within the parameters laid out by the Koran, Hadiths, shariah and almost 1500 years of Muslim discourse. This identification appears to be on the rise, leading many to ask why? In this context, there is a level of skepticism which ought to be addressed rega rding the origins of modern Islamic political discourse and identity. It is com mon among many scholars seeking to slide between these two extremes, to define I slamic politics and the quest for the umma as merely one of many strands of anti -colonial discourse and identification. This I take to be Peter Mandaville's ar gument in his book 'Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma' (Mandav ille, 2001). Certainly, it is a mantle which Muslim intellectuals have attempte d to claim for their religion and its discourse. I also take Olivier Roy to be making a similar argument in his book Globalized Islam' (Roy, 2004). The gentle men in question do not appear to be arguing that the concept of the umma and Mus lim solidarity emerged as a result of the anti-colonial struggle, but rather tha t they reemerged in this context. Of course, like most scholarship concerned wi th "post-colonial" matters, colonialism is very narrowly defined as occupation b y a western metropole across an ocean from the colonized region in question. El se, the "political Islam as discourse reemerging in the anti-colonial struggle" would run headlong into its failure to reemerge under centuries of Tsarist occup ation of Muslim central Asians, Arab colonization by Ottoman Turks (not to menti on previous dynasties) and so on. Nor do they explain the wild resurgence of Is

lamist politics against many of the very post-colonial elites who "liberated" th eir states in the first place. It is undeniable, however, that there has been a resurgence of the umma consciousness, and if not in response to western colonialism, to what? The answe r, I believe, is that the rise of Islamism and other political "umma" thinking i s, at least in part, a response to the rise of the nation, and the rise of the s tate. It is the common variable present between the colonial powers and their p ost-colonial successors. As Philpott makes clear in his section on colonialism in Revolutions in Sovereignty', the colonial powers had very different end games fo r their colonial projects: self-government in the case of the British and integr ation with a global but distinctly national empire in France's case (Philpott, 2 001, chapters 9 and 12). Both, however, placed the concept of the state, and in some ways the nation, in the direct path of the Muslim world. To the British, self-government meant self-governing nation-states. To the French, integration with the French state meant integration into the French nation. Post-colonial e lites, as Philpott demonstrates, were inculcated into the ideals of the nation-s tate, and made nationalism and state-based self-determination a key part of thei r discourse (Philpott, 2001, Chapter 11). Thus, even after the colonial powers had withdrawn, they left behind their foreign notions of state and nation, anath ema to the traditional concept of the umma. By contrast, other colonizers, such as the Ottomans, the Tsars and the various empires which dotted the Islamic pas t, brought with them neither the concept of state nor nation. Certainly, it has been argued that the concepts of a hereditary, hierarchical empire where power concentrated in the hands of a clan or clique is contrary to Islamic political t heory. Yet there are some important distinctions between empires and both natio ns and states which make the former more amenable to an umma identity. Most cen tral, in this regard, is the way in which authority and loyalty are construed in empires versus states and nations. For empires, authority is societally limite d but geographically universal. By contrast, states and nations both demand abs olute loyalty, and seek to project totalizing authority, in geographically const rained areas. Let us begin with a brief examination of empires. As Stanley Tambiah ar gues in the context of Southeast Asia (Tambiah, 1977), and Andre Wink likewise d emonstrates in the Indian subcontinent (Wink, 1984), traditional imperial politi es regard themselves as universal, encompassing or claiming to encompass the ent irety of the world they knew. They needed no maps or fixed boundaries, since th eir claims were universal. Often, as was the case in Southeast Asia, a center o r locus justified its "heavenly" or "galactic" claims based on the number of sat ellites it added or lost (tambiah, 2006). At times, as Wink shows, rival claima nts skirmished upon running into one another (Wink, 1984). In any case, the sel f-conception of these empires was geographically unbounded. By contrast, the cl aim which the sovereign generally made on his people's society was much less so. For an emperor, as Wink effectively demonstrates in the case of the subcontine nt, allegiance to his authority was sufficient (Wink, 1984). For both the state and the nation, this is anything but the case. As we live in (and the paper is primarily concerned with) a world of states and natio ns, it is worth dwelling on these two concepts at greater length. The state has its detractors and defenders, and the range of explanations for its formation r uns the gamut. For Karl Schmidt, the state is a natural, and a highly desirable , organization for society, which emerges from inherent us them distinctions (Li lla, 1997). For Marxists (or modified Marxists such as Hamsa Alavi or Hart and Negri), it emerges as a tool of ruling classes designed to preserve order (Alavi , 1972). Charles Tilly sees it in classical realist terms; the state was the mo st efficient means of making war(Tilly, 1992). For Daniel Philpott it was the r esult of an ideational revolution caused by Europe's encounter with the Protesta nt Reformation (Philpott, 2001). James Scott sees the state as a malignant enti ty attempting to socially engineer society on every level (Scott, 1998). For Ke nneth Dyson, there is a fundamental difference between the continental state, as it emerged in nations such as Germany, and the more liberal British model of th e state (Dyson, 1981). Notwithstanding all of their wide differences, these sc

holars broadly agree about certain aspects of the state. First, the state, most contend, is centralized and seeks absolute authority. For Schmidt this is a go od thing, for Scott it is not, but both agree about the state's drive for absolu te control. Philpott claims that the idea of a monolithic state sovereign: "in substance if not in name, comes directly out of the very propositions of Protest ant theology, in all of its variants" (Philpott, 2001, page 108). Second, the s tate is deliberately conceived as a geographically bounded entity. Winichakul m akes the point of boundedness explicit in his discussion of the kingdom of Siam' s transition to "modern" statehood, and the need felt by the state leaders to ma p their boundaries as part of this process (Winichakul, 1994). Mapping and boun daries are an essential part of the state system, and indeed, a cause for many o f the wars within it. Like the state, the nation is also a socially totalizing but geographica lly bounded entity. No thinker makes this more clear than does Benedict Anderso n in his now classic work 'Imagined Communities' (Anderson, 2006). For Anderson , the nation is a community which simultaneously imagines itself into being. Th e word simultaneous is used here quite deliberately. Anderson claims that, thro ugh newspapers and other national media, the pre-existing "sacred time" in which past, present and future are all blurred, is replaced with a national sense of "homogeneous empty time". As time is reimagined, so too is language; for Anders on, an important aspect of national development was the destruction of "sacred l anguages" such as Latin. Andersonian nationalism does not emphasize geographic boundedness in quite the same way as do all concepts of the state, but there rem ains, even in a constructivist account such as Anderson's, a particular sense in which the nation is not or cannot be universalized. For Walker Connor, who vie ws nationalism as a "myth of common dissent" and hence inherently ethnic, this i s even more the case (Connor, 1997). Connor's nation is the largest group of pe ople which can imagine a blood kinship, in a sense, a family, clan or tribe writ large. In the great internal debate among nationalist scholars between primord ialism and constructivism, Connor, though leaning in a constructivist direction due to his caveat that the blood relationship need not actually exist, is almost a both and. For Connor, the loyalty claimed by the nation is that owed to a fa mily, which he believes naturally trumps not only ideological but also, one assu mes, religious boundaries. Anderson and Connor differ to some extent on the rel ationship they envision between the nation and the state. For Anderson, nations and states often operate on the same level, in other words, the nation and the state are very regularly synonymous. This becomes clear in his discussion of La tin America, and the nationalism which he imagines to have emerged there (Anders on, 2006, Chapter 4). For Connor, most states and nations are in starkly differ ent and usually opposed juxtaposition. True nation-states, for Connor, are vani shingly rare, and he makes a distinction between nationalism and patriotism (Con nor, 1994, page 196). There is perhaps some room for middle ground. Obviously, not all states are nations and not all nations states. On the other hand, ther e is, on both sides of the divide, an impulse to conjoin the two. Nations, as C onnor agrees, constantly seek statehood. On the other hand, as Connor himself s eems to hint in his discussion of how the nation has emerged (a development whic h he views as extremely recent), states may also seek nationhood (Connor, 1994, Chapter 9). My understanding of states and nations, and hence the understanding operative in this paper, is that, while not always and everywhere synonymous, e ach seeks over time to become the other. Ultimately, neither is as compatible with the umma conception as the pre viously dominant imperial conception. Like many of the ancient empires, the Cal iphate and most Muslim empires claimed universal geographic dominion. The natur e of their claims to authority varied somewhat. Under most Muslim rule, a certa in circumscribed religious liberty was provided to non-Muslims. In many of the empires, there were also limits to the authority claimed by the center over peri pheral Muslims. In the Muslim conception of umma, such authority is universal, fusing political and religious authority to a high degree. By and large, confli cts between this model of empire have been limited; Muslim empires adapted thems elves readily to accommodate the umma, and non-Muslim empires left Muslims large

ly to their own devices, demanding little in the way of assimilation. Nations, and states, are far different actors. Jealous of any rival authority, as the um ma tends to be jealous, nations and states seek to occupy space in the imaginati on of Muslims which Islam, through the imagined community of the umma, has alrea dy claimed. And unlike Christendom, the Islamic umma has not given up its imagi native weapons, such as sacred time and a sacred language. Koranic Arabic retai ns its traditional potency, and a Muslim conception of time, which views events such as the crusades, Mongol invasions and death of the Prophet in much more rec ent terms than do westerners embedded in homogeneous empty time, has not given u p its hold on much of the Muslim world. This places nation and state-makers in Muslim societies, often synonymous, in a cleft stick of sorts. On one hand, to ignore Islam robs them of a potential source of unity, and in many cases, as Con nor points out, ethnicity and religion are tightly intertwined. On the other ha nd, attempting to use Islam for the purpose of imagining a national consciousnes s has clear pitfalls of its own. Even in the best of times, threading this need le is a highly complex process for state and national leaders. This difficulty is intensified in instances of secession, and it is to a n analysis of secession literature that this review must finally turn. It is im portant to specify that secession does not refer to a call for greater autonomy within a state, or some form of special federalism, but rather a violent or nonviolent movement calling for withdrawal from the state of which a region or nati on is a part and the formation of a new state. Secession, then, is the instance at which a state's desire for nationhood and a nation's desire for statehood co llide most sharply. For a state, secession is perhaps the greatest challenge to its legitimacy, which has led state-centric theorists of secession such as Lind a Bishai to argue that such movements are never or almost never justifiable (Bis hai in Lehning, 1998). For Bishai, the potential harm a secession movement migh t do to the international order outweighs any moral arguments the secessionists might put forward. Most scholars are more permissive, with some, such as Harry Beran, arguing for a radical model in which even the smallest community ought to have the right of secession (Beran in Lehning, 1998). Beran's hyper-cosmopolit anism, which envisions a "nested boxes" theory of authority, is highly impractic al and relies over heavily on the European Union precedent, but shows how far ce rtain cosmopolitan theories have drifted from the traditional Westphalian system . By far the most comprehensive scholarly theory of secession is that of Allen M. Buchanan. His theory, though more permissive than that of Bishai, still re tains a high threshold and a great deal of respect for the international system. According to Buchanan, there is a moral right to secede under certain highly q ualified circumstances (Buchanan, in Lehning, 1998). First, if the would-be sec essionist region suffers extreme injustice perpetrated by the state from which i t wishes to secede, or if the state does not protect it from injustice perpetrat ed by outsiders, secession may be morally justified. Second, even in the absenc e of such injustice, secession may be morally justified if the culture of that d istinct region is threatened. Buchanan further qualifies the cultural condition : (the culture must meet basic standards of decency, all other options for prese rving the culture within the state must be exhausted), and argues that any gover nment created by secession should also not be illiberal. Finally, even if the t wo above qualifications are not met, a region may secede if the state in questio n does not have a valid territorial claim over the region in question. These th ree reasons do not operate entirely independently of one another for Buchanan; a valid territorial claim may be made invalid by grievous injustice, a valid terr itorial claim may weaken the cultural claim, and so on. Thus, we can see that f or Buchanan, the moral right to secede, while it is very real, is highly conditi onal. He is preoccupied with respecting the rights of states, as is the interna tional system as a whole. As Buchanan comprehensively answers the ought question "should secession be allowed?" Viva Ona Bartkus attempts to answer the "is" question, "how do sec ession movements form"? In her book The Dynamic of Secession, Bartkus creates a matrix of necessary preconditions for secession and a calculus which, in some in formal mechanism, secessionist groups and the populous of their regions seem to

apply as they decide whether or not to secede. In order first to even consider secession, there must, she asserts, be: a distinct community, a geographic cente r of gravity, leadership for this geographically-center community and a sense of discrimination by the state (Bartkus, 1999). This in some ways mirrors the con ditions laid down normatively by Buchanan. Bartkus further stipulates to four c alculations which determine a movement's willingness to try secession: benefits of secession, costs of secession, benefits to staying in the state and costs to staying in the state. She is very explicit that such costs and benefits are oft en non-material, which sets her analysis apart from the pure rational choice vie w. Still, Bartkus argues that the decision to secede or not to secede is ultima tely a rational one which results from interest calculations. For a state too, there are calculations to be made. How might a potenti al secession effect the legitimacy of the state? Does it support or undercut the narrative upon which identity is constructed? What are the costs of violent sup pression, and what are the potential benefits? In Islamic states, where the noti on of umma cuts against both nation and state, and hence might threaten both the state's and the would-be seceding region's state and national projects, the ide ational picture becomes yet more complicated. Defining the Research Question: under what circumstances and with what degree of success does a Muslim state ideationally cooperate with the umma in an attempt to prevent secession? The preceding review of relevant literature indicates a complex picture of ideational actors all vying for a very similar space. Were we to posit a sit uation where, for example, a Muslim region was attempting to secede from a Musli m state, we might see three competing imagined communal identities, a state seek ing nationhood, a nation seeking statehood and the umma seeking to undercut both . On the other hand, were we to posit a Muslim state and a non-Muslim region, t he umma would have little ideational power in the seceding region. In a Muslim region seceding from a non-Muslim state, a high level of convergence between the umma and the seceding region might be possible during the struggle of independe nce at least, as Islam would help define the seceding region against its state. In formulating a research question which might effectively seek to measu re the interactions between these actors, it is first imperative to select a lev el of analysis. Three paths are possible: an examination of the state as it cop es with secession and umma, an examination of seceding regions and their use or avoidance of an imaginative entente with the umma, or a study of the umma itself as it responds both to the state and seceding regions. For a number of reasons , the state level of analysis is preferable. First and most obviously, gatherin g information on states is much easier than either regions or an amorphous ideat ional actor such as the umma, which is not always embodied in clear institutions . In the battle for identity, the state is the easiest actor to study. Second, the state is in many ways the dominant actor of the three. The international o rder is heavily stacked in its favor and it will more likely than not have great er economic, military and media resources. Finally, the Muslim state, with its drive toward nationhood in tension with the universalizing umma, has probably th e most interesting balancing act of the three. Muslim secessionists also have i nteresting pressures, but their overriding imperative is the conflict with the s tate. For the state, the secession crisis is often only part of its preoccupati on. More often than not, the umma is making itself felt at the same time, addin g pressure to which action the state takes. Thus, the focus of the question will be on states, Muslim states in part icular, with secession crises. The object then, is to examine the ways in which the Muslim state either allies with or conflicts with the umma in its ideationa l battle against secession, and under what circumstances. In the event that sta tes do in fact ideationally ally with the umma, it would also be worthwhile to m easure the relative success of the alliance. This alliance might involve a stat e relying heavily on the umma as a crutch, positioning itself as a defender of t he broader Muslim nation or explicitly predicating its identity on its Muslim po pulation. On the other hand, it might involve a shotgun wedding in which the st ate essentially co-opts the umma instrumentally or cynically for its own purpose

s. I will formulate the question as follows: under what circumstances and with what degree of success does a Muslim state ideationally cooperate with the umma in an attempt to prevent secession? A wide variety of answers are possible. Sta tes might never, sometimes, often or always cooperate with the umma in some form to battle secession, and such cooperation might never, sometimes, often or alwa ys be successful. Methodology: Essentially, this research question seeks to measure the comparative pow er of competing identities on state-leaders and secession-minded populations. I n particular, it seeks an assessment of state leaders own perception of their state s dentity relative to the concepts of nation and umma , and the receptivity of wou onist regions to this conception. Measuring identity is a highly complex and of ten difficult task, and many scholars have questioned whether such measurement i s even possible. Recently however, a growing body of scholarship has attempted to create methods by which identity can be measured, usually by borrowing from o ther disciplines. Of particular note in this regard is the edited volume by Abd elal, Herrera, Johnston and McDermott entitled measuring Identity' (Abdelal et a l, 2009). The authors, in chapter 2 of this work, define identity based on two aspects: content and contestation (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 2). Content may consist of four types: constitutive norms (who we are), social purposes (what w e want), relational comparisons based on other similar groups (who we are not ba sed on who they are) and cognitive maps (how we see the world). Contestation is the process of debate and discourse by which this content is defined and redefi ned (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 2). In breaking identity down into these two components, the authors ultimately make it into a measurable variable. These tw o elements of identity mesh rather well with this paper s research question. By thei r very nature, secession crises entail a high degree of identity contestation, t hereby allowing the researcher a unique window into the ways in which Muslims in these nations define themselves. While it may be argued that the authors lean p erhaps too heavily on the fluidity of identity, their definition still retains e nough substance for usage even by those with a less flexible view of identity fo rmation and, importantly, provide a good framework for measuring the highly inta ngible concepts with which this paper is concerned. Once identity has been defined, Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston and McDermott draw 'together a number of authors with very different methodologies. Of all t he methods they describe, content analysis and discourse analysis seem most pote ntially useful for this project. Discourse analysis involves thick description based on the author's deep familiarity with the identity under study and an emer sion into the widest variety of texts possible (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 1). Typical of discourse analysis is Ted Hopf's in-depth analysis of the Sino-Sovi et split through a minute examination of Russian culture at the time (Hopf in A bdelal, 2009). Though highly relevant and descriptive, discourse analysis lacks two key aspects of social science experiments, replicatability and generalizabi lity. By contrast, content analysis involves sifting through a large amount of texts for specific content which indicates the presence or absence of variables under consideration (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 1). The content analyst creat es a "dictionary" of relevant words and phrases and a "code book" which explains how the phrases will be coded to each variable (Neuendorf and Skalski in Abdela l et al, 2009). Some content analysts use hand-coding, while others rely on the assistance of computer programs. Content analysis holds out the real possibili ty of replicatability and generalizability. However, content analysis runs the risk of artificiality; the analyst runs the risk of reading his or her own frame work into the material. Coding bias and coder subjectivity are also potential p roblems (Neuendorf and Skalski in Abdelal et al, 2009). The analyst must clearl y show the parameters by which a judgment was made as to whether the content in question showed or did not show the trait under examination. It is imperative t o avoid, as much as possible, arbitrary coding and to make clear to the reader t he reasons for a given coding judgment. Notwithstanding these very real concerns, content analysis is almost cer tainly the best method for examining this research question. First, this study,

in attempting to measure identity variation, will require more than one case, t hereby making discourse analysis, which can take years to analyze a single case, prohibitively difficult. Second, given the broad nature of the research questi on, replicatability and generalizability are both extremely important traits for this study. However, content analysis' most serious weakness, artificiality, m ust be addressed. To that end, I intend to pair the content analysis with a tra ditional comparative case study. Not only will a case study provide the reader with a detailed frame for each individual body of content, but will help explain the coding used in each case, thereby increasing replicatability. Case studies will allow for the creation of a more thorough hypothesis which the content ana lysis can then test. The use of both quantitative and qualitative methods will provide rigger not available from the use of either method in isolation. This leads at last to the question of what content in each case ought to be analyzed, and a related question, what constitutes evidence for or against a n ideational alliance between state and umma? Regarding the content, the object is to analyze the state's attempt to deal with secession movements. Hence, the content analysis ought to deal with written material produced to persuade citize ns of the seceding region to throw in their lot with the state. This might invo lve educational materials such as textbooks, propaganda pamphlets, speeches give n by state leaders or territorial governors and other material of this sort. Sp eeches in particular are likely to have been translated into English, making the m an excellent place to begin. What, then, would constitute evidence of an alli ance between the state and the umma? Several possibilities suggest themselves: u se of Islamic phraseology or symbolism, evocation of a common Islamic fraternity and, crucially, an attempt to draw on Islamic historical memory. This might in volve the use of a common Islamic past, discussion of great Muslim heroes from l ocal history or conspicuous references to the Prophet Mohammed. Obviously, dire ct discussion of the umma and its role in maintaining the unity of the state wou ld be a very strong indicator. By contrast, evidence of a more conflictual rela tionship between state and umma might be found in the state's use of overtly sec ular language, discussion of the diversity of the state, attempt to draw on a mo re explicitly ethnic identity and so on. These are general guidelines, but in l arge part, the cases themselves will differ in this regard. Intimate familiarit y with the history of each case will be essential. It is appropriate, therefore , to move directly into a discussion of case selection and an overview of each c ase which was chosen. The Cases: Case selection often involves achieving a delicate balance between simil arity and variation. The primary variable on which I selected cases was, of cou rse, Islam, or more specifically, a majority Muslim population. Within this par ameter, I elected to seek similarity at the state level and variation in the sec eding region. Of the cases which I have selected, all five are majority Muslim states, three of the secession movements are or were Muslim and two were non-Mus lim. I also selected, in part, based on regionalism. Four of the five cases oc cur within the Asian context, mostly because my recent research has focused on i ssues of nation and state in Asia (for obvious reasons). I have included one Af rican case, but as the conclusion indicates, may consider enriching this case mi x with more African and Middle Eastern cases if/when I undertake the actual anal ysis. Aside from these intended similarities and variations, several others ha ve occurred naturally. Of the four states examined, all four are multi-ethnic, but all, to one degree or another, have been accused of privileging one ethnicit y. In one case, this privileging is de jure. One of the secession crises began and ended in the 1960s and the other four began in the 1970s, of which one ende d in that decade, the other in 1999, and the remaining two are still technically ongoing, but currently enjoy cease-fires. Finally, there is the question of re gime type, and here too there is a great deal of variation. One state is a here ditary monarchy, another an authoritarian democracy, and the remaining two have veered between authoritarianism and democracy. The cases are: Indonesia, in its struggle with Aceh on the one hand and East Timor on the other, Pakistan and th

e secession of Bangladesh, Malaysia and the expulsion of Singapore and Morocco, which confronts an ongoing secession crisis in the Western Sahara. Case 1: Indonesia, Aceh and East Timor. Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country by population, is a sprawl ing archipelago of 17,000 islands formerly colonized by the Dutch East India Com pany, and later the Dutch government directly. Its geographic decentralization combined with the presence of many quite sizable non-Muslim populations make an Islamic identity problematic for Indonesia, and any form of ethno-linguistic ide ntity has, of necessity, been painstakingly constructed. Indonesian leaders hav e primarily relied on secular nationalism to shape an Indonesian identity and, h opefully, make it stick. This has been neither a simple nor an easy task, and in the sixty years of Indonesian independence, the challenges have been manifold. Pancasila, the s tate ideology crafted by Sukarno and revised by Suharto, faced challenges, parti cularly from Islamist movements. Indonesian Islamists seeking an Islamic state and, to one degree or another, wrapping themselves in the concept of the umma, h ave been a potent political force. However, Indonesian Islam itself faces steep internal divisions which have limited, to a degree, the effectiveness of the co untry's Islamist movement. The most basic division is between the santri, or mo dernists, and the abangan, syncretic Muslims who draw on many pre-Islamic tradit ions (Brown, 2004, page 118). Within the santri, there is a divide between trad itionalists, represented by the Nahdlatul Ulama, and the Puritan modernists repr esented by Muhamadiyah (Brown, 2004, page 119-120). In general, Islamic parties with an orientation toward international Islam have come from this latter tradi tion, while abangan and even NU have been more comfortable with an Indonesian na tionalist identity. Indeed NU, particularly under its current leader Abdurrahma n Wahid, has enjoyed rather chilly relations with organized political Islam (Ste phens, 2006). The Indonesian state, particularly in its authoritarian period fr om 1953 to 1998, alternately fought and placated the Islamists, though the forme r far more often than the latter. Sukarno, wary of the Islamists, relied on the army and, later, the Indonesian Communist Party, for support (Brown, 2004, chap ter 4). His successor Suharto brutally purged the Communists, leaving only the army and the Islamists as potential supporters (Mcgregor, 2009). For the most p art, he chose the army, certain amenable Islamic groups such as Nahdlatul Ulama, and wooing of the population through promises of economic growth. This change d in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as he began courting the Islamists. His de mocratic successors have been more wary of the Islamists, who have fared poorly in recent elections. Understanding the backdrop of Indonesia's tense relationship with Islami sts and its conflicted understanding of its own Islamicness helps place in persp ective the two secession movements Indonesia has faced. There are actually thre e secession movements to choose from in Indonesia: Aceh East Timor and West Papu a. The West Papuan conflict is less well-known and thoroughly researched, and a s such was excluded in this design, though it may be reexamined in future. Of t he three, only Aceh is a predominantly Muslim region, and Islam has played an im portant role in this conflict. Located on the northern tip of Sumatra, Aceh is home to rich oil reserve s and devout Muslims. Since independence, the Acehanese have desired greater au tonomy from Java and a more Islamic state than Indonesia has been willing to pro vide. this was at least in part motivated by the probably accurate perception t hat the Javanese dominated the state, and out of a resistance to Indonesian cent ralization, as Van Clinken claims in his article "Big States and Little Independ ence Movements" (Van Clinken, 2000). Jakarta compounded these problems by placi ng bataks, another north Sumatran but largely Christian ethnic group, in positio ns of administrative authority in Aceh (Brown, 2004, page 142). Beyond any doub t however, Acehanese were uncomfortable with Indonesia's emphasis on secular nat ionalism. Initially, Acehanese sought to achieve their goals through an allianc e with Masyumi, an Islamic party which formed a cabinet during the brief and fra gmentary parliamentary period (Brown, 2004, pages 139-140). The rise of Sukarno demonstrated clearly the limits of the alliance with masyumi, and so calls bega

n for self-determination through autonomy. Over time, as it became clear that t he Indonesian state was unlikely to accede to their demands, the locus of activi sm shifted toward independence. The GAM, or Free Aceh Movement, emerged in this context in 1976, and began militating for a free, independent and Islamic Aceh (Brown, 2004, page 155). Suharto, as was his wont, responded with a harsh decla ration of martial law and a military crackdown. Since this time, the Acehanese struggle has alternated between violence and cease-fires, and recently a peace a greement has been reached between President Yudhoyono and the rebels. Time will tell whether this peace proves a durable one. East Timor could not be more different. For over 400 years, it was perh aps the sleepiest backwater of the increasingly threadbare Portuguese colonial e mpire. According to Alberto Arenas, who summarized colonial conditions in his a rticle "Education and Nationalism in East Timor," the population was largely lef t to their own devices, development was almost non-existent and the island's pri mary export was a limited amount of high quality coffee (Arenas, 1998). The Eas t Timorese were limited to slash and burn agriculture, education was not widely available and easily eradicated diseases were widespread. With the fall of the Salazar regime in 1974, Portugal began divesting itself of its former colonies. According to Paulo Gorjao, this was a perplexing time for the Portuguese, marke d by political unrest and conflicting messages sent to both its former colonies and regional players. Interestingly, Gorjao notes that, at the time, Portugal w as already considering the possibility that East Timor would be given to Indones ia (Gorjao, 2000). In his article describing Portuguese and Australian policies toward East Timor, Gorjao speaks of a reluctance on the part of the Portuguese to even consider independence for East Timor, on the basis that it could not sur vive on its own. Undeniably the Front for the Liberation of East Timor, or FRET ELIN, had other ideas. FRETELIN, a popular party with some Marxist leanings, un ilaterally declared independence in 1975, and not long after, Indonesia invaded. As Arenas points out, the reasons for the Indonesian invasion were many and varied (Arenas, 1998). Geopolitically, they were concerned both that FRETEL IN would prove to be a Communist bridgehead within Southeast Asia and that the i ndependence of East Timor would lead other restless regions within Indonesia in a more separatist direction. Economically, Indonesia was interested in exploiti ng rich oil and natural gas resources off the East Timorese coast. Religiously, Indonesia wanted to increase its Christian (particularly Catholic) population t hrough the addition of East Timor. With these mixed motives, Indonesia invaded East Timor and officially declared it the twenty-seventh province. The majority of the occupation period was marked by a rather heavy-handed Indonesian attempt to bring East Timor into the national fold, ranging from education to transmigr ation (a favorite policy of Suharto's which caused innumerable internal headache s for his successors), to the use of military force. The death toll is, of cour se, widely disputed, but was indisputably very high, particularly as a percentag e of the small East Timorese population. The East Timorese resisted by populari zing use of Tetum, the most widely-spoken indigenous language, as well as Portug uese, and through joining, in truly staggering numbers, the Catholic church (Are nas, 1998). The church, ironically one of the institutions which the Indonesian s had counted upon to bring East Timor into the fold, quickly became one of the most widespread and effective vehicles of resistance (Kohen, 2000). It is fair to say that Suharto's initial goal, creating an internal bulwark against the Isl amists, increasing Indonesia's control over the region and suppressing Communism , backfired in almost every particular. In 1996, East Timorese bishop Carlos Be lo and independence activist Jose Ramos Horta received the Nobel Peace Prize, th ereby putting the Timorese struggle at the center of the world stage. With the fall of Suharto, Indonesia's will to hold onto East Timor evaporated, and the na tion transitioned into UN stewardship and eventual independence. In both Aceh and East Timor, Indonesia showed a desperate and intense wi llingness to do anything necessary to keep the seceding regions in the fold. Ce rtainly, Aceh had real and East Timor hypothetical economic value. Yet particul arly in the case of East Timor, the costs must have very quickly outweighed the potential benefits. For Indonesia, at issue was not economy but integrity and i

dentity. Any secession, it was feared, might create a domino effect across the archipelago, and threatened to invalidate the carefully constructed pancasila-ba sed nationalism which sustained Indonesia throughout the authoritarian period. Thus any secession, even that of a region expropriated quite blatantly and illeg ally, must be fought tooth and nail. I hypothesize, however, that the essential ly secular character of the community Indonesian state leaders have sought to im agine makes an ideational alliance with the umma all but impossible. This is pa rticularly the case in Catholic East Timor, where discussion of the Muslim umma would only alienate the populous. More questionable is Aceh; if any ideational use of the umma occurred in this case, it would, I believe, be brief, half-heart ed and almost entirely instrumental. In the world's largest Muslim country, the umma is, from the perspective of the secular state, more of a threat than an op portunity. Case 2: Pakistan and Bangladesh. In multi-ethnic, multi-national Indonesia, secular nationalism was perha ps the state's only option in its quest for nationhood. Like Indonesia, Pakista n was multi-ethnic and contained minorities from other confessions. However, th e circumstances surrounding Pakistan's formation made an Indonesian-style limita tion on Islam's role within the national imagination all but impossible. Aisha Jalal, a noted scholar of Pakistani nationalism, claims that the nation of Pakis tan was almost accidental. As the process of decolonization moved forward in th e Indian subcontinent, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, she argues, used partition as a barg aining chip in an attempt to gain greater power for the Muslim League within a U nited India, and possibly even make himself Prime Minister (Jalal, 2000). Even in 1947, the Muslim League and Congress Party sought a mutually acceptable power -sharing agreement. Having failed to reach such an agreement, the British, Cong ress and the Muslim League agreed at last, and not without some violence, to a p artition along confessional lines. Thus, even at its outset, Pakistan was intended as a "Muslim homeland" i n the subcontinent. State-building, however, would prove a difficult and elusiv e goal. From the start, the young nation faced severe ethnic tensions between P unjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, Pashtuns, Bengalis and the Muslim refugee population from the rest of India or muhajirs (Ahmed in Brown and Ganguly, 1997, pages 8689). Bengalis made up the largest ethnic group in the nation, but were separate d from the western parts of Pakistan by hostile India. Access from west to east , therefore, could only be achieved by sailing around India or flying north thro ugh Chinese air space. Adding to the tensions between West Pakistan and the pre dominately Bengali east was a wide disparity in access to the military and civil service. Based on the British Indian military, Pakistan's new armed forces til ted heavily toward the so-called "martial races", Punjabis, Pashtuns and Baluchi s; Bengalis were systematically under-represented (Ahmed in Brow and Ganguly, 19 97). In the civil service, the muhajirs and to a lesser extent the Punjabis hel d many of the key posts, to the disadvantages of the other ethnic groups. It wa s these military and bureaucratic elites, combined with wealthy Punjabi landlord s, who dominated the Pakistani state (Alavi, 1972). Unsurprisingly, they displa yed very little interest in opening Pakistan to greater participation from sindh is or even poorer members of their own ethnic groups, let alone the Bengalis. E ast Pakistan received a considerably lesser share of the state's economic resour ces, though there is wide disagreement as to the extent of this disparity. The Bengali population was disadvantaged in other ways as well. In an attempt to cr eate national unity, Jinnah proposed the adoption of Urdu as the national langua ge, which antagonized the Bengali population greatly (Ahmed in Brow and Ganguly, 1997). The elites of West Pakistan favored a highly centralized state, while t he Bengalis argued for a great deal of autonomy between the two wings. As one might logically assume, this created a backlash in East Pakistan. The vehicle for expressing this resistance was the Awami League. Founded in r esponse to a growing perception that the Muslim League was out of touch with the concerns of Bengalis, the Awami League build itself as a secular, Bengali natio nalist and socialist party which could speak for all of the East Pakistani popul ation (Ahmed in Baxter, 1998). Initially, the Awami League demanded increasing

autonomy, but expressed a desire to remain within Pakistan. As their strength g rew however, so too did the reaction of the military and other West Pakistani go verning classes against them. Throughout much of United Pakistan's history, the military ruled the country directly. In 1970, long-delayed elections were fina lly scheduled, and won by the Awami league. The military, with, it should be no ted, the support of even left-leaning parties in West Pakistan, suspended the el ections, refusing to certify the results (Ahmed in Brown and Ganguly, 1997). Th e Awami League, finally convinced that autonomy would never be successful, pushe d at last for independence. In the ensuing violence, the Bengali population exp erienced mass killings at the hands of an increasingly desperate Pakistani milit ary. Seeing an opportunity, Pakistan's traditional rival India entered the war on the side of the secessionists and, with Indian assistance, the new state of B angladesh was formed. Once again, Pakistan's treatment of Bengali desires for first autonomy a nd later secession indicates that retaining East Pakistan was essential for Paki stan's self-identity. Even autonomy was anathema to the central government. In part, the problem was similar to that seen in Indonesia. The central government feared, not without justification as subsequent events indicated, that the sece ssion of East Pakistan would only embolden ethno-regional movements and weaken t he identity which state leaders sought to construct. Thus, even after the seces sion of Bangladesh, Pakistan continued to pursue centralization and an attempt t o sublimate ethnic differences. Islam has been a key ingredient in these attemp ts, as it was in the attempt to assimilate East Pakistan. As scholar of Pakista ni government ethnicity policy Samina Ahmed dryly puts it, Pakistani leaders fou nd Islam "insufficient" as a basis for their national identity (Ahmed in Brown a nd Ganguly, 1997). Craig Baxter goes further, arguing that the desire for an Is lamic state identity was much stronger in West Pakistan than in the Eastern Beng ali wing (Baxter, 1998, chapter 7). Thus, it is likely that state leaders attem pted an alliance with the umma, and that this alliance actually intensified the conflict with the nascent nation-state of Bangladesh. Case 3: Morocco and Western Sahara. Morocco is in many ways a different state than Indonesia or Pakistan. B oth of the former states were essentially creations of the decolonization proces s, hence their use of history must be highly constructed. Morocco, by contrast, had a pre-colonial history of unity, and draws on it heavily. This history is deeply steeped in Islam; the ruling dynasty claims dissent from the Prophet Moha mmed and has a quite expansionist view of its own territoriality. This is not t o say that colonization did not play a role in Morocco's secession crisis with W estern Sahara, but it was unarguably less dramatic than in India, Pakistan or, a s shall be demonstrated, Malaysia. To say that the current dynasty of Morocco has ruled the country continu ously since the seventeenth century is both a true and a false statement. The A laouites, who claim dissent from the Prophet Mohammed through his daughter Fatim a and son-in-law Ali, conquered the territory of present-day Morocco in the late seventeenth century, yet their hold on it was spotty at times. Unlike previous rulers, the Alaouites did not have the support of any of Morocco's Berber or Be douin tribes, leading them to attempt the creation of a centralized state, which the tribes resisted. The conflict between the central government and the tribe s defined this period of Moroccan history, with the center gradually gaining the upper hand in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In some ways, the Fre nch protectorate, established over Morocco with the treaty of Fez in 1912, redef ined this conflict. The French usurped the position of the center and quickly t ried to assert it even more strongly than the previous sultans (Hahn, 1960). Th ey built road and railway networks to link the coastal regions of Morocco to its hinterland, and attempted to subject the tribes to French courts and law. In p articular the Berbers, who the French erroneously believed to be less committed to Islam than their Arab fellows, were pressured to assimilate to a degree of Fr enchness (Hahn, 1960). This provoked a nationalist backlash, represented by the Istiqlal party, formed in 1940 and supported by the then Sultan. Though France banned the party and struggled to keep Morocco in the French fold, it eventuall

y gave up the attempt, granting the kingdom its independence in 1966. This, however, did not mark the end of colonial ventures in North Africa . Like its neighbor Portugal, Spain, under Francisco Franco, was determined to hold onto its few remaining colonial possessions. One of these was the Western Sahara, a sparsely populated but mineral-rich desert area bordering Morocco. Sp ain was resisted by the Polisario Front. Like many post-colonial liberation mov ements, Polisario was socialist, in name at least, and sought the creation of a sovereign state. Eventually, in 1975, Spain withdrew. Morocco, however, had no interest in Sahrawi independence. Reasons for Morocco's desired annexation wer e mixed. In part, it may have stemmed from irredentist claims of "greater Moroc co", a desire to unite all territory previously claimed by the Moroccan sultanat e under its authority (Zoubir, 1993). King Hassan II may also have been motivat ed by a desire for Western Sahara's mineral resources and to thwart the potentia l spread of socialism. Whatever the reason, Hassan, immediately upon the Spanis h withdrawal marched his army, and a throng of Moroccan civilians, into Western Sahara. From 1975 to the present, a conflict has raged between Morocco and the P olisario Front which proclaimed the creation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Repu blic and received support from the revolutionary regime in Algeria. The Morocca n government, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, refused even to engage in talks wi th Polisario, only coming to the table when it faced ostracism from the never re alized Maghreb Union (Zoubir, 1993). Hassan II claimed the Sahrawi resistance w as an "Algerian-backed separatist movement", and hence not truly authentic (Zoub ir, 1993). This kept relations between the two states tense; mutual recognition came only in 1988. In the Western Sahara, Morocco has established settlements of Moroccan nationals, built massive walls to enclose territory and relied on a heavily military solution to the conflict. For all its efforts, the Sahrawi ind ependence movement has remained a credible threat, and finally forced Morocco to the table. As in Aceh, the eventual outcome of the conflict remains in doubt. Morocco has a number of potential avenues it might pursue in order to dr aw Sahrawi loyalty. The Sahrawi are, as the name of their would-be state indica tes, ethnically Arab, and largely Muslim. The Moroccan kings can therefore be e xpected to deploy both Arabic and Islamic rhetoric in an attempt to win the Sahr awi over to assimilation. This may, however, be complicated by the support of o ther Arab governments for the Sahrawi independence movement and the rising tide of Islamist opinion which is by and large hostile to the monarchy. Though my ow n background on the Moroccan western Sahara conflict is thinner than any of the others, I remain confident that this case will provide methodological depth to t he study. Case 4: Malaysia and Singapore. In all of the above cases, the state in question has fought, usually lit erally, to keep the seceding region within the state. In the case of Malaysia a nd Singapore, the reverse is true. It was Singapore which fought to be included in the Malaysian Federation, with the acquiescence of the then Malaysian Prime Minister Tungu Abdul Rahman. Ultimately, after a brief association, it was Mala ysia which expelled Singapore, though Singapore's leader Li Kuan Yu was not with out responsibility for the eventual outcome. Both the Sultanates which eventually came to comprise the Malay Federati on and the island city state of Singapore were British colonial possessions, and from this colonial experience, inherited a complex ethnic picture. As they sou ght to exploit the rich natural resources of the peninsula, the British imported both Chinese and Indian workers, leaving the indigenous Malay population to its traditional agricultural economic activity (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). In Singap ore, which rapidly emerged as a major hub of commerce in British Asia, the light ly populated island saw a huge influx of Chinese, and some Indians and Malays. On the Malay Peninsula, the Chinese population gained increasing wealth due to i ts participation in commerce, the high level of education many of its wealthier members received and a sense among the British that the Malay were indolent and lazy while the Chinese were industrious (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). This impressi on led to a favoritism toward the Chinese on the part of the British throughout

the colonial period. At independence, the Chinese dominated the educated profes sions such as doctors and accountants, it made up at least a plurality of the ur ban poor. Yet Malays remained a majority of the population, and resented deeply the Chinese successes. As Malaya drifted toward independence, it became clear that the Malays w ould demand and receive certain preferences in the new state. This was the orig in of the term bumiputra, or son of the soil, which was applied to the Malays. From its inception, an independent Malay federation would privilege the Malay ma jority in an attempt to redress previous imbalances (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). A ffirmative action, a highly controversial policy in the United States, was almos t a matter of course for Malaysia. If Malays were to be privileged, so too was their religion. According to the Malay constitution, there are three elements t o Malay identity: speaking the Malay language, participation in Malay culture an d the practice of Islam (Nair, 1997). Consequently, Islam was made the official state religion and privileged above all competitors. At the same time, Malay l eaders were savvy enough to know they could not alienate the Chinese and Indian populations too far. Though the United Malay National Organization or UMNO has been Malaysia's governing party since independence, it is usually governed in co alition with ethnically Chinese and Indian parties. And while Islam is the offi cial religion, for non-Malays at least, religious freedom is strongly guaranteed and, in so far as it does not conflict with Islam's prerogatives, respected. I n this stance, UMNO has faced consistent opposition from Malay Islamic parties w hich advocate for a more Islamic state. To understand Singapore's entry into and expulsion from this complex pen insular mix, one must first understand the fear of communism rampant in both Mal aya and Singapore. The Malay Communist Party, a Chinese-dominated movement popu lar with the urban poor, waged a ten year war against the Malayo-British governm ent. This conflict, known as the Malay emergency, resulted in the destruction o f the MCP and was part of the impetus for the formation of the Malaysian Federat ion (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). On the Malaysian side, the desire to integrate Si ngapore stemmed from the latter's economic wealth and a desire to prevent Commun ism from taking hold in Malaysia's nearest neighbors. For Singapore's leader, L i Kuan Yu, access to Malaysia's natural resources was part of the rationale, but his primary hope was to dilute the Singapori communists inside a country which had, by and large, dispatched its communists by 1963 (Mauzi, 2002). It was in t his year that Singapore officially voted to join the Malaysian federation, and w as welcomed by Prime Minister Abdul Rahman. Two years later, Singapore was expelled again. The reasons for its expu lsion are manifold. Certainly, the promised economic integration did not provid e the immediate benefits expected on either side (Mauzi, 2002). Yet the primary reason for the expulsion was ethnic tension, and Li Kuan Yu's support of a "Mal aysia for all Malaysians . Coming from a heavily Chinese-dominated Singapore, he an d his People's Action Party were not willing to accept special status for the M alays, arguing that it amounted to discrimination and would prevent the formatio n of a Malaysian national consciousness (Mauzi, 2002). This in turn stoked fear s among malays that Singapore's entry would create a Chinese-dominated Malaysia in which Malay culture, language and religion would again be subordinated. It w as this fear of Li Kuan Yu's non-ethnic nationalist project which led Malaysia t o expel Singapore in 1965. Though the outcome differed from the other cases , the imperative of the Malaysian state in essentially forcing Singapore's seces sion was actually very similar. Malay leaders saw retaining Singapore as a part of the Malaysian Federation as a threat to the national identity they had so ca refully and painstakingly constructed. The largely material and ideological fac tors which argued in favor of Singapore's inclusion in 1963 were quickly overwhe lmed by an identity-level conservatism and fear of change by 1965. Islam, as a cornerstone of the Malay identity, played a pivotal role in this fear. Singapor e's Muslim population was a distinct minority, thereby making the possibility of assimilation into a Malay matrix all the more difficult. Those figures which e mphasized the Islamic identity of the Malays were some of the fiercest advocates for Singapore's expulsion. In this case, what concept of umma exists appears,

for the average Malay, to be indistinguishable from his or her ethnic identity, thus allowing Malay nationalists to harness it quite easily. However, as the Si ngapore case shows, and subsequent Malaysian ethnic conflict indicates, this ide ntification between the Malay and Islamic identities makes attempts to cooperate with other ethnicities problematic at best. Study of these four cases leads to a tentative hypothesis. In circumsta nces where Islam is seen as a necessary ingredient to national identity, state l eaders are forced to ideationally ally with the umma when faced with a secession crisis. By contrast, those states which have sought a more secular identity ha ve been hesitant to make such an alliance. The cases appear to provide mixed re sults on the success of this ideational alliance. Pakistan's Islamic identity w as not strong enough to prevent Bengali succession, but neither was its exclusio n sufficient to keep East Timor in the Indonesian fold. Aceh and Western Sahara remain uncertain, though it seems more likely that Aceh will remain in Indonesi a than that Western Sahara will not secede from Morocco. The Malaysian case rep resents an uncertain outcome; the Malay-dominated national identity protected it self from the possible threat of Singapore but failed to assimilate it. Conclusion: Feasibility and Improvements. As presently conceived, the paper is both feasible and potentially quite useful. If able to substantiate the hypothesis, the project would make a usefu l contribution to the body of literature concerned with Islamic nationalism, and could demonstrate that the concept of an Islamic umma remains a potent challeng e to it. That said, there is room for improvement and clarification. This is mos t evident in three areas: definition of the umma, methodology and case selection . To be sure, the amount of work done on the political aspects of the umma conc ept is far less than that available on the state and the nation, which is, in pa rt, the reason for the study. There is, however, perhaps room for improvement i n positioning this paper relative to other relevant literature on the topic. In regard to methodology, I am concerned about the difficulty of creating an effec tive coding scheme for the content analysis. For the first part of the question , the presence or absence of ideational cooperation with the umma, coding should be feasible, if not necessarily straightforward. Of more difficulty, particula rly in cases where a secession movement is still ongoing, will be assessing the state's success or failure. It might also be useful to include in the eventual coding table a marker indicating the state's broader view of Islam, though this will almost certainly come out in the case studies. Finally, I believe that the case mix, while adequate, could be dramatica lly improved with some additions. Initially, I shied away from the inclusion of Arab or Middle Eastern cases. In Arabic, the term "umma" can mean not only the Islamic nation but also the Arab nation. At the time, I felt that this second level on which the word might operate could unduly complicate an already highly complex picture. On further reflection however, I believe it might provide grea ter depth and power to the analysis. Thus, the project should add an examinatio n of the ongoing secession crisis in Yemen. At present, I also believe the case mix between Muslim and non-Muslim secession movements is unbalanced. Two possi bilities present themselves: subtract East Timor and Singapore and proceed only with Muslim on Muslim secession crises, or add additional non-Muslim cases, such as the Sudan South Sudan conflict, the Nigeria Ibo secession struggle and Indon esia's ongoing conflict with West Papua. Though I remain uncertain as to the ul timate direction I will take, I lean toward adding more cases. Sudan, particula rly after 1983, has been an Islamic state coping with a largely Christian and an imist secession movement in the south. Though there are other factors, I believ e this juxtaposition could add yet more depth and power. So too might analysis of the Nigeria-Ibo conflict. Indonesia and West Papua, while an interesting con flict in its own right, would only be worth adding if the results differed from those found in the case of East Timor. Ultimately, I believe the project is worth pursuing. I find the researc h question, and all the factors which play into it, extremely interesting, and b elieve the study, with the above modifications, is constructed in such a way as

to make an answer feasible. Works Cited: 1. Philpott, Daniel: 'Revolutions in Sovereignty', Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2001. 2. Anderson, Benedict: 'Imagined Communities', Verso, New York, NY, 2006. 3. Mandaville, Peter: 'Transnational Muslim Politics, Reimagining the Umma', Ro utledge, New York, NY, 2001. 4. Roy, Olivier: 'Globalized Islam, the Search for a New Umma', Columbia Univer sity Press, New York, NY, 2004. 5. Tambiah, Stanley: "The galactic Polity, the Structure of Traditional Kingdom s in Southeast Asia," Copyright 1977, annals of the New York academy of Sciences , vol. 293, issue 1, pages 69-97. 6. Wink Andre: "Sovereignty and Universal Dominion in South Asia", Indian Econo mic and Social review, 1984, vol. 21, beginning with page 265. 7. Lilla, Mark: "The Enemy of Liberalism," The New York Review of books, May 15 , 1997. 8. Scott, James: 'Seeing Like a State', Yale University Press, Newhaven CT, 199 8. 9. Tilly, Charles: Coercion, Capital and European States, 990-1992. Wiley Black well, Hoboken, NJ, 1992. 10. Dyson, Kenneth: 'The State Tradition in Western Europe', Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1981. 11. Winichakul, Thongchai: 'Siam Mapped, A History of the Geo-body of a Nation' ' University of Hawaii press, Honolulu, HI, 1994. 12. Connor, Walker: 'Ethnonationalism, The Quest for Understanding', Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1994. 13. Lehning, Percy (ed): 'Theories of Secession', Routledge, New York NY, 1998. 14. Bartkus, Viva Ona: 'The Dynamics of Secession', Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1999. 15. Abdelal Rawi et al (ed): 'Measuring Identity: a Guide for Social Scientists ', Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2009. 16. Brown, David: 'Ethnic Politics and the State in Southeast Asia', Routledge, New York, NY, 2004. 17. Stephens, Bret: "The Last King of Java," Wall street Journal, published on www.opinionjournal.com on May 15, 2007. 18. Mcgregor, Katherine: "A Bridge and a Barrier: Islam, Reconciliation and the 1965 Killings in Indonesia," in Brauchler, Bergit (ed): 'Indonesia: Grassroots Agency for Peace', Routledge, New York, NY, 2009. 19. Van Clinken, Gerry: "Big States and Little Independence Movements", Bulleti n of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 32, 2000.

20. Arenas, Alberto: "Education and Nationalism in East Timor," Social Justice, San Francisco, CA, volume 25, issue 2, pages 131-149. 21. Gorjao, Paulo: "The End of a Cycle: Australian and Portuguese Foreign Polic ies and the Fate of East Timor," Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 23, 2001. 22. Kohen, Arnold S: "The Catholic Church and the Independence of East Timor," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 32, issue 1-2, 2000. 23. Jalal, Aisha: "Encyclopedia of Nationalism, South Asia," (no further citati on information provided). 24. Brown, Michael and Ganguly, Summat (ed): 'Government Policies and Ethnic Re lations in Asia', The Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Univ ersity, Cambridge MA, 1997. 25. Alavi, Hamsa: "The State in Post-colonial societies: Pakistan and Banglades h", New Left Review, 1972. 26. Baxter, Craig: 'Bangladesh: From a Nation to a State', Westview Press, Boul der, CO, 1997. 27. Hahn, Lorna: 'North Africa, Nationalism to Nationhood', Public Affairs Pres s, Washington DC, 1960. 28. Zoubir, Yahia and Volman Daniel: 'International Dimensions of the Western S ahara Conflict', Praeger Publishers, Westport CT, 1993. 29. Nair, Shanti: 'Islam in Malaysian Foreign Policy', Routledge, New York, NY, 1997. 30. Mauzi Diane K and Mill RS: 'Singapore Politics under the People's Action Pa rty', Routledge, New York, NY, 2002.

Nation, State, and Umma: Constructing Identity in Islamic Secession Conflicts A.J. Nolte

Abstract: This paper seeks to create a research design whereby the inter-relationship between a pan-Islamic identity the umma and various national identities may be examine . Secession movements within the Muslim world in which identity contestation is a na tural part of the conflict provide a natural context for such an investigation. The paper recommends a mixed-methods approach comprised of content analysis and in-d epth case studies, to determine the degree and variety of contestation between t

hese two identities in secession crises. Cases are evaluated based on their abil ity to provide a balanced picture of the question, and their applicability to th e question at hand. Ultimately, the paper concludes that such a research design is feasible, and the project worthy of further study. Introduction: Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, prophecies of the d emise of the nation-state system were common, and as the twenty-first century da wns, they seem to grow more common still. Yet, despite widespread reports of it s demise, the uneasy accord between nation and state remains. New states, such a s East Timor and Eritrea have joined the sovereign state order while others, fro m Somaliland to Western Sahara, Quebec to West Papua, seek admission by secessio n. Though the state appears in retreat in its ancient European heartland, it is worth noting that, even in the European Union, the state is the basic unit at w hich members must be admitted, and political integration remains patchy and relu ctant. All of this, however, does not leave the nation-state without challenges . Individual states face challenges to their sovereignty from external actors ( other states, multi-national corporations) and internal threats to their cohesio n (secession movements, lack of institutional capacity). The increasingly inter dependent global economy places a strain on the ability of many states to preser ve their boundaries, and across the world, regional organizations have begun to vie for the loyalty which states attempt so jealously to guard. Aside from all of these concrete threats, states often face ideological competitors for that very loyalty. For Muslim states, it is possible that their religion itself constitutes such an ideological threat. To be sure, all religi ons, to one extent or another, threaten the totalizing desire of the state. In fact, if we take the peace of Westphalia as the beginning point of the state sys tem, as most scholars of international politics are wont to do, then its first r eal antagonist came in religious form. The Roman Catholic Church, seeing in Wes tphalia the potential death of its already tattered claim to universal authority in Christendom, declared the treaty to be "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unj ust, damnable, reprobate, inane, and empty of meaning and effect for all time." (Philpott, 2001, page 87). Roman Catholicism has accommodated itself to the nat ion-state system since this time, but, as Daniel Philpott argues in the end of h is book 'Revolutions in Sovereignty', Catholicism's view of a fixed, static, div ine order apart from the state may represent a still enduring challenge to the n ation-state system (Philpott, 2001, page 261-262). For all the difficulties Roman Catholicism may pose to the nation-state system, that posed by Islam may be greater. This threat is not limited to the r ise of international Islamist terrorism at the end of the twenty-first century. It is debatable, and outside the scope of this paper, how true to Islam some of the jihadists' interpretations are to the heart of their religion. Yet clearly and discernibly lodged near the core of the faith is the concept of the umma. Umma, as used by Muslims, is not an easily defined concept. Benedict Anderson c lassifies it as a concept of sacred authority not dissimilar from Christendom, w hich is a good beginning (Anderson, 2006, pages 11-12). There are three distinct differences between the concepts of umma and Ch ristendom however. First, Christendom was animated by the Roman Catholic Church , a real and discernable religious structure held in tension with kings and othe r proto-state leaders. In Islam, the caliphate, while technically existing unti l the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, lost potency centuries before. In any event, the Caliphate never held the same level of religious authority as the pap acy, partially because Islam itself has less of a concept of structural authorit y than do the historic Christian churches which existed in the age of Christendo m. Second, political authority was construed differently in Christendom than it is in the umma. For Christians, the church and the state were seen as distinct , though sometimes overlapping institutions. This was particularly true in the west, where the Roman Catholic Church outlasted the empire, but did not seek dir ect rule of it. In Islam, and in the umma, the political and religious spheres

were unified in the person of the Caliph, though, of course, his authority was n ot as absolute, in either sphere, as that of the bishop of Rome grew in the west ern church. Finally, and perhaps most consequentially, we may truly speak of Christe ndom in the past tense. Whether we speak of an Andersonian change in the imagin ation, or a revolution in sovereignty such as Philpott envisions, or view the em ergence of the western state as a result of its war-making potential as does Cha rles Tilly, Christendom fell to the hammer blows of the Reformation, Thirty Year s War and Peace of Westphalia, and was replaced by the nation-state system. Som e argue that the change was quick, while others see it taking centuries, but tha t it has happened is undeniable. In Islam, by contrast, a universal political i dea retains the power to move populations, and words such as Umma and Caliphate still conjure intense loyalty, and politically effective loyalty it would seem, among devout believers. This is not a difficult fact to ascertain. The occupat ion of the Palestinian territories often moves Muslims in completely unrelated r egions of the world to protests so fierce as to affect the foreign policy of the ir states. A statement to the Pope about Islam, cartoons in Denmark seen as der ogatory toward the Prophet Mohammed and even statements by televangelists about him, can spark riots halfway around the world. It is interesting to contrast th is with, for example, art exhibits depicting a crucifix in a jar of urine or sta tues of the Virgin Mary made out of elephant dung, or the treatment of Christian s in countries such as China, Burma, Egypt or Pakistan, none of which have creat ed the same level of outcry in Christian countries. Clearly, there is a sense o f Muslim unity which accedes that felt by Christians in its political potency, a nd which is tied to the sense of Islamic nationhood or "umma". For Muslim state leaders, the concept of "umma" must be a decidedly mixe d blessing. While at times state leaders have successfully harnessed this broad sense of Islamic nationhood to distract their populations from unfavorable dome stic conditions at home, more often than not, this universalism is troublesome t o them. States, jealous of their prerogatives, are skeptical of such universal loyalties, which might ultimately weaken their foundations. Nationalists might be expected to share this skepticism. Some of these national leaders are grappl ing with the state in which their nation is contained, hoping to make their nati ons into states. Others are state leaders themselves, attempting to use nationa lism to strengthen the bonds of the state or, in effect, make their states into nations. Whatever their imperatives, nationalists operating in a Muslim context must ultimately see the umma as a rival. Though there is considerable debate a bout the sources of nations and nationalism and the relationship between nations and states (see the literature review below), nations, like states, require the loyalty of their people, and claim and jealously. With its claims to universal ism, the umma has the potential to weaken the drive of nationalists to hold this claim. How Muslim state leaders and state-level nationalists have dealt with th is inherent danger from their own religion is the subject of this research desig n. In particular, I aspire to examine the tripartite struggle between state, na tion and umma. To do this, I intend to focus on a flash point for state and nat ional conflict, within an Islamic context. No where is the state's struggle for nationality and the nation's struggle for statehood more clearly demonstrated t han in secession crises. Examining the way in which states respond to secession movements within their borders shows us the level of confidence they feel in th eir own nationhood, the ways in which they construe it and the lengths they are willing to go to protect it. Examining the way in which Muslim states have resp onded to secession movements will demonstrate how Muslim states self-identify an d the lengths to which they are willing to go to protect that identity, and may shed light on the ways in which they have grappled with the Islamic universalism inherent in the concept of umma. Literature review: It is perhaps best to begin the literature review discussion of the pape r with some discussion of what, exactly, is meant by "Islam". In this respect, there are two extremes to be avoided. The first is to discuss Islam as some mon

olithic and unitary force expressed in the same way in all the contexts in which it occurs. As the cases explored in this study will demonstrate clearly, Islam varies widely from nation to nation and state to state, and sometimes within th ese two categories. Yet, in the same way that we must avoid the "monolithic ori entalism" of which Edward Said is so wary, so too we must avoid his deep skeptic ism about our ability to speak of Islam at all. Said, in 'Orientalism, skirts d angerously close to arguing that members of one culture cannot say anything usef ul about another. His skepticism, in the Muslim context at least, seems rebuked by the fact that over a billion Muslims not only imagine themselves part of a c ommunity, the umma, but share common characteristics, a common ethical system an d a strong and, as was mentioned in the introduction to this study, politically powerful and relevant identification with one another. Thus, for the purposes o f this paper, Islam is understood as an inter-subjective identity constantly cre ated and recreated by the world's Muslims within the parameters laid out by the Koran, Hadiths, shariah and almost 1500 years of Muslim discourse. This identification appears to be on the rise, leading many to ask why? In this context, there is a level of skepticism which ought to be addressed rega rding the origins of modern Islamic political discourse and identity. It is com mon among many scholars seeking to slide between these two extremes, to define I slamic politics and the quest for the umma as merely one of many strands of anti -colonial discourse and identification. This I take to be Peter Mandaville's ar gument in his book 'Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma' (Mandav ille, 2001). Certainly, it is a mantle which Muslim intellectuals have attempte d to claim for their religion and its discourse. I also take Olivier Roy to be making a similar argument in his book Globalized Islam' (Roy, 2004). The gentle men in question do not appear to be arguing that the concept of the umma and Mus lim solidarity emerged as a result of the anti-colonial struggle, but rather tha t they reemerged in this context. Of course, like most scholarship concerned wi th "post-colonial" matters, colonialism is very narrowly defined as occupation b y a western metropole across an ocean from the colonized region in question. El se, the "political Islam as discourse reemerging in the anti-colonial struggle" would run headlong into its failure to reemerge under centuries of Tsarist occup ation of Muslim central Asians, Arab colonization by Ottoman Turks (not to menti on previous dynasties) and so on. Nor do they explain the wild resurgence of Is lamist politics against many of the very post-colonial elites who "liberated" th eir states in the first place. It is undeniable, however, that there has been a resurgence of the umma consciousness, and if not in response to western colonialism, to what? The answe r, I believe, is that the rise of Islamism and other political "umma" thinking i s, at least in part, a response to the rise of the nation, and the rise of the s tate. It is the common variable present between the colonial powers and their p ost-colonial successors. As Philpott makes clear in his section on colonialism in Revolutions in Sovereignty', the colonial powers had very different end games fo r their colonial projects: self-government in the case of the British and integr ation with a global but distinctly national empire in France's case (Philpott, 2 001, chapters 9 and 12). Both, however, placed the concept of the state, and in some ways the nation, in the direct path of the Muslim world. To the British, self-government meant self-governing nation-states. To the French, integration with the French state meant integration into the French nation. Post-colonial e lites, as Philpott demonstrates, were inculcated into the ideals of the nation-s tate, and made nationalism and state-based self-determination a key part of thei r discourse (Philpott, 2001, Chapter 11). Thus, even after the colonial powers had withdrawn, they left behind their foreign notions of state and nation, anath ema to the traditional concept of the umma. By contrast, other colonizers, such as the Ottomans, the Tsars and the various empires which dotted the Islamic pas t, brought with them neither the concept of state nor nation. Certainly, it has been argued that the concepts of a hereditary, hierarchical empire where power concentrated in the hands of a clan or clique is contrary to Islamic political t heory. Yet there are some important distinctions between empires and both natio ns and states which make the former more amenable to an umma identity. Most cen

tral, in this regard, is the way in which authority and loyalty are construed in empires versus states and nations. For empires, authority is societally limite d but geographically universal. By contrast, states and nations both demand abs olute loyalty, and seek to project totalizing authority, in geographically const rained areas. Let us begin with a brief examination of empires. As Stanley Tambiah ar gues in the context of Southeast Asia (Tambiah, 1977), and Andre Wink likewise d emonstrates in the Indian subcontinent (Wink, 1984), traditional imperial politi es regard themselves as universal, encompassing or claiming to encompass the ent irety of the world they knew. They needed no maps or fixed boundaries, since th eir claims were universal. Often, as was the case in Southeast Asia, a center o r locus justified its "heavenly" or "galactic" claims based on the number of sat ellites it added or lost (tambiah, 2006). At times, as Wink shows, rival claima nts skirmished upon running into one another (Wink, 1984). In any case, the sel f-conception of these empires was geographically unbounded. By contrast, the cl aim which the sovereign generally made on his people's society was much less so. For an emperor, as Wink effectively demonstrates in the case of the subcontine nt, allegiance to his authority was sufficient (Wink, 1984). For both the state and the nation, this is anything but the case. As we live in (and the paper is primarily concerned with) a world of states and natio ns, it is worth dwelling on these two concepts at greater length. The state has its detractors and defenders, and the range of explanations for its formation r uns the gamut. For Karl Schmidt, the state is a natural, and a highly desirable , organization for society, which emerges from inherent us them distinctions (Li lla, 1997). For Marxists (or modified Marxists such as Hamsa Alavi or Hart and Negri), it emerges as a tool of ruling classes designed to preserve order (Alavi , 1972). Charles Tilly sees it in classical realist terms; the state was the mo st efficient means of making war(Tilly, 1992). For Daniel Philpott it was the r esult of an ideational revolution caused by Europe's encounter with the Protesta nt Reformation (Philpott, 2001). James Scott sees the state as a malignant enti ty attempting to socially engineer society on every level (Scott, 1998). For Ke nneth Dyson, there is a fundamental difference between the continental state, as it emerged in nations such as Germany, and the more liberal British model of th e state (Dyson, 1981). Notwithstanding all of their wide differences, these sc holars broadly agree about certain aspects of the state. First, the state, most contend, is centralized and seeks absolute authority. For Schmidt this is a go od thing, for Scott it is not, but both agree about the state's drive for absolu te control. Philpott claims that the idea of a monolithic state sovereign: "in substance if not in name, comes directly out of the very propositions of Protest ant theology, in all of its variants" (Philpott, 2001, page 108). Second, the s tate is deliberately conceived as a geographically bounded entity. Winichakul m akes the point of boundedness explicit in his discussion of the kingdom of Siam' s transition to "modern" statehood, and the need felt by the state leaders to ma p their boundaries as part of this process (Winichakul, 1994). Mapping and boun daries are an essential part of the state system, and indeed, a cause for many o f the wars within it. Like the state, the nation is also a socially totalizing but geographica lly bounded entity. No thinker makes this more clear than does Benedict Anderso n in his now classic work 'Imagined Communities' (Anderson, 2006). For Anderson , the nation is a community which simultaneously imagines itself into being. Th e word simultaneous is used here quite deliberately. Anderson claims that, thro ugh newspapers and other national media, the pre-existing "sacred time" in which past, present and future are all blurred, is replaced with a national sense of "homogeneous empty time". As time is reimagined, so too is language; for Anders on, an important aspect of national development was the destruction of "sacred l anguages" such as Latin. Andersonian nationalism does not emphasize geographic boundedness in quite the same way as do all concepts of the state, but there rem ains, even in a constructivist account such as Anderson's, a particular sense in which the nation is not or cannot be universalized. For Walker Connor, who vie ws nationalism as a "myth of common dissent" and hence inherently ethnic, this i

s even more the case (Connor, 1997). Connor's nation is the largest group of pe ople which can imagine a blood kinship, in a sense, a family, clan or tribe writ large. In the great internal debate among nationalist scholars between primord ialism and constructivism, Connor, though leaning in a constructivist direction due to his caveat that the blood relationship need not actually exist, is almost a both and. For Connor, the loyalty claimed by the nation is that owed to a fa mily, which he believes naturally trumps not only ideological but also, one assu mes, religious boundaries. Anderson and Connor differ to some extent on the rel ationship they envision between the nation and the state. For Anderson, nations and states often operate on the same level, in other words, the nation and the state are very regularly synonymous. This becomes clear in his discussion of La tin America, and the nationalism which he imagines to have emerged there (Anders on, 2006, Chapter 4). For Connor, most states and nations are in starkly differ ent and usually opposed juxtaposition. True nation-states, for Connor, are vani shingly rare, and he makes a distinction between nationalism and patriotism (Con nor, 1994, page 196). There is perhaps some room for middle ground. Obviously, not all states are nations and not all nations states. On the other hand, ther e is, on both sides of the divide, an impulse to conjoin the two. Nations, as C onnor agrees, constantly seek statehood. On the other hand, as Connor himself s eems to hint in his discussion of how the nation has emerged (a development whic h he views as extremely recent), states may also seek nationhood (Connor, 1994, Chapter 9). My understanding of states and nations, and hence the understanding operative in this paper, is that, while not always and everywhere synonymous, e ach seeks over time to become the other. Ultimately, neither is as compatible with the umma conception as the pre viously dominant imperial conception. Like many of the ancient empires, the Cal iphate and most Muslim empires claimed universal geographic dominion. The natur e of their claims to authority varied somewhat. Under most Muslim rule, a certa in circumscribed religious liberty was provided to non-Muslims. In many of the empires, there were also limits to the authority claimed by the center over peri pheral Muslims. In the Muslim conception of umma, such authority is universal, fusing political and religious authority to a high degree. By and large, confli cts between this model of empire have been limited; Muslim empires adapted thems elves readily to accommodate the umma, and non-Muslim empires left Muslims large ly to their own devices, demanding little in the way of assimilation. Nations, and states, are far different actors. Jealous of any rival authority, as the um ma tends to be jealous, nations and states seek to occupy space in the imaginati on of Muslims which Islam, through the imagined community of the umma, has alrea dy claimed. And unlike Christendom, the Islamic umma has not given up its imagi native weapons, such as sacred time and a sacred language. Koranic Arabic retai ns its traditional potency, and a Muslim conception of time, which views events such as the crusades, Mongol invasions and death of the Prophet in much more rec ent terms than do westerners embedded in homogeneous empty time, has not given u p its hold on much of the Muslim world. This places nation and state-makers in Muslim societies, often synonymous, in a cleft stick of sorts. On one hand, to ignore Islam robs them of a potential source of unity, and in many cases, as Con nor points out, ethnicity and religion are tightly intertwined. On the other ha nd, attempting to use Islam for the purpose of imagining a national consciousnes s has clear pitfalls of its own. Even in the best of times, threading this need le is a highly complex process for state and national leaders. This difficulty is intensified in instances of secession, and it is to a n analysis of secession literature that this review must finally turn. It is im portant to specify that secession does not refer to a call for greater autonomy within a state, or some form of special federalism, but rather a violent or nonviolent movement calling for withdrawal from the state of which a region or nati on is a part and the formation of a new state. Secession, then, is the instance at which a state's desire for nationhood and a nation's desire for statehood co llide most sharply. For a state, secession is perhaps the greatest challenge to its legitimacy, which has led state-centric theorists of secession such as Lind a Bishai to argue that such movements are never or almost never justifiable (Bis

hai in Lehning, 1998). For Bishai, the potential harm a secession movement migh t do to the international order outweighs any moral arguments the secessionists might put forward. Most scholars are more permissive, with some, such as Harry Beran, arguing for a radical model in which even the smallest community ought to have the right of secession (Beran in Lehning, 1998). Beran's hyper-cosmopolit anism, which envisions a "nested boxes" theory of authority, is highly impractic al and relies over heavily on the European Union precedent, but shows how far ce rtain cosmopolitan theories have drifted from the traditional Westphalian system . By far the most comprehensive scholarly theory of secession is that of Allen M. Buchanan. His theory, though more permissive than that of Bishai, still re tains a high threshold and a great deal of respect for the international system. According to Buchanan, there is a moral right to secede under certain highly q ualified circumstances (Buchanan, in Lehning, 1998). First, if the would-be sec essionist region suffers extreme injustice perpetrated by the state from which i t wishes to secede, or if the state does not protect it from injustice perpetrat ed by outsiders, secession may be morally justified. Second, even in the absenc e of such injustice, secession may be morally justified if the culture of that d istinct region is threatened. Buchanan further qualifies the cultural condition : (the culture must meet basic standards of decency, all other options for prese rving the culture within the state must be exhausted), and argues that any gover nment created by secession should also not be illiberal. Finally, even if the t wo above qualifications are not met, a region may secede if the state in questio n does not have a valid territorial claim over the region in question. These th ree reasons do not operate entirely independently of one another for Buchanan; a valid territorial claim may be made invalid by grievous injustice, a valid terr itorial claim may weaken the cultural claim, and so on. Thus, we can see that f or Buchanan, the moral right to secede, while it is very real, is highly conditi onal. He is preoccupied with respecting the rights of states, as is the interna tional system as a whole. As Buchanan comprehensively answers the ought question "should secession be allowed?" Viva Ona Bartkus attempts to answer the "is" question, "how do sec ession movements form"? In her book The Dynamic of Secession, Bartkus creates a matrix of necessary preconditions for secession and a calculus which, in some in formal mechanism, secessionist groups and the populous of their regions seem to apply as they decide whether or not to secede. In order first to even consider secession, there must, she asserts, be: a distinct community, a geographic cente r of gravity, leadership for this geographically-center community and a sense of discrimination by the state (Bartkus, 1999). This in some ways mirrors the con ditions laid down normatively by Buchanan. Bartkus further stipulates to four c alculations which determine a movement's willingness to try secession: benefits of secession, costs of secession, benefits to staying in the state and costs to staying in the state. She is very explicit that such costs and benefits are oft en non-material, which sets her analysis apart from the pure rational choice vie w. Still, Bartkus argues that the decision to secede or not to secede is ultima tely a rational one which results from interest calculations. For a state too, there are calculations to be made. How might a potenti al secession effect the legitimacy of the state? Does it support or undercut the narrative upon which identity is constructed? What are the costs of violent sup pression, and what are the potential benefits? In Islamic states, where the noti on of umma cuts against both nation and state, and hence might threaten both the state's and the would-be seceding region's state and national projects, the ide ational picture becomes yet more complicated. Defining the Research Question: under what circumstances and with what degree of success does a Muslim state ideationally cooperate with the umma in an attempt to prevent secession? The preceding review of relevant literature indicates a complex picture of ideational actors all vying for a very similar space. Were we to posit a sit uation where, for example, a Muslim region was attempting to secede from a Musli m state, we might see three competing imagined communal identities, a state seek ing nationhood, a nation seeking statehood and the umma seeking to undercut both

. On the other hand, were we to posit a Muslim state and a non-Muslim region, t he umma would have little ideational power in the seceding region. In a Muslim region seceding from a non-Muslim state, a high level of convergence between the umma and the seceding region might be possible during the struggle of independe nce at least, as Islam would help define the seceding region against its state. In formulating a research question which might effectively seek to measu re the interactions between these actors, it is first imperative to select a lev el of analysis. Three paths are possible: an examination of the state as it cop es with secession and umma, an examination of seceding regions and their use or avoidance of an imaginative entente with the umma, or a study of the umma itself as it responds both to the state and seceding regions. For a number of reasons , the state level of analysis is preferable. First and most obviously, gatherin g information on states is much easier than either regions or an amorphous ideat ional actor such as the umma, which is not always embodied in clear institutions . In the battle for identity, the state is the easiest actor to study. Second, the state is in many ways the dominant actor of the three. The international o rder is heavily stacked in its favor and it will more likely than not have great er economic, military and media resources. Finally, the Muslim state, with its drive toward nationhood in tension with the universalizing umma, has probably th e most interesting balancing act of the three. Muslim secessionists also have i nteresting pressures, but their overriding imperative is the conflict with the s tate. For the state, the secession crisis is often only part of its preoccupati on. More often than not, the umma is making itself felt at the same time, addin g pressure to which action the state takes. Thus, the focus of the question will be on states, Muslim states in part icular, with secession crises. The object then, is to examine the ways in which the Muslim state either allies with or conflicts with the umma in its ideationa l battle against secession, and under what circumstances. In the event that sta tes do in fact ideationally ally with the umma, it would also be worthwhile to m easure the relative success of the alliance. This alliance might involve a stat e relying heavily on the umma as a crutch, positioning itself as a defender of t he broader Muslim nation or explicitly predicating its identity on its Muslim po pulation. On the other hand, it might involve a shotgun wedding in which the st ate essentially co-opts the umma instrumentally or cynically for its own purpose s. I will formulate the question as follows: under what circumstances and with what degree of success does a Muslim state ideationally cooperate with the umma in an attempt to prevent secession? A wide variety of answers are possible. Sta tes might never, sometimes, often or always cooperate with the umma in some form to battle secession, and such cooperation might never, sometimes, often or alwa ys be successful. Methodology: Essentially, this research question seeks to measure the comparative pow er of competing identities on state-leaders and secession-minded populations. I n particular, it seeks an assessment of state leaders own perception of their state s dentity relative to the concepts of nation and umma , and the receptivity of wou onist regions to this conception. Measuring identity is a highly complex and of ten difficult task, and many scholars have questioned whether such measurement i s even possible. Recently however, a growing body of scholarship has attempted to create methods by which identity can be measured, usually by borrowing from o ther disciplines. Of particular note in this regard is the edited volume by Abd elal, Herrera, Johnston and McDermott entitled measuring Identity' (Abdelal et a l, 2009). The authors, in chapter 2 of this work, define identity based on two aspects: content and contestation (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 2). Content may consist of four types: constitutive norms (who we are), social purposes (what w e want), relational comparisons based on other similar groups (who we are not ba sed on who they are) and cognitive maps (how we see the world). Contestation is the process of debate and discourse by which this content is defined and redefi ned (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 2). In breaking identity down into these two components, the authors ultimately make it into a measurable variable. These tw o elements of identity mesh rather well with this paper s research question. By thei

r very nature, secession crises entail a high degree of identity contestation, t hereby allowing the researcher a unique window into the ways in which Muslims in these nations define themselves. While it may be argued that the authors lean p erhaps too heavily on the fluidity of identity, their definition still retains e nough substance for usage even by those with a less flexible view of identity fo rmation and, importantly, provide a good framework for measuring the highly inta ngible concepts with which this paper is concerned. Once identity has been defined, Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston and McDermott draw 'together a number of authors with very different methodologies. Of all t he methods they describe, content analysis and discourse analysis seem most pote ntially useful for this project. Discourse analysis involves thick description based on the author's deep familiarity with the identity under study and an emer sion into the widest variety of texts possible (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 1). Typical of discourse analysis is Ted Hopf's in-depth analysis of the Sino-Sovi et split through a minute examination of Russian culture at the time (Hopf in A bdelal, 2009). Though highly relevant and descriptive, discourse analysis lacks two key aspects of social science experiments, replicatability and generalizabi lity. By contrast, content analysis involves sifting through a large amount of texts for specific content which indicates the presence or absence of variables under consideration (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 1). The content analyst creat es a "dictionary" of relevant words and phrases and a "code book" which explains how the phrases will be coded to each variable (Neuendorf and Skalski in Abdela l et al, 2009). Some content analysts use hand-coding, while others rely on the assistance of computer programs. Content analysis holds out the real possibili ty of replicatability and generalizability. However, content analysis runs the risk of artificiality; the analyst runs the risk of reading his or her own frame work into the material. Coding bias and coder subjectivity are also potential p roblems (Neuendorf and Skalski in Abdelal et al, 2009). The analyst must clearl y show the parameters by which a judgment was made as to whether the content in question showed or did not show the trait under examination. It is imperative t o avoid, as much as possible, arbitrary coding and to make clear to the reader t he reasons for a given coding judgment. Notwithstanding these very real concerns, content analysis is almost cer tainly the best method for examining this research question. First, this study, in attempting to measure identity variation, will require more than one case, t hereby making discourse analysis, which can take years to analyze a single case, prohibitively difficult. Second, given the broad nature of the research questi on, replicatability and generalizability are both extremely important traits for this study. However, content analysis' most serious weakness, artificiality, m ust be addressed. To that end, I intend to pair the content analysis with a tra ditional comparative case study. Not only will a case study provide the reader with a detailed frame for each individual body of content, but will help explain the coding used in each case, thereby increasing replicatability. Case studies will allow for the creation of a more thorough hypothesis which the content ana lysis can then test. The use of both quantitative and qualitative methods will provide rigger not available from the use of either method in isolation. This leads at last to the question of what content in each case ought to be analyzed, and a related question, what constitutes evidence for or against a n ideational alliance between state and umma? Regarding the content, the object is to analyze the state's attempt to deal with secession movements. Hence, the content analysis ought to deal with written material produced to persuade citize ns of the seceding region to throw in their lot with the state. This might invo lve educational materials such as textbooks, propaganda pamphlets, speeches give n by state leaders or territorial governors and other material of this sort. Sp eeches in particular are likely to have been translated into English, making the m an excellent place to begin. What, then, would constitute evidence of an alli ance between the state and the umma? Several possibilities suggest themselves: u se of Islamic phraseology or symbolism, evocation of a common Islamic fraternity and, crucially, an attempt to draw on Islamic historical memory. This might in volve the use of a common Islamic past, discussion of great Muslim heroes from l

ocal history or conspicuous references to the Prophet Mohammed. Obviously, dire ct discussion of the umma and its role in maintaining the unity of the state wou ld be a very strong indicator. By contrast, evidence of a more conflictual rela tionship between state and umma might be found in the state's use of overtly sec ular language, discussion of the diversity of the state, attempt to draw on a mo re explicitly ethnic identity and so on. These are general guidelines, but in l arge part, the cases themselves will differ in this regard. Intimate familiarit y with the history of each case will be essential. It is appropriate, therefore , to move directly into a discussion of case selection and an overview of each c ase which was chosen. The Cases: Case selection often involves achieving a delicate balance between simil arity and variation. The primary variable on which I selected cases was, of cou rse, Islam, or more specifically, a majority Muslim population. Within this par ameter, I elected to seek similarity at the state level and variation in the sec eding region. Of the cases which I have selected, all five are majority Muslim states, three of the secession movements are or were Muslim and two were non-Mus lim. I also selected, in part, based on regionalism. Four of the five cases oc cur within the Asian context, mostly because my recent research has focused on i ssues of nation and state in Asia (for obvious reasons). I have included one Af rican case, but as the conclusion indicates, may consider enriching this case mi x with more African and Middle Eastern cases if/when I undertake the actual anal ysis. Aside from these intended similarities and variations, several others ha ve occurred naturally. Of the four states examined, all four are multi-ethnic, but all, to one degree or another, have been accused of privileging one ethnicit y. In one case, this privileging is de jure. One of the secession crises began and ended in the 1960s and the other four began in the 1970s, of which one ende d in that decade, the other in 1999, and the remaining two are still technically ongoing, but currently enjoy cease-fires. Finally, there is the question of re gime type, and here too there is a great deal of variation. One state is a here ditary monarchy, another an authoritarian democracy, and the remaining two have veered between authoritarianism and democracy. The cases are: Indonesia, in its struggle with Aceh on the one hand and East Timor on the other, Pakistan and th e secession of Bangladesh, Malaysia and the expulsion of Singapore and Morocco, which confronts an ongoing secession crisis in the Western Sahara. Case 1: Indonesia, Aceh and East Timor. Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country by population, is a sprawl ing archipelago of 17,000 islands formerly colonized by the Dutch East India Com pany, and later the Dutch government directly. Its geographic decentralization combined with the presence of many quite sizable non-Muslim populations make an Islamic identity problematic for Indonesia, and any form of ethno-linguistic ide ntity has, of necessity, been painstakingly constructed. Indonesian leaders hav e primarily relied on secular nationalism to shape an Indonesian identity and, h opefully, make it stick. This has been neither a simple nor an easy task, and in the sixty years of Indonesian independence, the challenges have been manifold. Pancasila, the s tate ideology crafted by Sukarno and revised by Suharto, faced challenges, parti cularly from Islamist movements. Indonesian Islamists seeking an Islamic state and, to one degree or another, wrapping themselves in the concept of the umma, h ave been a potent political force. However, Indonesian Islam itself faces steep internal divisions which have limited, to a degree, the effectiveness of the co untry's Islamist movement. The most basic division is between the santri, or mo dernists, and the abangan, syncretic Muslims who draw on many pre-Islamic tradit ions (Brown, 2004, page 118). Within the santri, there is a divide between trad itionalists, represented by the Nahdlatul Ulama, and the Puritan modernists repr esented by Muhamadiyah (Brown, 2004, page 119-120). In general, Islamic parties with an orientation toward international Islam have come from this latter tradi tion, while abangan and even NU have been more comfortable with an Indonesian na tionalist identity. Indeed NU, particularly under its current leader Abdurrahma

n Wahid, has enjoyed rather chilly relations with organized political Islam (Ste phens, 2006). The Indonesian state, particularly in its authoritarian period fr om 1953 to 1998, alternately fought and placated the Islamists, though the forme r far more often than the latter. Sukarno, wary of the Islamists, relied on the army and, later, the Indonesian Communist Party, for support (Brown, 2004, chap ter 4). His successor Suharto brutally purged the Communists, leaving only the army and the Islamists as potential supporters (Mcgregor, 2009). For the most p art, he chose the army, certain amenable Islamic groups such as Nahdlatul Ulama, and wooing of the population through promises of economic growth. This change d in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as he began courting the Islamists. His de mocratic successors have been more wary of the Islamists, who have fared poorly in recent elections. Understanding the backdrop of Indonesia's tense relationship with Islami sts and its conflicted understanding of its own Islamicness helps place in persp ective the two secession movements Indonesia has faced. There are actually thre e secession movements to choose from in Indonesia: Aceh East Timor and West Papu a. The West Papuan conflict is less well-known and thoroughly researched, and a s such was excluded in this design, though it may be reexamined in future. Of t he three, only Aceh is a predominantly Muslim region, and Islam has played an im portant role in this conflict. Located on the northern tip of Sumatra, Aceh is home to rich oil reserve s and devout Muslims. Since independence, the Acehanese have desired greater au tonomy from Java and a more Islamic state than Indonesia has been willing to pro vide. this was at least in part motivated by the probably accurate perception t hat the Javanese dominated the state, and out of a resistance to Indonesian cent ralization, as Van Clinken claims in his article "Big States and Little Independ ence Movements" (Van Clinken, 2000). Jakarta compounded these problems by placi ng bataks, another north Sumatran but largely Christian ethnic group, in positio ns of administrative authority in Aceh (Brown, 2004, page 142). Beyond any doub t however, Acehanese were uncomfortable with Indonesia's emphasis on secular nat ionalism. Initially, Acehanese sought to achieve their goals through an allianc e with Masyumi, an Islamic party which formed a cabinet during the brief and fra gmentary parliamentary period (Brown, 2004, pages 139-140). The rise of Sukarno demonstrated clearly the limits of the alliance with masyumi, and so calls bega n for self-determination through autonomy. Over time, as it became clear that t he Indonesian state was unlikely to accede to their demands, the locus of activi sm shifted toward independence. The GAM, or Free Aceh Movement, emerged in this context in 1976, and began militating for a free, independent and Islamic Aceh (Brown, 2004, page 155). Suharto, as was his wont, responded with a harsh decla ration of martial law and a military crackdown. Since this time, the Acehanese struggle has alternated between violence and cease-fires, and recently a peace a greement has been reached between President Yudhoyono and the rebels. Time will tell whether this peace proves a durable one. East Timor could not be more different. For over 400 years, it was perh aps the sleepiest backwater of the increasingly threadbare Portuguese colonial e mpire. According to Alberto Arenas, who summarized colonial conditions in his a rticle "Education and Nationalism in East Timor," the population was largely lef t to their own devices, development was almost non-existent and the island's pri mary export was a limited amount of high quality coffee (Arenas, 1998). The Eas t Timorese were limited to slash and burn agriculture, education was not widely available and easily eradicated diseases were widespread. With the fall of the Salazar regime in 1974, Portugal began divesting itself of its former colonies. According to Paulo Gorjao, this was a perplexing time for the Portuguese, marke d by political unrest and conflicting messages sent to both its former colonies and regional players. Interestingly, Gorjao notes that, at the time, Portugal w as already considering the possibility that East Timor would be given to Indones ia (Gorjao, 2000). In his article describing Portuguese and Australian policies toward East Timor, Gorjao speaks of a reluctance on the part of the Portuguese to even consider independence for East Timor, on the basis that it could not sur vive on its own. Undeniably the Front for the Liberation of East Timor, or FRET

ELIN, had other ideas. FRETELIN, a popular party with some Marxist leanings, un ilaterally declared independence in 1975, and not long after, Indonesia invaded. As Arenas points out, the reasons for the Indonesian invasion were many and varied (Arenas, 1998). Geopolitically, they were concerned both that FRETEL IN would prove to be a Communist bridgehead within Southeast Asia and that the i ndependence of East Timor would lead other restless regions within Indonesia in a more separatist direction. Economically, Indonesia was interested in exploiti ng rich oil and natural gas resources off the East Timorese coast. Religiously, Indonesia wanted to increase its Christian (particularly Catholic) population t hrough the addition of East Timor. With these mixed motives, Indonesia invaded East Timor and officially declared it the twenty-seventh province. The majority of the occupation period was marked by a rather heavy-handed Indonesian attempt to bring East Timor into the national fold, ranging from education to transmigr ation (a favorite policy of Suharto's which caused innumerable internal headache s for his successors), to the use of military force. The death toll is, of cour se, widely disputed, but was indisputably very high, particularly as a percentag e of the small East Timorese population. The East Timorese resisted by populari zing use of Tetum, the most widely-spoken indigenous language, as well as Portug uese, and through joining, in truly staggering numbers, the Catholic church (Are nas, 1998). The church, ironically one of the institutions which the Indonesian s had counted upon to bring East Timor into the fold, quickly became one of the most widespread and effective vehicles of resistance (Kohen, 2000). It is fair to say that Suharto's initial goal, creating an internal bulwark against the Isl amists, increasing Indonesia's control over the region and suppressing Communism , backfired in almost every particular. In 1996, East Timorese bishop Carlos Be lo and independence activist Jose Ramos Horta received the Nobel Peace Prize, th ereby putting the Timorese struggle at the center of the world stage. With the fall of Suharto, Indonesia's will to hold onto East Timor evaporated, and the na tion transitioned into UN stewardship and eventual independence. In both Aceh and East Timor, Indonesia showed a desperate and intense wi llingness to do anything necessary to keep the seceding regions in the fold. Ce rtainly, Aceh had real and East Timor hypothetical economic value. Yet particul arly in the case of East Timor, the costs must have very quickly outweighed the potential benefits. For Indonesia, at issue was not economy but integrity and i dentity. Any secession, it was feared, might create a domino effect across the archipelago, and threatened to invalidate the carefully constructed pancasila-ba sed nationalism which sustained Indonesia throughout the authoritarian period. Thus any secession, even that of a region expropriated quite blatantly and illeg ally, must be fought tooth and nail. I hypothesize, however, that the essential ly secular character of the community Indonesian state leaders have sought to im agine makes an ideational alliance with the umma all but impossible. This is pa rticularly the case in Catholic East Timor, where discussion of the Muslim umma would only alienate the populous. More questionable is Aceh; if any ideational use of the umma occurred in this case, it would, I believe, be brief, half-heart ed and almost entirely instrumental. In the world's largest Muslim country, the umma is, from the perspective of the secular state, more of a threat than an op portunity. Case 2: Pakistan and Bangladesh. In multi-ethnic, multi-national Indonesia, secular nationalism was perha ps the state's only option in its quest for nationhood. Like Indonesia, Pakista n was multi-ethnic and contained minorities from other confessions. However, th e circumstances surrounding Pakistan's formation made an Indonesian-style limita tion on Islam's role within the national imagination all but impossible. Aisha Jalal, a noted scholar of Pakistani nationalism, claims that the nation of Pakis tan was almost accidental. As the process of decolonization moved forward in th e Indian subcontinent, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, she argues, used partition as a barg aining chip in an attempt to gain greater power for the Muslim League within a U nited India, and possibly even make himself Prime Minister (Jalal, 2000). Even in 1947, the Muslim League and Congress Party sought a mutually acceptable power -sharing agreement. Having failed to reach such an agreement, the British, Cong

ress and the Muslim League agreed at last, and not without some violence, to a p artition along confessional lines. Thus, even at its outset, Pakistan was intended as a "Muslim homeland" i n the subcontinent. State-building, however, would prove a difficult and elusiv e goal. From the start, the young nation faced severe ethnic tensions between P unjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, Pashtuns, Bengalis and the Muslim refugee population from the rest of India or muhajirs (Ahmed in Brown and Ganguly, 1997, pages 8689). Bengalis made up the largest ethnic group in the nation, but were separate d from the western parts of Pakistan by hostile India. Access from west to east , therefore, could only be achieved by sailing around India or flying north thro ugh Chinese air space. Adding to the tensions between West Pakistan and the pre dominately Bengali east was a wide disparity in access to the military and civil service. Based on the British Indian military, Pakistan's new armed forces til ted heavily toward the so-called "martial races", Punjabis, Pashtuns and Baluchi s; Bengalis were systematically under-represented (Ahmed in Brow and Ganguly, 19 97). In the civil service, the muhajirs and to a lesser extent the Punjabis hel d many of the key posts, to the disadvantages of the other ethnic groups. It wa s these military and bureaucratic elites, combined with wealthy Punjabi landlord s, who dominated the Pakistani state (Alavi, 1972). Unsurprisingly, they displa yed very little interest in opening Pakistan to greater participation from sindh is or even poorer members of their own ethnic groups, let alone the Bengalis. E ast Pakistan received a considerably lesser share of the state's economic resour ces, though there is wide disagreement as to the extent of this disparity. The Bengali population was disadvantaged in other ways as well. In an attempt to cr eate national unity, Jinnah proposed the adoption of Urdu as the national langua ge, which antagonized the Bengali population greatly (Ahmed in Brow and Ganguly, 1997). The elites of West Pakistan favored a highly centralized state, while t he Bengalis argued for a great deal of autonomy between the two wings. As one might logically assume, this created a backlash in East Pakistan. The vehicle for expressing this resistance was the Awami League. Founded in r esponse to a growing perception that the Muslim League was out of touch with the concerns of Bengalis, the Awami League build itself as a secular, Bengali natio nalist and socialist party which could speak for all of the East Pakistani popul ation (Ahmed in Baxter, 1998). Initially, the Awami League demanded increasing autonomy, but expressed a desire to remain within Pakistan. As their strength g rew however, so too did the reaction of the military and other West Pakistani go verning classes against them. Throughout much of United Pakistan's history, the military ruled the country directly. In 1970, long-delayed elections were fina lly scheduled, and won by the Awami league. The military, with, it should be no ted, the support of even left-leaning parties in West Pakistan, suspended the el ections, refusing to certify the results (Ahmed in Brown and Ganguly, 1997). Th e Awami League, finally convinced that autonomy would never be successful, pushe d at last for independence. In the ensuing violence, the Bengali population exp erienced mass killings at the hands of an increasingly desperate Pakistani milit ary. Seeing an opportunity, Pakistan's traditional rival India entered the war on the side of the secessionists and, with Indian assistance, the new state of B angladesh was formed. Once again, Pakistan's treatment of Bengali desires for first autonomy a nd later secession indicates that retaining East Pakistan was essential for Paki stan's self-identity. Even autonomy was anathema to the central government. In part, the problem was similar to that seen in Indonesia. The central government feared, not without justification as subsequent events indicated, that the sece ssion of East Pakistan would only embolden ethno-regional movements and weaken t he identity which state leaders sought to construct. Thus, even after the seces sion of Bangladesh, Pakistan continued to pursue centralization and an attempt t o sublimate ethnic differences. Islam has been a key ingredient in these attemp ts, as it was in the attempt to assimilate East Pakistan. As scholar of Pakista ni government ethnicity policy Samina Ahmed dryly puts it, Pakistani leaders fou nd Islam "insufficient" as a basis for their national identity (Ahmed in Brown a nd Ganguly, 1997). Craig Baxter goes further, arguing that the desire for an Is

lamic state identity was much stronger in West Pakistan than in the Eastern Beng ali wing (Baxter, 1998, chapter 7). Thus, it is likely that state leaders attem pted an alliance with the umma, and that this alliance actually intensified the conflict with the nascent nation-state of Bangladesh. Case 3: Morocco and Western Sahara. Morocco is in many ways a different state than Indonesia or Pakistan. B oth of the former states were essentially creations of the decolonization proces s, hence their use of history must be highly constructed. Morocco, by contrast, had a pre-colonial history of unity, and draws on it heavily. This history is deeply steeped in Islam; the ruling dynasty claims dissent from the Prophet Moha mmed and has a quite expansionist view of its own territoriality. This is not t o say that colonization did not play a role in Morocco's secession crisis with W estern Sahara, but it was unarguably less dramatic than in India, Pakistan or, a s shall be demonstrated, Malaysia. To say that the current dynasty of Morocco has ruled the country continu ously since the seventeenth century is both a true and a false statement. The A laouites, who claim dissent from the Prophet Mohammed through his daughter Fatim a and son-in-law Ali, conquered the territory of present-day Morocco in the late seventeenth century, yet their hold on it was spotty at times. Unlike previous rulers, the Alaouites did not have the support of any of Morocco's Berber or Be douin tribes, leading them to attempt the creation of a centralized state, which the tribes resisted. The conflict between the central government and the tribe s defined this period of Moroccan history, with the center gradually gaining the upper hand in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In some ways, the Fre nch protectorate, established over Morocco with the treaty of Fez in 1912, redef ined this conflict. The French usurped the position of the center and quickly t ried to assert it even more strongly than the previous sultans (Hahn, 1960). Th ey built road and railway networks to link the coastal regions of Morocco to its hinterland, and attempted to subject the tribes to French courts and law. In p articular the Berbers, who the French erroneously believed to be less committed to Islam than their Arab fellows, were pressured to assimilate to a degree of Fr enchness (Hahn, 1960). This provoked a nationalist backlash, represented by the Istiqlal party, formed in 1940 and supported by the then Sultan. Though France banned the party and struggled to keep Morocco in the French fold, it eventuall y gave up the attempt, granting the kingdom its independence in 1966. This, however, did not mark the end of colonial ventures in North Africa . Like its neighbor Portugal, Spain, under Francisco Franco, was determined to hold onto its few remaining colonial possessions. One of these was the Western Sahara, a sparsely populated but mineral-rich desert area bordering Morocco. Sp ain was resisted by the Polisario Front. Like many post-colonial liberation mov ements, Polisario was socialist, in name at least, and sought the creation of a sovereign state. Eventually, in 1975, Spain withdrew. Morocco, however, had no interest in Sahrawi independence. Reasons for Morocco's desired annexation wer e mixed. In part, it may have stemmed from irredentist claims of "greater Moroc co", a desire to unite all territory previously claimed by the Moroccan sultanat e under its authority (Zoubir, 1993). King Hassan II may also have been motivat ed by a desire for Western Sahara's mineral resources and to thwart the potentia l spread of socialism. Whatever the reason, Hassan, immediately upon the Spanis h withdrawal marched his army, and a throng of Moroccan civilians, into Western Sahara. From 1975 to the present, a conflict has raged between Morocco and the P olisario Front which proclaimed the creation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Repu blic and received support from the revolutionary regime in Algeria. The Morocca n government, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, refused even to engage in talks wi th Polisario, only coming to the table when it faced ostracism from the never re alized Maghreb Union (Zoubir, 1993). Hassan II claimed the Sahrawi resistance w as an "Algerian-backed separatist movement", and hence not truly authentic (Zoub ir, 1993). This kept relations between the two states tense; mutual recognition came only in 1988. In the Western Sahara, Morocco has established settlements of Moroccan nationals, built massive walls to enclose territory and relied on a

heavily military solution to the conflict. For all its efforts, the Sahrawi ind ependence movement has remained a credible threat, and finally forced Morocco to the table. As in Aceh, the eventual outcome of the conflict remains in doubt. Morocco has a number of potential avenues it might pursue in order to dr aw Sahrawi loyalty. The Sahrawi are, as the name of their would-be state indica tes, ethnically Arab, and largely Muslim. The Moroccan kings can therefore be e xpected to deploy both Arabic and Islamic rhetoric in an attempt to win the Sahr awi over to assimilation. This may, however, be complicated by the support of o ther Arab governments for the Sahrawi independence movement and the rising tide of Islamist opinion which is by and large hostile to the monarchy. Though my ow n background on the Moroccan western Sahara conflict is thinner than any of the others, I remain confident that this case will provide methodological depth to t he study. Case 4: Malaysia and Singapore. In all of the above cases, the state in question has fought, usually lit erally, to keep the seceding region within the state. In the case of Malaysia a nd Singapore, the reverse is true. It was Singapore which fought to be included in the Malaysian Federation, with the acquiescence of the then Malaysian Prime Minister Tungu Abdul Rahman. Ultimately, after a brief association, it was Mala ysia which expelled Singapore, though Singapore's leader Li Kuan Yu was not with out responsibility for the eventual outcome. Both the Sultanates which eventually came to comprise the Malay Federati on and the island city state of Singapore were British colonial possessions, and from this colonial experience, inherited a complex ethnic picture. As they sou ght to exploit the rich natural resources of the peninsula, the British imported both Chinese and Indian workers, leaving the indigenous Malay population to its traditional agricultural economic activity (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). In Singap ore, which rapidly emerged as a major hub of commerce in British Asia, the light ly populated island saw a huge influx of Chinese, and some Indians and Malays. On the Malay Peninsula, the Chinese population gained increasing wealth due to i ts participation in commerce, the high level of education many of its wealthier members received and a sense among the British that the Malay were indolent and lazy while the Chinese were industrious (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). This impressi on led to a favoritism toward the Chinese on the part of the British throughout the colonial period. At independence, the Chinese dominated the educated profes sions such as doctors and accountants, it made up at least a plurality of the ur ban poor. Yet Malays remained a majority of the population, and resented deeply the Chinese successes. As Malaya drifted toward independence, it became clear that the Malays w ould demand and receive certain preferences in the new state. This was the orig in of the term bumiputra, or son of the soil, which was applied to the Malays. From its inception, an independent Malay federation would privilege the Malay ma jority in an attempt to redress previous imbalances (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). A ffirmative action, a highly controversial policy in the United States, was almos t a matter of course for Malaysia. If Malays were to be privileged, so too was their religion. According to the Malay constitution, there are three elements t o Malay identity: speaking the Malay language, participation in Malay culture an d the practice of Islam (Nair, 1997). Consequently, Islam was made the official state religion and privileged above all competitors. At the same time, Malay l eaders were savvy enough to know they could not alienate the Chinese and Indian populations too far. Though the United Malay National Organization or UMNO has been Malaysia's governing party since independence, it is usually governed in co alition with ethnically Chinese and Indian parties. And while Islam is the offi cial religion, for non-Malays at least, religious freedom is strongly guaranteed and, in so far as it does not conflict with Islam's prerogatives, respected. I n this stance, UMNO has faced consistent opposition from Malay Islamic parties w hich advocate for a more Islamic state. To understand Singapore's entry into and expulsion from this complex pen insular mix, one must first understand the fear of communism rampant in both Mal aya and Singapore. The Malay Communist Party, a Chinese-dominated movement popu

lar with the urban poor, waged a ten year war against the Malayo-British governm ent. This conflict, known as the Malay emergency, resulted in the destruction o f the MCP and was part of the impetus for the formation of the Malaysian Federat ion (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). On the Malaysian side, the desire to integrate Si ngapore stemmed from the latter's economic wealth and a desire to prevent Commun ism from taking hold in Malaysia's nearest neighbors. For Singapore's leader, L i Kuan Yu, access to Malaysia's natural resources was part of the rationale, but his primary hope was to dilute the Singapori communists inside a country which had, by and large, dispatched its communists by 1963 (Mauzi, 2002). It was in t his year that Singapore officially voted to join the Malaysian federation, and w as welcomed by Prime Minister Abdul Rahman. Two years later, Singapore was expelled again. The reasons for its expu lsion are manifold. Certainly, the promised economic integration did not provid e the immediate benefits expected on either side (Mauzi, 2002). Yet the primary reason for the expulsion was ethnic tension, and Li Kuan Yu's support of a "Mal aysia for all Malaysians . Coming from a heavily Chinese-dominated Singapore, he an d his People's Action Party were not willing to accept special status for the M alays, arguing that it amounted to discrimination and would prevent the formatio n of a Malaysian national consciousness (Mauzi, 2002). This in turn stoked fear s among malays that Singapore's entry would create a Chinese-dominated Malaysia in which Malay culture, language and religion would again be subordinated. It w as this fear of Li Kuan Yu's non-ethnic nationalist project which led Malaysia t o expel Singapore in 1965. Though the outcome differed from the other cases , the imperative of the Malaysian state in essentially forcing Singapore's seces sion was actually very similar. Malay leaders saw retaining Singapore as a part of the Malaysian Federation as a threat to the national identity they had so ca refully and painstakingly constructed. The largely material and ideological fac tors which argued in favor of Singapore's inclusion in 1963 were quickly overwhe lmed by an identity-level conservatism and fear of change by 1965. Islam, as a cornerstone of the Malay identity, played a pivotal role in this fear. Singapor e's Muslim population was a distinct minority, thereby making the possibility of assimilation into a Malay matrix all the more difficult. Those figures which e mphasized the Islamic identity of the Malays were some of the fiercest advocates for Singapore's expulsion. In this case, what concept of umma exists appears, for the average Malay, to be indistinguishable from his or her ethnic identity, thus allowing Malay nationalists to harness it quite easily. However, as the Si ngapore case shows, and subsequent Malaysian ethnic conflict indicates, this ide ntification between the Malay and Islamic identities makes attempts to cooperate with other ethnicities problematic at best. Study of these four cases leads to a tentative hypothesis. In circumsta nces where Islam is seen as a necessary ingredient to national identity, state l eaders are forced to ideationally ally with the umma when faced with a secession crisis. By contrast, those states which have sought a more secular identity ha ve been hesitant to make such an alliance. The cases appear to provide mixed re sults on the success of this ideational alliance. Pakistan's Islamic identity w as not strong enough to prevent Bengali succession, but neither was its exclusio n sufficient to keep East Timor in the Indonesian fold. Aceh and Western Sahara remain uncertain, though it seems more likely that Aceh will remain in Indonesi a than that Western Sahara will not secede from Morocco. The Malaysian case rep resents an uncertain outcome; the Malay-dominated national identity protected it self from the possible threat of Singapore but failed to assimilate it. Conclusion: Feasibility and Improvements. As presently conceived, the paper is both feasible and potentially quite useful. If able to substantiate the hypothesis, the project would make a usefu l contribution to the body of literature concerned with Islamic nationalism, and could demonstrate that the concept of an Islamic umma remains a potent challeng e to it. That said, there is room for improvement and clarification. This is mos t evident in three areas: definition of the umma, methodology and case selection . To be sure, the amount of work done on the political aspects of the umma conc

ept is far less than that available on the state and the nation, which is, in pa rt, the reason for the study. There is, however, perhaps room for improvement i n positioning this paper relative to other relevant literature on the topic. In regard to methodology, I am concerned about the difficulty of creating an effec tive coding scheme for the content analysis. For the first part of the question , the presence or absence of ideational cooperation with the umma, coding should be feasible, if not necessarily straightforward. Of more difficulty, particula rly in cases where a secession movement is still ongoing, will be assessing the state's success or failure. It might also be useful to include in the eventual coding table a marker indicating the state's broader view of Islam, though this will almost certainly come out in the case studies. Finally, I believe that the case mix, while adequate, could be dramatica lly improved with some additions. Initially, I shied away from the inclusion of Arab or Middle Eastern cases. In Arabic, the term "umma" can mean not only the Islamic nation but also the Arab nation. At the time, I felt that this second level on which the word might operate could unduly complicate an already highly complex picture. On further reflection however, I believe it might provide grea ter depth and power to the analysis. Thus, the project should add an examinatio n of the ongoing secession crisis in Yemen. At present, I also believe the case mix between Muslim and non-Muslim secession movements is unbalanced. Two possi bilities present themselves: subtract East Timor and Singapore and proceed only with Muslim on Muslim secession crises, or add additional non-Muslim cases, such as the Sudan South Sudan conflict, the Nigeria Ibo secession struggle and Indon esia's ongoing conflict with West Papua. Though I remain uncertain as to the ul timate direction I will take, I lean toward adding more cases. Sudan, particula rly after 1983, has been an Islamic state coping with a largely Christian and an imist secession movement in the south. Though there are other factors, I believ e this juxtaposition could add yet more depth and power. So too might analysis of the Nigeria-Ibo conflict. Indonesia and West Papua, while an interesting con flict in its own right, would only be worth adding if the results differed from those found in the case of East Timor. Ultimately, I believe the project is worth pursuing. I find the researc h question, and all the factors which play into it, extremely interesting, and b elieve the study, with the above modifications, is constructed in such a way as to make an answer feasible. Works Cited: 1. Philpott, Daniel: 'Revolutions in Sovereignty', Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2001. 2. Anderson, Benedict: 'Imagined Communities', Verso, New York, NY, 2006. 3. Mandaville, Peter: 'Transnational Muslim Politics, Reimagining the Umma', Ro utledge, New York, NY, 2001. 4. Roy, Olivier: 'Globalized Islam, the Search for a New Umma', Columbia Univer sity Press, New York, NY, 2004. 5. Tambiah, Stanley: "The galactic Polity, the Structure of Traditional Kingdom s in Southeast Asia," Copyright 1977, annals of the New York academy of Sciences , vol. 293, issue 1, pages 69-97. 6. Wink Andre: "Sovereignty and Universal Dominion in South Asia", Indian Econo mic and Social review, 1984, vol. 21, beginning with page 265. 7. Lilla, Mark: "The Enemy of Liberalism," The New York Review of books, May 15 , 1997. 8. Scott, James: 'Seeing Like a State', Yale University Press, Newhaven CT, 199

8. 9. Tilly, Charles: Coercion, Capital and European States, 990-1992. Wiley Black well, Hoboken, NJ, 1992. 10. Dyson, Kenneth: 'The State Tradition in Western Europe', Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1981. 11. Winichakul, Thongchai: 'Siam Mapped, A History of the Geo-body of a Nation' ' University of Hawaii press, Honolulu, HI, 1994. 12. Connor, Walker: 'Ethnonationalism, The Quest for Understanding', Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1994. 13. Lehning, Percy (ed): 'Theories of Secession', Routledge, New York NY, 1998. 14. Bartkus, Viva Ona: 'The Dynamics of Secession', Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1999. 15. Abdelal Rawi et al (ed): 'Measuring Identity: a Guide for Social Scientists ', Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2009. 16. Brown, David: 'Ethnic Politics and the State in Southeast Asia', Routledge, New York, NY, 2004. 17. Stephens, Bret: "The Last King of Java," Wall street Journal, published on www.opinionjournal.com on May 15, 2007. 18. Mcgregor, Katherine: "A Bridge and a Barrier: Islam, Reconciliation and the 1965 Killings in Indonesia," in Brauchler, Bergit (ed): 'Indonesia: Grassroots Agency for Peace', Routledge, New York, NY, 2009. 19. Van Clinken, Gerry: "Big States and Little Independence Movements", Bulleti n of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 32, 2000. 20. Arenas, Alberto: "Education and Nationalism in East Timor," Social Justice, San Francisco, CA, volume 25, issue 2, pages 131-149. 21. Gorjao, Paulo: "The End of a Cycle: Australian and Portuguese Foreign Polic ies and the Fate of East Timor," Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 23, 2001. 22. Kohen, Arnold S: "The Catholic Church and the Independence of East Timor," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 32, issue 1-2, 2000. 23. Jalal, Aisha: "Encyclopedia of Nationalism, South Asia," (no further citati on information provided). 24. Brown, Michael and Ganguly, Summat (ed): 'Government Policies and Ethnic Re lations in Asia', The Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Univ ersity, Cambridge MA, 1997. 25. Alavi, Hamsa: "The State in Post-colonial societies: Pakistan and Banglades h", New Left Review, 1972. 26. Baxter, Craig: 'Bangladesh: From a Nation to a State', Westview Press, Boul der, CO, 1997. 27. Hahn, Lorna: 'North Africa, Nationalism to Nationhood', Public Affairs Pres s, Washington DC, 1960.

28. Zoubir, Yahia and Volman Daniel: 'International Dimensions of the Western S ahara Conflict', Praeger Publishers, Westport CT, 1993. 29. Nair, Shanti: 'Islam in Malaysian Foreign Policy', Routledge, New York, NY, 1997. 30. Mauzi Diane K and Mill RS: 'Singapore Politics under the People's Action Pa rty', Routledge, New York, NY, 2002.