Nation, State and Umma

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

Abstract:This paper seeks to create a research design whereby the inter-relationshipbetween a pan-Islamic identityâthe ummaâand various national identities may be examin. Secession movements within the Muslim worldâin which identity contestation is a natural part of the conflictâprovide a natural context for such an investigation. Thepaper recommends a mixed-methods approach comprised of content analysis and in-depth case studies, to determine the degree and variety of contestation between these two identities in secession crises. Cases are evaluated based on their ability to provide a balanced picture of the question, and their applicability to the question at hand. Ultimately, the paper concludes that such a research designis feasible, and the project worthy of further study. Introduction:

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, prophecies of the demise of the nation-state system were common, and as the twenty-first century dawns, they seem to grow more common still. Yet, despite widespread reports of its demise, the uneasy accord between nation and state remains. New states, such as East Timor and Eritrea have joined the sovereign state order while others, from Somaliland to Western Sahara, Quebec to West Papua, seek admission by secession. Though the state appears in retreat in its ancient European heartland, it isworth noting that, even in the European Union, the state is the basic unit at which members must be admitted, and political integration remains patchy and reluctant.

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 cohesion (secession movements, lack of institutional capacity). The increasingly interdependent global economy places a strain on the ability of many states to preserve their boundaries, and across the world, regional organizations have begun tovie for the loyalty which states attempt so jealously to guard.

Aside from all of these concrete threats, states often face ideologicalcompetitors for that very loyalty. For Muslim states, it is possible that theirreligion itself constitutes such an ideological threat. To be sure, all religions, to one extent or another, threaten the totalizing desire of the state. Infact, if we take the peace of Westphalia as the beginning point of the state system, as most scholars of international politics are wont to do, then its first real antagonist came in religious form. The Roman Catholic Church, seeing in Westphalia the potential death of its already tattered claim to universal authority

in Christendom, declared the treaty to be "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, 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 his book 'Revolutions in Sovereignty', Catholicism's view of a fixed, static, divine order apart from the state may represent a still enduring challenge to the nation-state system (Philpott, 2001, page 261-262).

For all the difficulties Roman Catholicism may pose to the nation-statesystem, that posed by Islam may be greater. This threat is not limited to the rise 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 ofthe jihadists' interpretations are to the heart of their religion. Yet clearlyand 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 classifies it as a concept of sacred authority not dissimilar from Christendom, which is a good beginning (Anderson, 2006, pages 11-12).

There are three distinct differences between the concepts of umma and Christendom however. First, Christendom was animated by the Roman Catholic Church, a real and discernable religious structure held in tension with kings and other proto-state leaders. In Islam, the caliphate, while technically existing until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, lost potency centuries before. In anyevent, 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 authority than do the historic Christian churches which existed in the age of Christendom. Second, political authority was construed differently in Christendom than itis in the umma. For Christians, the church and the state were seen as distinct, though sometimes overlapping institutions. This was particularly true in thewest, where the Roman Catholic Church outlasted the empire, but did not seek direct rule of it. In Islam, and in the umma, the political and religious sphereswere unified in the person of the Caliph, though, of course, his authority was not as absolute, in either sphere, as that of the bishop of Rome grew in the western church.

Finally, and perhaps most consequentially, we may truly speak of Christendom in the past tense. Whether we speak of an Andersonian change in the imagination, 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 Charles Tilly, Christendom fell to the hammer blows of the Reformation, Thirty Years War and Peace of Westphalia, and was replaced by the nation-state system. Some argue that the change was quick, while others see it taking centuries, but that it has happened is undeniable. In Islam, by contrast, a universal political idea retains the power to move populations, and words such as Umma and Caliphatestill conjure intense loyalty, and politically effective loyalty it would seem,among devout believers. This is not a difficult fact to ascertain. The occupation of the Palestinian territories often moves Muslims in completely unrelated regions of the world to protests so fierce as to affect the foreign policy of their states. A statement to the Pope about Islam, cartoons in Denmark seen as derogatory toward the Prophet Mohammed and even statements by televangelists abouthim, can spark riots halfway around the world. It is interesting to contrast this with, for example, art exhibits depicting a crucifix in a jar of urine or statues of the Virgin Mary made out of elephant dung, or the treatment of Christians in countries such as China, Burma, Egypt or Pakistan, none of which have created the same level of outcry in Christian countries. Clearly, there is a sense of Muslim unity which accedes that felt by Christians in its political potency, and which is tied to the sense of Islamic nationhood or "umma".

For Muslim state leaders, the concept of "umma" must be a decidedly mixed blessing. While at times state leaders have successfully harnessed this broadsense of Islamic nationhood to distract their populations from unfavorable domestic conditions at home, more often than not, this universalism is troublesome to them. States, jealous of their prerogatives, are skeptical of such universalloyalties, which might ultimately weaken their foundations. Nationalists might

be expected to share this skepticism. Some of these national leaders are grappling with the state in which their nation is contained, hoping to make their nations 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 intonations. Whatever their imperatives, nationalists operating in a Muslim contextmust ultimately see the umma as a rival. Though there is considerable debate about the sources of nations and nationalism and the relationship between nationsand states (see the literature review below), nations, like states, require theloyalty of their people, and claim and jealously. With its claims to universalism, 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 design. In particular, I aspire to examine the tripartite struggle between state, nation and umma. To do this, I intend to focus on a flash point for state and national conflict, within an Islamic context. No where is the state's struggle fornationality and the nation's struggle for statehood more clearly demonstrated than in secession crises. Examining the way in which states respond to secessionmovements within their borders shows us the level of confidence they feel in their own nationhood, the ways in which they construe it and the lengths they arewilling to go to protect it. Examining the way in which Muslim states have responded 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 mayshed light on the ways in which they have grappled with the Islamic universalisminherent in the concept of umma.Literature review:

It is perhaps best to begin the literature review discussion of the paper 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 monolithic and unitary force expressed in the same way in all the contexts in whichit occurs. As the cases explored in this study will demonstrate clearly, Islamvaries widely from nation to nation and state to state, and sometimes within these two categories. Yet, in the same way that we must avoid the "monolithic orientalism" of which Edward Said is so wary, so too we must avoid his deep skepticism 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 useful about another. His skepticism, in the Muslim context at least, seems rebukedby the fact that over a billion Muslims not only imagine themselves part of a community, the umma, but share common characteristics, a common ethical system and a strong and, as was mentioned in the introduction to this study, politicallypowerful and relevant identification with one another. Thus, for the purposes of this paper, Islam is understood as an inter-subjective identity constantly created and recreated by the world's Muslims within the parameters laid out by theKoran, 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 regarding the origins of modern Islamic political discourse and identity. It is common among many scholars seeking to slide between these two extremes, to define Islamic 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 argument in his book 'Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma' (Mandaville, 2001). Certainly, it is a mantle which Muslim intellectuals have attempted to claim for their religion and its discourse. I also take Olivier Roy to bemaking a similar argument in his book Globalized Islam' (Roy, 2004). The gentlemen in question do not appear to be arguing that the concept of the umma and Muslim solidarity emerged as a result of the anti-colonial struggle, but rather that they reemerged in this context. Of course, like most scholarship concerned with "post-colonial" matters, colonialism is very narrowly defined as occupation by a western metropole across an ocean from the colonized region in question. Else, the "political Islam as discourse reemerging in the anti-colonial struggle"

would run headlong into its failure to reemerge under centuries of Tsarist occupation of Muslim central Asians, Arab colonization by Ottoman Turks (not to mention 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" their states in the first place.

It is undeniable, however, that there has been a resurgence of the ummaconsciousness, and if not in response to western colonialism, to what? The answer, I believe, is that the rise of Islamism and other political "umma" thinking is, at least in part, a response to the rise of the nation, and the rise of the state. It is the common variable present between the colonial powers and their p

ost-colonial successors. As Philpott makes clear in his section on colonialismin âRevolutions in Sovereignty', the colonial powers had very different end games for their colonial projects: self-government in the case of the British and integration with a global but distinctly national empire in France's case (Philpott, 2001, chapters 9 and 12). Both, however, placed the concept of the state, and insome ways the nation, in the direct path of the Muslim world. To the British,self-government meant self-governing nation-states. To the French, integrationwith the French state meant integration into the French nation. Post-colonial elites, as Philpott demonstrates, were inculcated into the ideals of the nation-state, and made nationalism and state-based self-determination a key part of their discourse (Philpott, 2001, Chapter 11). Thus, even after the colonial powershad withdrawn, they left behind their foreign notions of state and nation, anath

ema to the traditional concept of the umma. By contrast, other colonizers, suchas the Ottomans, the Tsars and the various empires which dotted the Islamic past, brought with them neither the concept of state nor nation. Certainly, it hasbeen argued that the concepts of a hereditary, hierarchical empire where powerconcentrated in the hands of a clan or clique is contrary to Islamic political theory. Yet there are some important distinctions between empires and both nations and states which make the former more amenable to an umma identity. Most central, in this regard, is the way in which authority and loyalty are construed inempires versus states and nations. For empires, authority is societally limited but geographically universal. By contrast, states and nations both demand absolute loyalty, and seek to project totalizing authority, in geographically constrained 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 demonstrates in the Indian subcontinent (Wink, 1984), traditional imperial polities regard themselves as universal, encompassing or claiming to encompass the entirety of the world they knew. They needed no maps or fixed boundaries, since their claims were universal. Often, as was the case in Southeast Asia, a center or locus justified its "heavenly" or "galactic" claims based on the number of satellites it added or lost (tambiah, 2006). At times, as Wink shows, rival claimants skirmished upon running into one another (Wink, 1984). In any case, the self-conception of these empires was geographically unbounded. By contrast, the claim 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 nations, it is worth dwelling on these two concepts at greater length. The state hasits detractors and defenders, and the range of explanations for its formation runs the gamut. For Karl Schmidt, the state is a natural, and a highly desirable, organization for society, which emerges from inherent us them distinctions (Lilla, 1997). For Marxists (or modified Marxists such as Hamsa Alavi or Hart andNegri), 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 most efficient means of making war(Tilly, 1992). For Daniel Philpott it was the result of an ideational revolution caused by Europe's encounter with the Protestant Reformation (Philpott, 2001). James Scott sees the state as a malignant entity attempting to socially engineer society on every level (Scott, 1998). For Ke

nneth Dyson, there is a fundamental difference between the continental state, asit emerged in nations such as Germany, and the more liberal British model of the state (Dyson, 1981). Notwithstanding all of their wide differences, these sc



holars broadly agree about certain aspects of the state. First, the state, mostcontend, is centralized and seeks absolute authority. For Schmidt this is a good thing, for Scott it is not, but both agree about the state's drive for absolute control. Philpott claims that the idea of a monolithic state sovereign: "insubstance if not in name, comes directly out of the very propositions of Protestant theology, in all of its variants" (Philpott, 2001, page 108). Second, the state 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 map their boundaries as part of this process (Winichakul, 1994). Mapping and boundaries are an essential part of the state system, and indeed, a cause for many of the wars within it.

Like the state, the nation is also a socially totalizing but geographically bounded entity. No thinker makes this more clear than does Benedict Anderson in his now classic work 'Imagined Communities' (Anderson, 2006). For Anderson, the nation is a community which simultaneously imagines itself into being. The word simultaneous is used here quite deliberately. Anderson claims that, through newspapers and other national media, the pre-existing "sacred time" in whichpast, 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 Anderson, an important aspect of national development was the destruction of "sacred languages" such as Latin. Andersonian nationalism does not emphasize geographicboundedness in quite the same way as do all concepts of the state, but there remains, even in a constructivist account such as Anderson's, a particular sense inwhich the nation is not or cannot be universalized. For Walker Connor, who views nationalism as a "myth of common dissent" and hence inherently ethnic, this is even more the case (Connor, 1997). Connor's nation is the largest group of people which can imagine a blood kinship, in a sense, a family, clan or tribe writlarge. In the great internal debate among nationalist scholars between primordialism and constructivism, Connor, though leaning in a constructivist directiondue to his caveat that the blood relationship need not actually exist, is almosta 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 assumes, religious boundaries. Anderson and Connor differ to some extent on the relationship they envision between the nation and the state. For Anderson, nationsand states often operate on the same level, in other words, the nation and thestate are very regularly synonymous. This becomes clear in his discussion of Latin America, and the nationalism which he imagines to have emerged there (Anderson, 2006, Chapter 4). For Connor, most states and nations are in starkly different and usually opposed juxtaposition. True nation-states, for Connor, are vanishingly rare, and he makes a distinction between nationalism and patriotism (Connor, 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, there is, on both sides of the divide, an impulse to conjoin the two. Nations, as Connor agrees, constantly seek statehood. On the other hand, as Connor himself seems to hint in his discussion of how the nation has emerged (a development which he views as extremely recent), states may also seek nationhood (Connor, 1994,Chapter 9). My understanding of states and nations, and hence the understandingoperative in this paper, is that, while not always and everywhere synonymous, each seeks over time to become the other.

Ultimately, neither is as compatible with the umma conception as the previously dominant imperial conception. Like many of the ancient empires, the Caliphate and most Muslim empires claimed universal geographic dominion. The nature of their claims to authority varied somewhat. Under most Muslim rule, a certain circumscribed religious liberty was provided to non-Muslims. In many of theempires, there were also limits to the authority claimed by the center over peripheral Muslims. In the Muslim conception of umma, such authority is universal,

fusing political and religious authority to a high degree. By and large, conflicts between this model of empire have been limited; Muslim empires adapted themselves 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 umma tends to be jealous, nations and states seek to occupy space in the imagination of Muslims which Islam, through the imagined community of the umma, has already claimed. And unlike Christendom, the Islamic umma has not given up its imaginative weapons, such as sacred time and a sacred language. Koranic Arabic retains 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 recent terms than do westerners embedded in homogeneous empty time, has not given up its hold on much of the Muslim world. This places nation and state-makers inMuslim societies, often synonymous, in a cleft stick of sorts. On one hand, toignore Islam robs them of a potential source of unity, and in many cases, as Connor points out, ethnicity and religion are tightly intertwined. On the other hand, attempting to use Islam for the purpose of imagining a national consciousness has clear pitfalls of its own. Even in the best of times, threading this needle is a highly complex process for state and national leaders.

This difficulty is intensified in instances of secession, and it is to an analysis of secession literature that this review must finally turn. It is important 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 non-violent movement calling for withdrawal from the state of which a region or nation is a part and the formation of a new state. Secession, then, is the instanceat which a state's desire for nationhood and a nation's desire for statehood collide most sharply. For a state, secession is perhaps the greatest challenge toits legitimacy, which has led state-centric theorists of secession such as Linda Bishai to argue that such movements are never or almost never justifiable (Bishai in Lehning, 1998). For Bishai, the potential harm a secession movement might do to the international order outweighs any moral arguments the secessionistsmight put forward. Most scholars are more permissive, with some, such as HarryBeran, arguing for a radical model in which even the smallest community ought tohave the right of secession (Beran in Lehning, 1998). Beran's hyper-cosmopolitanism, 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 certain cosmopolitan theories have drifted from the traditional Westphalian system. By far the most comprehensive scholarly theory of secession is that of AllenM. Buchanan. His theory, though more permissive than that of Bishai, still retains 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 secessionist region suffers extreme injustice perpetrated by the state from which it wishes to secede, or if the state does not protect it from injustice perpetrated by outsiders, secession may be morally justified. Second, even in the absence of such injustice, secession may be morally justified if the culture of that distinct region is threatened. Buchanan further qualifies the cultural condition: (the culture must meet basic standards of decency, all other options for preserving the culture within the state must be exhausted), and argues that any government created by secession should also not be illiberal. Finally, even if the two above qualifications are not met, a region may secede if the state in question does not have a valid territorial claim over the region in question. These three reasons do not operate entirely independently of one another for Buchanan; avalid territorial claim may be made invalid by grievous injustice, a valid territorial claim may weaken the cultural claim, and so on. Thus, we can see that for Buchanan, the moral right to secede, while it is very real, is highly conditional. He is preoccupied with respecting the rights of states, as is the international system as a whole.

As Buchanan comprehensively answers the ought question "should secessionbe 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 amatrix of necessary preconditions for secession and a calculus which, in some informal 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 considersecession, there must, she asserts, be: a distinct community, a geographic center of gravity, leadership for this geographically-center community and a sense ofdiscrimination by the state (Bartkus, 1999). This in some ways mirrors the conditions laid down normatively by Buchanan. Bartkus further stipulates to four calculations which determine a movement's willingness to try secession: benefitsof 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 often non-material, which sets her analysis apart from the pure rational choice view. Still, Bartkus argues that the decision to secede or not to secede is ultimately a rational one which results from interest calculations.

For a state too, there are calculations to be made. How might a potential secession effect the legitimacy of the state? Does it support or undercut thenarrative upon which identity is constructed? What are the costs of violent suppression, and what are the potential benefits? In Islamic states, where the notion of umma cuts against both nation and state, and hence might threaten both thestate's and the would-be seceding region's state and national projects, the ideational 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 attemptto 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 situation where, for example, a Muslim region was attempting to secede from a Muslim state, we might see three competing imagined communal identities, a state seeking 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, the umma would have little ideational power in the seceding region. In a Muslimregion seceding from a non-Muslim state, a high level of convergence between theumma and the seceding region might be possible during the struggle of independence 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 level of analysis. Three paths are possible: an examination of the state as it copes with secession and umma, an examination of seceding regions and their use oravoidance of an imaginative entente with the umma, or a study of the umma itselfas 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, gathering information on states is much easier than either regions or an amorphous ideational 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 order is heavily stacked in its favor and it will more likely than not have greater economic, military and media resources. Finally, the Muslim state, with itsdrive toward nationhood in tension with the universalizing umma, has probably the most interesting balancing act of the three. Muslim secessionists also have interesting pressures, but their overriding imperative is the conflict with the state. For the state, the secession crisis is often only part of its preoccupation. More often than not, the umma is making itself felt at the same time, adding pressure to which action the state takes.

Thus, the focus of the question will be on states, Muslim states in particular, with secession crises. The object then, is to examine the ways in whichthe Muslim state either allies with or conflicts with the umma in its ideational battle against secession, and under what circumstances. In the event that states do in fact ideationally ally with the umma, it would also be worthwhile to measure the relative success of the alliance. This alliance might involve a state 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 population. On the other hand, it might involve a shotgun wedding in which the state essentially co-opts the umma instrumentally or cynically for its own purpose



s. I will formulate the question as follows: under what circumstances and withwhat degree of success does a Muslim state ideationally cooperate with the ummain an attempt to prevent secession? A wide variety of answers are possible. States might never, sometimes, often or always cooperate with the umma in some formto battle secession, and such cooperation might never, sometimes, often or always be successful.Methodology:

Essentially, this research question seeks to measure the comparative power of competing identities on state-leaders and secession-minded populations. In particular, it seeks an assessment of state leadersâ own perception of their stateâsdentity relative to the concepts of ânationâ and âummaâ, and the receptivity of woonist regions to this conception. Measuring identity is a highly complex and often difficult task, and many scholars have questioned whether such measurement is even possible. Recently however, a growing body of scholarship has attemptedto create methods by which identity can be measured, usually by borrowing from other disciplines. Of particular note in this regard is the edited volume by Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston and McDermott entitled measuring Identity' (Abdelal et al, 2009). The authors, in chapter 2 of this work, define identity based on twoaspects: content and contestation (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 2). Content may

consist of four types: constitutive norms (who we are), social purposes (what we want), relational comparisons based on other similar groups (who we are not based on who they are) and cognitive maps (how we see the world). Contestation isthe process of debate and discourse by which this content is defined and redefined (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 2). In breaking identity down into these twocomponents, the authors ultimately make it into a measurable variable. These two elements of identity mesh rather well with this paperâs research question. By their very nature, secession crises entail a high degree of identity contestation, thereby allowing the researcher a unique window into the ways in which Muslims inthese nations define themselves. While it may be argued that the authors lean perhaps too heavily on the fluidity of identity, their definition still retains enough substance for usage even by those with a less flexible view of identity formation 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 the methods they describe, content analysis and discourse analysis seem most potentially useful for this project. Discourse analysis involves thick descriptionbased on the author's deep familiarity with the identity under study and an emersion 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 Abdelal, 2009). Though highly relevant and descriptive, discourse analysis lackstwo key aspects of social science experiments, replicatability and generalizability. By contrast, content analysis involves sifting through a large amount oftexts for specific content which indicates the presence or absence of variablesunder consideration (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 1). The content analyst creates a "dictionary" of relevant words and phrases and a "code book" which explainshow the phrases will be coded to each variable (Neuendorf and Skalski in Abdelal et al, 2009). Some content analysts use hand-coding, while others rely on theassistance of computer programs. Content analysis holds out the real possibility of replicatability and generalizability. However, content analysis runs therisk of artificiality; the analyst runs the risk of reading his or her own framework into the material. Coding bias and coder subjectivity are also potential problems (Neuendorf and Skalski in Abdelal et al, 2009). The analyst must clearly show the parameters by which a judgment was made as to whether the content inquestion showed or did not show the trait under examination. It is imperative to 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, thereby making discourse analysis, which can take years to analyze a single case,prohibitively difficult. Second, given the broad nature of the research question, replicatability and generalizability are both extremely important traits forthis study. However, content analysis' most serious weakness, artificiality, must be addressed. To that end, I intend to pair the content analysis with a traditional 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 explainthe coding used in each case, thereby increasing replicatability. Case studieswill allow for the creation of a more thorough hypothesis which the content analysis can then test. The use of both quantitative and qualitative methods willprovide 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 tobe analyzed, and a related question, what constitutes evidence for or against an ideational alliance between state and umma? Regarding the content, the objectis to analyze the state's attempt to deal with secession movements. Hence, thecontent analysis ought to deal with written material produced to persuade citizens of the seceding region to throw in their lot with the state. This might involve educational materials such as textbooks, propaganda pamphlets, speeches give

n by state leaders or territorial governors and other material of this sort. Speeches in particular are likely to have been translated into English, making them an excellent place to begin. What, then, would constitute evidence of an alliance between the state and the umma? Several possibilities suggest themselves: use of Islamic phraseology or symbolism, evocation of a common Islamic fraternityand, crucially, an attempt to draw on Islamic historical memory. This might involve the use of a common Islamic past, discussion of great Muslim heroes from local history or conspicuous references to the Prophet Mohammed. Obviously, direct discussion of the umma and its role in maintaining the unity of the state would be a very strong indicator. By contrast, evidence of a more conflictual relationship between state and umma might be found in the state's use of overtly secular language, discussion of the diversity of the state, attempt to draw on a more explicitly ethnic identity and so on. These are general guidelines, but in l

arge part, the cases themselves will differ in this regard. Intimate familiarity 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 case which was chosen.The Cases:

Case selection often involves achieving a delicate balance between similarity and variation. The primary variable on which I selected cases was, of course, Islam, or more specifically, a majority Muslim population. Within this parameter, I elected to seek similarity at the state level and variation in the seceding region. Of the cases which I have selected, all five are majority Muslimstates, three of the secession movements are or were Muslim and two were non-Muslim. I also selected, in part, based on regionalism. Four of the five cases occur within the Asian context, mostly because my recent research has focused on issues of nation and state in Asia (for obvious reasons). I have included one African case, but as the conclusion indicates, may consider enriching this case mix with more African and Middle Eastern cases if/when I undertake the actual analysis.

Aside from these intended similarities and variations, several others have 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 ethnicity. In one case, this privileging is de jure. One of the secession crises beganand ended in the 1960s and the other four began in the 1970s, of which one ended in that decade, the other in 1999, and the remaining two are still technicallyongoing, but currently enjoy cease-fires. Finally, there is the question of regime 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 haveveered between authoritarianism and democracy. The cases are: Indonesia, in itsstruggle 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 sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands formerly colonized by the Dutch East India Company, and later the Dutch government directly. Its geographic decentralizationcombined with the presence of many quite sizable non-Muslim populations make an

Islamic identity problematic for Indonesia, and any form of ethno-linguistic identity has, of necessity, been painstakingly constructed. Indonesian leaders have primarily relied on secular nationalism to shape an Indonesian identity and, hopefully, make it stick.

This has been neither a simple nor an easy task, and in the sixty yearsof Indonesian independence, the challenges have been manifold. Pancasila, the state ideology crafted by Sukarno and revised by Suharto, faced challenges, particularly from Islamist movements. Indonesian Islamists seeking an Islamic stateand, to one degree or another, wrapping themselves in the concept of the umma, have been a potent political force. However, Indonesian Islam itself faces steepinternal divisions which have limited, to a degree, the effectiveness of the country'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 traditions (Brown, 2004, page 118). Within the santri, there is a divide between traditionalists, represented by the Nahdlatul Ulama, and the Puritan modernists represented by Muhamadiyah (Brown, 2004, page 119-120). In general, Islamic partieswith an orientation toward international Islam have come from this latter tradition, while abangan and even NU have been more comfortable with an Indonesian nationalist identity. Indeed NU, particularly under its current leader Abdurrahman Wahid, has enjoyed rather chilly relations with organized political Islam (Stephens, 2006). The Indonesian state, particularly in its authoritarian period from 1953 to 1998, alternately fought and placated the Islamists, though the former far more often than the latter. Sukarno, wary of the Islamists, relied on thearmy and, later, the Indonesian Communist Party, for support (Brown, 2004, chapter 4). His successor Suharto brutally purged the Communists, leaving only the

army and the Islamists as potential supporters (Mcgregor, 2009). For the most part, he chose the army, certain amenable Islamic groups such as Nahdlatul Ulama,and wooing of the population through promises of economic growth. This changed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as he began courting the Islamists. His democratic successors have been more wary of the Islamists, who have fared poorlyin recent elections.

Understanding the backdrop of Indonesia's tense relationship with Islamists and its conflicted understanding of its own Islamicness helps place in perspective the two secession movements Indonesia has faced. There are actually three secession movements to choose from in Indonesia: Aceh East Timor and West Papua. The West Papuan conflict is less well-known and thoroughly researched, and as such was excluded in this design, though it may be reexamined in future. Of the three, only Aceh is a predominantly Muslim region, and Islam has played an important role in this conflict.

Located on the northern tip of Sumatra, Aceh is home to rich oil reserves and devout Muslims. Since independence, the Acehanese have desired greater autonomy from Java and a more Islamic state than Indonesia has been willing to provide. this was at least in part motivated by the probably accurate perception that the Javanese dominated the state, and out of a resistance to Indonesian centralization, as Van Clinken claims in his article "Big States and Little Independence Movements" (Van Clinken, 2000). Jakarta compounded these problems by placing bataks, another north Sumatran but largely Christian ethnic group, in positions of administrative authority in Aceh (Brown, 2004, page 142). Beyond any doubt however, Acehanese were uncomfortable with Indonesia's emphasis on secular nationalism. Initially, Acehanese sought to achieve their goals through an allianc

e with Masyumi, an Islamic party which formed a cabinet during the brief and fragmentary parliamentary period (Brown, 2004, pages 139-140). The rise of Sukarnodemonstrated 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 the Indonesian state was unlikely to accede to their demands, the locus of activism shifted toward independence. The GAM, or Free Aceh Movement, emerged in thiscontext 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 declaration of martial law and a military crackdown. Since this time, the Acehanesestruggle has alternated between violence and cease-fires, and recently a peace a

greement has been reached between President Yudhoyono and the rebels. Time willtell whether this peace proves a durable one.

East Timor could not be more different. For over 400 years, it was perhaps the sleepiest backwater of the increasingly threadbare Portuguese colonial empire. According to Alberto Arenas, who summarized colonial conditions in his article "Education and Nationalism in East Timor," the population was largely left to their own devices, development was almost non-existent and the island's primary export was a limited amount of high quality coffee (Arenas, 1998). The East Timorese were limited to slash and burn agriculture, education was not widelyavailable and easily eradicated diseases were widespread. With the fall of theSalazar 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 coloniesand regional players. Interestingly, Gorjao notes that, at the time, Portugal was already considering the possibility that East Timor would be given to Indonesia (Gorjao, 2000). In his article describing Portuguese and Australian policiestoward East Timor, Gorjao speaks of a reluctance on the part of the Portugueseto even consider independence for East Timor, on the basis that it could not survive on its own. Undeniably the Front for the Liberation of East Timor, or FRETELIN, had other ideas. FRETELIN, a popular party with some Marxist leanings, unilaterally declared independence in 1975, and not long after, Indonesia invaded.

As Arenas points out, the reasons for the Indonesian invasion were manyand varied (Arenas, 1998). Geopolitically, they were concerned both that FRETELIN would prove to be a Communist bridgehead within Southeast Asia and that the independence of East Timor would lead other restless regions within Indonesia in

a more separatist direction. Economically, Indonesia was interested in exploiting rich oil and natural gas resources off the East Timorese coast. Religiously,Indonesia wanted to increase its Christian (particularly Catholic) population through the addition of East Timor. With these mixed motives, Indonesia invadedEast Timor and officially declared it the twenty-seventh province. The majorityof the occupation period was marked by a rather heavy-handed Indonesian attemptto bring East Timor into the national fold, ranging from education to transmigration (a favorite policy of Suharto's which caused innumerable internal headaches for his successors), to the use of military force. The death toll is, of course, widely disputed, but was indisputably very high, particularly as a percentage of the small East Timorese population. The East Timorese resisted by popularizing use of Tetum, the most widely-spoken indigenous language, as well as Portuguese, and through joining, in truly staggering numbers, the Catholic church (Arenas, 1998). The church, ironically one of the institutions which the Indonesians had counted upon to bring East Timor into the fold, quickly became one of themost widespread and effective vehicles of resistance (Kohen, 2000). It is fairto say that Suharto's initial goal, creating an internal bulwark against the Islamists, increasing Indonesia's control over the region and suppressing Communism, backfired in almost every particular. In 1996, East Timorese bishop Carlos Belo and independence activist Jose Ramos Horta received the Nobel Peace Prize, thereby putting the Timorese struggle at the center of the world stage. With thefall of Suharto, Indonesia's will to hold onto East Timor evaporated, and the nation transitioned into UN stewardship and eventual independence.

In both Aceh and East Timor, Indonesia showed a desperate and intense willingness to do anything necessary to keep the seceding regions in the fold. Ce

rtainly, Aceh had real and East Timor hypothetical economic value. Yet particularly in the case of East Timor, the costs must have very quickly outweighed thepotential benefits. For Indonesia, at issue was not economy but integrity and i



dentity. Any secession, it was feared, might create a domino effect across thearchipelago, and threatened to invalidate the carefully constructed pancasila-based nationalism which sustained Indonesia throughout the authoritarian period.Thus any secession, even that of a region expropriated quite blatantly and illegally, must be fought tooth and nail. I hypothesize, however, that the essentially secular character of the community Indonesian state leaders have sought to imagine 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 ummawould only alienate the populous. More questionable is Aceh; if any ideationaluse of the umma occurred in this case, it would, I believe, be brief, half-hearted and almost entirely instrumental. In the world's largest Muslim country, theumma is, from the perspective of the secular state, more of a threat than an opportunity.Case 2: Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In multi-ethnic, multi-national Indonesia, secular nationalism was perhaps the state's only option in its quest for nationhood. Like Indonesia, Pakistan was multi-ethnic and contained minorities from other confessions. However, the circumstances surrounding Pakistan's formation made an Indonesian-style limitation on Islam's role within the national imagination all but impossible. Aisha

Jalal, a noted scholar of Pakistani nationalism, claims that the nation of Pakistan was almost accidental. As the process of decolonization moved forward in the Indian subcontinent, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, she argues, used partition as a bargaining chip in an attempt to gain greater power for the Muslim League within a United India, and possibly even make himself Prime Minister (Jalal, 2000). Evenin 1947, the Muslim League and Congress Party sought a mutually acceptable power-sharing agreement. Having failed to reach such an agreement, the British, Congress and the Muslim League agreed at last, and not without some violence, to a partition along confessional lines.

Thus, even at its outset, Pakistan was intended as a "Muslim homeland" in the subcontinent. State-building, however, would prove a difficult and elusive goal. From the start, the young nation faced severe ethnic tensions between Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, Pashtuns, Bengalis and the Muslim refugee population

from the rest of India or muhajirs (Ahmed in Brown and Ganguly, 1997, pages 86-89). Bengalis made up the largest ethnic group in the nation, but were separated 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 through Chinese air space. Adding to the tensions between West Pakistan and the predominately Bengali east was a wide disparity in access to the military and civilservice. Based on the British Indian military, Pakistan's new armed forces tilted heavily toward the so-called "martial races", Punjabis, Pashtuns and Baluchis; Bengalis were systematically under-represented (Ahmed in Brow and Ganguly, 1997). In the civil service, the muhajirs and to a lesser extent the Punjabis held many of the key posts, to the disadvantages of the other ethnic groups. It was these military and bureaucratic elites, combined with wealthy Punjabi landlords, who dominated the Pakistani state (Alavi, 1972). Unsurprisingly, they displayed very little interest in opening Pakistan to greater participation from sindhis or even poorer members of their own ethnic groups, let alone the Bengalis. East Pakistan received a considerably lesser share of the state's economic resources, though there is wide disagreement as to the extent of this disparity. TheBengali population was disadvantaged in other ways as well. In an attempt to create national unity, Jinnah proposed the adoption of Urdu as the national language, which antagonized the Bengali population greatly (Ahmed in Brow and Ganguly,1997). The elites of West Pakistan favored a highly centralized state, while the 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 nationalist and socialist party which could speak for all of the East Pakistani population (Ahmed in Baxter, 1998). Initially, the Awami League demanded increasing



autonomy, but expressed a desire to remain within Pakistan. As their strength grew however, so too did the reaction of the military and other West Pakistani governing classes against them. Throughout much of United Pakistan's history, themilitary ruled the country directly. In 1970, long-delayed elections were finally scheduled, and won by the Awami league. The military, with, it should be noted, the support of even left-leaning parties in West Pakistan, suspended the elections, refusing to certify the results (Ahmed in Brown and Ganguly, 1997). Th

e Awami League, finally convinced that autonomy would never be successful, pushed at last for independence. In the ensuing violence, the Bengali population experienced mass killings at the hands of an increasingly desperate Pakistani military. Seeing an opportunity, Pakistan's traditional rival India entered the waron the side of the secessionists and, with Indian assistance, the new state of Bangladesh was formed.

Once again, Pakistan's treatment of Bengali desires for first autonomy and later secession indicates that retaining East Pakistan was essential for Pakistan's self-identity. Even autonomy was anathema to the central government. Inpart, the problem was similar to that seen in Indonesia. The central governmentfeared, not without justification as subsequent events indicated, that the secession of East Pakistan would only embolden ethno-regional movements and weaken t

he identity which state leaders sought to construct. Thus, even after the secession of Bangladesh, Pakistan continued to pursue centralization and an attempt to sublimate ethnic differences. Islam has been a key ingredient in these attempts, as it was in the attempt to assimilate East Pakistan. As scholar of Pakistani government ethnicity policy Samina Ahmed dryly puts it, Pakistani leaders found Islam "insufficient" as a basis for their national identity (Ahmed in Brown and Ganguly, 1997). Craig Baxter goes further, arguing that the desire for an Islamic state identity was much stronger in West Pakistan than in the Eastern Bengali wing (Baxter, 1998, chapter 7). Thus, it is likely that state leaders attempted an alliance with the umma, and that this alliance actually intensified theconflict 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 process, 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 isdeeply steeped in Islam; the ruling dynasty claims dissent from the Prophet Mohammed and has a quite expansionist view of its own territoriality. This is not to say that colonization did not play a role in Morocco's secession crisis with Western Sahara, but it was unarguably less dramatic than in India, Pakistan or, as shall be demonstrated, Malaysia.

To say that the current dynasty of Morocco has ruled the country continuously since the seventeenth century is both a true and a false statement. The Alaouites, who claim dissent from the Prophet Mohammed through his daughter Fatima and son-in-law Ali, conquered the territory of present-day Morocco in the lateseventeenth century, yet their hold on it was spotty at times. Unlike previousrulers, the Alaouites did not have the support of any of Morocco's Berber or Bedouin tribes, leading them to attempt the creation of a centralized state, whichthe tribes resisted. The conflict between the central government and the tribes defined this period of Moroccan history, with the center gradually gaining theupper hand in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In some ways, the French protectorate, established over Morocco with the treaty of Fez in 1912, redefined this conflict. The French usurped the position of the center and quickly tried to assert it even more strongly than the previous sultans (Hahn, 1960). They built road and railway networks to link the coastal regions of Morocco to itshinterland, and attempted to subject the tribes to French courts and law. In particular the Berbers, who the French erroneously believed to be less committedto Islam than their Arab fellows, were pressured to assimilate to a degree of Fr

enchness (Hahn, 1960). This provoked a nationalist backlash, represented by theIstiqlal party, formed in 1940 and supported by the then Sultan. Though Francebanned 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 tohold onto its few remaining colonial possessions. One of these was the WesternSahara, a sparsely populated but mineral-rich desert area bordering Morocco. Spain was resisted by the Polisario Front. Like many post-colonial liberation movements, Polisario was socialist, in name at least, and sought the creation of a

sovereign state. Eventually, in 1975, Spain withdrew. Morocco, however, had nointerest in Sahrawi independence. Reasons for Morocco's desired annexation were mixed. In part, it may have stemmed from irredentist claims of "greater Morocco", a desire to unite all territory previously claimed by the Moroccan sultanate under its authority (Zoubir, 1993). King Hassan II may also have been motivated by a desire for Western Sahara's mineral resources and to thwart the potential spread of socialism. Whatever the reason, Hassan, immediately upon the Spanish withdrawal marched his army, and a throng of Moroccan civilians, into WesternSahara.

From 1975 to the present, a conflict has raged between Morocco and the Polisario Front which proclaimed the creation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and received support from the revolutionary regime in Algeria. The Morocca

n government, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, refused even to engage in talks with Polisario, only coming to the table when it faced ostracism from the never realized Maghreb Union (Zoubir, 1993). Hassan II claimed the Sahrawi resistance was an "Algerian-backed separatist movement", and hence not truly authentic (Zoubir, 1993). This kept relations between the two states tense; mutual recognitioncame only in 1988. In the Western Sahara, Morocco has established settlementsof Moroccan nationals, built massive walls to enclose territory and relied on aheavily military solution to the conflict. For all its efforts, the Sahrawi independence movement has remained a credible threat, and finally forced Morocco tothe 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 draw Sahrawi loyalty. The Sahrawi are, as the name of their would-be state indicates, 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 Sahrawi over to assimilation. This may, however, be complicated by the support of other Arab governments for the Sahrawi independence movement and the rising tideof Islamist opinion which is by and large hostile to the monarchy. Though my own background on the Moroccan western Sahara conflict is thinner than any of theothers, I remain confident that this case will provide methodological depth to the study.Case 4: Malaysia and Singapore.

In all of the above cases, the state in question has fought, usually literally, to keep the seceding region within the state. In the case of Malaysia and Singapore, the reverse is true. It was Singapore which fought to be includedin the Malaysian Federation, with the acquiescence of the then Malaysian PrimeMinister Tungu Abdul Rahman. Ultimately, after a brief association, it was Malaysia which expelled Singapore, though Singapore's leader Li Kuan Yu was not without responsibility for the eventual outcome.

Both the Sultanates which eventually came to comprise the Malay Federation and the island city state of Singapore were British colonial possessions, andfrom this colonial experience, inherited a complex ethnic picture. As they sought to exploit the rich natural resources of the peninsula, the British importedboth Chinese and Indian workers, leaving the indigenous Malay population to itstraditional agricultural economic activity (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). In Singapore, which rapidly emerged as a major hub of commerce in British Asia, the lightly 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 its 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 andlazy while the Chinese were industrious (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). This impression led to a favoritism toward the Chinese on the part of the British throughout



the colonial period. At independence, the Chinese dominated the educated professions such as doctors and accountants, it made up at least a plurality of the urban poor. Yet Malays remained a majority of the population, and resented deeplythe Chinese successes.

As Malaya drifted toward independence, it became clear that the Malays would demand and receive certain preferences in the new state. This was the origin 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 majority in an attempt to redress previous imbalances (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). Affirmative action, a highly controversial policy in the United States, was almost a matter of course for Malaysia. If Malays were to be privileged, so too wastheir religion. According to the Malay constitution, there are three elements to Malay identity: speaking the Malay language, participation in Malay culture and the practice of Islam (Nair, 1997). Consequently, Islam was made the officialstate religion and privileged above all competitors. At the same time, Malay leaders were savvy enough to know they could not alienate the Chinese and Indianpopulations too far. Though the United Malay National Organization or UMNO hasbeen Malaysia's governing party since independence, it is usually governed in coalition with ethnically Chinese and Indian parties. And while Islam is the offi

cial religion, for non-Malays at least, religious freedom is strongly guaranteedand, in so far as it does not conflict with Islam's prerogatives, respected. In this stance, UMNO has faced consistent opposition from Malay Islamic parties which advocate for a more Islamic state.

To understand Singapore's entry into and expulsion from this complex peninsular mix, one must first understand the fear of communism rampant in both Malaya and Singapore. The Malay Communist Party, a Chinese-dominated movement popular with the urban poor, waged a ten year war against the Malayo-British government. This conflict, known as the Malay emergency, resulted in the destruction of the MCP and was part of the impetus for the formation of the Malaysian Federation (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). On the Malaysian side, the desire to integrate Singapore stemmed from the latter's economic wealth and a desire to prevent Communism 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, buthis primary hope was to dilute the Singapori communists inside a country whichhad, by and large, dispatched its communists by 1963 (Mauzi, 2002). It was in this year that Singapore officially voted to join the Malaysian federation, and was welcomed by Prime Minister Abdul Rahman.

Two years later, Singapore was expelled again. The reasons for its expulsion are manifold. Certainly, the promised economic integration did not provide the immediate benefits expected on either side (Mauzi, 2002). Yet the primaryreason for the expulsion was ethnic tension, and Li Kuan Yu's support of a "Malaysia for all Malaysiansâ. Coming from a heavily Chinese-dominated Singapore, he and his People's Action Party were not willing to accept special status for the Malays, arguing that it amounted to discrimination and would prevent the formation of a Malaysian national consciousness (Mauzi, 2002). This in turn stoked fears among malays that Singapore's entry would create a Chinese-dominated Malaysiain which Malay culture, language and religion would again be subordinated. It was this fear of Li Kuan Yu's non-ethnic nationalist project which led Malaysia to expel Singapore in 1965. Though the outcome differed from the other cases, the imperative of the Malaysian state in essentially forcing Singapore's secession was actually very similar. Malay leaders saw retaining Singapore as a partof the Malaysian Federation as a threat to the national identity they had so carefully and painstakingly constructed. The largely material and ideological factors which argued in favor of Singapore's inclusion in 1963 were quickly overwhelmed by an identity-level conservatism and fear of change by 1965. Islam, as acornerstone of the Malay identity, played a pivotal role in this fear. Singapore's Muslim population was a distinct minority, thereby making the possibility of

assimilation into a Malay matrix all the more difficult. Those figures which emphasized the Islamic identity of the Malays were some of the fiercest advocatesfor 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 Singapore case shows, and subsequent Malaysian ethnic conflict indicates, this identification between the Malay and Islamic identities makes attempts to cooperatewith other ethnicities problematic at best.

Study of these four cases leads to a tentative hypothesis. In circumstances 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 secessioncrisis. By contrast, those states which have sought a more secular identity have been hesitant to make such an alliance. The cases appear to provide mixed results on the success of this ideational alliance. Pakistan's Islamic identity was not strong enough to prevent Bengali succession, but neither was its exclusion sufficient to keep East Timor in the Indonesian fold. Aceh and Western Sahararemain uncertain, though it seems more likely that Aceh will remain in Indonesia than that Western Sahara will not secede from Morocco. The Malaysian case represents an uncertain outcome; the Malay-dominated national identity protected itself 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 useful contribution to the body of literature concerned with Islamic nationalism, andcould demonstrate that the concept of an Islamic umma remains a potent challenge to it.

That said, there is room for improvement and clarification. This is most 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 concept is far less than that available on the state and the nation, which is, in part, the reason for the study. There is, however, perhaps room for improvement in positioning this paper relative to other relevant literature on the topic. Inregard to methodology, I am concerned about the difficulty of creating an effective 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, particularly in cases where a secession movement is still ongoing, will be assessing thestate's success or failure. It might also be useful to include in the eventualcoding table a marker indicating the state's broader view of Islam, though thiswill almost certainly come out in the case studies.

Finally, I believe that the case mix, while adequate, could be dramatically improved with some additions. Initially, I shied away from the inclusion ofArab or Middle Eastern cases. In Arabic, the term "umma" can mean not only theIslamic nation but also the Arab nation. At the time, I felt that this secondlevel on which the word might operate could unduly complicate an already highlycomplex picture. On further reflection however, I believe it might provide greater depth and power to the analysis. Thus, the project should add an examination of the ongoing secession crisis in Yemen. At present, I also believe the casemix between Muslim and non-Muslim secession movements is unbalanced. Two possibilities present themselves: subtract East Timor and Singapore and proceed onlywith Muslim on Muslim secession crises, or add additional non-Muslim cases, suchas the Sudan South Sudan conflict, the Nigeria Ibo secession struggle and Indonesia's ongoing conflict with West Papua. Though I remain uncertain as to the ultimate direction I will take, I lean toward adding more cases. Sudan, particularly after 1983, has been an Islamic state coping with a largely Christian and animist secession movement in the south. Though there are other factors, I believe this juxtaposition could add yet more depth and power. So too might analysisof the Nigeria-Ibo conflict. Indonesia and West Papua, while an interesting conflict in its own right, would only be worth adding if the results differed fromthose found in the case of East Timor.

Ultimately, I believe the project is worth pursuing. I find the research question, and all the factors which play into it, extremely interesting, and believe the study, with the above modifications, is constructed in such a way as



to make an answer feasible.

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26. Baxter, Craig: 'Bangladesh: From a Nation to a State', Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1997.

27. Hahn, Lorna: 'North Africa, Nationalism to Nationhood', Public Affairs Press, Washington DC, 1960.

28. Zoubir, Yahia and Volman Daniel: 'International Dimensions of the Western Sahara 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 Party', Routledge, New York, NY, 2002.

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

Abstract:

This paper seeks to create a research design whereby the inter-relationshipbetween a pan-Islamic identityâthe ummaâand various national identities may be examin. Secession movements within the Muslim worldâin which identity contestation is a na

tural part of the conflictâprovide a natural context for such an investigation. Thepaper recommends a mixed-methods approach comprised of content analysis and in-depth case studies, to determine the degree and variety of contestation between t



hese two identities in secession crises. Cases are evaluated based on their ability to provide a balanced picture of the question, and their applicability to the question at hand. Ultimately, the paper concludes that such a research designis 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 dawns, they seem to grow more common still. Yet, despite widespread reports of its demise, the uneasy accord between nation and state remains. New states, such as East Timor and Eritrea have joined the sovereign state order while others, from Somaliland to Western Sahara, Quebec to West Papua, seek admission by secession. Though the state appears in retreat in its ancient European heartland, it isworth noting that, even in the European Union, the state is the basic unit at which members must be admitted, and political integration remains patchy and reluctant.

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 interdependent global economy places a strain on the ability of many states to preserve their boundaries, and across the world, regional organizations have begun tovie for the loyalty which states attempt so jealously to guard.

Aside from all of these concrete threats, states often face ideologicalcompetitors for that very loyalty. For Muslim states, it is possible that theirreligion itself constitutes such an ideological threat. To be sure, all religions, to one extent or another, threaten the totalizing desire of the state. Infact, if we take the peace of Westphalia as the beginning point of the state system, as most scholars of international politics are wont to do, then its first real antagonist came in religious form. The Roman Catholic Church, seeing in Westphalia the potential death of its already tattered claim to universal authorityin 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 nation-state system since this time, but, as Daniel Philpott argues in the end of his book 'Revolutions in Sovereignty', Catholicism's view of a fixed, static, divine order apart from the state may represent a still enduring challenge to the nation-state system (Philpott, 2001, page 261-262).

For all the difficulties Roman Catholicism may pose to the nation-statesystem, that posed by Islam may be greater. This threat is not limited to the rise 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 ofthe jihadists' interpretations are to the heart of their religion. Yet clearlyand 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 classifies it as a concept of sacred authority not dissimilar from Christendom, which is a good beginning (Anderson, 2006, pages 11-12).

There are three distinct differences between the concepts of umma and Christendom however. First, Christendom was animated by the Roman Catholic Church, a real and discernable religious structure held in tension with kings and other proto-state leaders. In Islam, the caliphate, while technically existing until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, lost potency centuries before. In anyevent, the Caliphate never held the same level of religious authority as the papacy, partially because Islam itself has less of a concept of structural authority than do the historic Christian churches which existed in the age of Christendom. Second, political authority was construed differently in Christendom than itis in the umma. For Christians, the church and the state were seen as distinct

, though sometimes overlapping institutions. This was particularly true in thewest, where the Roman Catholic Church outlasted the empire, but did not seek direct 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 not as absolute, in either sphere, as that of the bishop of Rome grew in the western church.

Finally, and perhaps most consequentially, we may truly speak of Christendom in the past tense. Whether we speak of an Andersonian change in the imagination, or a revolution in sovereignty such as Philpott envisions, or view the emergence 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 Years War and Peace of Westphalia, and was replaced by the nation-state system. Some argue that the change was quick, while others see it taking centuries, but that it has happened is undeniable. In Islam, by contrast, a universal political idea retains the power to move populations, and words such as Umma and Caliphatestill conjure intense loyalty, and politically effective loyalty it would seem,among devout believers. This is not a difficult fact to ascertain. The occupation of the Palestinian territories often moves Muslims in completely unrelated regions of the world to protests so fierce as to affect the foreign policy of their states. A statement to the Pope about Islam, cartoons in Denmark seen as derogatory toward the Prophet Mohammed and even statements by televangelists abouthim, 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 statues of the Virgin Mary made out of elephant dung, or the treatment of Christians in countries such as China, Burma, Egypt or Pakistan, none of which have created the same level of outcry in Christian countries. Clearly, there is a sense of Muslim unity which accedes that felt by Christians in its political potency, and which is tied to the sense of Islamic nationhood or "umma".

For Muslim state leaders, the concept of "umma" must be a decidedly mixed blessing. While at times state leaders have successfully harnessed this broadsense of Islamic nationhood to distract their populations from unfavorable domestic conditions at home, more often than not, this universalism is troublesome to them. States, jealous of their prerogatives, are skeptical of such universalloyalties, which might ultimately weaken their foundations. Nationalists mightbe 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 nations into states. Others are state leaders themselves, attempting to use nationalism to strengthen the bonds of the state or, in effect, make their states intonations. Whatever their imperatives, nationalists operating in a Muslim contextmust ultimately see the umma as a rival. Though there is considerable debate about the sources of nations and nationalism and the relationship between nationsand states (see the literature review below), nations, like states, require theloyalty of their people, and claim and jealously. With its claims to universalism, the umma has the potential to weaken the drive of nationalists to hold thisclaim.

How Muslim state leaders and state-level nationalists have dealt with this inherent danger from their own religion is the subject of this research design. In particular, I aspire to examine the tripartite struggle between state, nation and umma. To do this, I intend to focus on a flash point for state and national conflict, within an Islamic context. No where is the state's struggle fornationality and the nation's struggle for statehood more clearly demonstrated than in secession crises. Examining the way in which states respond to secessionmovements within their borders shows us the level of confidence they feel in their own nationhood, the ways in which they construe it and the lengths they arewilling to go to protect it. Examining the way in which Muslim states have responded to secession movements will demonstrate how Muslim states self-identify and the lengths to which they are willing to go to protect that identity, and mayshed light on the ways in which they have grappled with the Islamic universalisminherent in the concept of umma.Literature review:

It is perhaps best to begin the literature review discussion of the paper 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 whichit occurs. As the cases explored in this study will demonstrate clearly, Islamvaries widely from nation to nation and state to state, and sometimes within these two categories. Yet, in the same way that we must avoid the "monolithic orientalism" of which Edward Said is so wary, so too we must avoid his deep skepticism about our ability to speak of Islam at all. Said, in 'Orientalism, skirts dangerously close to arguing that members of one culture cannot say anything usef

ul about another. His skepticism, in the Muslim context at least, seems rebukedby the fact that over a billion Muslims not only imagine themselves part of a community, the umma, but share common characteristics, a common ethical system and a strong and, as was mentioned in the introduction to this study, politicallypowerful and relevant identification with one another. Thus, for the purposes of this paper, Islam is understood as an inter-subjective identity constantly created and recreated by the world's Muslims within the parameters laid out by theKoran, 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 regarding the origins of modern Islamic political discourse and identity. It is common 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 argument in his book 'Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma' (Mandaville, 2001). Certainly, it is a mantle which Muslim intellectuals have attempted to claim for their religion and its discourse. I also take Olivier Roy to bemaking a similar argument in his book Globalized Islam' (Roy, 2004). The gentlemen in question do not appear to be arguing that the concept of the umma and Muslim solidarity emerged as a result of the anti-colonial struggle, but rather that they reemerged in this context. Of course, like most scholarship concerned with "post-colonial" matters, colonialism is very narrowly defined as occupation by a western metropole across an ocean from the colonized region in question. Else, 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 mention previous dynasties) and so on. Nor do they explain the wild resurgence of Islamist politics against many of the very post-colonial elites who "liberated" their states in the first place.

It is undeniable, however, that there has been a resurgence of the ummaconsciousness, and if not in response to western colonialism, to what? The answer, I believe, is that the rise of Islamism and other political "umma" thinking is, at least in part, a response to the rise of the nation, and the rise of the state. It is the common variable present between the colonial powers and their post-colonial successors. As Philpott makes clear in his section on colonialismin âRevolutions in Sovereignty', the colonial powers had very different end games for their colonial projects: self-government in the case of the British and integration with a global but distinctly national empire in France's case (Philpott, 2001, chapters 9 and 12). Both, however, placed the concept of the state, and insome ways the nation, in the direct path of the Muslim world. To the British,self-government meant self-governing nation-states. To the French, integrationwith the French state meant integration into the French nation. Post-colonial elites, as Philpott demonstrates, were inculcated into the ideals of the nation-state, and made nationalism and state-based self-determination a key part of their discourse (Philpott, 2001, Chapter 11). Thus, even after the colonial powershad withdrawn, they left behind their foreign notions of state and nation, anathema to the traditional concept of the umma. By contrast, other colonizers, suchas the Ottomans, the Tsars and the various empires which dotted the Islamic past, brought with them neither the concept of state nor nation. Certainly, it hasbeen 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 theory. Yet there are some important distinctions between empires and both nations 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 inempires versus states and nations. For empires, authority is societally limited but geographically universal. By contrast, states and nations both demand absolute loyalty, and seek to project totalizing authority, in geographically constrained areas.

Let us begin with a brief examination of empires. As Stanley Tambiah argues in the context of Southeast Asia (Tambiah, 1977), and Andre Wink likewise d

emonstrates in the Indian subcontinent (Wink, 1984), traditional imperial polities regard themselves as universal, encompassing or claiming to encompass the entirety of the world they knew. They needed no maps or fixed boundaries, since their claims were universal. Often, as was the case in Southeast Asia, a center or locus justified its "heavenly" or "galactic" claims based on the number of satellites it added or lost (tambiah, 2006). At times, as Wink shows, rival claimants skirmished upon running into one another (Wink, 1984). In any case, the self-conception of these empires was geographically unbounded. By contrast, the claim 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 nations, it is worth dwelling on these two concepts at greater length. The state hasits detractors and defenders, and the range of explanations for its formation runs the gamut. For Karl Schmidt, the state is a natural, and a highly desirable, organization for society, which emerges from inherent us them distinctions (Lilla, 1997). For Marxists (or modified Marxists such as Hamsa Alavi or Hart andNegri), 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 most efficient means of making war(Tilly, 1992). For Daniel Philpott it was the result of an ideational revolution caused by Europe's encounter with the Protestant Reformation (Philpott, 2001). James Scott sees the state as a malignant entity attempting to socially engineer society on every level (Scott, 1998). For Kenneth 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 the state (Dyson, 1981). Notwithstanding all of their wide differences, these scholars broadly agree about certain aspects of the state. First, the state, mostcontend, is centralized and seeks absolute authority. For Schmidt this is a good thing, for Scott it is not, but both agree about the state's drive for absolute control. Philpott claims that the idea of a monolithic state sovereign: "insubstance if not in name, comes directly out of the very propositions of Protestant theology, in all of its variants" (Philpott, 2001, page 108). Second, the state is deliberately conceived as a geographically bounded entity. Winichakul makes 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 map their boundaries as part of this process (Winichakul, 1994). Mapping and boundaries are an essential part of the state system, and indeed, a cause for many of the wars within it.

Like the state, the nation is also a socially totalizing but geographically bounded entity. No thinker makes this more clear than does Benedict Anderson in his now classic work 'Imagined Communities' (Anderson, 2006). For Anderson, the nation is a community which simultaneously imagines itself into being. The word simultaneous is used here quite deliberately. Anderson claims that, through newspapers and other national media, the pre-existing "sacred time" in whichpast, 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 Anderson, an important aspect of national development was the destruction of "sacred languages" such as Latin. Andersonian nationalism does not emphasize geographicboundedness 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 inwhich the nation is not or cannot be universalized. For Walker Connor, who views 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 people which can imagine a blood kinship, in a sense, a family, clan or tribe writlarge. In the great internal debate among nationalist scholars between primordialism and constructivism, Connor, though leaning in a constructivist directiondue to his caveat that the blood relationship need not actually exist, is almosta both and. For Connor, the loyalty claimed by the nation is that owed to a family, which he believes naturally trumps not only ideological but also, one assu

mes, religious boundaries. Anderson and Connor differ to some extent on the relationship they envision between the nation and the state. For Anderson, nationsand states often operate on the same level, in other words, the nation and thestate are very regularly synonymous. This becomes clear in his discussion of Latin America, and the nationalism which he imagines to have emerged there (Anderson, 2006, Chapter 4). For Connor, most states and nations are in starkly different and usually opposed juxtaposition. True nation-states, for Connor, are vanishingly rare, and he makes a distinction between nationalism and patriotism (Connor, 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, there is, on both sides of the divide, an impulse to conjoin the two. Nations, as Connor 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 which he views as extremely recent), states may also seek nationhood (Connor, 1994,Chapter 9). My understanding of states and nations, and hence the understandingoperative in this paper, is that, while not always and everywhere synonymous, each seeks over time to become the other.

Ultimately, neither is as compatible with the umma conception as the previously dominant imperial conception. Like many of the ancient empires, the Caliphate and most Muslim empires claimed universal geographic dominion. The nature of their claims to authority varied somewhat. Under most Muslim rule, a certain circumscribed religious liberty was provided to non-Muslims. In many of theempires, there were also limits to the authority claimed by the center over peripheral 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 themselves readily to accommodate the umma, and non-Muslim empires left Muslims largely 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 umma tends to be jealous, nations and states seek to occupy space in the imagination of Muslims which Islam, through the imagined community of the umma, has already claimed. And unlike Christendom, the Islamic umma has not given up its imaginative weapons, such as sacred time and a sacred language. Koranic Arabic retains its traditional potency, and a Muslim conception of time, which views eventssuch as the crusades, Mongol invasions and death of the Prophet in much more recent terms than do westerners embedded in homogeneous empty time, has not given up its hold on much of the Muslim world. This places nation and state-makers inMuslim societies, often synonymous, in a cleft stick of sorts. On one hand, toignore Islam robs them of a potential source of unity, and in many cases, as Connor points out, ethnicity and religion are tightly intertwined. On the other hand, attempting to use Islam for the purpose of imagining a national consciousness has clear pitfalls of its own. Even in the best of times, threading this needle is a highly complex process for state and national leaders.

This difficulty is intensified in instances of secession, and it is to an analysis of secession literature that this review must finally turn. It is important to specify that secession does not refer to a call for greater autonomywithin a state, or some form of special federalism, but rather a violent or non-violent movement calling for withdrawal from the state of which a region or nation is a part and the formation of a new state. Secession, then, is the instanceat 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 toits legitimacy, which has led state-centric theorists of secession such as Linda 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 might do to the international order outweighs any moral arguments the secessionistsmight put forward. Most scholars are more permissive, with some, such as HarryBeran, arguing for a radical model in which even the smallest community ought tohave the right of secession (Beran in Lehning, 1998). Beran's hyper-cosmopolitanism, which envisions a "nested boxes" theory of authority, is highly impractical 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 AllenM. Buchanan. His theory, though more permissive than that of Bishai, still retains 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 secessionist region suffers extreme injustice perpetrated by the state from which it wishes to secede, or if the state does not protect it from injustice perpetrated by outsiders, secession may be morally justified. Second, even in the absence of such injustice, secession may be morally justified if the culture of that distinct 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 government created by secession should also not be illiberal. Finally, even if the two above qualifications are not met, a region may secede if the state in question does not have a valid territorial claim over the region in question. These three reasons do not operate entirely independently of one another for Buchanan; avalid territorial claim may be made invalid by grievous injustice, a valid territorial claim may weaken the cultural claim, and so on. Thus, we can see that for Buchanan, the moral right to secede, while it is very real, is highly conditional. He is preoccupied with respecting the rights of states, as is the international system as a whole.

As Buchanan comprehensively answers the ought question "should secessionbe allowed?" Viva Ona Bartkus attempts to answer the "is" question, "how do secession movements form"? In her book The Dynamic of Secession, Bartkus creates a

matrix of necessary preconditions for secession and a calculus which, in some informal mechanism, secessionist groups and the populous of their regions seem toapply as they decide whether or not to secede. In order first to even considersecession, there must, she asserts, be: a distinct community, a geographic center of gravity, leadership for this geographically-center community and a sense ofdiscrimination by the state (Bartkus, 1999). This in some ways mirrors the conditions laid down normatively by Buchanan. Bartkus further stipulates to four calculations which determine a movement's willingness to try secession: benefitsof secession, costs of secession, benefits to staying in the state and costs tostaying in the state. She is very explicit that such costs and benefits are often non-material, which sets her analysis apart from the pure rational choice view. Still, Bartkus argues that the decision to secede or not to secede is ultimately a rational one which results from interest calculations.

For a state too, there are calculations to be made. How might a potential secession effect the legitimacy of the state? Does it support or undercut thenarrative upon which identity is constructed? What are the costs of violent suppression, and what are the potential benefits? In Islamic states, where the notion of umma cuts against both nation and state, and hence might threaten both thestate's and the would-be seceding region's state and national projects, the ideational picture becomes yet more complicated.Defining the Research Question: under what circumstances and with what degree ofsuccess does a Muslim state ideationally cooperate with the umma in an attemptto prevent secession?

The preceding review of relevant literature indicates a complex pictureof 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 Muslim state, we might see three competing imagined communal identities, a state seeking 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, the umma would have little ideational power in the seceding region. In a Muslimregion seceding from a non-Muslim state, a high level of convergence between theumma and the seceding region might be possible during the struggle of independence at least, as Islam would help define the seceding region against its state.

In formulating a research question which might effectively seek to measure 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 copes with secession and umma, an examination of seceding regions and their use oravoidance of an imaginative entente with the umma, or a study of the umma itselfas 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, gathering information on states is much easier than either regions or an amorphous ideational 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 order is heavily stacked in its favor and it will more likely than not have greater economic, military and media resources. Finally, the Muslim state, with itsdrive toward nationhood in tension with the universalizing umma, has probably th

e most interesting balancing act of the three. Muslim secessionists also have interesting pressures, but their overriding imperative is the conflict with the state. For the state, the secession crisis is often only part of its preoccupation. More often than not, the umma is making itself felt at the same time, adding pressure to which action the state takes.

Thus, the focus of the question will be on states, Muslim states in particular, with secession crises. The object then, is to examine the ways in whichthe Muslim state either allies with or conflicts with the umma in its ideational battle against secession, and under what circumstances. In the event that states do in fact ideationally ally with the umma, it would also be worthwhile to measure the relative success of the alliance. This alliance might involve a state relying heavily on the umma as a crutch, positioning itself as a defender of the 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 state essentially co-opts the umma instrumentally or cynically for its own purposes. I will formulate the question as follows: under what circumstances and withwhat degree of success does a Muslim state ideationally cooperate with the ummain an attempt to prevent secession? A wide variety of answers are possible. States might never, sometimes, often or always cooperate with the umma in some formto battle secession, and such cooperation might never, sometimes, often or always be successful.Methodology:

Essentially, this research question seeks to measure the comparative power of competing identities on state-leaders and secession-minded populations. In particular, it seeks an assessment of state leadersâ own perception of their stateâsdentity relative to the concepts of ânationâ and âummaâ, and the receptivity of woonist regions to this conception. Measuring identity is a highly complex and often difficult task, and many scholars have questioned whether such measurement is even possible. Recently however, a growing body of scholarship has attemptedto create methods by which identity can be measured, usually by borrowing from other disciplines. Of particular note in this regard is the edited volume by Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston and McDermott entitled measuring Identity' (Abdelal et al, 2009). The authors, in chapter 2 of this work, define identity based on twoaspects: content and contestation (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 2). Content mayconsist of four types: constitutive norms (who we are), social purposes (what we want), relational comparisons based on other similar groups (who we are not based on who they are) and cognitive maps (how we see the world). Contestation isthe 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 twocomponents, the authors ultimately make it into a measurable variable. These two elements of identity mesh rather well with this paperâs research question. By thei



r very nature, secession crises entail a high degree of identity contestation, thereby allowing the researcher a unique window into the ways in which Muslims inthese nations define themselves. While it may be argued that the authors lean perhaps too heavily on the fluidity of identity, their definition still retains enough substance for usage even by those with a less flexible view of identity formation and, importantly, provide a good framework for measuring the highly intangible concepts with which this paper is concerned.

Once identity has been defined, Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston and McDermottdraw 'together a number of authors with very different methodologies. Of all the methods they describe, content analysis and discourse analysis seem most potentially useful for this project. Discourse analysis involves thick descriptionbased on the author's deep familiarity with the identity under study and an emersion 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 Abdelal, 2009). Though highly relevant and descriptive, discourse analysis lackstwo key aspects of social science experiments, replicatability and generalizability. By contrast, content analysis involves sifting through a large amount oftexts for specific content which indicates the presence or absence of variables

under consideration (Abdelal et al, 2009, chapter 1). The content analyst creates a "dictionary" of relevant words and phrases and a "code book" which explainshow the phrases will be coded to each variable (Neuendorf and Skalski in Abdelal et al, 2009). Some content analysts use hand-coding, while others rely on theassistance of computer programs. Content analysis holds out the real possibility of replicatability and generalizability. However, content analysis runs therisk of artificiality; the analyst runs the risk of reading his or her own framework into the material. Coding bias and coder subjectivity are also potential problems (Neuendorf and Skalski in Abdelal et al, 2009). The analyst must clearly show the parameters by which a judgment was made as to whether the content inquestion showed or did not show the trait under examination. It is imperative to avoid, as much as possible, arbitrary coding and to make clear to the reader the reasons for a given coding judgment.

Notwithstanding these very real concerns, content analysis is almost certainly the best method for examining this research question. First, this study,in attempting to measure identity variation, will require more than one case, thereby making discourse analysis, which can take years to analyze a single case,prohibitively difficult. Second, given the broad nature of the research question, replicatability and generalizability are both extremely important traits forthis study. However, content analysis' most serious weakness, artificiality, must be addressed. To that end, I intend to pair the content analysis with a traditional comparative case study. Not only will a case study provide the readerwith a detailed frame for each individual body of content, but will help explainthe coding used in each case, thereby increasing replicatability. Case studieswill allow for the creation of a more thorough hypothesis which the content analysis can then test. The use of both quantitative and qualitative methods willprovide 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 tobe analyzed, and a related question, what constitutes evidence for or against an ideational alliance between state and umma? Regarding the content, the objectis to analyze the state's attempt to deal with secession movements. Hence, thecontent analysis ought to deal with written material produced to persuade citizens of the seceding region to throw in their lot with the state. This might involve educational materials such as textbooks, propaganda pamphlets, speeches given by state leaders or territorial governors and other material of this sort. Speeches in particular are likely to have been translated into English, making them an excellent place to begin. What, then, would constitute evidence of an alliance between the state and the umma? Several possibilities suggest themselves: u

se of Islamic phraseology or symbolism, evocation of a common Islamic fraternityand, crucially, an attempt to draw on Islamic historical memory. This might involve the use of a common Islamic past, discussion of great Muslim heroes from l



ocal history or conspicuous references to the Prophet Mohammed. Obviously, direct discussion of the umma and its role in maintaining the unity of the state would be a very strong indicator. By contrast, evidence of a more conflictual relationship between state and umma might be found in the state's use of overtly secular language, discussion of the diversity of the state, attempt to draw on a more explicitly ethnic identity and so on. These are general guidelines, but in large 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 case which was chosen.The Cases:

Case selection often involves achieving a delicate balance between similarity and variation. The primary variable on which I selected cases was, of course, Islam, or more specifically, a majority Muslim population. Within this parameter, I elected to seek similarity at the state level and variation in the seceding region. Of the cases which I have selected, all five are majority Muslimstates, three of the secession movements are or were Muslim and two were non-Muslim. I also selected, in part, based on regionalism. Four of the five cases occur 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 African case, but as the conclusion indicates, may consider enriching this case mix with more African and Middle Eastern cases if/when I undertake the actual analysis.

Aside from these intended similarities and variations, several others have 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 ethnicity. In one case, this privileging is de jure. One of the secession crises beganand ended in the 1960s and the other four began in the 1970s, of which one ended in that decade, the other in 1999, and the remaining two are still technicallyongoing, but currently enjoy cease-fires. Finally, there is the question of regime type, and here too there is a great deal of variation. One state is a hereditary monarchy, another an authoritarian democracy, and the remaining two have

veered between authoritarianism and democracy. The cases are: Indonesia, in itsstruggle with Aceh on the one hand and East Timor on the other, Pakistan and the 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 sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands formerly colonized by the Dutch East India Company, and later the Dutch government directly. Its geographic decentralizationcombined with the presence of many quite sizable non-Muslim populations make anIslamic identity problematic for Indonesia, and any form of ethno-linguistic identity has, of necessity, been painstakingly constructed. Indonesian leaders have primarily relied on secular nationalism to shape an Indonesian identity and, hopefully, make it stick.

This has been neither a simple nor an easy task, and in the sixty yearsof Indonesian independence, the challenges have been manifold. Pancasila, the state ideology crafted by Sukarno and revised by Suharto, faced challenges, particularly from Islamist movements. Indonesian Islamists seeking an Islamic stateand, to one degree or another, wrapping themselves in the concept of the umma, have been a potent political force. However, Indonesian Islam itself faces steepinternal divisions which have limited, to a degree, the effectiveness of the country's Islamist movement. The most basic division is between the santri, or modernists, and the abangan, syncretic Muslims who draw on many pre-Islamic traditions (Brown, 2004, page 118). Within the santri, there is a divide between traditionalists, represented by the Nahdlatul Ulama, and the Puritan modernists represented by Muhamadiyah (Brown, 2004, page 119-120). In general, Islamic parties

with an orientation toward international Islam have come from this latter tradition, while abangan and even NU have been more comfortable with an Indonesian nationalist identity. Indeed NU, particularly under its current leader Abdurrahma



n Wahid, has enjoyed rather chilly relations with organized political Islam (Stephens, 2006). The Indonesian state, particularly in its authoritarian period from 1953 to 1998, alternately fought and placated the Islamists, though the former far more often than the latter. Sukarno, wary of the Islamists, relied on thearmy and, later, the Indonesian Communist Party, for support (Brown, 2004, chapter 4). His successor Suharto brutally purged the Communists, leaving only thearmy 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 changed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as he began courting the Islamists. His democratic successors have been more wary of the Islamists, who have fared poorlyin recent elections.

Understanding the backdrop of Indonesia's tense relationship with Islamists and its conflicted understanding of its own Islamicness helps place in perspective the two secession movements Indonesia has faced. There are actually three secession movements to choose from in Indonesia: Aceh East Timor and West Papua. The West Papuan conflict is less well-known and thoroughly researched, and as such was excluded in this design, though it may be reexamined in future. Of the 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 reserves and devout Muslims. Since independence, the Acehanese have desired greater autonomy from Java and a more Islamic state than Indonesia has been willing to provide. this was at least in part motivated by the probably accurate perception that the Javanese dominated the state, and out of a resistance to Indonesian centralization, as Van Clinken claims in his article "Big States and Little Independence Movements" (Van Clinken, 2000). Jakarta compounded these problems by placing bataks, another north Sumatran but largely Christian ethnic group, in positions of administrative authority in Aceh (Brown, 2004, page 142). Beyond any doubt however, Acehanese were uncomfortable with Indonesia's emphasis on secular nationalism. Initially, Acehanese sought to achieve their goals through an alliance 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 Sukarnodemonstrated clearly the limits of the alliance with masyumi, and so calls began for self-determination through autonomy. Over time, as it became clear that the Indonesian state was unlikely to accede to their demands, the locus of activism shifted toward independence. The GAM, or Free Aceh Movement, emerged in thiscontext 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 declaration of martial law and a military crackdown. Since this time, the Acehanesestruggle has alternated between violence and cease-fires, and recently a peace agreement has been reached between President Yudhoyono and the rebels. Time willtell whether this peace proves a durable one.

East Timor could not be more different. For over 400 years, it was perhaps the sleepiest backwater of the increasingly threadbare Portuguese colonial empire. According to Alberto Arenas, who summarized colonial conditions in his article "Education and Nationalism in East Timor," the population was largely left to their own devices, development was almost non-existent and the island's primary export was a limited amount of high quality coffee (Arenas, 1998). The East Timorese were limited to slash and burn agriculture, education was not widelyavailable and easily eradicated diseases were widespread. With the fall of theSalazar regime in 1974, Portugal began divesting itself of its former colonies.According to Paulo Gorjao, this was a perplexing time for the Portuguese, marked by political unrest and conflicting messages sent to both its former coloniesand regional players. Interestingly, Gorjao notes that, at the time, Portugal was already considering the possibility that East Timor would be given to Indonesia (Gorjao, 2000). In his article describing Portuguese and Australian policies

toward East Timor, Gorjao speaks of a reluctance on the part of the Portugueseto even consider independence for East Timor, on the basis that it could not survive 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, unilaterally declared independence in 1975, and not long after, Indonesia invaded.

As Arenas points out, the reasons for the Indonesian invasion were manyand varied (Arenas, 1998). Geopolitically, they were concerned both that FRETELIN would prove to be a Communist bridgehead within Southeast Asia and that the independence of East Timor would lead other restless regions within Indonesia ina 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 through the addition of East Timor. With these mixed motives, Indonesia invadedEast Timor and officially declared it the twenty-seventh province. The majorityof the occupation period was marked by a rather heavy-handed Indonesian attemptto bring East Timor into the national fold, ranging from education to transmigration (a favorite policy of Suharto's which caused innumerable internal headaches for his successors), to the use of military force. The death toll is, of course, widely disputed, but was indisputably very high, particularly as a percentage of the small East Timorese population. The East Timorese resisted by popularizing use of Tetum, the most widely-spoken indigenous language, as well as Portuguese, and through joining, in truly staggering numbers, the Catholic church (Are

nas, 1998). The church, ironically one of the institutions which the Indonesians had counted upon to bring East Timor into the fold, quickly became one of themost widespread and effective vehicles of resistance (Kohen, 2000). It is fairto say that Suharto's initial goal, creating an internal bulwark against the Islamists, increasing Indonesia's control over the region and suppressing Communism, backfired in almost every particular. In 1996, East Timorese bishop Carlos Belo and independence activist Jose Ramos Horta received the Nobel Peace Prize, thereby putting the Timorese struggle at the center of the world stage. With thefall of Suharto, Indonesia's will to hold onto East Timor evaporated, and the nation transitioned into UN stewardship and eventual independence.

In both Aceh and East Timor, Indonesia showed a desperate and intense willingness to do anything necessary to keep the seceding regions in the fold. Certainly, 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 thepotential benefits. For Indonesia, at issue was not economy but integrity and identity. Any secession, it was feared, might create a domino effect across thearchipelago, and threatened to invalidate the carefully constructed pancasila-based nationalism which sustained Indonesia throughout the authoritarian period.Thus any secession, even that of a region expropriated quite blatantly and illegally, must be fought tooth and nail. I hypothesize, however, that the essentially secular character of the community Indonesian state leaders have sought to imagine makes an ideational alliance with the umma all but impossible. This is particularly the case in Catholic East Timor, where discussion of the Muslim ummawould only alienate the populous. More questionable is Aceh; if any ideationaluse of the umma occurred in this case, it would, I believe, be brief, half-hearted and almost entirely instrumental. In the world's largest Muslim country, theumma is, from the perspective of the secular state, more of a threat than an opportunity.Case 2: Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In multi-ethnic, multi-national Indonesia, secular nationalism was perhaps the state's only option in its quest for nationhood. Like Indonesia, Pakistan was multi-ethnic and contained minorities from other confessions. However, the circumstances surrounding Pakistan's formation made an Indonesian-style limitation on Islam's role within the national imagination all but impossible. AishaJalal, a noted scholar of Pakistani nationalism, claims that the nation of Pakistan was almost accidental. As the process of decolonization moved forward in the Indian subcontinent, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, she argues, used partition as a bargaining 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). Evenin 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 partition along confessional lines.

Thus, even at its outset, Pakistan was intended as a "Muslim homeland" in the subcontinent. State-building, however, would prove a difficult and elusive goal. From the start, the young nation faced severe ethnic tensions between Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, Pashtuns, Bengalis and the Muslim refugee populationfrom the rest of India or muhajirs (Ahmed in Brown and Ganguly, 1997, pages 86-

89). Bengalis made up the largest ethnic group in the nation, but were separated 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 through Chinese air space. Adding to the tensions between West Pakistan and the predominately Bengali east was a wide disparity in access to the military and civilservice. Based on the British Indian military, Pakistan's new armed forces tilted heavily toward the so-called "martial races", Punjabis, Pashtuns and Baluchis; Bengalis were systematically under-represented (Ahmed in Brow and Ganguly, 1997). In the civil service, the muhajirs and to a lesser extent the Punjabis held many of the key posts, to the disadvantages of the other ethnic groups. It was these military and bureaucratic elites, combined with wealthy Punjabi landlords, who dominated the Pakistani state (Alavi, 1972). Unsurprisingly, they displa

yed very little interest in opening Pakistan to greater participation from sindhis or even poorer members of their own ethnic groups, let alone the Bengalis. East Pakistan received a considerably lesser share of the state's economic resources, though there is wide disagreement as to the extent of this disparity. TheBengali population was disadvantaged in other ways as well. In an attempt to create national unity, Jinnah proposed the adoption of Urdu as the national language, which antagonized the Bengali population greatly (Ahmed in Brow and Ganguly,1997). The elites of West Pakistan favored a highly centralized state, while the 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 theconcerns 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 population (Ahmed in Baxter, 1998). Initially, the Awami League demanded increasingautonomy, but expressed a desire to remain within Pakistan. As their strength grew however, so too did the reaction of the military and other West Pakistani governing classes against them. Throughout much of United Pakistan's history, themilitary ruled the country directly. In 1970, long-delayed elections were finally scheduled, and won by the Awami league. The military, with, it should be noted, the support of even left-leaning parties in West Pakistan, suspended the elections, refusing to certify the results (Ahmed in Brown and Ganguly, 1997). The Awami League, finally convinced that autonomy would never be successful, pushed at last for independence. In the ensuing violence, the Bengali population experienced mass killings at the hands of an increasingly desperate Pakistani military. Seeing an opportunity, Pakistan's traditional rival India entered the waron the side of the secessionists and, with Indian assistance, the new state of Bangladesh was formed.

Once again, Pakistan's treatment of Bengali desires for first autonomy and later secession indicates that retaining East Pakistan was essential for Pakistan's self-identity. Even autonomy was anathema to the central government. Inpart, the problem was similar to that seen in Indonesia. The central governmentfeared, not without justification as subsequent events indicated, that the secession of East Pakistan would only embolden ethno-regional movements and weaken the identity which state leaders sought to construct. Thus, even after the secession of Bangladesh, Pakistan continued to pursue centralization and an attempt to sublimate ethnic differences. Islam has been a key ingredient in these attempts, 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 found Islam "insufficient" as a basis for their national identity (Ahmed in Brown and 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 Bengali wing (Baxter, 1998, chapter 7). Thus, it is likely that state leaders attempted an alliance with the umma, and that this alliance actually intensified theconflict 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. Both 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 isdeeply steeped in Islam; the ruling dynasty claims dissent from the Prophet Mohammed and has a quite expansionist view of its own territoriality. This is not to say that colonization did not play a role in Morocco's secession crisis with Western Sahara, but it was unarguably less dramatic than in India, Pakistan or, as shall be demonstrated, Malaysia.

To say that the current dynasty of Morocco has ruled the country continuously since the seventeenth century is both a true and a false statement. The Alaouites, who claim dissent from the Prophet Mohammed through his daughter Fatima and son-in-law Ali, conquered the territory of present-day Morocco in the lateseventeenth 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 Bedouin tribes, leading them to attempt the creation of a centralized state, whichthe tribes resisted. The conflict between the central government and the tribes defined this period of Moroccan history, with the center gradually gaining theupper hand in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In some ways, the French protectorate, established over Morocco with the treaty of Fez in 1912, redefined this conflict. The French usurped the position of the center and quickly tried to assert it even more strongly than the previous sultans (Hahn, 1960). They built road and railway networks to link the coastal regions of Morocco to itshinterland, and attempted to subject the tribes to French courts and law. In particular the Berbers, who the French erroneously believed to be less committedto Islam than their Arab fellows, were pressured to assimilate to a degree of Frenchness (Hahn, 1960). This provoked a nationalist backlash, represented by the

Istiqlal party, formed in 1940 and supported by the then Sultan. Though Francebanned the party and struggled to keep Morocco in the French fold, it eventually 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 tohold onto its few remaining colonial possessions. One of these was the WesternSahara, a sparsely populated but mineral-rich desert area bordering Morocco. Spain was resisted by the Polisario Front. Like many post-colonial liberation movements, Polisario was socialist, in name at least, and sought the creation of asovereign state. Eventually, in 1975, Spain withdrew. Morocco, however, had nointerest in Sahrawi independence. Reasons for Morocco's desired annexation were mixed. In part, it may have stemmed from irredentist claims of "greater Morocco", a desire to unite all territory previously claimed by the Moroccan sultanate under its authority (Zoubir, 1993). King Hassan II may also have been motivated by a desire for Western Sahara's mineral resources and to thwart the potential spread of socialism. Whatever the reason, Hassan, immediately upon the Spanish withdrawal marched his army, and a throng of Moroccan civilians, into WesternSahara.

From 1975 to the present, a conflict has raged between Morocco and the Polisario Front which proclaimed the creation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and received support from the revolutionary regime in Algeria. The Moroccan government, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, refused even to engage in talks with Polisario, only coming to the table when it faced ostracism from the never realized Maghreb Union (Zoubir, 1993). Hassan II claimed the Sahrawi resistance was an "Algerian-backed separatist movement", and hence not truly authentic (Zoub

ir, 1993). This kept relations between the two states tense; mutual recognitioncame only in 1988. In the Western Sahara, Morocco has established settlementsof Moroccan nationals, built massive walls to enclose territory and relied on a



heavily military solution to the conflict. For all its efforts, the Sahrawi independence movement has remained a credible threat, and finally forced Morocco tothe 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 draw Sahrawi loyalty. The Sahrawi are, as the name of their would-be state indicates, ethnically Arab, and largely Muslim. The Moroccan kings can therefore be expected 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 other Arab governments for the Sahrawi independence movement and the rising tideof Islamist opinion which is by and large hostile to the monarchy. Though my own background on the Moroccan western Sahara conflict is thinner than any of theothers, I remain confident that this case will provide methodological depth to the study.Case 4: Malaysia and Singapore.

In all of the above cases, the state in question has fought, usually literally, to keep the seceding region within the state. In the case of Malaysia and Singapore, the reverse is true. It was Singapore which fought to be includedin the Malaysian Federation, with the acquiescence of the then Malaysian PrimeMinister Tungu Abdul Rahman. Ultimately, after a brief association, it was Mala

ysia which expelled Singapore, though Singapore's leader Li Kuan Yu was not without 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, andfrom this colonial experience, inherited a complex ethnic picture. As they sought to exploit the rich natural resources of the peninsula, the British importedboth Chinese and Indian workers, leaving the indigenous Malay population to itstraditional agricultural economic activity (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). In Singapore, which rapidly emerged as a major hub of commerce in British Asia, the lightly 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 its participation in commerce, the high level of education many of its wealthiermembers received and a sense among the British that the Malay were indolent and

lazy while the Chinese were industrious (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). This impression led to a favoritism toward the Chinese on the part of the British throughoutthe colonial period. At independence, the Chinese dominated the educated professions such as doctors and accountants, it made up at least a plurality of the urban poor. Yet Malays remained a majority of the population, and resented deeplythe Chinese successes.

As Malaya drifted toward independence, it became clear that the Malays would demand and receive certain preferences in the new state. This was the origin 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 majority in an attempt to redress previous imbalances (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). Affirmative action, a highly controversial policy in the United States, was almost a matter of course for Malaysia. If Malays were to be privileged, so too wastheir religion. According to the Malay constitution, there are three elements to Malay identity: speaking the Malay language, participation in Malay culture and the practice of Islam (Nair, 1997). Consequently, Islam was made the officialstate religion and privileged above all competitors. At the same time, Malay leaders were savvy enough to know they could not alienate the Chinese and Indianpopulations too far. Though the United Malay National Organization or UMNO hasbeen Malaysia's governing party since independence, it is usually governed in coalition with ethnically Chinese and Indian parties. And while Islam is the official religion, for non-Malays at least, religious freedom is strongly guaranteedand, in so far as it does not conflict with Islam's prerogatives, respected. In this stance, UMNO has faced consistent opposition from Malay Islamic parties which advocate for a more Islamic state.

To understand Singapore's entry into and expulsion from this complex peninsular mix, one must first understand the fear of communism rampant in both Malaya 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 government. This conflict, known as the Malay emergency, resulted in the destruction of the MCP and was part of the impetus for the formation of the Malaysian Federation (Brown, 2004, chapter 6). On the Malaysian side, the desire to integrate Singapore stemmed from the latter's economic wealth and a desire to prevent Communism from taking hold in Malaysia's nearest neighbors. For Singapore's leader, Li 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 whichhad, by and large, dispatched its communists by 1963 (Mauzi, 2002). It was in this year that Singapore officially voted to join the Malaysian federation, and was welcomed by Prime Minister Abdul Rahman.

Two years later, Singapore was expelled again. The reasons for its expulsion are manifold. Certainly, the promised economic integration did not provide the immediate benefits expected on either side (Mauzi, 2002). Yet the primaryreason for the expulsion was ethnic tension, and Li Kuan Yu's support of a "Malaysia for all Malaysiansâ. Coming from a heavily Chinese-dominated Singapore, he and his People's Action Party were not willing to accept special status for the Malays, arguing that it amounted to discrimination and would prevent the formation of a Malaysian national consciousness (Mauzi, 2002). This in turn stoked fear

s among malays that Singapore's entry would create a Chinese-dominated Malaysiain which Malay culture, language and religion would again be subordinated. It was this fear of Li Kuan Yu's non-ethnic nationalist project which led Malaysia to expel Singapore in 1965. Though the outcome differed from the other cases, the imperative of the Malaysian state in essentially forcing Singapore's secession was actually very similar. Malay leaders saw retaining Singapore as a partof the Malaysian Federation as a threat to the national identity they had so carefully and painstakingly constructed. The largely material and ideological factors which argued in favor of Singapore's inclusion in 1963 were quickly overwhelmed by an identity-level conservatism and fear of change by 1965. Islam, as acornerstone of the Malay identity, played a pivotal role in this fear. Singapore's Muslim population was a distinct minority, thereby making the possibility ofassimilation into a Malay matrix all the more difficult. Those figures which e

mphasized the Islamic identity of the Malays were some of the fiercest advocatesfor 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 Singapore case shows, and subsequent Malaysian ethnic conflict indicates, this identification between the Malay and Islamic identities makes attempts to cooperatewith other ethnicities problematic at best.

Study of these four cases leads to a tentative hypothesis. In circumstances where Islam is seen as a necessary ingredient to national identity, state leaders are forced to ideationally ally with the umma when faced with a secessioncrisis. By contrast, those states which have sought a more secular identity have been hesitant to make such an alliance. The cases appear to provide mixed results on the success of this ideational alliance. Pakistan's Islamic identity was not strong enough to prevent Bengali succession, but neither was its exclusion sufficient to keep East Timor in the Indonesian fold. Aceh and Western Sahararemain uncertain, though it seems more likely that Aceh will remain in Indonesia than that Western Sahara will not secede from Morocco. The Malaysian case represents an uncertain outcome; the Malay-dominated national identity protected itself 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 quiteuseful. If able to substantiate the hypothesis, the project would make a useful contribution to the body of literature concerned with Islamic nationalism, andcould demonstrate that the concept of an Islamic umma remains a potent challenge to it.

That said, there is room for improvement and clarification. This is most 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 part, the reason for the study. There is, however, perhaps room for improvement in positioning this paper relative to other relevant literature on the topic. Inregard to methodology, I am concerned about the difficulty of creating an effective coding scheme for the content analysis. For the first part of the question, the presence or absence of ideational cooperation with the umma, coding shouldbe feasible, if not necessarily straightforward. Of more difficulty, particula

rly in cases where a secession movement is still ongoing, will be assessing thestate's success or failure. It might also be useful to include in the eventualcoding table a marker indicating the state's broader view of Islam, though thiswill almost certainly come out in the case studies.

Finally, I believe that the case mix, while adequate, could be dramatically improved with some additions. Initially, I shied away from the inclusion ofArab or Middle Eastern cases. In Arabic, the term "umma" can mean not only theIslamic nation but also the Arab nation. At the time, I felt that this secondlevel on which the word might operate could unduly complicate an already highlycomplex picture. On further reflection however, I believe it might provide greater depth and power to the analysis. Thus, the project should add an examination 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 possibilities present themselves: subtract East Timor and Singapore and proceed onlywith Muslim on Muslim secession crises, or add additional non-Muslim cases, suchas the Sudan South Sudan conflict, the Nigeria Ibo secession struggle and Indonesia's ongoing conflict with West Papua. Though I remain uncertain as to the ultimate direction I will take, I lean toward adding more cases. Sudan, particularly after 1983, has been an Islamic state coping with a largely Christian and animist secession movement in the south. Though there are other factors, I believe this juxtaposition could add yet more depth and power. So too might analysisof the Nigeria-Ibo conflict. Indonesia and West Papua, while an interesting conflict in its own right, would only be worth adding if the results differed fromthose 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 believe the study, with the above modifications, is constructed in such a way asto make an answer feasible.

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Documents

Nation, State and Umma