This article charts the complex trajectories of Malaysia and Indonesia and highlights the role of the primary actors and agents that were the key players during this long historical process. Firstly, the case of Indonesia, where decades of state control in the effort to domesticate the forces of political Islam merely ended up with the marginalisation of the state’s own official discourse and the emergence of a host of new actors and agents who have used the language of Islam to delegitimize the very state that had been protecting them for so long. Secondly, the analysis of the parallel developments that is taking place in Malaysia. Thirdly and lastly, a discussion on the implication of the rise of new Islamist groups in Southeast Asia.
Islam, politics, Islamist groups, Malaysia, Indonesia