A group of eight sculptures dated to the Majapahit period represent deified figures of kings and queens dressed in royal attire, which is evident from their high crowns, their substantial garments and the heavy ornaments on their ankles. The detailed pattern of the sinjang kawung repeating itself in slightly different variations on each sculpture indicates the reverence with which the Majapahit rulers held this particular motif. As Klokke has suggested, the presence of four arms is an unmistakably divine feature, with the attributes indicating the specific qualities of the various gods represented. The highest god is one who combines the visual characteristics of two deities to express the oneness of these gods, such as Ardhanarīśvara, the supreme concept of one god, joined as one in both male and female. They stand in a stiff, upright stance—a distinctive feature. Their eyes are downcast in deep meditation, combined with the limited mudrā of the lower two hands. Their deification led them to attain the highest spiritual knowledge (Klokke 1994, pp. 190–91). H.G. Quaritch Wales has suggested that at the foundation of the Majapahit there was a resurgence of pre- Indianized culture, which appeared to have little reference to the Indian legacy of the past. This was evident in the culture of non-Indian gods and ancestors, who appeared to reign supreme (Wales 1977, pp. 89–90).

The statues in this chapter, unlike with the previous sections, will be ordered chronologically where possible during the mid-fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, as the textile patterns all fall within two group. The first will include the ceplok patterns, and the second will consist of the different models in Java and in Sumatra.

The practice of deifying the ancestors was known at the beginning of the thirteenth century during the Kediri period and continued throughout the Singhasāri and Majapahit periods. The assumption that the images bear facial features of a certain king or queen is in contrast to ancient Indian and Southeast Asia sculptures whose features are generally without any specific character and appear to follow the convention or the style of the period. However, in East Java the sculptors did not deviate from this practice, as it would be necessary to have more than one statue bearing exactly the same features to be able to consider a statue as a portrait of a person.

There is little sign of a new social contract developing that would deliver a more equitable power structure and income/wealth distribution. On the contrary, power and wealth have become more concentrated. The elite seem to be tone deaf. There are too many parallels with the runup to the French Revolution of 1789.

There is even less sign of a contract between humanity and nature, of mankind respecting nature and acknowledging the role of ecosystems as a fundamental factor underpinning the survival of the species. Humans still think that artificially engineered instruments are better than nature.

Despite the twelve fundamental challenges, the world is still ruled very much by mindsets forged during the industrial age and designed to deliver economic growth.

The future, up to 2035, based on what we know now about demography, technology and human behaviour, looks like this.

The world will become divided into regions, the three most important of which are Asia, the Western hemisphere, and Europe and its adjacent areas. The leading regional nation or nations will build their own technology—internet, 5G and such—energy grids and currency area, forcing other countries in the region into this strong economic, technological, cultural and political framework. This game is already visible for the United States and China. It will be difficult and expensive to do business outside the region, which points to a more compact supply chain.

Some elements of globalization will be maintained, but global institutions (the IMF, World Bank and WTO) and the global rule of law (for example, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) will wither away. Such a global model means that the world will stay entrenched in the current political and economic thinking without starting to shift gear and tackle the deep underlying challenges. Shortterm economic profit will continue to control the actions of policymakers, as will the traditional power game.

The twelve fundamental challenges will be talked about but they will not be fundamentally addressed. Tepid national and international efforts will be insufficient to halt the threat they pose for civilization, or even less to set the course for a better world.

Haze, by definition, is a term normally denoting a naturally occurring climatic condition in which visibility is affected; for instance, the phrase “heat haze”. In Southeast Asia the term is rather euphemistically used to refer to the smoke emitted from land and forest fires, both natural and man-made, that visibly persists in the atmosphere. Haze is described as transboundary when the smoke travels across political boundaries and remains in the airspace of neighbouring countries.

The first reported incidence of transboundary haze in Southeast Asia was in 1982. Almost forty years later, the region continues to suffer from almost annual haze episodes, the most severe being during the years 1994, 1997–98 (which remains the region's worst haze episode in history), 2005, 2013, 2015, and most recently in 2019. Indeed, the situation seems to be getting worse: while previous severe episodes were largely confined to the southern Southeast Asian subregion, recent years have seen serious incidences in the northern (Mekong) subregion as well.

What can explain the persistence of transboundary haze in Southeast Asia? Why has the region not been able to act to effectively mitigate the issue in light of its well-known negative health, environmental and economic effects (see “Here's How Much the Haze Costs Us”, p. 58 of this collection)? This collection argues that transboundary haze is not only a physical problem linked to fire but also a political one with complex socioeconomic and diplomatic considerations.

Regional Responses: ASEAN and Haze Cooperation

The fires that cause haze in the southern Southeast Asian region are mainly located in Indonesia and to a lesser extent Malaysia. Fires in the Mekong subregion occur mainly at the Golden Triangle border areas of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. To date, transboundary haze has, at one time or another and in varying levels of severity, affected all ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

With causes and effects squarely rooted within the region, the haze is a uniquely ASEAN problem. The association first acknowledged that haze was a regional concern in 1985, and this was soon followed by many agreements for regional cooperation to mitigate the issue, as summarized in the timeline below:

1985 The Agreement on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources specifically referred to air pollution and “transboundary environmental effects”.

The Fiery Peats of Haze in Southeast Asia

First published in Clean Malaysia on 10 May 2016.

You would be forgiven for thinking the haze is here to stay. After all, countries in Southeast Asia have been experiencing almost annual haze episodes since the 1980s. And despite increasingly desperate rhetoric from governments, NGOs and the public across the region to banish haze once and for all, haze continues to be a dry season staple.

What makes the haze problem such a difficult one to solve? The common assumption is that haze is a result of smoke from naturally occurring forest fires; a natural phenomenon that is near impossible to curb or control. A deeper look into the human factors surrounding these fires, however, paints a picture that is quite contrary—and controllable.

Not All Smoke is Created Equal

It is correct that haze is a result of smoke from forest fires. But not all forest fires are the same, and not all of them produce the same kind of smoke. This is the key to understanding the haze problem, and its solution.

When you look out your window on a hazy day, what do you see? A murky grey shroud tinting your view of the skyline, and sometimes, on closer inspection, small black particles floating about as well. This particular type of haze is the result of a particular type of smoke from a very particular type of fire.

There are generally three types of naturally occurring forest fires in the region: brush, crown, and peat fires. Brush and crown fires are no big deal. Brush fires spread along low-lying vegetation, while crown fires burn the crowns of trees and tall shrubs. They both spread at a relatively slow rate and burn fresh vegetation. This “fresh” fuel means these fires usually produce a light smoke that disperses easily. They also die out quickly because of the high water content of the vegetation.

Peat fires, on the other hand, are quite different. Peat itself is a unique type of soil. Peat is commonly found along riverbanks and other coastal areas. Southeast Asian peatlands make up a whopping sixty per cent of the world's wetlands and they cover approximately twelve per cent of the region's land area.

INTRODUCTION

This study was born of a decade's participant observation of rural women in the southwest of Peninsular Malaysia. It was apparent to me that they dealt with a particularly patriarchal society by establishing power in the privacy of the home by wielding religion as the tool of choice to exert control over their offspring and spouse. Subsequent research into the possibility of rural mothers and mother-figures perpetuating more conservative or exclusivist interpretations of Islam in the home took a different turn, however, when I realized that this state of affairs already exists in urban Kuala Lumpur and its outskirts.

After more than three years letting this stew on a back-burner and after several failed attempts to put forward the hypothesis that mothers could possibly be vectors of terror, it became clear that it is highly taboo in Southeast Asia to posit that a mother-figure could be anything but pure and perfect. However in 2017, the first woman with links to the Islamic State (IS) was arrested in Singapore; subsequent media coverage of similar arrests in Malaysia and Indonesia enabled the acceptance for publication of an article which had previously been deemed “rather difficult content”. In May 2018, the Surabaya family suicide bombings shocked the region and the rejection of this theory for being “offensive to mothers” dissipated.

The question at hand is whether mothers use religion in the private sphere of the home to expand personal power and social standing, and whether that could lead to increased normalization of “hateful extremism”.

Initially meant to focus on just rural women, interviews with informants broadened the quest to Kuala Lumpur and its wealthy suburbs. The perpetuation of exclusivist and intolerant views amongst mothers and encouragement to engage in the defence of the greater Islamic cause, or at least to carry out “financial jihad” (jihad bil mal), was already in motion. From the city's tertiary centres of learning, a new “empowering form of Islam” not unlike that described as “female jihadism” (EUROPOL 2019) is sent back to rural villages through students and fresh graduates with a mission to recruit disenfranchised “sisters” to the cause.

The global financial crisis of 2008–9 morphed into political, economic and social problems, mainly for the United States, demonstrating its fading power within the global picture. Domestic disruptions and dislocations of a magnitude few had foreseen followed. It disclosed how fragile the US political system had become, confronting it with events that required bipartisan measures to address in the interests of the nation and, even more so, in the interests of the world.

History may well record the crisis as an event that changed the attitudes of Americans. In 2011, 38 per cent of Americans were of the opinion that the United States stood above all other countries in the world. In 2017, the figure was 29 per cent. Even if the percentage of Americans saying that there are other countries that are better than the United States has not gone above 15 per cent, the smaller percentage that see their country as the best is significant, as it signifies a reduced willingness to finance and support a policy of “exporting” the model. The support for the kind of foreign and security policies that the United States had for decades sustained—policies anchored in values—is now much weaker.

A survey conducted in twenty-two countries in 2011 revealed that 66 per cent of people had a favourable view of the United States, compared to 25 per cent who saw it as a major threat. Only five years later, the figure for those with a favourable view of the United States was down to 51 per cent, with those seeing it as a threat having risen to 45 per cent. The biggest swing was seen in Germany (30 percentage points), France (29 percentage points) and Mexico (26 percentage points). The figure for the other neighbour of the United States, Canada, was at 23 per cent.

These two surveys convey the picture of a superpower that is losing both domestic and international support for its global role— especially from its allies and neighbouring countries. The figures for its two neighbours augur fundamental trouble, with 66 per cent of Mexicans and 46 per cent of Canadians saying that the United States is a major threat. With regard to US policy and its position in Asia, the percentage of people classifying the United States as a major threat among its two main allies, Japan and Korea, are 66 and 67 per cent, respectively.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Series Editor:

Editorial Committee: