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Carool Kersten is Senior Lecturer in the Study of Islam & the Muslim World at King’s College London. In addition, Dr. Kersten is Deputy Research Director of the Centre for Religion Theology and Public Life and a member of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies. He is also a research associate of the Centre for South East Asian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), from where he obtained his PhD in the Study of Religions. Earlier he received an MA (cum laude) in Arabic Language and Culture from Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands), and a Certificate in Southeast Asian Studies from Payap University in Thailand. Before joining King’s College in 2007, Carool Kersten was a faculty member at the Southeast Asian Institute of Global Studies at Payap University, where he taught courses on Asian history and religion. At the same time he served as academic director of a US-based non-profit organization facilitating study-abroad programmes. Prior to his return to academia in 2001, he worked for more than ten years in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states as a human resources manager and translator of Arabic. Dr. Kersten is the author of Islam in Indonesia: The Contest for Society, Ideas and Values (Hurst, 2014); co-editor with Susanne Olsson of Alternative Islamic Discourses and Religious Authority (Ashgate, 2014); and co-editor with Madawi Al-Rasheed and Marat Shterin of Demystifying the Caliphate: Historical Memory and Contemporary Contexts (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Religious Pluralism versus Intolerance: Sectarian Violence in Indonesia
Religious pluralism has been under threat and sectarianism on the rise during the ten-year (2004-2014) tenure of outgoing president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Carool Kersten explains how local and regional authorities condone (and sometimes even stimulate) intimidation and hate crimes.
