As confidence in the secularization thesis predicting that modernization would marginalize religion has waned, scholars of Southeast Asia have increasingly focused on the complex intersection between religion, politics, and the nation-state. Whereas religion has often fueled political conflict across the region, so, too, have religious leaders, adherents, and activists played important roles in strengthening democracy, reducing violence, and promoting peacebuilding. At times these relationships can seem paradoxical, with religious leaders both advancing democratic commitments while also intertwined with various forms of illiberal governance on the other. In Southeast Asia,as in Western contexts, religion has never been fully confined to the private sphere. Indeed, religion has consistently influenced public policy and the public sphere, even as some political leaders have occasionally sought to limit its importance and relevance in national and regional politics. Over the last century religious actors of various sorts have played important roles in independence movements against colonial rule, the formation of modern nation-states, and subsequent engagements and experiments with democratization and globalization. Islam, Conflict, and Political Transformation examines—theoretically and empirically—socio-religious change, conflict, and political transformation across the Southeast Asian archipelago. The question that arises here is to what degree, and in what ways, does religion—especially but not limited to Islam—play a role in the realm of social conflict and subsequent public policy, across the myriad communities and countries of Southeast Asia? How do patterns of conflict impact socio-cultural and political change? Given the increasingly important role of religion in the public sphere, what are the prospects for religious democracy in the region?