February proved itself to be a much less violent month than January, with sources reporting 343 incidents of Anti-Shiism, half of last month’s 673. However, the crackdowns on freedom of expression and incessant discrimination against the Shia population led to 52 deaths, 226 injuries, 71 arrests and harsh sentencing, and seven related anti-Shia actions, including but not limited to, sectarian slander, police brutality, and vandalism.
This paper will focus several examples of such representation: several examples of art works from India in the British Library collections; the ‘Muharram processional scroll’ painting from around 1840 Madras now in the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore; and the Syair Tabut, a 146-quatrain Malay narrative poem from 1864 Singapore, and read these instances of aesthetic presentation in the context of contested claims to authentic religiosity and indeed the right of individuals and groups to practice their religion as they saw fit.
