Is religious nationalism rising in South East Asia /ASEAN ?

Is religious nationalism increasing in South East Asia? Michael Sainsbury, a Bangkok-based journalist, certainly thinks so. While explaining the Thai junta's decision to repatriate hundreds of Uighurs refugees to China, he argues in his article, Understanding the plight of the Uighurs:

Yet this action is one more example of how politics in Asia is unintelligible without factoring in the significance of religion. The common frequently focus is on military, trade and national rivalries that culminate in decisive and dismaying actions. But increasingly religion tied to national identity is integral to the events....

It’s the latest visible example that religious fault lines and an emerging trend of religious nationalism is now beginning to appear right across the region. It is one that poses a fresh threat to the ambitions of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Economic Nations Community that will come into being on December 31, 2015.

He mentions increasing Buddhist nationalism in Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar; Muslim nationalism in Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia; and Hindu nationalism in India.  

However, the decision to repatriate Uighurs, as Sainsbury also acknowledges is more to do with Thai military junta's need for powerful allies than to rise in religious nationalism in Thailand. Moreover, in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world, last year elections results showed that religious nationalism is stagnant, if not in retreat (See Indonesian Elections: A Victory for Pancasila Nationalism)

In Bangladesh too, although it is not in South East Asia, religious nationalism is losing to ethnolinguistic Bengali nationalism (See Bangladesh's secular nationalism asserts itself). Similarly, religious nationalism suffered a defeat when Philippines government agreed to accommodate concerns of Muslims in the Southern islands last year. 

Moreover, like Thailand and Cambodia, Muslim-majority Malaysia also deported fellow Muslim Uighurs to China in 2013 ( See Malaysia Hit for Deporting Uyghurs). More recently, both Malaysia and Indonesia (along with Bangladesh) were reluctant to accept fellow Muslims Rohingyas, who were fleeing worst kind of religious persecution (See Malaysia's Duty to the Rohingyas), making a mockery of Muslim brotherhood and Muslim nationalism. Only after international pressure, some Rohingya refugees were accepted.

So, religious nationalism is South East Asia presents a mixed picture. It is rising in some countries but losing in others.