ABSTRACT
In Western societies in general and in secular, liberal democracies in particular, the terms “1968” and “the sixties” are frequently associated with a strong student movement and a liberalization of various behavioral norms and conventions. The student-power movement of the late 1960s articulated a range of demands, among them peace in Vietnam, an end to alleged imperialism by certain Western powers, and the liberation from moral constraints as summed up in the slogan “make love not war.” While acknowledging the important role of student and New Left movements during the period known as the “global sixties” in the West, it remains to be questioned if such movements emerged all over the globe. It may additionally be asked if there were other ideological and/or social movements that exerted an influence on major cultural changes during the era less well known than those associated with the sixties in the West. In what follows, I focus on developments in two Southeast Asian states with Muslim-majority populations, Indonesia and Malaysia, and trace the late sixties and seventies as a period of considerable social change there. The movements that became influential in these two countries are different from the ones in the West. They can hardly be characterized as New Left movements, although their political orientation was anti-establishment in a way similar to that of their counterparts in other world regions. Their actions were, in most cases, directed against authoritarian if not dictatorial rule.
