After the departure of the United Nations and the restoration of the monarchy in 1993, Cambodia’s Muslim minorities became an important hub of transnational Muslim networks and movements, including the Salafī movement, which is increasingly influential. This article will examine how Salafism has inserted itself into Cambodian society and what limits there may be to its continued growth.

Short-term Christian overseas volunteer trips, also known as short-term mission trips (STMs), have become increasingly prevalent (Howell & Dorr, 2007). However, research on these programs has been limited. This quasi-experimental study adds to the literature by quantitatively measuring the effects of an STM from Singapore to Thailand. STM recipients’ ( n = 44) self-esteem and readiness for self-directed learning (RSDL) were compared across timepoints – pre-test, post-test, follow-up – and with a control group ( n = 50). It was hypothesized that recipients would experience an increase in self-esteem and RSDL such that their scores would be higher than the control group post-STM. Results provide partial support for the hypotheses; while improvements among recipients were either not significant (for self-esteem) or not long-lasting (for RSDL), recipients had higher scores than the control group post-STM. This suggests that STMs have some, albeit limited, positive effects. Recommendations for promoting greater and longer-lasting effects are offered.

This article explores the characteristics and structure of the Cambodian Muslim social media scene and considers what they tell us about the sociopolitical setting of the country's Muslim minority. It focuses on how the relationship between Islamic actors of the Cambodian Muslim minority, that is, groups, movements and institutions, and their offline environment shape their online representations and proselytization activities. It particularly considers the observation that theological debate is almost absent in this Islamic social media scene compared to that of other Southeast Asian Muslim societies and attempts to find answers to the question of why this is the case. The article particularly examines the Facebook pages of various Islamic groups and explains the sociopolitical factors and language politics that inform the ways in which they formulate the contents and style of their posts. It shows how the close connections between the political and the religious fields in an authoritarian setting, where the state strongly discourages social discord, have the effect of largely muting debates on social media.

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