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Rising Islamic Conservatism in Indonesia

Author: Leonard C. Sebastian
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100020538X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
This edited volume argues that the rise of Islamic conservatism poses challenges to Indonesia’s continued existence as a secular state, with far-reaching implications for the social, cultural and political fortunes of the country. It contributes a model of analysis in the field of Indonesian and Islamic studies on the logic of Islamic conservative activism in Indonesia. This volume presents informative case studies of discourses and expressions of Islamic conservatism expressed by leading mainstream and upcoming Indonesian Islamic groups and interpret them in a nuanced perspective. All volume contributors are Indonesian-based Islamic Studies scholars with in-depth expertise on the Islamic groups they have studied closely for years, if not decades. This book is an up-to-date study addressing contemporary Indonesian politics that should be read by Islamic Studies, Indonesian Studies, and more broadly Southeast Asian Studies specialists. It is also a useful reference for those studying Religion and Politics, and Comparative Politics.

Religious Pluralism in Indonesia

Author: Chiara Formichi
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501760467
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
In 1945, Sukarno declared that the new Indonesian republic would be grounded on monotheism, while also insisting that the new nation would protect diverse religious practice. The essays in Religious Pluralism in Indonesia explore how the state, civil society groups, and individual Indonesians have experienced the attempted integration of minority and majority religious practices and faiths across the archipelagic state over the more than half century since Pancasila. The chapters in Religious Pluralism in Indonesia offer analyses of contemporary phenomena and events; the changing legal and social status of certain minority groups; inter-faith relations; and the role of Islam in Indonesia's foreign policy. Amidst infringements of human rights, officially recognized minorities—Protestants, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists and Confucians—have had occasional success advocating for their rights through the Pancasila framework. Others, from Ahmadi and Shi'i groups to atheists and followers of new religious groups, have been left without safeguards, demonstrating the weakness of Indonesia's institutionalized "pluralism." Contributors: Lorraine Aragon, Christopher Duncan, Kikue Hamayotsu, Robert Hefner, James Hoesterey, Sidney Jones, Mona Lohanda, Michele Picard, Evi Sutrisno, Silvia Vignato

Becoming Better Muslims

Author: David Kloos
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400887836
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
How do ordinary Muslims deal with and influence the increasingly pervasive Islamic norms set by institutions of the state and religion? Becoming Better Muslims offers an innovative account of the dynamic interactions between individual Muslims, religious authorities, and the state in Aceh, Indonesia. Relying on extensive historical and ethnographic research, David Kloos offers a detailed analysis of religious life in Aceh and an investigation into today’s personal processes of ethical formation. Aceh is known for its history of rebellion and its recent implementation of Islamic law. Debunking the stereotypical image of the Acehnese as inherently pious or fanatical, Kloos shows how Acehnese Muslims reflect consciously on their faith and often frame their religious lives in terms of gradual ethical improvement. Revealing that most Muslims view their lives through the prism of uncertainty, doubt, and imperfection, he argues that these senses of failure contribute strongly to how individuals try to become better Muslims. He also demonstrates that while religious authorities have encroached on believers and local communities, constraining them in their beliefs and practices, the same process has enabled ordinary Muslims to reflect on moral choices and dilemmas, and to shape the ways religious norms are enforced. Arguing that Islamic norms are carried out through daily negotiations and contestations rather than blind conformity, Becoming Better Muslims examines how ordinary people develop and exercise their religious agency.

Improvisational Islam

Author: Nur Amali Ibrahim
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501727885
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Book Description
"In this landmark account, Nur Amali Ibrahim paints a nuanced, detailed portrait of students seeking to reconcile some of the major social forces that inflect everyday life across the Muslim world—Islam, liberalism, radicalism, and secularism—as they strive to both find and define their place in a fast-changing, democratizing nation. Ibrahim demonstrates the critical importance of scholarly attention in both anthropology and religious studies to this vibrant country—the world’s largest Muslim nation." ―Daromir Rudnyckyj, Associate Professor, University of Victoria, and author of the award-winning Spiritual Economies Improvisational Islam is about novel and unexpected ways of being Muslim, where religious dispositions are achieved through techniques that have little or no precedent in classical Islamic texts or concepts. Nur Amali Ibrahim foregrounds two distinct autodidactic university student organizations, each trying to envision alternative ways of being Muslim independent from established religious and political authorities. One group draws from methods originating from the business world, like accounting, auditing, and self-help, to promote a puritanical understanding of the religion and spearhead Indonesia’s spiritual rebirth. A second group reads Islamic scriptures alongside the western human sciences. Both groups, he argues, show a great degree of improvisation and creativity in their interpretations of Islam. These experimental forms of religious improvisations and practices have developed in a specific Indonesian political context that has evolved after the deposal of President Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime in 1998. At the same time, Improvisational Islam suggests that the Indonesian case study brings into sharper relief processes that are happening in ordinary Muslim life everywhere. To be a practitioner of their religion, Muslims draw on and are inspired by not only their holy scriptures, but also the non-traditional ideas and practices that circulate in their society, which importantly include those originating in the West. In the contemporary political discourse where Muslims are often portrayed as uncompromising and adversarial to the West and where bans and walls are deemed necessary to keep them out, this story about flexible and creative Muslims is an important one to tell.

Contemporary Developments in Indonesian Islam

Author: Martin van Bruinessen
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9814414565
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
"Once celebrated in the Western media as a shining example of a 'liberal' and 'tolerant' Islam, Indonesia since the end of the Soeharto regime (May 1998) has witnessed a variety of developments that bespeak a conservative turn in the country's Muslim politics. In this timely collection of original essays, Martin van Bruinessen, our most distinguished senior Western scholar of Indonesian Islam, and four leading Indonesian Muslim scholars explore and explain these developments. Each chapter examines recent trends from a strategic institutional perch: the Council of Indonesian Muslim scholars, the reformist Muhammadiyah, South Sulawesi's Committee for the Implementation of Islamic Shari'a, and radical Islamism in Solo. With van Bruinessen's brilliantly synthetic introduction and conclusion, these essays shed a bright light on what Indonesian Muslim politics was and where it seems to be going. The analysis is complex and by no means uniformly dire. For readers interested in Indonesian Muslim politics, and for analysts interested in the dialectical interplay of progressive and conservative Islam, this book is fascinating and essential reading." -Robert Hefner, Director Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University

Islam and the 2009 Indonesian Elections, Political and Cultural Issues

Author: Ahmad-Norma Permata
Publisher: Institut de recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-Est contemporaine
ISBN: 2355960011
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 104

Book Description
The history of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) is part of the longstanding tradition of political Islam in Indonesia. Born in 1912 with the foundation of the Union of Muslim Traders (Sarekat Dagang Islam) this trend dominated the emerging nationalism in the Dutch East Indies for nearly twenty years. This initial momentum lies at the the origin of the two-dimensional Islamist project: to islamicise society by cleansing Islam of all practices considered to be impure; to mobilise the electorate by invoking Islamic values and their necessary implementation. Indeed, the birth and development of political Islam was closely linked to the reformist Muslim movement which in religious, cultural and social matters attempted to face the colonial challenge through a religious surge. In Indonesia, the Muhammadiyah, founded in 1912, and the Persatuan Islam, founded in 1923, provided most of the early generations of activists. During the decade after independence, militant Islam played a leading role in Indonesian politics. Between 1945 and 1960, the Masjumi party, which brought together most Muslim organisations, was one of the main government components and thereby constituted the matrix of political Islam in Indonesia to which the current generation of activists still refer. The discussions conducted within this party, especially the delicate compromises made between divine law and people's democracy, preconfigured the present debates conducted by Islamic parties. Like the current leaders of the PKS, this first generation of “government Islamists” was also confronted with economic and social modernity issues such as those related to the role of the West in this process. As the two following contributions remind us, its failure is mainly due to domestic reasons that in turn heavily influenced the way Indonesian Islam later considered these issues. Banned by President Sukarno and marginalised by the emerging New Order, the proponents of militant Islam had no choice but to withdraw from conventional politics. Here the organisational model of the Muslim Brotherhood (also repressed in several Arab countries) as well as the financial resources and literature made available to them by Wahhabi Islam networks contributed to the radicalisation of their discourse. The two terms Dakwah (preaching) and Tarbiyah (education) were therefore used to describe a movement based on the conviction that the re-Islamisation of Indonesian society was the essential precondition for its return to the political scene. Paradoxically, after the initial phase of repression, it was the New Order that favoured this agenda. From the early 1990s, some of the networks born from the Islamic revival were instrumented by a power lacking support and looking for scapegoats (Sino-Indonesian Christians...) on whom to deflect public anger. However, most student associations from the Tarbiyah movement did not let themselves be dragged into this trend and, true to their moral position, joined the opposition against the declining Soeharto regime. From this movement the Justice Party (PK) was born in 1998 (later transformed into the Prosperous Justice Party, or the PKS).

Civil Islam

Author: Robert W. Hefner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400823870
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
Civil Islam tells the story of Islam and democratization in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation. Challenging stereotypes of Islam as antagonistic to democracy, this study of courage and reformation in the face of state terror suggests possibilities for democracy in the Muslim world and beyond. Democratic in the early 1950s and with rich precedents for tolerance and civility, Indonesia succumbed to violence. In 1965, Muslim parties were drawn into the slaughter of half a million communists. In the aftermath of this bloodshed, a "New Order" regime came to power, suppressing democratic forces and instituting dictatorial controls that held for decades. Yet from this maelstrom of violence, repressed by the state and denounced by conservative Muslims, an Islamic democracy movement emerged, strengthened, and played a central role in the 1998 overthrow of the Soeharto regime. In 1999, Muslim leader Abdurrahman Wahid was elected President of a reformist, civilian government. In explaining how this achievement was possible, Robert Hefner emphasizes the importance of civil institutions and public civility, but argues that neither democracy nor civil society is possible without a civilized state. Against portrayals of Islam as inherently antipluralist and undemocratic, he shows that Indonesia's Islamic reform movement repudiated the goal of an Islamic state, mobilized religiously ecumenical support, promoted women's rights, and championed democratic ideals. This broadly interdisciplinary and timely work heightens our awareness of democracy's necessary pluralism, and places Indonesia at the center of our efforts to understand what makes democracy work.

The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State

Author: Noah Feldman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400824079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
Perhaps no other Western writer has more deeply probed the bitter struggle in the Muslim world between the forces of religion and law and those of violence and lawlessness as Noah Feldman. His scholarship has defined the stakes in the Middle East today. Now, in this incisive book, Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the shari'a--the law of the traditional Islamic state--in the modern Muslim world. Western powers call it a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. What, then, is the shari'a? Given the severity of some of its provisions, why is it popular among Muslims? Can the Islamic state succeed--should it? Feldman reveals how the classical Islamic constitution governed through and was legitimated by law. He shows how executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the shari'a, and how this balance of power was finally destroyed by the tragically incomplete reforms of the modern era. The result has been the unchecked executive dominance that now distorts politics in so many Muslim states. Feldman argues that a modern Islamic state could provide political and legal justice to today's Muslims, but only if new institutions emerge that restore this constitutional balance of power. The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State gives us the sweeping history of the traditional Islamic constitution--its noble beginnings, its downfall, and the renewed promise it could hold for Muslims and Westerners alike.

Islamising Indonesia

Author: Yon Machmudi
Publisher: ANU E Press
ISBN: 192153625X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) is the most interesting phenomenon in contemporary Indonesian politics. Not only is it growing rapidly in membership and electoral support, it is also bringing a new and markedly different approach to Islamic politics, one which has no precedent in Indonesian history. Understanding PKS and analysing its political behaviour presents challenges to scholars and observers. This is partly due to the fact that the party represents a new trend within Indonesian Islam which has few parallels with preceding movements. Yon Machmudi has rendered us a valuable service. In this book, he provides a thoughtful and authoritative context for viewing PKS. He critiques the existing categorisations for Indonesian Islam and points to their inadequacy when describing the PKS and the campus-based Tarbiyah movement from which it sprang. He reworks the santri typology, dividing it into convergent, radical and global substreams. This offers new possibilities for explaining the PKS phenomenon and assists in differentiating between various types of Islamic revivalism in contemporary Indonesia. It also allows a more understanding of the accommodatory stance which PKS has towards the state and other political forces. Yon's text provides a good overview of the development of PKS from its Tarbiyah movement origins to its impressive success at the 2004 general elections. It considers the party's attitude towards the issues of sharia implementation and community welfare and closes by examining the future challenges facing PKS. It is a well written and authoritative account from a scholar who has done wideranging research on the party.

Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment

Author: Ahmet T. Kuru
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108419097
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.