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"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 ...
This book is a succinct and critical account on the shariatisation of Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world. It comes with an important conclusion that the change of such a non-theocratic state like Indonesia into a theocratic state is highly possible when its law is penetrated by those who want to change the state system.
The fall of President Soeharto in May 1998 and the introduction of multi-party democracy by President BJ Habibie have unleashed religious parties (both Islamic and Christian) in Indonesian politics. This study shows that the Islamist agenda of the Islamist parties is overshadowed by their political pragmatism. This book is a must-read account on the rise and failure of the Islamist struggle in Indonesia's emerging democracy. Platzdasch's work is without a doubt a significant and timely contribution to a better understanding of Islamic politics in contemporary Indonesia. - Professor Azyumardi Azra, Professor of History & Director, Graduate School, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta, Indonesia.
A testament to the relevance of historical research in understanding contemporary politics, Islam and the Making of the Nation guides the reader through the contingencies of the past that have led to the transformation of a nationalist leader into a 'separatist rebel' and a 'martyr', while at the same time shaping the public perception of political Islam and strengthening the position of the Pancasila in contemporary Indonesia.
A major realignment is taking place in the way we understand the state in Indonesia. New studies on local politics, ethnicity, the democratic transition, corruption, Islam, popular culture, and other areas hint at novel concepts of the state, though often without fully articulating them. This book captures several dimensions of this shift. One reason for the new thinking is a fresh wind that has altered state studies generally. People are posing new kinds of questions about the state and developing new methodologies to answer them. Another reason for this shift is that Indonesia itself has changed, probably more than most people recognize. It looks more democratic, but also more chaotic and ...
This volume interrogates settled ways of thinking about the seemingly interminable conflict between religious and secular values in our world today. What are the assumptions and resources internal to secular conceptions of critique that help or hinder our understanding of one of the most pressing conflicts of our times? Taking as their point of departure the question of whether critique belongs exclusively to forms of liberal democracy that define themselves in opposition to religion, these authors consider the case of the “Danish cartoon controversy” of 2005. They offer accounts of reading, understanding, and critique for offering a way to rethink conventional oppositions between free speech and religious belief, judgment and violence, reason and prejudice, rationality and embodied life. The book, first published in 2009, has been updated for the present edition with a new Preface by the authors.
The Suharto (1966-98) government of Indonesia and the Mahathir (1981-2003) government of Malaysia both launched Islamisation programmes, upgrading and creating religious institutions. The author argues that, while generally ulamas, or religious teachers, had to support state ideologies, they sometimes succeeded in "capturing" the state by influencing policies in their favour. The author builds his argument on strong fieldwork data, especially interviews, and he engages in critical discussion of comparative politics paradigms and the concept of capture.
Indonesian Islam is an important and timely book based on approximately 2,000 fatwâ (pl. fatâwâ)--an opinion on a point of law or dogma given by a person with recognized authority (ijâza)--demonstrating that classical Islamic reasoning is an alternative to state-defined Islam and is capable of dealing with contemporary challenges in ethics and morality in a consistent and rational way. The book provides a comprehensive survey of how modern Indonesian Islamic thinking has responded to changes in social practices since the 1920s, and how authorities have ruled on diverse subjects ranging from football pools to land sales and milk banks. The author examines in detail the development and nua...
This book looks at fatwa in Indonesia during the period following the fall of President Suharto. It is an in-depth exploration of three fatwa-making agencies-Majelis Ulama Indonesia, Lajnah Bahth al-Masail Nahdlatul Ulama, and Majelis Tarjih Muhammadiyah-all of which are highly influential in shaping religious thought and the lives of Muslims in Indonesia. Rather than look at all the fatwa that have emerged in the period, Pradana Boy ZTF focuses on those that have strong repercussions for intra-community relations and the development of Indonesian Muslims more generally, including fatwa pertaining to sectarianism, pluralism, secularism and liberalism.