Network Islam

The Islamization of Southeast Asia resulted in a distinct Malay-Muslim culture combining the universalist dimensions of a religious doctrine with a global reach and the cultural particularities of the region (language, local practices). Recent discoveries of new text material and archaeological evidence have pushed the emergence of this civilization back in time. Key elements of the chapter’s narrative are the emergence of Muslim states in the archipelago, and the active participation of diasporic groups from the Middle East, cosmopolitan figures from insular Southeast Asia, and mediators from South Asia in the further Islamization of maritime Southeast Asia. It also provides the argument for challenging the frequent dismissal of Islam in Indonesia as a ‘thin veneer’ over older religious deposits of indigenous or Indian origin, a misconception that was later corroborated by anthropological research in the 1980s. Throughout this time frame, the Indian Ocean continues to act as a conduit for the ‘global circulation of ideas’ and the emerge of sophisticated intellectual milieus in Sumatra and Java

Conclusion

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An Indonesian Islam?

The history of postcolonial Indonesia can therefore be divided into three periods, dominated by different regimes with its own characteristics, during which Islamisation process has continued to evolve. The Sukarno presidency (1945-1965) marks the first period, during which Mayumi established itself as the main Islamic political party. It began with decade of continuing nation building when the young republic was first engaged in armed conflict with the Dutch; experimented with liberal democracy; but then shifted toward ‘Guided Democracy’ and the disbanding of Masyumi. During the same twenty-year period, the unity of Indonesia was also challenged by the Islamist Darul Islam movement. A military coup in 1965 heralded the beginning of the military New Order Regime of General Suharto (1965-1998). Political Islam was kept control and occasionally manipulating it for its own purposes. From the 1970s onward, New Order did make some allowances for Muslim participation in governance, initiating further use of Islam for political purposes between 1983—1993. After the dramatic regime change in 1998, the democratisation process that started in 1999 saw an unprecedented opening-up of the public sphere. This change in Indonesia’s political climate offered new opportunities for socio-political activism across the Islamic spectrum, but also presented a new set of challenges for the world’s largest Muslim nation state. Islamic mass organisations, newly formed political parties, NGOs, think tanks and other platforms began presenting a range of competing Islamic discourses.

The arrival of Islam

The arrival of Islam in Indonesia is bound up with developments in the wider geographical area of Southeast Asia. This chapter presents a broader angle than the current political boundaries of the Republic of Indonesia. The chapter addresses the question of the relatively late local acceptance of Islam, even though Southeast Asia’s contacts with the Middle East and South Asia go back to pre-Islamic times. Based on a critical assessment of the historiography of Southeast Asian Islam, the chapter will identify four key issues that are relevant for a balanced account of the Islamization process: Time frame (13th century); Provenance (theories propose various origins: South Asia, Middle East, and China; Agency (Merchants, religious professionals (missionaries, Sufis), local involvement); Motivations (political, commercial, colonial, religious factors). The emerging picture consists of a variety of starting points, numerous modalities for the diffusion of Islam, positioning the Indian Ocean basin as a vital contact zone. The associated ‘single ocean concept’ turned it into a ‘neutral water’ links the history of the Islamization of Southeast Asia to the newly emerging scholarly field of Indian Ocean studies

Islam and nation-building

Indonesia is home to the largest Muslim mass organizations in the world, which not only predate, but whose tens of millions of adherents also put more well-known movements such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistans Jamaat-e Islami in the shadow. Opting for less confrontational modes of emancipation of Indonesia’s Muslim population, the Islamic modernist Muhammadiyah (1912), the puritan reformist Persatuan Islam (1923), and traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, 1926) all focused on Islamic education. Only the Sarekat Islam (1911) had a political agenda from the beginning, When opportunity arose during the Japanese occupation, al switched to political activism, playing a key role in the independence struggle of the 1940s.

Introduction

Indonesia is the largest and most populous Muslim nation state in the world; a fact that is often forgotten because it was never part of the great caliphates that are historically associated with the Dar al-islam or ‘abode of Islam’. Also because of its great distance from the so-called Islamic heartlands, it is still often assumed that Islam in Indonesia is just a thin veneer over earlier religious deposits from elsewhere in Asia. Consequently, both scholars of Islam and Southeast Asianists overlook or underestimate the importance of this religion for the formation of Southeast Asian cultures....

Islam as resistance

Increasing frequency and higher intensity of trans-regional contacts across the Indian Ocean in the course of the 19th century also helped turning Islam into a tool of resistance. The account will begin with the challenge of local power structures in South Sumatra by returning Hajjis inspired by the Wahhabi capture of Mecca and Medina in the early 1800s, resulting in the Padri Wars. This foreshadowed a changing of the guards of the leadership of anti-colonial activities after the Java War of the 1830s, when aristocrats were replaced by religious figures as resistance leaders. Coincidental with the high imperialism of the industrial age, technological advances making traffic between Indonesia and the holy places easier, thus accelerating the arrival of ideas associated with Islamic reformism and modernism. The political translation of these ideas into Panislamist ideologies and the hybrid religious nationalism of ‘Islamic nationhood’ were met with fierce repression on the part of the Dutch Indies colonial authorities. The chapter ends by pointing out that in the same period we also find the roots of the separatism in Aceh which would continue into the independence era.