Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam

Muhamad Ali

Abstract


This article seeks to explain the emergence of an Indonesian post-Orientalist study of Islam from the 1990s onwards, which results from the increased influx of Indonesian-born scholars into the study of Indonesian Islam, a field previously dominated by Western-born scholars. In contrast to Edward Said’s adverse Orientalists, to the Arabic-based dirāsah islāmiyyah, and the previous generations of Indonesian Western-educated scholars, the post-1990s generation of pesantren-and-Western-educated Indonesian scholarship has taken selectively elements from Islamic texts and traditions, humanities, and social sciences in analyzing contemporary Islamic beliefs and practices. With an eclectic intellectualism combining faith and public mission, Indonesian Muslim scholars have reinterpreted Qur’anic and classical Islamic concepts while engaging different Western theories regarding religion, law, identity, and social movements. By analyzing local and national figures and movements, using diverse sources, and negotiating the tensions between the normative, practical, scriptural, and contextual, they aim to represent Islam and Muslims in their diversity and complexity in global, national, and local dynamics. With collaborative work at home and abroad, they contribute to pursuing different trajectories with scholarship and activism for Indonesian society and beyond.

Keywords


Post-Orientalism; Islamic Studies; Agama; Discursive Tradition; Local Studies; Social Movement

References


Abbas, Megan Brankley. 2021. Whose Islam? The Western University and Modern Islamic Thought in Indonesia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Abdullah, Amin. 1996. Studi Agama. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar.

Alam, Rudy Harisyah, and Ihsan Ali-Fauzi. (eds.) 2003. The True Face of Islam: Essays on Islam and Modernity in Indonesia. Jakarta: Voice Center Indonesia.

Alatas, Ismail Fajrie. 2021. What is Religious Authority? Cultivating Islamic Communities in Indonesia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

______. 2024. “Living Sunna: Scholars, Community Leaders, and the Integration of Islam in Java”. Nasr M. Arif and Abbas Panakkal. Eds., Southeast Asian Islam: Integration and Indigenisation. London and New York. Routledge. 37-60.

Alfitri. 2022. Islamic Law and Society in Indonesia: Corporate Zakat Norms and Practices in Islamic Banks. New York: Routledge.

Al-Jābirī, Muhammad ‘Ābid. 1991. Al-Turāth wa al-Hadātsah: Dirāsāt wa Munāqasāt. Beirut: Markaz Dirāsat al-Wahdat al-‘Arabiyyah.

Al-Jābirī, Muhammad ‘Ābid. 1993. 6th edition. Nahnu wa al-Turāth: Qirā’ah Mu’āsirah fi Turāthinā al-Falsafī. Beirut: Al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-‘Arabī.

Al-Jābirī, Muhammad ‘Ābid. 1996. Al-Dimuqrātiyyah wa Huqūq al-Insān. Beirut: Kitāb fī Jarīdah.

Ali, Muhamad. 2015. “Kajian Islam di Barat Kontemporer”, Titik-Temu, 8:1, July-December, 77-98.

______. 2016. Islam and Colonialism: Becoming Modern in Indonesia and Malaya. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

______. 2022. “Harun Nasution (1919-1998)” Oxford Encyclopedias of the Islamic World, Digital collection. Oxford University Press.

______. 2023. “Ministry of Religious Affairs (Kementerian Agama), Indonesia” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Retrieved 4 Feb 2025, from https://oxfordre.com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-1206.

______. 2024. “Integration of Islam into the Malay and Bugis-Makassar Kingdoms” in Nasr M. Arif and Abbas Panakkal, Southeast Asian Islam: Integration and Indigenisation. London and New York: Routledge. 121-117.

Ali, Muhamad, and Muhammad Afdillah. 2020. “Islam and Diversity in Contemporary Indonesia: Belief, Gender, and Politics” the Muslim World, 110:4, Autumn.

Al-Sufyānī, Ābid ibn Muhammad. 1992. Al-Mustashriqūn wa man Tāba’ahum wa mawqifuhum min Thabāt al-Sharī’ah wa Shumūlihā Dirāsatan Wa Tathbīqan. Jedah: Dār al-Manārah.

Anugrah, Iqra. 2015. “Review: Recent Studies on Indonesian Islam: A Sign of Intellectual Exhaustion?” Indonesia,100, October. 105-116.

Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

______. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

______. 2007. On Suicide Bombing. New York: Columbia University Press.

Azra, Azyumard Azra, Kees van Dijk, Nico J.G. Kaptein. 2010. Varieties of Religious Authority: Changes and Challenges in 20th Century Indonesian Islam. Leiden and Singapore: IIAS and ISEAS.

Bahri, Media Zainul. 2011. Satu Tuhan Banyak Agama: Pandangan Sufistik Ibn ‘Arabī, Rūmī, and Al-Jīlī. Jakarta. Mizan Publika.

Bamualim, Chaider S. (ed.) 2005. A Portrait of Contemporary Indonesian Islam. Jakarta: Center for Languages and Cultures and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.

Bellah, Robert. 1970. Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World. Berkeley: University of California, Riverside.

Bowen, John R. 1995. “Western Studies of Southeast Asian Islam: Problem of Theory and Practice,” Studia Islamika: Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies. 2, 4, 69-86.

Braginsky, Vladimir. 2004. The Heritage of Traditional Malay Literature: A Historical Survey of Genres, Writings and Literary Views. Singapore: ISEAS.

Bruinessen, Martin van. 2016. Oman Fathurrahman, Shațțārīyah Silsilah in Aceh, Java, and the Lanao Area of Mindanao, Tokyo, Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, University of Foreign Studies. In Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, Tome 102, 487-490.

Burhani, Ahmad Najib. 2012.“Al-Tawassut wa-l I’tidal: the NU and Moderatism in Indonesian Islam,” Asian Journal of Social Science, 40, 5/6, 564-581.

______. 2013. “Defining Indonesian Islam: An Examination of the Construction of the National Islamic Identity of Traditionalist and Modernist Muslims,” in Jajat Burhanuddin and Kees van Dijk. (eds.) Islam in Indonesia: Contrasting Images and Interpretations. Leiden and Singapore: Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 25-47.

Burhanuddin, Jajat, and Kees van Dijk. (eds.) Islam in Indonesia: Contrasting Images and Interpretations. Leiden and Singapore: Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press

Dabashi, Hamid. 2015. Post-Orientalism: Knowledge & Power in a Time of Terror. London and New York: Taylor & Francis.

Darāz, Muhammad ‘Abdullah, al-Dīn: Buhūth Mumahhadah Li Dirāsat Tārīkh al-Adyān (Amman: Al-Ahliyah, 2019).

Dofier, Zamakhsari. 1994. “Dawr al-Mu’assasat al-Tarbawiyah al-Islāmiyah al-Taqlīdiyah fi Ta’mīm al-Ta’līm al-Asasī fi Indūnīsīyā”, Studia Islamika, 1: 2, 147-67.

Ernst, Carl W., and Richard C. Martin. (eds.) 2010. Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism. South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press.

Fathurahman, Oman. 2001. Book Review Tradisi Intelektual Islam Melayu-Indonesia: Adaptasi dan Pembaharuan, Studia Islamika, 8:3, 2001, 220-221.

______. 2016. Shattārīyah Silsilah in Aceh, Java, and the Lanao area of Mindanao, Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.

Fauzia, Amelia. 2013. Faith and the State: A History of Islamic Philanthropy in Indonesia Leiden and Boston: Brill.

“From the Editor”, 1994. Studia Islamika, 1:1 April-June, III.

Graf, Arndt, Schirin Fathi, Ludwig Paul. (eds.) 2011. Orientalism & Conspiracy: Politics and Conspiracy Theory in the Islamic World. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.

Gutmann, Amy. (ed.) 1994. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hadi, Amirul. 2004. Islam and State in Sumatra: A Study of Seventeenth-Century Aceh. Leiden: Brill.

Hallaq, Wael. 2013. The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament. New York: Columbia University Press.

Hanafī, Hassan. 1991. Muqaddimah fī ‘Ilm al-Istigrāb. Cairo. Al-Dār al-Fanniyyah.

Hasan, Noorhaidi, 2006. Laskar Jihad: Islam, Militancy, and the Quest for Identity in Post-New Order Indonesia. New York: Cornell University Press.

Hasyim, Syafiq. 2023. Shariatisation of Indonesia: the Politics of the Council of Indonesian Ulama (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Hefner, Robert W. 2024. Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia: Democracy and the Quest for an Inclusive Public Ethics. London and New York: Routledge.

Heryanto, Ariel. 2007. “Can There be Southeast Asians in Southeast Asian Studies?” in Laurie J. Sears (ed.), Knowing Southeast Asian Subjects. Seattle and Singapore: University of Washington Press and NUS Press. 75-108.

______. 2011. “Indonesia dalam Kajian tentang Indonesia”, Tempo, November 14-20. 128-129.

Hidayat, Komaruddin, and Ahmad Gaus AF. eds, 2023. Inspirasi Untuk Dunia: Islam Indonesia dalam Perspektif, Pemikiran Nurcholish Madjid, Abdurrahman Wahid, Ahmad Syafii Maarif. Bandung and Cimanggis: Mizan dan Universitas Islam Indonesia Internasional.

Hodgson, Marshall G.S. 1974. 3 vols. The Venture of Islam, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Hooker, M.B. 2003. Indonesian Islam: Social Change through Contemporary Fatāwā, NSW, Australia, and Honolulu: Allen & Unwin and University of Hawai’i Press.

Hosen, Nadirsyah. 2007.Sharī’a & Constitutional Reform in Indonesia. Singapore: ISEAS.

Hosen, Nadirsyah, and Richard Mohr. 2011. Law and Religion in Public Life: The Contemporary Debate. London and New York: Routledge.

Ilyas, Husnul Fahimah, and Annabel Teh Gallop, 2024. “A Prolific 19th Century Bugis Scribe: Syaikh Zainal Abidin and His Personal Catalogue of 52 Qur’ān Manuscript Copied”, Archipel, 107. 75-117.

Jahroni, Jajang. 2008. Defending the Majesty of Islam: Indonesia’s Front Pembela Islam 1998-2003. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books.

Kersten, Carool. 2011. Cosmopolitans and Heretics: New Muslim Intellectuals and the Study of Islam. New York: Columbia University Press.

______. 2015. Islam in Indonesia: The Contest for Society, Ideas, and Values. New York: Oxford University Press.

King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and ‘The Mystic East’. London and New York: Routledge.

Kurzman, Charles, and Carl W. Ernst. 2012. “Islamic Studies in U.S. Universities,” Review of Middle East Studies, 46:1.

Lawrence, Bruce. 1989. Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

______. 1998. Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Lukens-Bull, Ronald A. 2013. Islamic Higher Education in Indonesia: Continuity and Conflict. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ma’arif, A. Syafii. 1993. “Orientalisme Mengapa Digugat?”, in Peta Bumi Intelektualisme Islam di Indonesia. Bandung: Mizan.

______. 1996. “Islam Indonesia: Pergumulan antara Cita dan Kenyataan”, in M. Amin Rais, ed., Islam di Indonesia: Suatu Ikhtiar Mengaca Diri. Jakarta: RajaGrafindo Persada, 173-194.

______. 2009. Islam dalam Bingkai Keindonesiaan dan Kemanusiaan: Sebuah Refleksi Sejarah. Bandung dan Jakarta: Mizan dan Ma’arif Institute.

Majmū’a Bāhithīn, 2013. Al-Islām fī Indūnīsiyā: al-Tārikh, al-Huwīyah, al-Nizām. Dubayy, al-Imārāt al-ʻArabīyah al-Muttaḥidah: Markaz al-Misbār lil-Dirāsāt wa-al-Buḥūth.

Mujani, Saiful. 1994. “Mu’tazilah Theology and the Modernization of the Indonesian Muslim Community: Intellectual Portrait of Harun Nasution,” Studia Islamika, 1: 1, April-June. 91-131.

______. 2007. Muslim Demokrat: Islam, Budaya Demokrasi, dan Partisipasi Politik di Indonesia Pasca Orde Baru. Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama.

Madjid, Nurcholish. 1990. “Pengaruh Kisah Israiliyat dan Orientalisme terhadap Islam”, Kontroversi Pemikiran Islam di Indonesia. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya. 91-107.

______. 2000. “Islam in Indonesia: A Move from the Periphery to the Center,” in Kultur: The Indonesian Journal for Muslim Cultures, 1:1. 1-15.

______. 2003. Indonesia Kita. Jakarta: Nurcholish Madjid Society.

Martin, Richard C. (ed.) 1985. Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies. Oxford: Oneworld.

Mujiburrahman. 2006. Feeling Threatened: Muslim-Christian Relations in Indonesia’s New Order. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

______. 2008. Mengindonesiakan Islam: Representasi dan Ideologi. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar.

Nurlaelawati, Euis. 2010. Modernization, Tradition, and Identity: The Komplisasi Hukum Islam and Legal Practice in the Indonesian Religious Courts. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Permata, Ahmad Norma. (ed.) 2000. “Pendahuluan Editor”, Metodologi Studi Agama. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar.

Rahman, Yusuf. (ed.) 2006. Islam and Society in Contemporary Indonesia. Jakarta: Postgraduate Studies UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.

Riddell, Peter. 2001. Islam and the Malay-Indonesian World: Transmission and Responses. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Ropi, Ismatu. 2000. Fragile Relation: Muslims and Christians in Modern Indonesia. Ciputat: Logos Wacana Ilmu.

______. 2017. Religion and Regulation in Indonesia. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.

Salim, Arskal. 2008. Challenging Secular State: Islamization of Law in Indonesia. Honolulu: The University of Hawai‘i Press.

Sirry, Mun’im. 2014. Scriptural Polemics: the Qur’ān and Other Religions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sonn, Tamara. (ed.) 2021. Overcoming Orientalism: Essays in Honor of John L. Esposito. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tempo. 2011. “Liputan Khusus Republik di Mata Indonesianis: Pasang-Surut Peran peneliti Asing dalam Sejarah Indonesia” November 1-20.

Woodward, Mark W., 1996. “Introduction: Talking Across Paradigms: Indonesia, Islam, and Orientalism,” in Mark W. Woodward (ed.) Toward A New Paradigm: Recent Developments in Indonesian Islamic Thought. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona State University.

Yakin, Ayang Utriza, Adis Duderija, and An Van Raemdonck. (eds.) 2024. Shame, Modesty, and Honor in Islam. London: Bloomsbury Academic.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.36712/sdi.v32i1.45297

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
All publication by Studia Islamika are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Studia Islamika, ISSN: 0215-0492, e-ISSN: 2355-6145

View My Stats