The early history of Islam in Indonesian world is bewilderingly complex, not only in the context of the spread of Islam in the area, but also in the terms of its institutional formation. This book, therefore, discusses such themes as the early introduction of Islam to the Indonesian archipelago, the development of Islamic learning, educational, and legal institutions. Not least important, the book also reveals the religious, intellectual and political relations between Islam in the archipelago with that of the Arabian world “Professor Azyumardi Azra is a brilliant authority in Islam in Indonesia. No one interested in Indonesian Islam can afford to be without this book.” —Professor Dr. M.C. Ricklefs Department of History National University of Singapore Author of acclaimed book, A History of Modern Indonesia since c. 1200 (third edition, 2002) “This well researched book should be a required reading for anyone who would like to comprehend the dynamic of Islam in Indonesian and in Southeast asia as a whole.” —Professor DR. Taufik Abdullah Sejarahwan and member of Akademi Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (AIPI) [Mizan, Pustaka, Religion, Islam, Refrention]

While Muslims in Indonesia have begun to turn towards a strict adherence to Islam, the reality of the socio-religious environment is much more complicated than a simple shift towards fundamentalism. In this volume, contributors explore the multifaceted role of Islam in Indonesia from a variety of different perspectives, drawing on carefully compiled case studies. Topics covered include religious education, the increasing number of Muslim feminists in Indonesia, the role of Indonesia in the greater Muslim world, social activism and the middle class, and the interaction between Muslim radio and religious identity.

This highly informative and insightful study opens numerous windows into the history of Islamic religious thought in the Malay-Indonesian world from the thirteenth to the late twentieth century. The author begins by addressing theological issues relevant to the wider Islamic world then examines Malay-Indonesian Islamic thought in the pre-twentieth century period and Islamic religious thought in Southeast Asia in the modern era.

In 1998, Indonesia's military government collapsed, creating a crisis that many believed would derail its democratic transition. Yet the world's most populous Muslim country continues to receive high marks from democracy-ranking organizations. In this volume, political scientists, religious scholars, legal theorists, and anthropologists examine Indonesia's transition compared to Chile, Spain, India, and potentially Tunisia, and democratic failures in Yugoslavia, Egypt, and Iran. Chapters explore religion and politics and Muslims' support for democracy before change.

Explores the history of Islam in the largest Muslim nation state in the worldLocated on the eastern periphery of the historical Muslim world, as a political entity Indonesia is barely a century old. Yet with close to a quarter of a billion followers of Islam it is now the largest and most populous Muslim country in the world. As the greatest political power in Southeast Asia, and a growing player on the world scene, Indonesia presents itself as a bridge country between Asia, the wider Muslim world and the West.In this survey Carool Kersten presents the Islamisation of Indonesia from the first evidence of the acceptance of Islam by indigenous peoples in the late thirteenth century until the present day. He provides comprehensive insight into the different roles played by Islam in Indonesia throughout history, including the importance of Indian Ocean networks for connecting Indonesians with the wider Islamic world, the religions role as a means of resistance and tool for nation building, and postcolonial attempts to forge an aIndonesian Islam.Key FeaturesThe first comprehensive historical survey of the Islamisation of Indonesia from the arrival of Islam in the 13th century until the presentAn interdisciplinary study of the place and role of Islam in IndonesiaAn overview of the religions growing significance in the formation of what is now the largest and most populous Muslim country in the world

Indonesians and Their Arab World explores the ways contemporary Indonesians understand their relationship to the Arab world. Despite being home to the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia exists on the periphery of an Islamic world centered around the Arabian Peninsula. Mirjam Lücking approaches the problem of interpreting the current conservative turn in Indonesian Islam by considering the ways personal relationships, public discourse, and matters of religious self-understanding guide two groups of Indonesians who actually travel to the Arabian Peninsula—labor migrants and Mecca pilgrims—in becoming physically mobile and making their mobility meaningful. This concept, which Lücking calls "guided mobility," reveals that changes in Indonesian Islamic traditions are grounded in domestic social constellations and calls claims of outward Arab influence in Indonesia into question. With three levels of comparison (urban and rural areas, Madura and Central Java, and migrants and pilgrims), this ethnographic case study foregrounds how different regional and socioeconomic contexts determine Indonesians' various engagements with the Arab world.

Across the Muslim world, religion plays an increasingly prominent role in both the private and public lives of over a billion people. Observers of these changes struggle to understand the consequences of an Islamic resurgence in a democratizing world. Will democratic political participation by an increasingly religious population lead to victories by Islamists at the ballot box? Will more conspicuously pious Muslims participate in politics and markets in a fundamentally different way than they had previously? Will a renewed attention to Islam lead Muslim democracies to reevaluate their place in the global community of states, turning away from alignments with the West or the Global South and towards an Islamic civilizational identity? The answers to all of these questions depend, at least in part, on what ordinary Muslims think and do. In order to provide these answers, the authors of this book look to Indonesia--the world's largest Muslim country and one of the world's only consolidated Muslim democracies. They draw on original public opinion data to explore how religiosity and religious belief translate into political and economic behavior at the individual level. Across various issue areas--support for democracy or Islamic law, partisan politics, Islamic finance, views about foreign engagement--they find no evidence that the religious orientations of Indonesian Muslims have any systematic relationships with their political preferences or economic behavior. The broad conclusion is that scholars of Islam, in Indonesia and elsewhere, must understand religious life and individual piety as part of a larger and more complex set of social transformations. These transformations include modernization, economic development, and globalization, each of which has occurred in parallel with Islamic revivalism throughout the world. Against the common assumption that piety would naturally inhibit any tendencies towards modernity, democracy, or cosmopolitanism, Piety and Public Opinion reveals the complex and subtle links between religion and political beliefs in a critically important Muslim democracy.