STUDIA ISLAMIKA

STUDIA ISLAMIKA
Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies
Vol. 32, no. 1, 2025

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Saiful Mujani

MANAGING EDITOR
Oman Fathurahman

EDITORS
Jamhari
Didin Syafruddin
Jajat Burhanudin
Fuad Jabali
Saiful Umam
Dadi Darmadi
Jajang Jahroni
Din Wahid
Ismatu Ropi
Euis Nurlaelawati
Testriono

INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL BOARD

M. Quraish Shihab (Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University of Jakarta, INDONESIA)
Martin van Bruinessen (Utrecht University, NETHERLANDS)
John R. Bowen (Washington University, USA)
M. Kamal Hasan (International Islamic University, MALAYSIA)
Virginia M. Hooker (Australian National University, AUSTRALIA)
Edwin P. Wieringa (Universität zu Köln, GERMANY)
Robert W. Hefner (Boston University, USA)
Rémy Madinier (Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), FRANCE)
R. Michael Feener (National University of Singapore, SINGAPORE)
Michael F. Laffan (Princeton University, USA)
Minako Sakai (The University of New South Wales, AUSTRALIA)
Annabel Teh Gallop (The British Library, UK)
Syafaatun Almirzanah (Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University of Yogyakarta, INDONESIA)

ASSISTANT TO THE EDITORS

Muhammad Nida' Fadlan
Ronald Adam
Abdullah Maulani
Savran Billahi
Firda Amalia

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ADVISOR

Benjamin J. Freeman
Daniel Peterson
Batool Moussa

ARABIC LANGUAGE ADVISOR

Yuli Yasin

COVER DESIGNER
S. Prinka
STUDIA ISLAMIKA (ISSN 0215-0492; E-ISSN: 2355-6145) is an international journal published
by the Center for the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University of
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Table of Contents

Articles

1 James B. Hoesterey
The Study of Islam in Indonesia:
A 75-Year Retrospective on a Post-Orientalist
Collaboration

9 Robert W. Hefner
The Social Scientific Study of Islam
in Indonesia: A 75 Year Retrospective

43 Muhamad Ali
Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam

75 Nancy J. Smith-Hefner
Gender and Islam in Indonesian Studies,
A Retrospective

101 Mark Woodward

Paradigms, Models, and Counterfactuals:
Decolonializing the Study of Islam in Indonesia

137 Fatimah Husein
Ba ‘Alawi Women and the Development of
Hadrami Studies in Indonesia

Book Review
161 Savran Billahi
Demokrasi, Islam, dan Etika Publik:
Memahami Politik Kewargaan di Indonesia

Document
175 Muhammad Nida’ Fadlan
Shedding Light on Indonesian Islam:
The Latest Trends from Europe
 Muhamad Ali

Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam

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.

43 Studia Islamika, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2025 DOI: 10.36712/sdi.v32i1.45297

44 Muhamad Ali

Abstrak: Artikel ini berupaya menjelaskan kemunculan studi Islam pasca-

orientalis Indonesia sejak tahun 1990-an, yang merupakan dampak dari
meningkatnya jumlah sarjana kelahiran Indonesia dalam kajian Islam
Indonesia. Bidang ini sebelumnya didominasi oleh sarjana kelahiran Barat.
Berbeda dengan pandangan orientalis negatif Edward Said, dirāsah islāmiyyah
berbasis Arab, dan generasi sebelumnya dari sarjana Indonesia lulusan Barat,
sarjana Muslim Indonesia pasca-1990-an, dengan latar belakang pendidikan
pesantren dan Barat, menafsirkan kembali konsep-konsep Al-Qur’an dan
Islam klasik sambil melibatkan berbagai teori Barat mengenai agama, hukum,
identitas, dan gerakan sosial. Melalui analisis tokoh dan gerakan lokal serta
nasional, penggunaan beragam sumber, dan negosiasi ketegangan antara
normatif, praktis, tekstual, dan kontekstual, mereka bertujuan merepresentasikan
Islam dan Muslim dalam keragaman dan kompleksitasnya dalam dinamika
global, nasional, dan lokal. Melalui kerja sama di dalam dan luar negeri,
mereka berkontribusi dalam mengejar berbagai jalur dengan keilmuan dan
aktivisme untuk masyarakat Indonesia dan dunia.

Kata kunci: Pasca-Orientalisme, Studi Islam, Agama, Tradisi Diskursif,

Studi Lokal, Gerakan Sosial.

‫ يسعى هذا املقال إىل تبيان نشأة الدراسات اإلسالمية اإلندونيسية ما بعد‬:‫ملخص‬
‫ كنتيجة لزايدة أعداد الباحثني اإلندونيسيني يف‬،‫االستشراقية منذ تسعينيات القرن املاضي‬
‫ وخالفًا‬.‫ والذيكان يهيمن عليه ساب ًقا علماء غربيون‬،‫حقل دراسات اإلسالم يف إندونيسيا‬
‫ واجليل‬،‫ والدراسات اإلسالمية ذات املنشأ العريب‬،‫للنظرة االستشراقية السلبية إلدوارد سعيد‬
‫ فإن جيل العلماء املسلمني اإلندونيسيني‬،‫السابق من العلماء اإلندونيسيني خرجيي الغرب‬
،‫ خبلفياهتم التعليمية املتنوعة بني املعاهد اإلسالمية واجلامعات الغربية‬،1990 ‫ما بعد عام‬
‫يقومون إبعادة تفسري املفاهيم القرآنية واإلسالمية الكالسيكية مع االخنراط يف نظرايت غربية‬
‫ ومن خالل حتليل شخصيات‬.‫متعددة حول الدين والقانون واهلوية واحلركات االجتماعية‬
‫ والتفاوض بني التوترات املعيارية والعملية‬،‫ واستخدام مصادر متنوعة‬،‫وحركات حملية ووطنية‬
‫ يهدف هؤالء العلماء إىل متثيل اإلسالم واملسلمني يف تنوعهم وتعقيدهم‬،‫والنصية والسياقية‬
‫ يسامهون يف‬،‫ وعرب التعاون الداخلي واخلارجي‬.‫ضمن الديناميات العاملية والوطنية واحمللية‬
.‫تتبع مسارات متنوعة ابلبحث العلمي والنشاط اجملتمعي خلدمة اجملتمع اإلندونيسي والعامل‬

‫ التقليد‬،‫ الدين‬،‫ الدراسات اإلسالمية‬،‫ ما بعد االستشراقية‬:‫الكلمات املفتاحية‬

.‫ احلركات االجتماعية‬،‫ الدراسات احمللية‬،‫اخلطايب‬
DOI: 10.36712/sdi.v32i1.45297 Studia Islamika, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2025
 Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam 45

I
n a brief analysis of Western studies of Islam in Southeast Asia in
the mid-1990s, American anthropologist John R. Bowen argued
that the contrast between the topics chosen by Western scholars
and those by Southeast Asian (including Indonesian) scholars should
remind us of their failure to understand “the relation between normative
texts, interpretative processes, and every behavior that characterizes
not only the observable realities of Muslim societies…but also many
Muslims’ sense of how things ought to work in contemporary social
life” (Bowen 1995, 73). Bowen’s distinction between practical and
normative approaches remains important among contemporary
Indonesianists. More recently, Megan Abbas’s intellectual history of
some Indonesian intellectuals, such as Harun Nasution, Nurcholish
Madjid, and Ahmad Syafi’i Ma’arif, has pointed to their fusionism of
both Western and Islamic traditions, with a conclusion that outlines
three trajectories: discursive boundary maintenance; self-critical, cross-
discursive dialogue; and radical introspection (Abbas 2021, 187-199).
Abbas’ trajectories remain the concern of Westerners, but the Indonesian
Muslims of the post-1990s generations demonstrate a varying degree
of self-critical dialogue from within Muslim intellectuals that work
back and forth, sometimes ambiguous, often between secular-detached
boundary maintenance and the predominantly Arabic and normative
orientations. Still, John Bowen and Megan Abbas’ observations seem to
have overlooked another dynamic within Indonesian Muslim scholars
who have studied in the West but remain engaged in Western, Arabic,
and Indonesian sources and scholarship, indicating not just fusionism
of two traditions but an intellectual eclecticism of using some elements
from humanities and other elements from social sciences which have
traditionally different foci and methods. The Indonesian pesantren
students whose background was the Qur’ān, the Hadith, muqāran al-
adyān, sharī’a, da’wa, ādab, and others from their graduate and postgraduate
training have employed theories and concepts from humanities such as
philosophy, history, and religious studies with qualitative methods, in
interpreting meanings and exploring the human experience. Still, they
analyze modern ideas among local figures, people, social movements,
and political parties, using social sciences and methods such as surveys
to study human behavior and institutions.
Here, we define Indonesian post-Orientalism as the critical examination
and rethinking of Western representations and interpretations of Indonesian

Studia Islamika, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2025 DOI: 10.36712/sdi.v32i1.45297

46 Muhamad Ali

Islam through the lens of post-colonialism and the effects of Orientalism.

In the context of Indonesian Islam, post-Orientalism seeks to challenge
the historical and contemporary stereotypes and the one-dimensional
and simplistic portrayals of Indonesian Islam by focusing on the
diversity and complexity of Indonesian Islam.
In this regard, Indonesian post-Orientalism asserts that Muslim
intellectuals have been not mere borrowers and imitators of foreign
ideas without critical engagement. They have been long impressed
by streams of thought originating elsewhere – the Middle East, Asia,
and other places accessible to them. Still, these ideas apply to local
and Indonesian circumstances, producing dynamic results. Although
the Malay-Indonesian Islamic world owes much to other parts of
the Muslim world, Southeast Asian Islam has made a substantial
creative contribution to the mosaic of Islam (Riddell 2001, 321-
322). Nonetheless, the Malay-Indonesian Muslim writers from the
seventeenth to the mid-twentieth century were educated in the Middle
East and other parts of Asia. After the1945 independence of Indonesia,
Islamic schools and colleges flourished, and more Indonesian pesantren-
students attended Western academic institutions thanks to international
funding agencies, print technology, educational reform, open political
climate, economic growth, and the social dynamism of grass-root social
movements. Muslim students from Java, Sumatera, Sulawesi, and other
areas trained in Islamic sciences in the pesantren primarily associated
with the Nahdlatul Ulama and its foundations (Dofier 1994), the
Islamic schools (madrasah), and the state Islamic colleges under the
postcolonial Ministry of Religious Affairs, founded in 1946 (Ali 2023),
and the private schools and colleges formed by the Muhammadiyah
and other organizations, have shifted their graduate and postgraduate
studies to Western universities: Leiden, Montreal, London, Bonn,
Paris, Melbourne, Chicago, California, and others, to study humanities
and social sciences, under the supervision of primarily Western and few
Western Muslim professors from the Middle East and South Asia. This
development coincided with the development of Islamic Studies in
America and Europe, particularly the inclusion of Islamic and Muslim
studies in the studies of the Middle Eastern or Near Eastern languages
and civilizations, in Religious Studies, Divinity, and Social Sciences –
history, anthropology, political science, and women and gender studies
(Kurzman and Ernst 2012). The Westen-educated Muslim intellectuals

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 Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam 47

have learned about Western intellectualisms and biases, but they, too,
read Western intellectual diversity and complexity, not as a monolithic
tradition. Many have been inspired by Edward Said and other
postcolonial critics who argue for East-West power imbalances. Still,
they, too, have learned Western theories and methodologies, have been
critical of the theories and purposes that do not fit into the Muslim
and Indonesian conditions, and have been critical of the Arabic Islamic
ideological orientations that they see as inapplicable in Indonesian
contexts. In this regard, Westerners can no longer be content to describe
Indonesian cultures and local Islam as separate from the wider Islamic
world of which they are a part (Woodward 1996, 38). But Indonesian
Muslims, too, continue to be part of the Western and globalizing
world. For their part, Western scholars have played an essential role in
training many Indonesian students who study in the U.S., Europe, and
Australia (Tempo 2011).
While Orientalism has received much attention from Western and
Arab Muslim scholars alike (Hanafī 1991; Al-Sufyānī 1992), post-
Orientalism has just begun to be a subject of inquiry, particularly
within the Western traditions of studying Religion and Area Studies.
Western scholars have depicted post-Orientalism differently. Firstly,
post-Orientalism refers to a response to Orientalism by invoking
humanist cosmopolitanism, which entails seeing different religions
and cultures as having equal rights. This approach is not a radical
break from the previous and existing Orientalist traditions, but there
is a greater awareness of their assumptions, goals, and methodologies.
Some Western non-Muslim and Muslim scholars have integrated
Islamic studies in Religious Studies and Muslim societies in Area
Studies such as Middle Eastern and Asian Studies (Martin 1985;
Ernst and Martin 2010; Lawrence 1989, 1998). These Western post-
Orientalist Islamicists usually show a mastery of languages and training
in the classical and contemporary societies of others. The second is
post-Orientalism which critiques the European Enlightenment and its
products in conceptualizing the others (Asad 1993, 2003, 2007; King
1999) that are critical of Western Christian hegemonic constructions of
religion, the secular, and modernity in studying non-Western Christian
societies. The third use of post-Orientalism points to scholarly and
political recognition of diverse cultures and peoples with concepts
such as universalism, politics of difference, and equal citizenship

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48 Muhamad Ali

(Taylor in Gutmann 1994). The fourth meaning of post-Orientalism

is the radical critique of Western knowledge production by exilic or
diasporic intellectuals (Hamid Dabashi 2008). Indonesian Muslim
scholars may be placed in the fifth category of post-Orientalism, the
former colonized and postcolonial intellectuals studying their histories,
problems, and societies. Arndt Graf describes this type as a non-Western
study of the histories and cultures of the non-Western, made possible
by decolonization, democratization, and liberalization, with topics
ranging from violence, gender, pluralism, democracy, civil society, and
human rights (Graf, Fathi and Paul 2011). However, the scholarship
that will be briefly reviewed below belongs to an educational and
intellectual movement that uses and engages the diverse Western and
Arabic Islamic traditions, each characterized by analytical strengths and
information accuracy as well as weaknesses and biases. These Indonesian
scholars do not necessarily shift the focus from one disciplinary
approach to interdisciplinary approaches, from Western knowledge
to local knowledge and local scholars, or from Islamic knowledge to
Western traditions. Still, they seek to eclectically combine whatever
information, concepts, and theories from humanities and social
sciences work for their research interests and objectives, informed by
their pesantren Islamic studies background and the Indonesian socio-
political circumstances. Post-Orientalism does not necessarily mean
anti-Western scholarship or resistance to European colonialism in
all its forms and manifestations during the colonial time (Ali 2016)
and in the postcolonial eras. The Indonesian post-Orientalist study
of Islam considers both Western and Eastern, outsider and insider
perspectives, foreigners and locals, not as a binary opposition, but as
a complementary and inclusive relationship to attain a more accurate
and critical interpretation and analysis of Islam and Muslim societies
with a sense of mission for public scholarship and social impacts.
To highlight continuity in intellectual eclecticism and public
intellectualism, Nurcholish Madjid (d. 2005) remains an influential
theologian and intellectual for many of the post-1990s generation
(Alam and Ali-Fauzi 2003). Madjid is critical of Snouck Hurgronje
as an example of colonial Orientalism and is also critical of Clifford
Geertz as an example of colonial bias and negative attitude toward
Islam. Still, he praises Robert Bellah, the author of Beyond Belief
(1970), in discussing the Mīthāq al-Madīnah, or the Constitution of

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 Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam 49

Medina, and uses Marshall Hodgson, the author of The Venture of Islam
(3 vols, 1974), in reinterpreting the role of sharī’a in shaping Islamic
cosmopolitanism, while also engaging them with Ibn ‘Arabī and Ibn
Khaldūn. Using modern sources and traditional heritage and seeking
to preserve “the old that remains good while seeking the new that is
better”, Madjid advocates an Indonesian Islam as genuinely Islamic as
elsewhere in the world and promotes a shift from the periphery to the
center (Madjid 2000). Madjid bases his ideas on expert observations
by international scholars and his own experience, participation, and
observation. He believed Indonesia was a great nation with its culture,
religious community, and complexity. Madjid is aware of the inevitable
dominance of the educated classes of the colonial era, but soon to be
replaced by “people nurtured in independent, educated, postcolonial
times, most of whom are Muslims, just as most Indonesians are
Muslims” (Madjid 1990, 91-107). Madjid’s critical assessment of
some Orientalists while embracing other Orientalists demonstrates an
ambiguous yet middle position for depth and clarity with a vision for
building democracy and national dignity (Madjid 2003). For historian
M.B. Hooker, Nurcholish Madjid develops a systematic Indonesian
Islamic thought as an example of a creative scholasticism instead of
a responsive scholasticism of the previous eras. Madjid is a model for
synthesizing Western philosophy and social sciences and Arabic dirāsah
islāmiyyah, which were to be implemented in Indonesia (Hooker
2003,13-46).
Another Chicago graduate, Ahmad Syafi’i Ma’arif (1935-2022),
recognizes the positive effects of Western colonialism in creating the
archipelago (Nusantara) as the nation-state (Ma’arif 2009, 86-87).
Ma’arif urges other Indonesians to imitate Orientalists’ seriousness in
producing creative work while reminding them to cultivate an extra-
critical attitude toward their interpretation of Islamic doctrines. For
Ma’arif, mistrusting the Orientalists was just another form of intellectual
powerlessness. He calls Muslims to study the West to understand its
civilization, which is undergoing porousness (kekeroposan) (Ma’arif
1993). Like Madjid, Ma’arif sees history as knowledge about the past
and a history with mission. He strived to build a middle path between
religious fundamentalism and atheistic secularism, advocating a
cosmopolitan ethos that should cross ideological biases and interests of
domination (Ma’arif 2009). To Ma’arif, Indonesian Islam is a struggle

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50 Muhamad Ali

between different ideologies, and the strategy to move forward is to

have faith and look at reality (Ma’arif 1996, 173-194). Madjid and
Ma’arif had to select between positive and negative Orientalisms and
between positive and negative Islamic normativities and traditions.
Madjid and the Paramadina foundation, Ma’arif and his Ma’arif
Institute’s forms of Muslim cosmopolitanism see Islam, the modern
nation-state, Indonesian nationalism, ethnic identity, and humanity
as not contradictory ideas but as ideas that could be compatible and
even mutually sustaining. These tendencies remained apparent in the
work of the younger generation. Still, they offer more locally situated
Islamic studies with a broader range of topics, methods, findings, and
publication venues than previous generations.

The Post-1990s Generation of Scholars

In their career, Nurcholish Madjid and Ahmad Syafi’i Maarif,
among others, strongly encourage the younger generation of Muslim
students and activists to study humanities and social sciences in Western
universities. They contribute to reforming Islamic higher education
through their ethos of critical thinking, open-mindedness, and spiritual
courage to promote social change (Ali 2015; Ali 2022; Hidayat and
Gaus 2023). The fusion of Western and Eastern traditions is exemplified
through the mushrooming of epistemic communities in and outside
campuses, such as the Forum Mahasiswa Ciputat (Formaci), and, from
the early 1990s, the academic peer-review journals published by Islamic
institutes and universities, an outcome of the collaborative work of
the pioneering Western-educated Indonesian graduates and Western
scholars.1 Saiful Mujani, for example, was a pesantren graduate, a
ushūluddīn student at the IAIN of Jakarta, and one of the key founders
of the Formaci. He went to Ohio State University and wrote a doctoral
dissertation later translated into Indonesian Muslim Demokrat (2007).
In this book, Mujani criticizes Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis
for failing to recognize the compatibility of democracy and Muslim
societies as those in Indonesia. Seeing Islam as a multidimensional
religion (the fundamental and non-fundamental) and democracy as a
political participation and democratic culture (including participation
and tolerance), using some quantitative surveys of Muslim political
views and behavior, Mujani’s work complicates the relationship between
Islam and democracy in both theoretical and practical manners. In the

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 Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam 51

light of our argument regarding an Indonesian post-Orientalist study

of Islam, Mujani’s work offers a uniquely Indonesian trajectory of a
global idea of Muslim democracy, highlighting the Pancasila principles
of Indonesian unity (Persatuan) and the concept of peoplehood
(kerakyatan) based on wisdom, deliberation, and representativeness,
thus going beyond the East and West dichotomies. In contrast to the
pre-1990s scholarship that also touches upon the notion of Pancasila
and democracy, Mujani’s and other scholarship on Indonesian Muslim
responses to Pancasila and democracy offer a more sophisticated
argument and quantitative evidence for supporting the compatibility
of nationalism, democracy, and Islam.
Mujani and others served as Indonesian editors and published articles
in Studia Islamika, the first scholarly journal to study Islam in Indonesia,
launched in 1994 by collaborating with Western scholars. They sought
to change peripheral scholarship of Islam in Indonesia but said that
blaming Western scholars for misconceptions and misrepresentations
of Islam in Indonesia was no longer productive. To them, Indonesian
Muslim scholars were responsible for providing a more accurate picture
of Islam in their region (“From Editor,” Studia Islamika 1994, III).
Admitting the challenge of the lack of Indonesian scholars writing in
either English or Arabic, one of the factors responsible for the obscurity
of the development of Islam in Indonesia, they felt the need to tread the
path in the direction of translating Indonesian scholarship into English
or Arabic and producing knowledge about the various dimensions of
Islam in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries.2 In contrast
to the pre-1990s books and opinion articles, the post-1990s journal
articles explore a wider range of local studies and Indonesian intellectual
biographies with theoretical sophistication and methodological rigor
drawn from humanities and social sciences.
In one of the articles, Saiful Mujani contrasted two Western-
educated Indonesians with Arabic graduate training, Mohammad
Rasjidi and Harun Nasution. Harun Nasution studied in Cairo, Egypt
and Montreal, Canada, whom Rasjidi criticized for being “influenced
by orientalist ways of thinking which harm Islam” (Mujani 1994, 107).
In the view of Mujani, Nasution sees Islam as highly pluralistic, sees
Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism in their terms, and
holds that their adherents could attain salvation. In contrast, Rasjidi
sees Islam as the only one and the only true monotheism that guarantees

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52 Muhamad Ali

salvation. But Mujani saw both as reflecting the different orientations:

one was an academic, historical, objective, and dialogical (rather than
the adverse effects of Orientalism according to Edward Said), and the
other was a religious, normative, and missionizing approach to Islam
and other religions (rather than the more objective understanding
of Islam from within Islamic framework). This distinction between
the academic and the normative resulted from Mujani’s exposure
to Western and rationalist Islamic traditions. In his view, Nasution
considered Islamic rationalism and liberalism, not necessarily Christian
Orientalist, because he believed liberal thinking originated within the
Mu’tazilah Islamic traditions (Mujani 1994). Here, Mujani saw two
different orientations of Islamic studies, but Mujani sought neither to
essentialize Nasution and Rasjidi’s positions nor to essentialize the West
and Islam by locating Nasution and Rasjidi’s thoughts and academic
career as a product of a modernizing Indonesian political, economic, and
social system and culture previously dominated by Arabic normativism
and Western Orientalism as separate paths. To Mujani, their study in the
West would not necessarily make them Orientalist or liberal – a label
many Indonesians perceive as harmful and detrimental to the faith.
However, the pursuit of studying Islam in both the West and the
Middle East helped develop a distinctly Indonesian form of Islamic
studies that draws on both traditions (Lukens-Bull 2013, 67-85).
However, we must highlight some features of a distinct Indonesian
Muslim scholarship. Carool Kersten’s analysis (2011; 2015) regarding
new Muslim intellectuals Nurcholish Madjid, Hassan Hanafī, and
Mohammed Arkoun as the caretakers of their traditions, who shared
some common concerns: critical engagement with Islamic heritage
(turāth), the place of reason, and humanist concerns, provides a
significant contribution to these common traits of these scholars.
While we read that the generation of Indonesian Muslim intellectuals
of the last two decades shows this engagement with Islamic heritage,
the importance of rationality and the concern with humanism, the
post-Madjid and post-Hanafi generations offer more diverse concerns,
topics, case studies, public opinion, and survey methodology in
conducting national and local studies, as well as more varied languages
of research and publications.
The first feature of distinct Indonesian Islamic scholarship is the
critical engagement with Western and Arabic scholars as developed

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 Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam 53

by Western-based scholars such as Samuel Huntington, Edward Said,

Talal Asad, and Wael Hallaq (Sonn 2021) as well as by such Arabic,
Iranian and Asian scholars as Hassan Hanafī, Nasr Abū Zayd, Alī
Shariatī, and Fazlur Rahman in explaining Islamic beliefs, practices,
and societies in Indonesia which have Hindu-Buddhist and indigenous
vocabularies and traditions. They seek a combination of the scriptural,
contextual, practical, and normative understandings of Islam in various
themes, including the relationship between Arabic Islam, modern
concepts, and local traditions. Some post-1990s Indonesian scholars
have demonstrated an appreciative but critical stand of their previous
generations and contemporaries.
Another feature is the combination of Islam, intellectualism, and
social mission, combining academic pursuit and social activism,
integrating faith, knowledge, and society, manifested in applied Islamic
studies and in the practical effects of the studies for policymakers and
Muslims. In what follows, we discuss the combination of intellectualism,
faith, and public mission, and the diverse concepts and themes from
different origins related to religion, discursive tradition, identity, and
social movement to support our central argument regarding the distinct
features of Indonesian Islamic post-Orientalist scholarship.

Integrating Dīn, Agama, and Religion

One of the features of Indonesian post-Orientalism is the use of
such different polysemic concepts of dīn, religion, and agama. The
new generation of scholars, such as Ahmad Norma Permata, agree
with their predecessors, like Amin Abdullah (1996), who seek diverse
directions. Permata cites Syed Naquib al-Attas in his rendering of dīn
as both obedience to Divinity and a civilizational worldview, and he
references Western scholars such as E.B. Taylor and Ninian Smart,
who study religion as an empirical object of study and human reality.
Still, as an Indonesian Muslim, Permata wishes to keep being religious
without being apologetic and without judging the truth claims of other
religions.
Permata’s introduction of definitions of religion from Eastern Indian
and Chinese traditions (agama, dharma, tao) and the Arabic traditions
highlight an intellectual eclecticism of Nurcholish Madjid and others of
the post-1990s Indonesian scholarship who had to grapple with different
approaches, objects, and sources of the terminology used in the study

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of religions and Islam. The dimension of public intellectualism can be

read from Permata’s suggestion that Indonesian religious scholars should
be responsible for formulating positive and constructive interactional
patterns that are theoretically, politically, and socially beneficial to the
policymakers and the religious communities in Indonesia (Permata
2000, 42-45). Permata has promoted academic concern with the
scholarship beyond East and West under the Indonesian national and
local interests and circumstances as he sees them.
Another scholar, Media Zainul Bahri, seeks to combine Western
and Islamic approaches to examining Ibn ‘Arabī, Jalāluddin al-Rūmi,
and Abd al-Kārim Al-Jīli in their intellectual and historical contexts,
presenting the ideas of spiritual-transcendental-esoteric unity and
formal, historical, external diversity in many religions. Bahri’s discussion
of wahdat al-adyān, the unity of religions, in terms of the concepts
of dīn, religion, and agama, with the characterizations of the exoteric
and esoteric, forms and essence, the profane and the transcendental,
the sharī’a and the haqīqa, suggests a hybridization of Western and
Islamic concepts in the study of Muslim intellectualism. At the same
time, being critical of both Islamic and Western scholarship on the
Sufi masters, Bahri seeks to invite Muslims and non-Muslims to be
critical and apply pluralist spiritually without neglecting their formal
religious identity (Bahri 2011, 407-411). Moreover, Bahri’s primary
audience remains Indonesian Muslim scholars and society who, in his
view, still face the challenges of religious intolerance and political and
social discrimination based on faith and religion. Permata’s and Bahri’s
cases highlight the creative use of Arabic, Western, and Indonesian
traditions for the sake of an Indonesian study of religion that should
have practical benefits and practical impacts in shaping the life of the
multi-religious nation of Indonesia.
On another level, the distinction of Islam as a reified religion
and an inclusive attitude of submission to God has also received
some attention among Indonesians. A graduate of Chicago, Mun’im
Sirry uses the notion of scriptural polemics to discuss contemporary
Muslim commentaries of the Qur’ān on other religions including
some controversial topics of Islam’s superiority and the exclusivist and
inclusivist ideas of the salvation of religious others and the meaning
of Islam as submission to God and reified confessional Islam through
Muhammad, borrowing Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s notion of “reification”

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and Muhammad Rashīd Ridā’s interpretation of dīn and Islam. For

Sirry, Ridā addresses the gap between the Qur’anic inclusiveness of
Islam as the one dīn and the exclusive religions in history, including
Judaism and Christianity, as a result of the religious and political
leaders and fanaticism in each faction (Sirry 2014, 69-98). Egyptian
scholar Muhammad ‘Abdullah Darāz (2019) notes that Mun’im Sirry
discusses Rashīd Ridā, Abul Kalām Azad, Hamka, and At-Tabātabā’ī
alongside other Western Islamicists on this notion of Islam as one dīn
and many adyān, or religions, agama. But in contrast to Arabic and
Western scholarships, Sirry’s work includes an Indonesian Qur’anic
scholar, Hamka, to provide a comparative case. In this and other works,
Sirry highlights a critical analysis of Islamic concepts whose concerns
are from within and beyond multiple centers, local and global, Western
and Eastern.
The use of agama as religion and religious freedom in Indonesian
politics and society has become a focus of Ismatu Ropi, who studied in
Canada and Australia. His scholarship on Indonesian Muslim views of
Christianity and religion, and state regulation in Indonesia is essential
in offering a textual and non-textual, non-apologetic analysis of
religious diversity and freedom. The first work on Indonesian Muslim
attitudes toward Christianity offers cases of polemic and dialogue
with a concluding remark inviting Muslims and Christians to mutual
understanding (Ropi 2000). After analyzing how the majority of actors
have formulated and promoted the first pillar of the national ideology
of Pancasila, the belief in the one and only God (Ketuhanan Yang Maha
Esa), as a political compromise between the secular nationalists and
Islamists in Indonesia, Ropi sees problems of discriminations and argues
that the state should protect religious freedom for all citizens regardless
of their religion (Ropi 2017). Ropi and the other scholars discuss Islam
in terms of Western religion, the Indonesian Sanskrit loanword agama,
and Arabic dīn in the scriptures and within the Indonesian socio-
political institutions and public policy.

Discursive and Non-Discursive Tradition

As Talal Asad and other scholars have argued, the other theme concerns
Islam as a discursive tradition. Mujiburrahman, a local Banjarese of
South Kalimantan, student of pesantren and the ushūluddin, and
McGill University and Universiteit Utrecht graduate who wrote a

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dissertation on Muslim-Christian relations in the New Order (2006)

and Indonesian essays, sees the Indonesianization of Islam as a problem
of representation and ideology. His works offer critical engagement with
Western scholars, Arabic scholars, and Indonesian scholars of the past
and his time. Mujiburrahman seeks a middle position between Western
Orientalism on the one hand and “Orientalism on the Reverse” by
Muslim fundamentalists who see the West as essentially imperialist
and amoral on the other hand (Mujiburrahman 2008, 19). He sees
Edward Said, Talal Asad, and Muhammad ‘Ābid al-Jābirī as different
influential theorists of discourse in the domains of literature and
media, anthropology, and theology respectively, with a quite similar
focus on power relations. Discussing Al-Jābirī’s contribution to his
project of Arabic renewal, alongside Hassan Hanafī, Al-Ghazālī, Philip
Hitti, Olivier Leaman, Harun Nasution, and Nurcholish Madjid,
Mujiburrahman shows an eclectic intellectualism like his predecessors.
Mujiburrahman reads al-Jābirī’s idea of Arabic Islamic heritage (al-
turāth, see Al-Jābirī 1991,1993), including the Qur’ān, the Hadith,
and sciences (kalām, fiqh, falsafah, and tasawwuf), by taking continuity
in principles as a priority that could well coexist with Western ideas
of religion, discourses, the nation-state, democracy, and human rights,
which would be promisin’ for contemporary Muslim intellectuals
whose predicaments center around how to best respond to both
Eastern tradition and Western cultures (Mujiburrahman 2008, 148-
166; See al-Jābirī 1996). Mujiburrahman argues that these discourse
analyses, of Al-Jabari and others, have overlooked the function of
religion as a perennial lifeworld and spiritual experience, advocating a
phenomenological approach that should fill in the gap in Islamic studies
(Mujiburrahman 2008, 25-43). In contrast to the previous generations
of scholars, he sees the need for integrating Islamic kalām, fiqh, and
tasawwuf with empirical social research about the contemporary reality
of Muslims in Indonesia and other parts of the world.
Also important for our central argument, Mujiburrahman discusses
the intellectual contribution of Nurcholish Madjid in the context of
personal, urban-class, and socio-political contexts. He praises Madjid’s
breadth and depth in Islamic theological thinking and Western
epistemology, demonstrating a convincing power in formulating Islamic
humanist values centering around tauhīd and equality. Still, in some of
his statements, Mujiburrahman is critical of Madjid’s eclecticism and

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 Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam 57

apologetic tone. He sees Madjid’s message on social justice as a crucial

problem to be addressed not only from legalistic perspectives but also as
theological abstractions, but he criticizes Madjid for emphasizing Islam’s
contribution to Western modernity and Islam as the fastest-growing
religion in the world (Mujiburrahman 2008, 187-188). Reading Madjid’s
speech on Islamic discourse on human leadership and stewardship
(kalām kekhalifahan), Mujiburrahman points to Madjid’s apologetic
statement that Islam had developed the idea of human leadership long
before Western humanism. Mujiburrahman wonders why Madjid had
urged Muslims to be proud of humanity’s values and their contribution
to solving world problems while ignoring the fact that Muslims were still
under Western hegemony (Mujiburrahman 2008, 187-188; 206-207).
The uses of the scriptural concept of ahl al-kitāb, or the people of the
book within the socio-political context of Indonesia, present another
example of a combination of discourses and a non-discursive tradition
crucial in understanding Indonesian Islam. The Qur’ān’s rendering of
the term points to Jews and Christians, but many Indonesian Muslims
have used it to refer to non-Muslims who are not animists. The Pancasila
state, which is neither religious nor secular, has been a context for the
predominance of the theistic meanings of agama or religion associated
with Christianity in particular, but also with extended meanings
including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism in the country. The
controversy around religious missions toward other people who already
have religion and the legal and social debate on interfaith marriage,
which concerns Muslims and non-Muslims, has also been related to
the discussion of the meanings of ahl al-kitāb. The concept and other
related concepts, such as kāfir dhimmī and kāfir mu’āhid, have had legal
implications on the legal status of local religions and the believers in
the One God (Penghayat Kepercayaan kepada Tuhan Yang Maha Esa)
and the discursive debate and practice of citizenship or muwāthanah in
Indonesia (Mujiburrahman 2008, 279-297). Although Robert Hefner
has suggested that the majority of Muslim leaders and scholars have put
aside the classical fiqh categories of protected people (ahl al-dhimma)
and “people of the book” (ahl al-kitāb) and have practiced local models
of multi-religious citizenship and national belonging (Hefner 2024),
some of the new generation of Indonesian Muslim scholars have also
engaged the scriptural Arabic concepts with the Western ideas and the
Indonesian socio-political history and realities.

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Legal Formality and Substantive Values

Another contribution of the new generation of Indonesian scholars
concerns the distinction and accommodation of Islam as formalistic and
substantive. Some Indonesian santris trained in the sharī’a sciences such
as Nadirsyah Hosen, Arskal Salim, and Syafiq Hasyim have engaged in
Western and international legal traditions and human rights. Overall,
they focus on the intersection of the sharī’a and the modern notions of
law and constitution in the spirit of religious and civic human values. In
discussing the compatibility of the sharī’a and constitutional reform in
Indonesia, citing legal Islamicist Wael Hallaq on key Islamic terms such
as ijtihād and the notion of change in Islamic law, Nadirsyah Hosen
differentiates between the group who sees incompatibility, themselves
divided into the fundamentalist and the secularist, and the group who
considers compatibility, divided into the formalistic and substantivistic.
Hosen supports the compatibility of Islamic substantive law and modern
constitutionalism (Hosen 2007, 28-50). Hosen’s critical engagement
with modern Western legal terms, traditions, and traditional Islamic
law has led him to contend that Islamic law is not static and final.
Islamic law can be modified without rejecting the fundamental basis,
objectives, or spirit. For Hosen, a state that implements Islamic law is
possible. To this end, he says, “Islam and constitutionalism can coexist
in the same vision, not without risk of tension, but with the possibility
of success” (Hosen 2007, 224). Hosen’s other work, in collaboration
with a Western scholar (2011), discusses law and religion in public life
and provides an example of Indonesian Muslim scholars’ contributions
to the debate on law and religion to the global audience.
Syafiq Hasyim uses the concept of shariatization of Indonesia in
his study of the Majlis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), complementing Atho
Mudzhar’s book on the fatwas of the MUI (Hasyim 2023). In line with
an earlier work by Arskal Salim on the nationalization and localization
of Islamic law (Salim 2008), Syafiq Hasyim’s work is another project
of a cross-discursive dialogue approach between Islamic intellectual
tradition and Western epistemology, rather than the secularist and
the radical disavowal from the West. Employing Wael Hallaq’s
conceptualization of ijtihād, ijma’, and maslaha and citing Talal Asad in
his discussion on Muslim orthodoxy as the power to regulate or adjust
correct practice and exclude and replace incorrect ones, Syafiq Hasyim
explores the way the MUI produced their fatwas and functioned as the

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central religious authority that sought to impose their orthodoxy on

Indonesian Islam, including the Majlis’ attack against other Muslim
scholars such as Nurcholish Madjid and Ahmad Syafi’i Ma’arif for
being liberal due to Orientalism (Hasyim 2023, 38, 273, 293, 318).
Other scholars, such as Euis Nurlaelawati, examine Muslim women
in Indonesian religious courts – one of the unique cases considers the
absence of women judges in other Muslim-majority countries and
the legal practice through the Kompilasi Hukum Islam in Indonesia
(Nurlaelawati 2010). Alfitri studies the zakat practices in Islamic banks
in Indonesia (Alfitri 2022). Another young scholar, Ayang Utriza Yakin,
who studied in Egypt and France and is now an associate professor at
a Catholic university in Belgium, seeks to intervene in the study of
the history of Islamic law of the Bantenese sultanate and contributes
to contemporary issues of Islamic moderation and tolerance (Yakin,
Duderija, and Raemdonck 2024). These Indonesian scholars of Islamic
law offer a trajectory of research quite different from Arabic and
Western scholars of Islamic law.
The fusion of the principles of Islamic law and the values of human
rights, the rule of law, and religious liberty is an argument that is in
line with Wael Hallaq, who invites Muslims and Western scholars to
be critical of their moral problems without telling others what’s best
for their respective societies (Hallaq 2013). However, different from
Hallaq, whose main concerns were classical and global, some Indonesian
scholars discussed here have localized the classical, medieval, and
modern debate on law, politics, and society within local, Indonesian
national, and global contemporary contexts.

Local Studies and Manuscripts

The critical role of nationalist and local identities continues to
develop in the post-1990s Indonesian scholarship. Following but also
beyond the work of the predecessors like Harun Nasution, Nurcholish
Madjid, Ahmad Syafi’i Maarif, and Amin Abdullah, many of the new
generation of Indonesians produce work on the histories and expressions
of Islam in its local, often ethnic contexts such as Aceh, Makassar, Malay,
Bima, Banjarmasin, Manado, Yogyakarta, and Bandung (Ali 2024).
They investigate the tension and accommodation between Islam and
Indigenous knowledge, sometimes in terms of “local wisdom”(kearifan
lokal), including local histories, manuscripts, and cultures. They also

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bring to the fore the prose, poems, ethics, and material cultures from
within Indonesia and regional places in the study of Islam and Muslim
societies. Many seek to reassess secondary sources originating from
English and Arabic with primary local Indonesian Malay, Sundanese,
Banjarese, Buginese, and other local manuscripts and cultures and the
Arabic script of these local languages. Acehnese scholar Amirul Hadi,
a graduate of McGill University, for example, has used travel accounts,
royal edicts and inscriptions, legal texts, manuscripts, literary works,
Islamic and local archeological evidence, oral traditions and folklore,
local histories and chronicles, artifacts and numismatics such as coins
and currency, as well as colonial records and correspondence (Hadi
2004; Ilyas and Gallop 2024).
Local manuscripts in Southeast Asia are abundant and deserving of
study, such as the local Malay-Indonesian work on Sanskrit epics and
purana, and the hikayats of Iskandar Zulkarnain, Amir Hamzah, and
Muhammad Hanafiyah from the early Islamic period, the poetry or
sha’ir, the translation and commentary of the Qur’ān, Sufi literature
of the different Sufi networks and the jurisprudential interpretations
before European impacts or outside colonial control across Indonesia
and a broader region of Southeast Asia (Braginsky 2004). Indonesia’s
leading expert on Islamic manuscripts, Oman Fathurrahman, who
graduated from the pesantren and Indonesian universities and
researched in a a number of Western and Eastern universities and
research centers abroad, focuses on some of these local manuscripts
in Indonesia covering Aceh, the Philippines, Southern Thailand,
and other parts of Southeast Asia. The emphasis on local voices and
perspectives serves as an alternative to the overgeneralization of Islam as
a global single religion by Western journalists, public figures, and even
academics. Fathurrahman’s work is not simply on the local manuscripts
but also the trans-local and regional networks, such as his work on the
silsilah of the Shattārīyah Sufi order in Aceh, Java and the Lanao area of
Mindanao. He finds that although the themes of these manuscripts are
generally considered “conservative”, such as those discussing the tariqah,
magics, and jurisprudence, the findings highlight the vibrancy of local
Islams from before and beyond European colonialism (Fathurahman
2001, 2016). Dutch scholar Martin van Bruinessen considers the work
a valuable contribution to studying Sufi orders in Southeast Asia and
the trans-local relations and cultural flows involved (Bruinessen 2016,

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487-490). It is also important to suggest that because local manuscripts

are in private hands and libraries worldwide are now more digitized,
these demand research in their production, transmission, translation,
interpretation, reception, and impacts.
In addition, textual studies have been conducted creatively in tandem
with ethnography. Inspired by the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) leaders and
grand teachers such as Abdurrahman Wahid and Muhammad Luthfi
ibn Yahya, Indonesian Arab-descent scholar Ismail Fajrie Alatas uses
historiography and ethnography to analyze religious authority using
theories such as “articulatory labor” and “concrete universality”, moving
beyond the Tradition of the Prophet as elaborated in the historical
(Tarikh) and Hadith studies (Alatas 2021). In contrast to Talal Asad’s
idea of Islam as a discursive tradition that relates itself to the scriptures
and the changing forms of social practice, Alatas’ idea of existing
foundational texts, the past as a model for action or sunna to others in
a specific time and place, here and now (hence ‘living sunna’), leads to
the production of Islamic texts, practices, and institutions that generate
diverse forms of religious authority. At the same time, being critical
of Max Weber’s idea of charisma, Alatas’ work focuses on preserving
religious authorities often described as charismatic (Alatas 2021; Alatas
2024). In contrast to Wael Hallaq’s work and project of “introspective
Orientalism” (Hallaq 2018, 439), that history should be written only
for one’s society, not for the other, Alatas’ work here proposes a history
that aims to be intelligible to others. Beyond Hallaq’s project, Alatas
argues in Western academic terms that Islamic religious authority is
a local, concrete, and sustained labor of translation, mobilization,
collaboration, and competition. To Alatas, Islam’s universality has
become an object of historical and ethnographic inquiry (Alatas 2021,
214). Local Muslims like himself have the same capacity to conduct
such investigations, an inquiry critically appreciated and praised by
Muslim and non-Muslim scholars and readers alike.

Social Movement
One of the popular topics among the new generation has been the
study of Islam as practiced in the socio-religious organizations like the
Muhammadiyah, Nahdlatul Ulama, Persatuan Islam, Mathla’ul Anwar,
Ahmadiyah, Jaringan Islam Liberal, and Salafī networks. Researching
the Muhammadiyah and its relationship with NU, Ahmadiyah,

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Salafī, and others have become less confessional and more socially
and scientifically oriented with the work of Ahmad Najib Burhani ,
following their predecessors. They use critically the Western concepts
of orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and religious authority. Citing Clifford
Geertz, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Bernard Lewis, and Khaled
Abou El Fadl, Burhani critically analyzes how moderate Islam has
been viewed differently: political in the U.S. and religious in Indonesia
(Burhani 2012, 567-581). In other words, mapping Javanese religion
in terms of Clifford Geertz’s variants of santri, abangan, and priyayi,
but critically discussing the early Muhammadiyah as no less Javanese,
Burhani turns to an exploration of a wide range of Indonesian Islam,
categorized as fundamentalist, moderate, and progressive, with some
actors promoting their orthodoxy against minority groups such as the
Shi’a and Ahmadiyah. These and other categorizations of Indonesian
Muslim organizations into the traditionalist and the modernists
(Burhani 2013) are examples of the critical analysis of Muslim beliefs
and practices from within Islamic, Western, and indigenous traditions.
Jajang Jahroni, Noorhaidi Hasan, Dien Wahid, and Zulkifli
have addressed jihadism, Salafism, Wahhabism, and Shi’ism in
Indonesia, using a combination of historical, textual, ethnographic,
and sociological approaches. Noorhaidi Hasan’s work on Laskar
Jihad, The Soldier of Jihad (Hasan 2006), offers important data and
analysis combining textual, bibliographical, historical, sociological, and
ethnographic approaches to the rise of an Arab-descent Indonesia cleric
Ja’far Umar Thalib and his Islamist movement. Hasan interviewed a
hundred Laskar Jihad members, actors who “were not the subjects of
analysis; rather, they produced the subject of analysis and supplied
its meaning” (Hasan 2006, 28). The book demonstrates a theoretical
and empirical analysis of an Islamic movement by discussing such
Arabic concepts as umma, jihād, hākimiyyah, al-walā wa al-barrā, and
hizbiyyah, as well as considering Western contemporary concepts such
as network, community, politics, activism, and identity. For example,
on the notion of jihad, Hasan cites classical works by Ibn Qayyīm
al-Jawziyyah, the writings, interviews, and speeches by the leaders
of Laskar Jihad, the books by Rudolph Peters, all within the global
imaginations of the Western Christian-Zionist conspiracy and the local
contexts of Christians and Muslims fighting in the Moluccas. Hasan
discusses the different categorizations of jihad in terms of the lesser and

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 Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam 63

the greater, the offensive and the defensive kinds, the rules when jihad
as the war is proclaimed, and the implications of martyrdom for the
believers when they die. In Hasan’s words: “This belief has developed
with the circulation of religious texts, replete with Qur’anic verses and
Prophetic Traditions extolling the merits of fighting a jihad and vividly
describing the reward waiting in the hereafter for those slain during the
fighting” (Hasan 2006, 152).
In this interdisciplinary work, Noorhaidi Hasan seeks to distance
himself from his research objects, expecting to provide their meanings,
seeking to avoid biases. At the same time, the language of analysis
remains Western and Arabic as understood by the Indonesian Muslims,
both the researcher and the object of research. In examining the social
background of the newly urban religious people joining the jihadi
movement, Hasan eclectically cites Max Weber on modernization,
Jurgen Habermas on communicative rationality and civil society,
Manuel Castells on the impact of globalization, and Pierre Bourdieu
on the habitus. In the context of frustration and uncertainty arising
from modernization, jihad emerges as the concept whose symbols and
discourses can be used to express anger among the deprived people.
Jihad can transform marginality into centrality and defeat patriotism
(Hasan 2006, 157-159, 173, 182-183). Noorhaidi Hasan’s concluding
remark highlights our argument on an Indonesian intellectual pursuit
and critical thinking with a mission:
Because such militants pursue their struggle through spectacular violence,
jihadi Islam remains on the political periphery and may never succeed in
the map of Indonesian Islam. Nor has it changed the secular system of
the Indonesian nation-state. The majority of Indonesian Muslims remain
tolerant and opposed to the use of violence, let alone terrorism. (Hasan
2006, 221)
Using the concept of fundamentalism, which originated in the
Western Protestant tradition, Jajang Jahroni seeks to explain how and
why the Front of Pembela Islam (FPI) emerged in the post-reformation
era (Jahroni 2008, 2). Other scholars from Southeast Asia see Jajang
Jahroni’s monograph published by the Asian Muslim Action Network
as a part of the endeavors of presenting the diversity of Islam from
Southeast Asia studied by local scholars. Citing Edward Said, Chaiwat
Satha-Anand from Thammasat University, Bangkok, comments
on the publication of Jajang Jahroni’s monograph, “At a time when

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Islamophobia is on the rise, it is essential to find fresh perspectives

that will allow us to understand the new problems and tensions facing
Muslims in contemporary Southeast Asian societies…” (“Foreword”
in Jahroni 2008, vii). In addition, an edited volume features Abdullah
Faqih’s study of NU progressives in Jepara, Agus Salim’s article on
the rise of Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, Syamsul Rijal’s article on Sabili
and Islamism in post-new order Indonesia, and other articles on the
tarekat and pesantren in local contexts (Bamualim 2005; Rahman
2006). These and other studies indicate the diversity and complexity of
local expressions of Islam (Azra, Dijk, and Kaptein2010; Fauzia 2013;
Burhanuddin and Dijk 2013; Majmū’a Bāhithīn 2013).
There are other topics of study linked to the histories of pre-colonial
Islam in its multicultural and inter-religious contexts – identity,
interaction, acculturation, and hybrid cultures. Research is also needed
about the marginalized and non-mainstream Islamic movements and
organizations, such as Al-Washliyah, Al-Irsyad, Mathlaul Anwar, Al-
Khairaat, Wahdah Islamiyyah; and the Shi’a such as Ikatan Jama’ah
Ahlul Bait Indonesia (IJABI) and Ahlul Bait Indonesia (ABI); the
different factions of the Ahmadiyah in Indonesia, Fahmina, Rahima,
Islam Bergerak; and other less-known organizations and networks
in various parts of Indonesia, to understand how and why specific
organizations survive to become mainstream when others do not and to
study how and why new organizations and movements have emerged
from the 1990s onwards. More studies are needed to analyze Indonesia’s
relations with multiple centers, including other parts of Asia, Turkey,
India, Pakistan, and Iran beyond the Arabic Middle Eastern region. It
is also important to engage the political economy in the critical study of
Islam: class analysis in the study of Islam in Indonesia is not only about
the middle class (Anugrah 2015, 105-116) but also the crossing of
social classes in the transmission and application of Islam in Indonesia.
Such studies can focus on the ideas and structural factors at work.
These studies and other research projects should enhance the quantity
and quality, as well as the practice and the theory of an Indonesian
post-Orientalist study of Islam.
Lastly, Indonesian studies of Islam must also be part of Southeast
Asian (and Asian) Studies. As a subfield, Indonesian studies have,
after the 1990s, undergone more transformative changes. Ariel
Heryanto observes that local scholars would do best in analyzing data

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 Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam 65

in specific areas such as contemporary life, oral history, ethnography,

religion, popular culture, and media. Still, they were less advantaged
in universalist theorization, politically sensitive topics, macro- and
comparative studies across regions, or archival studies on research
materials currently conserved in a few Western libraries (Heryanto
2007, 75-108), and might want to reconsider their research topic.
Indonesian scholars are today research partners rather than a mere
object of study. This does not mean Indonesians know more about
Indonesia as they have no privilege over foreigners in studying their
country; there is a continued need to create a balance, if not equality,
in power dynamics (Heryanto 2011). However, the new generation of
Indonesian Muslim scholars has made critical observations regarding
controversial topics and local archives while falling short in universalist
theorization, comparative, and global studies.

Concluding Remarks
For the last two decades, a growing number of Indonesian Muslim
scholars have examined a wide range of topics that we don’t discuss in
this article, including women and gender, arts and popular culture,
the new media, economics, and the environment, but select themes in
some publications surveyed here may suffice to highlight the significant
development of Islamic studies by the post-1990s generations of
Indonesian Muslims trained in Islamic traditional schools and the
West.3 Read from the Indonesian Muslim research and publications
on the themes of religion and agama, discursive and non-discursive
tradition, identity, and social movement, the perspectives evolving from
the new generation have not been another binary opposition: Western
versus Eastern, Arabic versus non-Arabic, modern versus traditional,
but an accommodation of the Western and the Eastern in its diversity,
which could include Arabic and Indonesia and local ethnic, Arabic and
non-Arabic (Iranian-Persian and South Asian), and different forms of
modernity and traditions, each and all neither monolithic nor static.
Although not always explicit and bold, the relationship between these
geographical and cultural ideas and entities has gradually shifted from
superiority, inferiority, domination, and resistance to more inclusive,
equitable, and collaborative relationships. From the review of some
works above, Indonesian post-Orientalism may be described as the
critical examination and rethinking of Western representations and

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66 Muhamad Ali

interpretations of Islam, mainly Indonesian Islam, through the lens

of post-colonialism and the effects of Orientalism. In the context of
Indonesian Islam, post-Orientalism has started to reject the historical
and contemporary stereotypes and to seek to decolonize the ways
Indonesian Islam is portrayed. This approach focuses on the diversity
and complexity of Indonesian Islam.
When Carl Ernst and Richard Martin argued that the best post-
Orientalist scholarship in Islamic Studies should be based on solid
training in the languages, texts, and history of premodern Islam as a
necessary basis for the discourse of Islam and Muslims today (Ernst
and Martin 2010, 13), they proposed a post-Orientalism from within
Western traditions rather than from within Muslim scholarship itself.
However, many Indonesian Muslim scholars who are well-versed in
classical and premodern Islam and contemporary humanities and
social sciences have become much more focused on their nationalist
and local concerns than they are seeking universalist theorization
and global influence. Except for some Indonesian diasporic scholars
teaching and researching in Western countries and the Indonesian
Islamic organizations such as the Muhammadiyah and the NU with
their international conferences promoting an Indonesian archipelagic
(Nusantara) Islamic civilization and the idea of religious moderation
for the world, most of the Indonesian intellectual initiatives and
activities remain from within the motherland, Indonesia, in their
organizations, social movements, campuses, and research centers. An
Indonesian post-Orientalist study of Islam has emerged primarily
from the motherland to enhance local Indonesian Muslims’ agency
and voices. When Muslim scholars sought to de-Orientalize Islamic
studies, many sought to decolonize religion by re-Arabizing religious
and Islamic Studies. Others critically engaged the Arabic and Western
heritage with the present realities shaped by multiple sources of
knowledge. However, Indonesian Muslim scholars have claimed they
pursue middle positions, albeit with different trajectories depending on
their disciplines and interests. Some of them do not want to perpetuate
the production of knowledge to dominate others; they seek to avoid
recreating other forms of power imbalance: between Muslims and non-
Muslims, between Islam in the majority, and the different religions and
traditions in the minority.

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 Indonesian Post-Orientalist Study of Islam 67

The challenge facing the new generation of Indonesian Muslim

scholars remains great: how can they produce theories from their
diverse research topics and sources, streamlining local and global
histories, cultures, and problems within a broader study of Islam
and Muslims, consistently engaging more Arabic Islamic knowledge,
wrestling Western theoretical and methodological studies, moving
beyond providing references to the Westerners studying Islam and
beyond the Arab-based Islamic scholarship? They are responsible for
developing creative, bold, and confident ways of making Indonesian
Islam and its theoretical study accessible and intelligible to scholars of
Islam, humanities, and social sciences beyond Indonesia in other parts
of the world.

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68 Muhamad Ali

Endnotes
1. The production of knowledge by Indonesian Muslim academics through the
publication of these journals: Al-Jāmi’ah: Journal of Islamic Studies (Yogyakarta:
1962-present); Studia Islamika: Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies (Jakarta,
1994-present); Journal of Indonesian Islam (Surabaya, 2006- present); Indonesian
Journal of Islam and Muslim Societies (Salatiga: 2011-present), and Qudus International
Journal of Islamic Studies (2013-present) in English and Arabic, whose authors have
been predominantly Indonesian. The oldest academic journal is al-Jami’ah: Journal
of Islamic Studies, first published by IAIN Sunan Kalijaga, Yogyakarta, in 1962, first
in Indonesian language and later in English and Arabic, covering a wide range of the
study of Islam normatively from the traditional perspectives, and later also in terms of
social sciences and humanities.
2. See also articles by Indonesian scholars under the theme Islam and diversity in
contemporary Indonesia: belief, gender, and politics in the Muslim World, a journal
devoted to the study of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations. Overall, they argue that
Muslim identities and actions are neither monolithic nor fixed, conditioned by textual
and contextual interpretations and the religious, social, and political circumstances at
the local and global levels (Ali and Afdillah, eds, 2020).
3. The articles published in Studia Islamika between 2011 and 2024 shows approaches
used to analyze women and gender, cultural studies, the study of reception of ideas,
and social class. For example, different articles explore gender awareness of the Islamic
woman’s movement, women in the Qur’anic exegesis, and manhood and womanhood
in Aisyiyah and the reception of the ideas of Iranian-American Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
those of Iranian Ali Shari’ati, and those of Egyptian Hassan Hanafi among Indonesian
intellectuals.

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_____________________
Muhamad Ali, University of California, Riverside, United States. Email:
[email protected].

Studia Islamika, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2025 DOI: 10.36712/sdi.v32i1.45297

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S
tudia Islamika, published three times a year since 1994, is a
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specializes in Indonesian Islamic studies in particular and
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of Islamic Education in Southeast Asia,” in Making Modern
Muslims: The Politics of Islamic Education in Southeast Asia, ed.
Robert Hefner, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
2. Booth, Anne. 1988. “Living Standards and the Distribution
of Income in Colonial Indonesia: A Review of the Evidence.”
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 19(2): 310–34.
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Islamic Law in Contemporary Indonesia: Ideas and Institutions.
Cambridge: Islamic Legal Studies Program.
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‫مت اعتماد ستوداي إسالميكا من قبل وزارة البحوث والتكنولوجيا والتعليم العايل جبمهورية إندونيسيا ابعتبارها‬
‫دورية علمية (رقم القرار‪.)32a/E/KPT/2017 :‬‬

‫ستوداي إسالميكا عضو يف ‪( CrossRef‬اإلحاالت الثابتة يف األدبيات األكادميية) منذ ‪ ،2014‬وابلتايل‬

‫معرف الوثيقة الرقمية (‪.)DOI‬‬
‫فإن مجيع املقاالت اليت نشرهتا مرقمة حسب ّ‬
‫ستوداي إسالميكا جملة مفهرسة يف سكوبس (‪ )Scopus‬منذ ‪ 30‬مايو ‪.2015‬‬

‫عنوان المراسلة‪:‬‬

‫‪Editorial Office:‬‬
‫‪STUDIA ISLAMIKA, Gedung Pusat Pengkajian‬‬
‫‪Islam dan Masyarakat (PPIM) UIN Jakarta,‬‬
‫‪Jl. Kertamukti No. 5, Pisangan Barat, Cirendeu,‬‬
‫‪Ciputat 15419, Jakarta, Indonesia.‬‬
‫;‪Phone: (62-21) 7423543, 7499272, Fax: (62-21) 7408633‬‬
‫‪E-mail: [email protected]‬‬
‫‪Website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/studia-islamika‬‬

‫قيمة االشتراك السنوي خارج إندونيسيا‪:‬‬

‫للمؤسسات‪ 75 :‬دوالر أمريكي‪ ،‬ونسخة واحدة قيمتها ‪ 25‬دوالر أمريكي‪.‬‬
‫لألفراد‪ 50 :‬دوالر أمريكي‪ ،‬ونسخة واحدة قيمتها ‪ 20‬دوالر أمريكي‪.‬‬
‫والقيمة ال تشمل نفقة اإلرسال بالبريد الجوي‪.‬‬

‫رقم الحساب‪:‬‬
‫خارج إندونيسيا (دوالر أمريكي)‪:‬‬
‫‪PPIM, Bank Mandiri KCP Tangerang Graha Karnos, Indonesia‬‬
‫‪account No. 101-00-0514550-1 (USD).‬‬

‫داخل إندونيسيا (روبية)‪:‬‬

‫‪PPIM, Bank Mandiri KCP Tangerang Graha Karnos, Indonesia‬‬
‫‪No Rek: 128-00-0105080-3 (Rp).‬‬

‫قيمة االشتراك السنوي داخل إندونيسيا‪:‬‬

‫لسنة واحدة ‪ 150,000‬روبية (للمؤسسة) ونسخة واحدة قيمتها ‪50,000‬‬
‫روبية‪ 100,000 ،‬روبية (للفرد) ونسخة واحدة قيمتها ‪ 40,000‬روبية‪.‬‬
‫والقيمة ال تشتمل على النفقة لإلرسال بالبريد الجوى‪.‬‬
 ‫ستوديا إسالميكا‬
‫مجلة إندونيسيا للدراسات اإلسالمية‬
‫السنة الثانية والثالثون‪ ،‬العدد ‪2025 ،1‬‬
‫رئيس التحرير‪:‬‬
‫سيف املزاين‬
‫مدير التحرير‪:‬‬
‫أومان فتح الرمحن‬
‫هيئة التحرير‪:‬‬
‫مجهاري‬
‫ديدين شفرالدين‬
‫جاجات برهان الدين‬
‫فؤاد جبلي‬
‫سيف األمم‬
‫دادي دارمادي‬
‫جاجانج جهراين‬
‫دين واحد‬
‫ايويس نورليالوايت‬
‫تيسرتيونو‬
‫جملس التحرير الدويل‪:‬‬
‫حممد قريش شهاب (جامعة شريف هداية هللا اإلسالمية احلكومية جباكرات)‬
‫مارتني فان برونيسني (جامعة أترخية)‬
‫جوهن ر‪ .‬بووين (جامعة واشنطن‪ ،‬سانتو لويس)‬
‫حممد كمال حسن (اجلامعة اإلسالمية العاملية – ماليزاي)‬
‫فركنيا م‪ .‬هوكري (جامعة أسرتاليا احلكومية كانبريا)‬
‫إيدوين ف‪ .‬ويرجنا (جامعة كولونيا‪ ،‬أملانيا)‬
‫روبريت و‪ .‬هيفنري (جامعة بوستون)‬
‫رميي مادينري (املركز القومي للبحث العلمي بفرنسا)‬
‫ر‪ .‬ميكائيل فينري (جامعة سينغافورا احلكومية)‬
‫ميكائيل ف‪ .‬لفان (جامعة فرينشتون)‬
‫ميناكو ساكاي (جامعة نيو ساوث ويلز)‬
‫اانبيل تيه جالوب (املكتبة الربيطانية)‬
‫شفاعة املرزانة (جامعة سوانن كاليجاغا اإلسالمية احلكومية)‬
‫مساعد هيئة التحرير‪:‬‬
‫حممد نداء فضالن‬
‫عبد هللا موالين‬
‫رونلد آدم‬
‫سفران ابهلل‬
‫فريداء أماليا‬
‫مراجعة اللغة اإلجنليزية‪:‬‬
‫بنيمن ج‪ .‬فرميان‬
‫دانيل فرتيون‬
‫موسى بتول‬
‫مراجعة اللغة العربية‪:‬‬
‫يويل ايسني‬
‫تصميم الغالف‪:‬‬
‫س‪ .‬برنكا‬
STUDIA ISLAMIKA
2025 ،1 ‫ العدد‬،‫السنة الثانية والثالثون‬

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