Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia: Indonesia and Malaysia in the Nineteen-nineties [1. Aufl.] 9783839400814

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Georg Stauth Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Indonesia and Malaysia in the Nineteen-nineties

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For Laura, sitting at the other end of the table, painting

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Georg Stauth Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Indonesia and Malaysia in the Nineteen-nineties

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Printed with the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Gedruckt mit Unterstützung der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft

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Die Deutsche Bibliothek – CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Stauth, Georg: Politics and cultures of islamization in Southeast Asia : Indonesia and Malaysia in the nineteen-nineties / Georg Stauth. – Bielefeld : Transcript, 2002 ISBN: 3-933127-81-5 © 2002 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Typeset by: digitron GmbH, Bielefeld Printed by: Digital Print, Witten ISBN 3-933127-81-5

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Contents

Preface ...................................................................................... 9 1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée: Islam and the Challenge of Modernity in Southeast Asia ............................................................... 13 Liberalism – Holism: Hierarchy, East and West .................... 13 Some General Conditions of Southeast Asian Islam ............ 20 The Global Status of Islam and the Case of Southeast Asia ..................................................................... 26 The Exoticism of Local Islam ................................................ 34 The Politics of Local Settings of Islam .................................. 37 Locations of Discussion and Observation ............................. 38 Notes ................................................................................... 42

2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam and the Multi-Ethnic Condition of Asia .......... 45 Visions of the Historical Process of Islamization and the Governmental and Structural Modes of Embeddedness of Islam, Malaysia – Indonesia ............................................. 45 Islamization and the Pondok/Pesantren System ................... 51 Embeddedness of Islamization in the Intellectual Discourse of Modernity ....................................................... 64 The Postmodern Vision of Islam and Southeast Asian Islam .......................................................................... 78 Notes ................................................................................... 84

3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam in the Minangkabau Region of West Sumatra ...... 87 Religion as Institution and Event ......................................... 87 Minangkabau Adat and Islamic Organization ...................... 92 Minangkabau Islamic Education Systems ............................ 99

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Visiting the Pesantren in the Minankabau – The Dense Networks of Muhammadiyya ............................. 110 Minangkabau and the State Intellectuals of Islam – Intellectual Landscape and Voices of the Islamic Opposition in 1994 ................................................ 119 The Muhammadiyya Local Politics: Modern Education, Islam, State ........................................................................ 124 Islam, Socialism and the Muhammadiyya Bureaucratism .... 131 An Example: Muchtar Naim ................................................ 136 Notes .................................................................................. 140

4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition ...................................................................... 143 Visioning the Postmodern Condition in Javanese Tradition .............................................................. 143 “Civil Society” and Javanese Islam ...................................... 150 Two Organizations – Two Islams in Indonesia? – Yokyakarta-Culture Involvements ....................................... 159 Two Javanese Leaders of Islam in Indonesia: Two Offices and the Fate of Indonesian Politics ................. 167 Amien Rais and Muhammadiyya ........................................ 169 Nahdatul Ulama and Abdurrahman Wahid .......................... 173 An Example: Abdurrahman Wahid ..................................... 179 Madjid, ICMI and the Islamic Future ................................. 182 Notes .................................................................................. 184

5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam ............................ 187 Society in Crisis .................................................................. 187 Colonial Rule, Democratization and Refeudalization (1945-1998) ........................................................................ 190 Malaysian Islamization: Alternative Modernization of State and Society ............................................................ 196 Success Story of Modernist Islamic Thought ...................... 199 Mahatirism and Islamization ............................................. 205 Mahatir – Anwar ................................................................ 209 Mahatirism and Islam ......................................................... 213

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Traditional Islam and Religious Spirituality: Syed Naquib Muhammad al-Attas ....................................... The Example of ISTAC in Kuala Lumpur ............................ Glimpses of the Islamic Civil Society ................................. Notes ..................................................................................

217 227 232 235

6. The Singapore Civilization ............................................. 239 Free Trade and the Rule of Law – A Singapore Model of Material Civilization? ...................... 239 Capitalism and the Postmodern Condition ......................... 241 Global City and the Tropes ................................................. 243 Consumerism and Civilizing Processes .............................. 244 The Multicultural Machine and Self-Appeasement ............. 247 State and Public Religion .................................................... 251 Material Culture and Self-Organization .............................. 252 Government and Self-Empowerment .................................. 254 Notes ................................................................................. 256

7. Asian Crisis and the End of Islamization? .................... 261 Asian and Islamic Renaissance ........................................... 261 Islamization and the Globalization of Cultural Discourse ........................................................................... 264 The Challenge of the Southeast Asian Experience for the Islamic World ........................................................ 266 Notes ................................................................................. 268

Bibliography .......................................................................... 271

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Preface

Preface

The concept of “Islamization” dates back to the famous Mecca conference on Islamic education in 1977. The programme was meant to restructure education and science according to values and methods of Islam and to propagate an Islamic world view in terms of translating traditional Islamic education and science into existing institutions of higher learning, universities in the main. “Islamization of knowledge” was the slogan purported at the conference in principle by laic Muslim scholars like Islma’il R. alFaruqi, Syed Hossein Nasr and Syed M. Naquib al-Attas. One might be tempted to argue that the discourse bears remarkable similarities to the Third Worldist critiques of the West, consequently “Islamization” was meant to “de-westernize” the methods of acquiring knowledge. Although the discourse about Islamic science and knowledge had far reaching effects in certain Muslim countries, “Islamization” turned to acquire a broader social meaning after the 1978/79 revolution in Iran. It was to describe a process of cultural and social transformation related to the increase in religious expansion in the public sphere with respect to figures of mosque-attendance,women’s veiling,politicalhegemonyofIslamicideasand that, therefore, the idea that Islam will play a decisive role in the process of restructuration of society in the Muslim World all over. Within the gap between this two devices, knowledge and society, “Islamization” took on to bear the connotation of a double meaning: First of all, it meant the transformation of the public sphere in terms of the mass distribution of Islamic symbols and the increase of political representation of Islam. Second, it took the meaning that Islamization is the contention of purporting an Islamic world view by re-introducing Islamic values and methods into educational institutions, science and politics. The following book reduces the field of investigation to a third dimension, namely the effect of Islamization on institution building, rationalisation and restructuration of the societies in Southeast Asia – principally Indonesia and Malaysia. Both countries represent at the same time two different models of “Islamization”. First, the etatization of the discourse in Malaysia lead to a “think-tank” focused mode of Islamization as an attempt to introduce a type of hyperrationalized post-modern social engineering. Second, the important role of the pre-existing Islamic mass-organisations in Indonesia “beyond” the secular state of the New Order regime seems to represent a sort of “left-alone” Islamization. There happened an increased

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia symbolic representation of Islam in the public sphere with comparatively little effects on institutional rationalisation and political ideas. An absent centre of wealth, growth and civilizational progress is Singapore. In both countries, Indonesia and Malaysia, Singapore signifies a model for the future. Combining a type of authoritarian enlightenment and pragmatic social engineering, Singapore forced the modern modes of religious authentication to their extremes. Since the early 1970s Christianism, Confucianism, Islamism and Hinduism and the respective ethnic communities were subjected to a type of state regulated cultural and social self-management with strong effects on social rationalisation based on ethnic and religious inclinations of social self-construction. The idea of this book started in Singapore back in 1992 in the neatly focused Islam section of ISEAS and NUS libraries. That the book ends with Singapore is symbolic, it would be frivolous to state that Singapore is central for the understanding of “Islamization” in Southeast Asia. However, it is the contention of this book to point to the success of the material culture of Singapore as a vision which encapsulates much of the utopian thought of Southeast Asian intellectuals. If “Islamization” meant to construct new forms of institutional embeddedness of religion, then Singapore turns to be more than an “absent centre”. Singapore stands for a cultural, moral and social reinstitution of politics and economics. This is where “Islamization” could reinstitute Islam as a moral force of social development and growth. In Singapore, I took the chance to establish the networks and exchanges which were important for developing some very intense discussions with leaders and intellectuals in Malaysia and Indonesia. The idea of this book was then transported to Germany, further developed in Australia and exchanged with various scholars and leaders, Islamic or otherwise, in Malaysia and Indonesia. I received support for this undertaking from many institutions and individuals. I would like to express my deep gratitude to all of them. My special thanks go to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for its favourable grant, enabling me to travel and to work. Hans-Dieter Evers and Bryan S. Turner hosted me similarly generous at Bielefeld, Germany and Geelong/Melbourne, Australia. Mona Abaza was always present, I should like to thank her for her patience and support. Finally, my deep gratitude goes to those who hosted me in Southeast Asia and who gave empathy and time to the ideas that move the following text. I only regret, that – even if means at my hands were not as limited as they are – I should never be able to reciprocate in my own country on the type of hospitality that was given to me in this world of winds and lightness of waters. 10

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Preface The end of 1998 sets the limits in perspective to the beforehand study, which I began writing in 1994. Since 1998 many changes, personal and institutional, have occured in Indonesian and Malaysian Islam. Some of these have been noted at the revision stage. However, the basic configurations with respect to power and religion which I have drawn in this book, have been confirmed by later events: Mahatir and Mahatirism remain unchallenged in Malaysia. Similarly, despite Abdurrahman Wahis’s short interlude as president – which was ended not without his antipode, Amien Rais, being a driving force –, the secular power centers in Indonesia have been reaffirmed, leaving the two main organizations of Islam in Indonesia again in a competitive position.

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée

1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée: Islam and the Challenge of Modernity in Southeast Asia

Liberalism – Holism: Hierarchy, East and West In considering the question of progress and social development, Western models were almost fully inhibited of the idea of evolutionism and, more specifically, when it comes to sociology, of social differentiation. In contrast, Asians, perceiving their own mode of success and development – “pre-crisis”, so to say – seemed always to rely on visions of solidarity and social cohesion. They believed in maintaining a rigid scheme of social integration, and the idea of the coincidence and coherence of the spheres of politics, culture and economy is prevalent in Asian capitalism. The Asian mode of modernity has had its impact on Muslim countries in Southeast Asia. It seems to me that the search for some type of an equivalent formula for the Asian model, although it remained incomplete, was not without success among contemporary Muslim thinkers. In Southeast Asia Islam took on the quest of developing a new and cohesive Islamic outlook. “Islamic Renaissance”, al-nahda al-islamiyya, was a conventional concept of modern Islamic reformism, figuring in the works of such famous Egyptian reformists as Muhammad ‘Abduh at the end of the 19th century. This concept was rephrased in the 1970s and 1980s into a specific component of the “Asian Renaissance”, namely the idea that Islam could play a similar role to Confucianism in being functional to social and economic development. However, it should also be mentioned that long before “Renaissance”, “Wonder” and “Crisis” in Asia, the ideas of holism and social cohesion were distinct concepts of social thought in the West, and even affiliated with the mainstream schools of thought on social differentiation. Weber in Southeast Asia Durkheim, for example, showed us that religion is something more than a mere epiphenomenon of the morphological theatre of communities. As Parson puts it, “Durkheim arrived at the famous proposition that society is always the real object of religious veneration” (Parsons 1954: 205). Whether impressed by such a statement or on the basis of their own views on religion, modern Muslims from various strata would easily apply this idea with respect to Islam. Some of them, like the late Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi have spoken of Islam as a God-created theory of society, and others even of 13

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia “Islamic Sociology” or “Islamic Anthropology”. Beyond such religious inclinations, the sociologist of religion would treat such an endeavour as being itself based on beliefs or religious doctrines, the very subject of his field of analysis. Religion would be separated from other fields of social encounter such as economy, politics and law. More specifically sociologists were inclined to study the impact of religious ideas on social change and on increases in functional differentiation. For example, Durkheim tended to show the function of religion for social structures and to maintain the idea of the socially integrative significance of religion. He based his view on the structuring power of religious symbols and rituals. Weber on the other hand built his matrix for the comparative study of religion on the relationship of the “heavenly courses, as regulated by divine order, to the inviolable sacred social order in terrestial affairs, that makes the universal gods the responsible guardians of both these phenomena” (Weber 1969: 409).

Weber’s intention was to explore the way in which religious ideas were applied and their functioning with respect to institution building and rationalization of life worlds. This later aspect was of a specific interest for Weber, his object of interest being the genealogy of modern man and his fate under the conditions of capitalism and bureaucratic rationalism. The problem with all these basic conventional sociological perspectives is that they are directed with an evolutionist view toward ever greater rationalization, departmentalization, segmentation and differentiation between and within secular and sacred spheres and from there on within the whole field of cultural and social construction. The conceptualization of the breaks, the gaps and the tensions which religious ideas could create in unfolding the social process were always at the core of the sociological inquiry, whilst undoubtedly at the same time maintaining the paradoxical idea that religion would disseminate the ethical tools of some sort of a cohesive social order. However, differentiation remained the steady winner in all sociological perceptions of development and evolution. Asian and Islamic Holism It is interesting to note in this context that Southeast Asians – quite in contrast to this inherently Western concept of break and social differentiation – perceived the conditions of their own fate as being tied to concepts of communalism and social coherence. “Asian holism” is very much related to the view they hold of their own culture within the general perspective of the 14

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée “Look East Policy” and the rise of Asian capitalism. The paradoxical impact of the Weber-Thesis on Asia (cf. Alatas 1963; Buss 1985; Kantowsky 1986) was a new dogma which reversed previously-held assumptions by asserting that Asian religions and specifically Confucianism provide the necessary ethical foundations for the success story of capitalism in Asia. At the beginning of the 1980s a group known as the “Singapore school” on Asian values settled around the Institute of East Asian Philosophy. The institute was created in 1983 “at the peak of the “Confucianism as the spirit of Capitalism” debate” (Chua 1998a: 215). It was at this time that, on 11 May 1983, Mahatir, the Malaysian nationalist leader, announced the foundation of the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur and stated that the movement accepting “revelation and reason as sources of knowledge” would be taken up in Malaysia (cf. Khoo Boh Teik 1996: 175ff.). Similarly, we should note that, in the footsteps of Fazlur Rahman (1982) and Leonard Binder (1988), during this period in Indonesia Islamic intellectuals and leaders began reviewing modernist Islamic thought in Indonesia in terms of Civil Society and Liberalism (Barton 1995). If we agree, as sociologists of the region do, that the recent culture of Asian values fully translates into the Protestant foundations of Western bourgeois culture (Chua 1998a,b) then we should also agree that the Islam of the “Islamization”-debate takes on an equivalent function. However, we often forget that it is not just the “collectivism” or “holism” of Southeast Asian ethical foundations that form the hidden matrix of the Islamization and Asian values campaigns. The ambiguity of these concepts lies in the fact that sometimes in contrast to the declared aims and in disregard of the practical political position of some of the protagonists, specifically in the Indonesia of the “New Order” period, it was in fact authoritarianism intending to find a legitimate base within a new cultural trend. We might be able to state today after nearly two years of Asian crisis and the re-emergence of ethnical conflict and social movements, that both the Asian value and the Islamization campaigns – admittedly with different emphases – undeniably contributed much to the cultural celebration of authoritarianism and the political quietism of the emerging middle classes. The bourgeois revolution, if one could ever speak of something like this in the context of Southeast Asia, was intrinsically linked to the authoritarian regimes of the postcolonial state. The Confucianism celebrated in Singapore was a campaign of the governing state intellectuals and politicians. Islamization in Malaysia (with strong effects on Malay Muslims in Singapore) was a concerted government programme of coopting and sponsoring Islamic intellectuals from a strong socio-religious movement of anti-establishment 15

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia groups into state educational and cultural institutions. Modern Islamic Intellectualism in Indonesia was a late attempt at coordinating a concerted discourse between state officials, leaders and cadres of established Islamic organizations. In nearly all cultural and political endeavours since the mid 1980s, these campaigns meant the concerted recognition of new bourgeois cultural needs – both with respect to emancipation and self-assertiveness within a framework of continuity – in various ways, some direct, some more disguised – of the ancien regime authoritarianism. Quite in contrast to what was believed by close and attentive observers in the early 1980s, and even in the case of Indonesia in the early 1990s, namely, that the varying futuristic cultural and religious programmes would formulate the “ideas” for social uprise in the near future, in the present times of actual crisis, it has become clear that Islam has not emerged as an ideological power. Islam, it seems, had lost its utopian grip on the forces of political and practical social change or even of revolution. Perhaps it is too early today to judge, perhaps the retreat of Islam on the ideological front is only symbolic and linked to the decline of anciens regimes; however, the signs of the end of the ideological lead of a politics of religious “authentication” are clear: Singapore closed the Confucian Philosophy institute in 1997; the foremost representative of Islamization in Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, was gaoled in 1998 in a sarcastic reverse of a vicious American media game; in Indonesia in 1998, Amien Rais left Muhammadiyya, which he had led, to found a “secular” Party, Abdurrahman Wahid refounded Nahdatul Ulama as a political party mainly in support of Megawati’s “secular” democratic movement. Neither Confucianism nor Islam figured as core concepts in the emerging new discourse of political change for democracy, human rights, civil society and liberalism. In this crisis it was clearly revealed that Islam and Islamic leaders – perhaps with the exception of Amien Rais1 – do and will not play a defining or even leading role in the ongoing process of civil unrest and democratization. Despite its underlying presence as a knitting force for solidarity among different groups and organizations and their links with the popular basis and constituencies, it was not the language of “Political Islam” that took the ideological lead in the movements of 1998. This has instead to be traced within the scenario of the politics and cultures of Islamization in the 1980s and 1990s. In view of the curent “crisis” in Asia, the model of Asian holism, – a term formulated by Louis Dumont (1986) and extended to the entire Asian world beyond India – can be said to have lost its momentum. What ever the real causes of the crisis were, Asian countries seem to have lost the struggle – if there ever was one – for a challenging cultural position in the competi16

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée tion with the West over capitalism and growth. Or perhaps this is a preliminary statement only? Islam and Asian holism, nevertheless, took – and in various instances still continue to do so – a prominent place in the social undertakings of people in Southeast Asia. A key to what Malaysians, Indonesians and Singaporians in the 1990s have identified as the specificity of their way to social and economic development can be found in a nutshell in the following observation made by Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister and -in his youth – a Muslim student rebellion leader: “The major Asian traditions stand for a holistic vision of life and society encompassing economic, social and political dimensions as opposed to partialistic and fragmentary approaches to development” (Ibrahim 1996: 29).

The aim of this book is to illustrate more adequately the very challenge of that enterprise which we may call the utopian “holism” of Asian reconstruction. Our special concern is with this “holism” as far as it relates to Islam and the capitalist take-off in Southeast Asia. As we have already seen above, conventional sociological perspectives on religion concern the legitimate anchorage of institutions in non-institutionalized social spheres. This necessarily leads to a split, viewing religion in terms of structural dichotomies: scriptural/oral, rational/irrational, official/popular, public/ private. I will show in greater detail later on how these separations and differentiations have in themselves helped to construct a cultural self-perception that is largely based on a “holism” that recognizes Islam as being based on holistic principles. But of course we should note here that this notion of holism is in direct contrast to the social differentiation thesis, to quote again our prominent source: “It has been argued that economic issues must be kept apart from non-economic ones. Neither politics nor morality must disrupt the peaceful clamour of the market-place. This argument is again another gross misinterpretation of what Asian traditions have always stood for. … If we want to lay claim to a unique Asian way, such a way is none other than the articulation of that vision [of holism] in unequivocal terms. Central to this vision is the philosophy that economic development must proceed coterminously with cultural enrichment. The pursuit of prosperity must not be at the expense of environmental degradation. The quest for growth must always be balanced by a profound concern for social justice and equity. This is the master key to unlocking the secrets of the Asian Renaissance” (ibid.).

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Islam and Cohesiveness On a deeper culturally and religiously inclined level, for Southeast Asians – in terms of their theoretically most advanced heralds – this holism tends to be explained more decisively in Islamic terms. Inherent to this perspective is the suspicion of an undue “Western scientific conception of the world that is restricted to the world of science and sensible experience” and Islam is perceived to be the major core of resistance to lop-sided Western objectification: “Islam does not concede to the dichotomy of the sacred and the profane; the world view of Islam encompasses both al-dunya and al-akhirah, in which the dunya-aspect must be related in a profound and inseparable way to the akhirah-aspect, and in which the akhirah-aspect has ultimate and final significance” (Al-Attas 1996: 25f.).

Syed Naquib Muhammad al-Attas would certainly – and with good reason – object to being ranked as a type of New Age philosopher. However, he would claim that Islam is based on a “holistic” concept of “knowledge” which incorporates God, mankind and nature at the same time. The “hierarchy” which this type of “knowledge” implies is willed by God; i. e., it is revealed order. The point is that Western thought and development are perceived in terms of structural inconsistencies and antagonizing dichotomies broadly related to the separation between institutionalized and non-institutionalized social spheres. Contemporary thought – with no definite breakthrough on the agenda – operates on various levels to bypass dichotonomous thinking. We should note, here, that historically this dichotinomous separation of spheres and concepts rephrases the basic structural pattern of agrarian empires and implicitly relates to the “god/king” and “populace” divide in their political systems and the modern escape from it. The process of civilization encompassing modernity tentatively leads precisely to the end of this structural divide, without fully coming to grips with the cultural and ideological implications of rescinding it. These, in fact, are the antinomies of modernity with which “Western thought” today is eminently preoccupied: the search for cultural concepts of destructuration and the end of hierarchical dichotomization. While the thematic of the “Death of God” seems to have imposed the desacralization of all realms of moral foundation, the thematic of “Islam” would appear to relate the utopia of the resacralization of politics and, accordingly, of all the realms of social encounter to the renewed search for cultural and social homogeneity and a sense of home. 18

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée However, what has been strongly neglected is the aspect of destructuralization and the related issues of social and cultural coherence. The point of Islam and Asian Renaissance – similarly to those of Western reinventions of Christianity, New Age and pagan religiosity – is whether “religion”, in precisely the spirit of conventional sociology and Parsonian thinking, could serve as the necessary underlying “tool” for a democratic, non-institutionalized, destructuralized, multi-layered form of social organization “from below” and for the necessary civlizational modulations of the “individual” to interact and to communicate peacefully in a “new” society where the social processes of production, the market-place and politics could coincide as a comprehensive cultural “event” beyond – as Foucault once described it – the monotony of finality and eventually – if I am allowed to add this – of utopia. It is within the framework of these questions that this book evolves. We should be aware that the idea of Islam and Asian Renaissance encompasses the “postmodern” striving for a “holistic” vision of society and that within this broader framework of “event of ideas”, Islam, the emergent “modern” Islamic thought and style, is to be understood as a major operator. Statements like the following seem to be an old hat. So fast have events been moving in recent months, that little seems to be left of the “futurism” of the early 1990s. However, they do articulate a vision which may keep its holdon Muslims for years to come: “Southeast Asians will not forget that since time immemorial, their region has been the theatre where the great civilizations have crossed paths. But they are honest enough to know that the region is not a great melting pot. The collective memory of each community is as strong as ever. … Yet, Southeast Asia today is moving towards greater cohesiveness, and a sense of community could not be fostered without shared values. The Indonesian motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity), defines the region culturally. The challenge to Muslims and the people of other confessions is to effectively articulate their moral vision and intensify the search for common ethical ground” (Ibrahim 1996: 124).

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Some General Conditions of Southeast Asian Islam The Arrival of Islam Muslims, great believers, pure visionaries, futuristic thinkers in Malaysia and in Indonesia have since the 16th century sensed the depth of “Islam”, the message of a prophet from the desert, with the ear of those living in the relative abundance of tropical nature, rain forests and endless variety of natural foods and fruits and with the surplus of heat and water. No doubt, the idea of syncretism, which was once so convincingly developed by Southeast Asianists – is it really just another essentialist Orientalist invention? – and which was so relentlessly applied by Javanese thinkers, was often linked with the suspicion that there was a lack of understanding of, or only a superficial adaptation to the “foreign” language of an Arab prophet. There is enough reason to argue that this idea itself lacks any consideration of the depth of the local cultural contention, the depth of listening to something “strange”, so as to understand one’s own position in this world. In other words, “science”, in speaking of something like a second-rate-religion which the word “adat-Islam” implies, was depriving the “believer” of something which “science” itself takes as its own well grounded characteristic: empathy. Although the “calling” of science claims to be based on this very virtue of empathy, it seems at the same time to lack the understanding of empathy of the religiously inclined. The forms of linguistic formulation of “paradise” which the Prophet was able to transport, on the other hand, relate very much to the real world of natural luxury of these Eastern oriental islands, which later on were somewhat mysteriously denominated “the lands moved by the wind”, zirbadat, in Arab-Persian vernacular. This is where the communicative link between the Muslims of the Malay Archipelago and their Islam starts. As such the religious ideas of Islam came as both fact and event. For the believer they are there, attitudes and habits of the fathers, rules that have to be followed, things that have to be dealt with, ideas to be taken on, to be carried further. They are also actualized as events, as something overwhelming, as something unavoidable, a happening that takes place in both body and mind, as convictions and self-experience at the same time. In other words, Islam came to the region as a type of maximization of the self. One major question that would be important to raise in this context is whether this type of self-maximization, incorporating a double vision of Islam, namely the dynamics of syncretism and of “authentic” Islam, could lead to something new. The combining of history with the social imagery of 20

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée the far away world of the “real” religion, could this bring about a new civilizational take-off, generating the visionary and symbolic powers that would transport the region into the new setting of global competition which it is entering today? As we have seen, there are a number of daring, highly modern, highly global questions with respect to the role of Islam in contemporary Southeast Asia and specifically in Malaysia and Indonesia. These are built into the perspective of a broad comparativist matrix of the self-description of leading Muslims and of the history and directions of views on Malay and Javanese Islam. This perspective is sociological, not anthropological, the given panopticum is global not local, macro not micro. The issue is civilization not culture, not “miniature outposts” but far-stretching visions, not history but future, not authenticity and origin but the effective tools of civilizational build-up based on it. Benedict Anderson once put the problem like this, asking whether “the penetration of Islam was more assimilative” in Java, for example, than in other world regions, and whether the “Islamization of the rulers does not seem to have caused major alterations in their way of life or outlook”, he went on to assert that “The penetration of Islam scarcely changed the composition and the recruitment of the Javanese political elite or affected the basic intellectual framework of traditional political thought” (Anderson 1972: 58f.).

Given our proposal to study how “authentication” is used for strategic power formation, we would believe that the problem cannot be put this way any longer. All this has become secondary, is inbuilt into a “discourse of authenticity” over the “real”. The fact, the very problem is, how this discourse today changes the civilizational set-up in the social worlds of the Malay Archipelago, if not in the Islamic world as a whole. It is in this sense that we would have to raise the question, of the conjunction between the “modernist Islamic politician” and the “syncretism typical of traditional Javanese thought”. Is this conjunction a mere construct set up by modern politico-anthropology, bringing forth this Jacobine idea of the Islamic “umma” that is supposedly inherent to the continuous and correct observance of the obligations imposed by the Prophet and the symbols of Islam: a model of purity which opposes itself to the kafir and the munafiq of Javanese thought? Why should Islam represent a counter model to this Javanese thought, which “connotes a lack of strong concern for external boundaries and the external perimeters of society” (ibid.: 62)? Is it not exactly this 21

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia constructed difference which, as an “idea”, has in fact transported the ideology of the “New Order” regime, affecting here and there the beginnings of a new social reality in Indonesia? It is not my intention here to show in detail how this idea of Islam “as one of the great proselytizing religions of the world” which “has always … been conscious of its perimeters and the line between the “we” of the ummat and the “they” of the kafir” (ibid.) entered the field of politico-anthropology of the world of Southeast Asia in the 1960s. However, we would probably be well advised to understand that this idea of frontiers and borderlines in the very sense of social and political practice is one of modernism and at the same time of political anthropology, not one of “Islam”, or to be more precise of orthodox Islamic thought, and similarly not of traditional Javanese thought either. The dilemma of Malay and Javanese Islamic politics and society, namely, the contradiction between rigid and pure practicioners of Islam and lip-service Muslims who stick to pre-Islamic traditions is a twofold creation of Islamization beyond “origin” and Islam beyond correct “practice”, which was created as a problem of cultural and political borderlines in the process of modernization and the implementation of political anthropology – which then found its very subject with it. Islam and Authentication Accordingly, there are two modes of inclusion of Islam in the modern world of cultures. First, Islam and its ideologization serve as a self-affirmation of cultural reconstruction in terms of a counter-strategy to secular, non-believing practice. The focus here relies on the declared primordiality of religious convictions and cultural principles and their authentication as a critique of modernity and at the same time as setting the framework for local communitarian and political strength in a global world of competing nations and localities. Second, there are movements and schools of thought which purport the inner modernization of Islamic principles and visions to be a strategy of modulation of Islam into the new framework of a global civilization. Both these modes of the contemporary movements of Islamization coincide and compete at the same time in various Muslim countries, both are conventionally perceived as what Michel Foucault once named strategies of political rationalization moulded into the post-colonial type of formation of the nation state. How far, then, can Islam be a strategy of political rationalization with respect to the new “utopias” of the individual and social organization in a post-etatist society? We may be aware that often Islamic leaders, quite in contrast to their declared aim of reorganizing life in terms of the “Ursprung” or origin, have 22

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée really been aiming at and wanting to influence the living in “progress”. Authentication, in fact, whether based on science or on way of life, is a mode of cultural modernization. However, at the same time the struggle for authentication and recognition of Islamic principles and local visions of social order, whether declared inner modernist or openly anti-Western, has also led to the religious involution of intellectual ideas and visions, to a certain double-mindedness of the intellectuals’ perceptions of order, to the intensification of the tensions between private and public spheres, to the politicization of religion and the religious challenge of the functional orientation of public institutions in terms of pastoralization. These are the characteristics of the emergence of religiously founded institutions and lifestyle, setting the new patterns of self-oriented social organization, in terms of asceticism as well as mass hedonism and consumerism. We may consider that there is an ambiguous new position of Islam with respect to internal intellectual and political struggles within the Islamic camp and that its competing visions, social futures and orders are shaping the potentials for change. Islamization also relates to the ambiguous bondage to different types of cultural heritage. Historically Islamization is about how Islam came to the region of Southeast Asia, i. e. Islamization means a specific pattern of civilizational exchanges between the Middle East and Southeast Asia. We have discussed this earlier. However, sociologically the concept of Islamization also means the transformation of religious institutions and behaviours into patterns and ideas of “authentic”, “real” and “pure” Islam and their control over social and political spheres. More than sociologists in the West, intellectuals in the Third World felt the disturbances of the impulse cultural authentication. It is this impulse emerging in the tradition of Frantz Fanon that awakened young philosophers like the Egyptian Fuad Zakariyyya in the 1980s to see that al-asala al-haqiqiyya takmun fi qalb al-mu‘asara, (“real auhenticity lies in the heart of modernity”) (Zaqariyya 1987: 97), and to discover “Islamic fundamentalism” as a most radical application of Western cultural tools of authentication.2 We may observe in Southeast Asia that this quest for authentication was channelled into a rather soft and balanced chanel of state rituals or think-tank proclamations and that the dangers of “Ursprungsdenken”, thinking in terms of origins, and political claims of cultural “difference” have been, so far, circumvented. Both the historical exchanges and the sociological transformations of Islam in Southeast Asia relate to ideas, visions and perceptions of Islamic Civilization as it originates in a far away region, the Middle East. This was expressed earlier by the Dutch colonial officer and famous Orientalist 23

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Snouck Hurgronje in terms of a negative cultural mould called “adat-Islam” and perceived by the Muslim population of the East-Indian Archipelago as having an impure, incomplete cultural and religious status, which they strove to overcome. However, one could reluctantly ask the question whether this mould of local Islam would entail much potential in terms of providing favourable conditions for a new striving for social organization centred on Southeast Asia. The idea of Isalmization as a movement of cultural authentication, re-inventing the spirituality and human touch of early Islam, for many Muslims, might have been seen as a convincing tool for social self-organization and local autonomy against Westernism and globalism. For many Western intellectuals the Iranian Revolution was welcomed in terms of recognizing Islam (as Michel Foucault does) as a new manifestation of local resistance and reinstitution of lost spirituality (see e. g. Stauth 1992a; Leezenberg 1998). However, many others stuck to the critical observation that Islamism and Islamization movements were inventing a tool for up-rooting the Islam of their fathers and mothers and of the historical tradition in general. They argued that Islamization-“Islam” was based on obscure readings of sources and in practical politics was used for political interpretations of a right wing, fascist and hypernational ideology (Al-Azmeh 1996: 586). Between these two visions of contemporary Islam, certainly, a huge gap yawns, with functional and strategic potentials for social unrest and appeasement policies, which are specific dimensions in both Malaysia and Indonesia today, particularly in times of crisis. The cross-civilizational aspect of Islamization is also to be noted. Beyond all dialogical reconstruction, there are some sorts of fundamentals, soteriological visions and ethical principals, which are characteristic of it. Both Westerners and Muslims have interpreted these visions and principles as anathematic to modernization. The struggle is about the point at which authentication and difference intersect: is Islam a counter-civilization to the West and modernity, or is there something like an Islamic modernity, both being culturally alternative, coinciding but different. Conventional wisdom would suggest that Middle Eastern Islam tended to strive more decisively towards a cultural model of Islam as a counter civilization to Christianity and the West, while in Southeast Asia Islam adopted a smoother way of perceiving Islam as a coincidental type of modernity. Although such a statement seems to be convincing with respect to history and to the pattern of sociological Islamization, there remains a question mark with respect to contradicting adoptions of Islamic thought and ideas in the region. This will certainly be addressed in greater detail below. 24

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée The Modernity Break-through Modernity is linked to “crisis” and quest for “transgression” both on the level of the individual and his or her life world and on the level of structures and institutions. We should be aware that concepts of crisis and transgression reposition religion in a more general framework of the sociopathology intellectualism. Civilizational processes relate to restructurations of gender relations and family structures as well as to new perceptions of gender roles demanding for the steady reformulation of values. The conventional idea is that religion is the type of identity broker needed to gear individual needs towards the necessary requirements of professional life and functional differentiations occurring today in all modern societies. Religion there is no longer perceived in close patterns of community life, but rather as a means of private self-organization. In recent years within a pattern of global cultural exchange, the functional role of religion has been rediscovered as fostering public social mobilization and organization. “Public Religion” and the resacralization of public life have, however, been basically understood in terms of de-privatization (Casanova 1992), not in terms of public religious control. However, there is this broader need for a new individual in a global world. In general one would believe that this relates to new types of ideological totalization of the self, the body, the style of life. Can Islam cope with this type of social need? The globalization of cultural forms of social reconstruction also brings us to view more closely the problem of institutional involvement of the local society. It has by now become clear that Max Weber’s theory failed to explain the default of rationalization in Islamic social environments. What are the organizational structures and morphologies which have opposed the transformations of institutions in a modern material sense? What are the ways in which today both institutions of the nation-state and patterns of “civil society” are transformed by communication systems related to the consumer culture of the middle classes? The thesis is that a pre- and a proto-institutionalization exists, but not however a form of institutionalization in the Weberian sense of combining ideas, institutions, and forms of social life. The civil society debate continues to think in Weberian dichotomies even though attempting to replace it by some sort of communitarian social organization from below. My point is that the state has to do the job of balancing out the diverse communitarian drives for power by some sort of scientifically based social engineering. Only this type of etatist redirection of the society and the social self can lay the foundations for a post-etatist society centred on the self. We will have to reflect on this in greater detail with respect to the civilizing processes as adopted by the metropoli25

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia tan middle classes of the region, most significantly in Singapore, with decisive effects on Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. To develop the issue of the global position of Islam and with specific reference to Southeast Asian Islam, the analysis will have to deal with the leading perceptions of Islam’s potential for balancing “crisis” and for furthering the quest for transgression at the same time. This means that the region will foster some broad patterns of civilizational progress in Southeast Asia, including Singapore as a growth centre as well as one of social management and ideas. In this framework the issue of modernity and crisis with respect to the critical assessment of the socio-pathology of local Islamic intellectualism is of specific importance. The underlying problem remains how to clarify the issue of proto-institutionalization – i. e. the simulative copying of Western forms of social regulation in the framework of nation-building policies. In this respect the varying organizational patterns of Islam and Islamic ideas in Southeast Asia should also be identified. This will lead us to comparative issues of the study of different local forms of social and political embeddedness of Islam in Malayia and Indonesia and the culture and politics of structuring a society in Singapore will serve to demonstrate a successful counter-model to the – although in quite different ways – critical position of Islam in Malaysian and Indonesian affairs.

The Global Status of Islam and the Case of Southeast Asia The Challenge of Islamic Modernism As we have seen there is an expanding interest in Islamic fundamentalism or Islamic mysticism as potential recourses for integrating Islam into a modern cultural project. However, this interest has not been developed in relation to the diversity of local applications of Islam and the respective resources of this diversity. It is time to examine some of the new visions of Islam which are now evolving in local contexts in Southeast Asia and specifically Malaysia and Indonesia, given the weight these countries have in the Muslim world not only as regards their share in numbers of the Muslim population as a whole. These visions often quite unintentionally take part in a broader drive existing all over the Islamic world, namely, the aim to Islamize society. Inclusion or exclusion of local communities relates to a process of translocal and transnational integration geared by the application of such visions. Comparative research on distinct courses of Islamization will detect the strategic local and global status of these processes. 26

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée This is to gain understanding of the way in which distinct projects of Islam impinge on modern societies and to develop an understanding of the effects of cultural globalization and the way in which Islamic visions of modernity reconstruct local communities and the structure of their embeddedness in national and transnational relations. Clearly, biographies of religious leaders, their impact on local institutions and their national and international patterns of networking are of decisive interest here. Some background reflections should be made in order to familiarize us with the specific problematic of the Muslim community today. The preparatory reflections for this book coincided with renewed interest in the concept of “modernity” and its expansion to the field of intercultural relations, making the recent processes of rationalization and cultural emancipation in non-Western, and specifically Islamic countries, the focal point. One could conveniently speak in this context of a Renaissance of the debate on cultural modernization, giving non-Western potentials for rationalization and change an increased importance. From this follows that the arena of the conditions and genesis of what could be described as alternative, non- or anti-occidental worldviews, communities and institutions could generate a strategic potential for a coexistence with Western “modernity”, specifically in Southeast Asia, a region which recently entered the global scene as a new and active player. The “grand narratives” of occidental civilization have always been very influential among intellectuals and political leaders in the non-Western world. Important Muslim thinkers have often used their readings of Western critics of modernity like Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, to construct a type of “authentic” view on the history and ideas of their own culture. Islam served here widely as a type of “Kulturkritik”, as cultural criticism as well as criticism of an anti-modern, anti-Western rationality. So-called traditional Islamic concepts and visions were used as harmonizing holistic social concepts and spiritual and transcendental issues were rationalized into concepts of worldly social order. Muhammad Iqbal, Mawlana Maududi and Sayyid Qutb – and in a very specific way and more recently Muhammad ‘Imara – might be named as the most influential Islamic thinkers. Others like al-Attas (1985) in Malaysia have argued for greater sophistication and are much more scrupulous in their political outlook. It should be noted that the transposition of Western cultural ideas into Islamic ones is not a new phenomenon and that there is a long history of intellectual “double bind” in modern Islamic thought (Gibb 1947). Certainly, we should note – and al-Attas has pointed our attention to this in a very radical way – there is a longer history of the presence of Islamic ideas in the West.3 27

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia With the decline of Europe as a cultural centre, the ideological bases of the secular nation state are questioned. This is where in many Islamic communities Islam has been instituted as a type of anti-modern and antiwestern ethical reconstruction of social life and institutions under the “Grace of God”. The local elaborations operate within a global framework of social change that has been called the “the global condition”. On a fairly broad level we could conceptualize this new global condition as a pattern of social change with the following factors most prominent: First, we might discern the new language of ethics filtered into everyday symbolism and aesthetics. The impact of the media world brings with it a tendency to replace written with picture language as a major source of information. This tendency could also be characterized as involving an ever higher symbolic and imaginative degree of institutional reconstruction, putting the conventional functional and rational aspects into a position of secondary importance (see also Luhmann 1992; Knorr-Cetina 1994). Second, mass tourism and consumer society have contributed to increasing all forms of cross-cultural interaction; however, of special significance here are specifically those which place the image of the cultural other in the forefront of everyday practice (e. g. Featherstone 1987). Third, the existence of virtually unlimited resources of credit and finance, have made “cash” a new factor of social regulation in all local contexts with relics of subsistance economy. Fourth, conventional perceptions of time and space have been challenged by the globalization of the media and communication system, with their potential of placing any local event on a global stage. The all too humanness of everyday life turns into a logic of change. Contrary to the dominant view in conventional sociology, which identifies science, technology and bureaucratization as the main sources of change (e. g. Berger et al. 1973), the above factors should be conceived as determining change in local contexts in the 1980s and 1990s and defining the components of a pluralization of life worlds of social actors. Islam in the various local contexts promotes religious ideas and visions of a true religious life as a counter-ideology of coherence of human values opposed to the existing pluralism. Conventional perspectives on Islamic fundamentalism could help to draw the major Islamic responses to the operative factors of the “condition of globality” on two levels: There is the observation that the project seeks in a sense to disguise social reality, to overload social space with religious symbols and to employ these as a strategy of sacralizing both life world and politics. Among the most significant to identify this trend are Sivan (1985) 28

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée and Etienne (1987). With a more internal view on the staging effect of public religion in erverday contexts Salvatore (1998) and Werner (1998) develop various insights on this type of Islamization process in Egypt. The second dimension is the religious foundation of science, the undertaking to Islamize science and to control and determine orientations of research and the application of scientific solutions as a means of constructing an overall coherent Islamic scientific world view as a strategy of politics and social change. This trend can be most significantly identified in Malaysia and, in a broader context of cultural and educational reconstruction under the New Order, in Indonesia. We might take the discussions of al-Faruqi (1983) and Sardar (1988) as some indicators for the Malaysian case (Abaza 1991). The case of Indonesia is widely discussed and, given the fact of a secular military government, certainly more open. Although the institutionalization of ICMI points quite clearly in this direction (Hefner 1993), it remains, however, as we will see below, incomplete and ridden with problems of mass organization rather than having the clear-cut intellectual guidance of social engineering. The focus of this study is principally on the various effects of these trends on social institutions and social change at large. They operate in various local contexts and are reflected in the different strands of thought and often competing groups of intellectuals and local leaders. Islamic fundamentalism is a potential source of social fragmentation and unrest. However, at the same time we can observe some determined attempts at integrating Islam into a modern cultural project of social reconstruction on the basis of broad sociological reflections (Turner 1974, 1994; Ahmad 1992; Gellner 1992). This certainly resumes a type of repositioning of religion in relation to modernity which has long since taken place in civilizational analysis and sociology of religion (Eisenstadt 1981, 1998; Casanova 1992). In addition to the broader theoretical reflections on religion and modernity, Islam and social reconstruction, an increasing role of modern orthodox intellectualism (e. g. for Morocco: Eickelman 1985) and Islamic mysticism can be observed (for Southeast Asia: Johns 1993; for Indonesia: van Bruinessen 1990a; 1994). However, the modern role of Islam rarely oversteps the tenuous borderlines of nation-state culture. Nationalism and culture in the 1960s, 70s and 80s linked the concept of culture and modernity with nation-state formation in the emerging post-colonial period (Von Grunebaum 1962; Geertz 1960a, 1968; Gellner 1968; Anderson 1991/1983). Islamic revivalism established its foundations within the ideological framework, the inconsistencies and antinomies of the modern nation-state. 29

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Nationalism and the nation-state were identified as strategic concepts of the Western legacy and seemed to be largely inadequate for the postcolonial drive to reconstruct pre-colonial civilizations and cultures in a nonWestern framework of perception (Chatterjee 1986, 1993). In this context it is interesting to note that the recent underlying conceptualizations of Islam and culture seemingly emerge as anti-western and anti-nationalist. Approaches to Islamic reconstruction in Southeast Asia, namely, Malaysia and Indonesia, are to be examined in this context. It is interesting to see how local projects of reconstruction of Islamic thought stand in response and in opposition to fundamentalism. At the same time they reflect a diversity of local applications and employ some generalized visions of Islam, placing them in a broader perspective of “national” and global recognition of local cultural inclinations. Local Cultural Continuity That visions of Islam in Southeast Asia and specifically Malaysia and Indonesia evolve with strong commitments to local traditions and take on a deliberate local flavour is a well known paradigm in Southeast Asian studies and one often taking its label from the misleading and ill-placed concept of adat-Islam (Von Grunebaum 1971: 296ff.).4 Furthermore, the variety of the Middle Eastern sources of local Islamic reconstruction in Southeast Asia have only recently been rediscovered (Roff 1970; Abaza 1991; von der Mehden 1993). However, we should also be aware that – as mainstream sociology has told us – the global sources of local diversity are similarly important (Robertson 1992). The inclusive universalization of the concept of Islam stands in a complementary relation to the works of local particularities and plays a decisive role here; however, this has been generally neglected in research and analysis. It is to be acknowledged that the term “Islamization” was first used in post-colonial discourse and as a concept with universal significance by the American Orientalist Gustav von Grunebaum, who pointed out that the lack of Islamized great power complexes in classical Islamic civilization contributed to its “inability to bring forth a political organization that would be effective in the modern world” (Von Grunebaum 1962: 52). The importance of local cultures in Islam was perceived as a two-sided effect of the process of Islamic expansion and adaptation. On the one side, expanding Islam was seen as being pressed into patterns and basic conceptions of pre-existing superior civilizations; a process which is made largely responsible for what is considered as amalgams of Islamic life specifically in regions where strong relics of such old civilizations can be traced. On 30

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée the other hand, Islamic expansion in Southeast Asia was perceived as a rather superfluous process of institutionalization, while on the surface of society social life persists in the form of local traditions beneath all the official Islamic institutional culture. The vision of the pure Islam of the Middle East, here, and the peripheral Islam deserted by prevailing local traditions with little reference to the institutionalized Islamic culture fails to acknowledge sufficiently the fact that the development of dogma in the early period of Islam is in fact characterized by accepting and regenerating both the “low” and the “high” traditions of pre-existing civilizations. It might, therefore, only be reasonable to state that after the constitution period of the dogma in the first three centuries after Hidjra, a universal and highly consistent Islamic world view established its real effects and cultural transformations to “the widest possible measure of religious, social and cultural unity throughout the Islamic world” (Gibb 1955; Von Grunebaum 1962: 53). It seems to me that there are the three major options for Muslim thinkers, historians, philologists and sociologists when looking to specific local expressions of Islam: First, the search for common religious ideas and principles. Second, the search for a general if not coherent universal social and political order. Third, unity in the practice and style of Muslim life. For Muslims in Southeast Asia “Islamization” relates to the complexes of the latecomer. This is why in the discourse of Southeast Asian Islam these options, in which the specific ways in which historical “Islamization” took place in Southeast Asia, processes quite similar to those in the Middle East in the early period, can be identified. Today they play an important role as alternative models for conceptualizing modern social, political and cultural consistencies of Islam, if not for a renewed “Islamization” of society. The strength of these visions and authenticated models of local Islamization is that they play an important role in the global process of exclusion or inclusion of social localities and local cultures. My argument is that inclusion or exclusion of local cultures relate to a process of translocal and transnational integration geared by the application or refutation of such visions. Comparative research on distinct paths of Islamization will, therefore, detect the strategic local and global status of individual visions of Islam. The question is, how can we compare the diverse applications of the intellectual discourse on Islamization and the future of Islam in relation to modernity beyond nation-state and nationalism? The applications of central concepts and visions of Islam and their application to local institutions, the emergence of leading local religious figures and the extension of local 31

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia networks to the international scene by means of globalized patterns of religious exchange – all these are issues which delineate the strategic importance of local Islamic cultures. Emerging today are localized applications of Islam and concomitant religious ideologies which contribute to far-reaching trends of social change, new forms of access to state power and the development of religiously tradionalized or – often by way of response to these movements – modernized forms of governance. “Islamization” is a key concept in the understanding of the applications of localized visions of the history of Islam and Islamic expansion, linking it to the attempts to construct a new historical consciousness within a context of intensified global cultural exchange. We should undoubtedly be aware of the specific status of the historicity of local cultures with respect to their role in modernity and in a globalized world. The rethinking of local reconstructions of Islam reflects the renewed interest in the concept of “modernity” and its expansion to the field of intercultural relations. In particular, the recent processes of rationalization and cultural emancipation in non-Western, and specifically Islamic countries seem to reveal a strong contradictory relationship to what was perceived as the achievements of Western civilization. One could conveniently speak in this context of a Renaissance of the debate on cultural modernization, giving non-Western and/or anti-Western potentials for rationalization and change an increased importance. As for Islam, three different forces and their role in local modern cultures are of particular interest: traditional intellectualism (the ‘ulama), the continuing spirituality and extra-worldliness of Islamic intellectual traditions; fundamentalism, the paradoxical constitution of a modern innerworldliness by an essentially extraworldly intellectual tradition; Sufism, the reinstitution of a – in modern terms – purified extrawordly intellectualism. The Global Condition The reason for the renewed significance of “modernity” is that with the concept of “global culture”, social theory embarked for a new terrain of cultural tensions and dynamics: processes of systematization and rationalization of everyday experience are effected by cross- and multi-cultural mechanisms of symbolic reconstruction which operate in the global context. This has its direct effect on local institutional and communities’ processes of rationalization (Robertson 1992). An important aspect in this debate are, therefore, the attempts to redefine “modernity” beyond any concept of occidental domination (Eisenstadt 1998). From this follows that with a view to a pragmatic outcome, we should 32

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée generate some broad features of the genesis and conditions of alternative, non- or anti-occidental world views. The political sociology of Islam in Southeast Asia has seldom really inquired in which sense the general conditions of the political and institutional embeddedness of Islam differ in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. This question is also of a certain importance today with respect to the different grades of involvement of these countries in the “Asian crisis”. Indonesia was involved more than any of the other countries. Indonesia faced what could be called a smooth social revolution. “Islam” and the major Islamic organizations in Indonesia were involved in this revolution, although “Islam” remained silent and was not employed as an idea of political change. Surprisingly for many observers, the moving event of this revolution was not “Islam” but globalization. Because structurally Idonesia was less flexible than the other countries, it had to face a “revolutionary” situation. International conditions of change and the “world-as-a-whole” weighed less in the view of its president, the military, the elite, the Muslim leaders, than the vision of a nation with a very specific history, the variety of its ethnic and geographic settings, its demographic richness. Indonesia, in their minds, figured as a Moloch in its own right, powerful enough to go its own ways, and to regenerate itself from the scratch by means of its own creative powers. The image of a huge population and the strategic advantage of this vast world of islands seemed to have fostered more resistance to change than a corrupt government. It was the global conditions of change that brought about this revolution, and all local force for change, including the most dominant one, the voice of Islam, were silenced into that theatre of communitarian solidarity that characterizes a nation in danger. Of course, historically speaking, Indonesia was never really subject to the colonizing forces of a global power. Could one really speak of the Dutch peasant, merchant and seafarer state as of a global power? We certainly cannot deny that, quite unlike the case with respect to Malysia and Singapore, for the political culture of Indonesia it was decisive that the village and community ideology, the “Gemeinschaft” ideology of the Dutch, and specifically in the way in which it was “universalized” and then made subject to its own colonial administrative policies and its “Islampolitik” (policy of Islamization), always formed a substantial basis for what was later termed “involution” – agrarian, cultural and social. Universalistic, democratic and other general conceptions “rule” were here subdued instead to the very specific understandings of this type of communitarian involution.

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia The Exoticism of Local Islam Visions of the Other This book is based on discussions and observations during long stays at various locations in a geographical region which the natural historians of the 19th century called “the Malay Archipelago”. It is interesting to see how Wallace and the explorers of the physical world of the islands and peninsulas of the East Indies – Les Insulindes, to use the French colonial vernacular – harmonized with the strange and to Western senses often shocking interiors of the tropical forests and coastal sea routes (Wallace 1994/1869). The settlers who wished to establish their own conditions of making a living in the Malay forests were much less confident (see e. g. Faconnier 1990/1931). Travelling and settling in the region – perhaps less than in other regions of the Orient – provoked endless accounts of the exoticism of fauna and flora and of the people who inhabited the forests or survived by exploring the world of the seas. Anthropological theorists – from Bateson, Mead and Geertz to Barth and Wikan – took some miraculous spots in the region as their extreme pole of culture counter to western civilization. The exploration of Islam in that region was left to the Dutch and perhaps for that reason has always been less exciting and striking. The pioneering works of Snouck Hurgronje and van den Berg perceived Islam as a case for colonial management. Exotic modelling would relate to the physical, the “fictitious” aspects of Malay or Javanese Islam as opposed to the “real” world of Middle Eastern Islam. The “event” of Islam in today’s Southeast Asia is about a variety of diverse scenarios of an “idea”, a new theory of contemporary society encapsulating the need for economic growth and formation of life style much as it was three or four centuries ago. Looking from a different angle than the models of “othering” of conventional sociology would imply, the methodological perspective of this study is to avoid, however, the analysis of “origin”. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the idea of Islamization has a very specific connotation in this region, basically because it relates very strongly to the history of Islamic arrival. Furthermore, the intensification of the call to Islam through various waves of spiritual obsession was never really furthered by any local institution of “high” learning or emerging “own” scholarly traditions of the Malay World. Therefore, the event of “Islam” is of a broader, popular nature. Both what is practised and what is envisioned as “Islam” in Southeast Asia is based on – scholarly and ordinary – traditions, rules and images that have been developed and are continuously reshaped in contact and cultural 34

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée exchange with a different part of the world, the Middle East. Southeast Asian “Islam”, therefore, relates to the social imagery of a cultural “Other”, a world of culture somewhere else. It is in itself an exotic model, an instrument of cultural elevation of the self. Southeast Asianists, historians and anthropologists, in speaking of Malay or Javanese Islam, have conventionally neglected this fact, taking the process of cultural modelling based on the exotic as a static fact: the relatively superfluous absorption of symbols and ideas of Islam coinciding with a relatively strong continuity of civilizational inclinations pre-dating the advent of Islam in the region, be they Buddhist or Hindu or even Christian. The political sociology of Islam in Southeast Asia is overloaded with dubious ethnography and exoticism. It is generally argued that theory – in contrast to ethnological factfinding – is possibly free from exotic modelling. The socio-cultural preconceptions of theoreticians, indeed, are of a different order from ethnographic modelling based on description. To use a formulation of Michel Foucault’s, their sentences must be of a “higher” type than object-speech. Theory, then, could nevertheless be well-understood – and much that have been the commonplaces of cultural anthropology in the region have been absorbed into bits and pieces of general social theory – as a “higher” order of imagination. Anthropological theorizing not only panders to the cultural intelligence of its readers, but there is also a colonizing-cum-civilizing mentality at work which refers to “othering” with respect to what Edward Said terms “the imperial contest”. The study of cultural or ethnographic differences relies necessarily on conceptual exaggerations. Anthropological, like sociological theorizing, is a discursive enterprise, but even more, though, it is the mutual implantation of religious ideas on all levels and variations of social interaction – oral, scriptural, symbolic, imaginary, visionary – that eventualizes social facts. The social interplay which is based on cultural differences on all these levels, this is where personalities, institutions and ideas are related to the general field of contemporary Islamic thought in Southeast Asia. What we attempt to avoid in this exercise is “object-speech”. Stating that “Southeast Asian Islam is …”, “Malay Islam is …” “Sumatran Islam is …” etc. remains a heuristic enterprise and often very ambiguous. Nevertheless, we are heading for an analysis of local conceptual perceptions of Islam which remain theoretically informed and conceptually practised in the various scenarios. In other words, we wish to look to the cultural transgressions used by the local actors and what they imagine with respect to what they call “Islam”. And yet, all that follows is, of course, “exotic speech”, is about exoticiz35

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia ing practices of people – of themselves as much as of others – when they turn to the “higher” genre of order and ideas. Otherness and “Counter-Knowledge” The somewhat strange subject relates to the rather paradoxical phenomenon of globalization, namely, that the scientific discourse about “Otherness” is more and more preoccupied with the idea that forged description and scientific ethnography turn into comparable types of modelling the exotic. I should disclose that my encounter with Southeast Asia was related to my originally spending about two years in Singapore and having been asked by the late Denys Lombard to contribute a paper to a conference on the real and imagined history of 18th century Southeast Asia (cf. Lombard and Ptak 1994); the idea then came to my mind developing further the idea of tracing an imagined history and relating it more closely to the issue of religion. I came close to the subject of “imagined anthropology”, which aroused my interest in Singapore. Most notably, I was puzzled by Nedham’s intriguing “Exemplars” of 1985, and by his pages on “Psalmanaazaar, Confidence Man” (Needham 1985: 75-116). The ideas and writings of Needham seemed to reflect a crisis in twentieth century anthropology, namely, that we have entered into a stage of interdependency with the non-European world, which has itself gained the status of a system of referential relationships. These have by now gone beyond familiar dissociations and detachments, involving us rather in a new process of identification and counter-identification. This must have been different not so long ago. European civilization was perceived by Norbert Elias, for example, as an internal process of forms of life, changing from plain, natural and open attitudes to self-compulsion and restraint (Elias 1981). Quite in contrast, though, we could today trace similar civilizational involvements in a variety of colonizing experiences, namely, that the encounter with and modelling of exotic otherhood turns into the subject of self-compulsion and restraint. In facing the represented Other, the Exotic, all experience seems to become merged in this dimension of restraint and self-possession – the very process of civilization which Elias was able to identify as an inherent, unilinear development in Europe. Exotic modelling, therefore, whether fake or “real”, should be made a focal point of the very process of civilization and, more specifically, should be related to theory construction. Following a global view, which today embraces a broad stratum of cultures all over the world, one could perhaps even argue that theorizing civilizational processes is in itself strongly related to the elaboration of “exotic” forms. There, the imaginative relationship 36

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée between Europe and the East Indian Archipelago is only one amongst many, but nevertheless, a most highly representative illustration. What follows might serve as a modest contribution to opening up the discourse on Islam in Southest Asia, in counterplaying the stages of awareness and of rationalizing its “authenticity”. Ethnography about Islam, however, is not my subject. It is not my intention to deal with the “real” ethnographic history of Islam in Southeast Asia, either. It would be an enterprise in its own right to compare different cases of ethnographic modelling of Islam and its impacts on local politics. My focus, nevertheless, is on comparison; and, perhaps, in comparing three major cases of emerging “local Islam” (Chapters 3-5) with the emerging civilizational discourse in Singapore (Chapter 6), we may detect some familiar paradigms of theorization and exotic modelling. Reflecting the varieties of exotic modelling and selfperception will also throw some light on the question whether and in which way the construction of otherhood relates to reconstructed selfhood. Here, we might be able to trace both in “theory” and in “fake” ethnography something comparable, namely, the contention that they perceive or invent an “object of knowledge” hitherto believed to be unknown, as a type of “counter-knowledge”.

The Politics of Local Settings of Islam The intellectual discourse over the future of Islamic communities stands in close relation to modernity, encompassing a variety of distinct paths of Islamizing modern structures and/or modernizing Islam. The applications of central concepts and visions of Islam and their imposition to local institutions, the emergence of leading local religious figures and the extension of local networks to the international scene is part and parcel of today’s globalized world of religious exchange. This is of strategic importance for local Islamic communities; their applications of Islam and its concomitant religious ideologies engage them in far-reaching trends of social change, new forms of access to state power and the development of religiously traditionalized or – often by way of response to these movements – modernized forms governance. Islamization is today a key concept which is crucial to the understanding of the applications of localized visions of Islam within a context of intensified global cultural exchange. In this context it is important to discover what Islam means to Muslims and what the local, national and international networks are about. The permeation of ideas and visions of Isalmization could lead us to compare 37

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia by way of case studies different paths of Islamization. As we have made clear above, one possible approach to such a systematic description is to study morphologies of local settings, life projects and biographies of individual leading actors. This would certainly coincide with certain theoretical insights of modern sociology, tracing in biographies the projects of identity formation (Berger et al. 1973). The biographical fields of tension between pre-modern and modern patterns of identity formation are focal in this respect. In terms of methodology therefore, we would have to determine “biography” and “milieu” as the locations of research, calling for an integration of biographical and ethnographical research methods (Grathoff 1987) – in our words: oral histories of the self, identity and local morphologies. By these means, we will analyse life projects, institutional affiliations and social networks of local intellectuals and political leaders. This would also include a reflective and critical examination of approaches from semiotic anthropology (e. g. in the field of Islam Geertz 1968; Gellner 1968; Gilsenan 1982; Bagadar 1983; Fischer and Abedi 1990) or even “Islamic anthropology” (cf. Ahmad 1986). We have earlier discussed the necessity for a critical evaluation of such approaches to the study of Islam, as they are most influential in ideology construction among local leaders and intellectuals (cf. Abaza and Stauth 1988; Turner 1994). With this methodological approach we enter both on the micro- and on the macro-level into the field of the study of Islamization in various Islamic countries.

Locations of Discussion and Observation For a long period of time – beginning in 1990 and continuing on and off until 1997 – I became part of a network of discussions focusing on Islam in Southeast Asia and taking place between various places in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore and Australia. As for more intensive investigations, I started these in Padang and the Minangkabau Region in West-Sumatra and in Jakarta in Summer 1994. In 1995 and 1996 I visited Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur in the main, but also Penang, Southern Thailand: Patani and Kelantan. In autumn 1997 I stayed in the Yokyakarta region and in Jakarta again. Without listing the numerous institutions and persons who hosted me during these stays, let it be said that, having a background of Middle Eastern training, I enjoyed great hospitality and openness in discussion in Southeast Asia. All these places are conventionally considered “Islamic periphery”. The 38

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée dominating trend in literature and research is to develop a link or a comparative perspective between Islamic peripheries and centres (Fischer and Abedi 1990; Abaza 1994; Mehmet 1990). In contrast, this study is about personalities and the chains of application of the discourse of Islamization at places and institutions in such “peripheries” of the Islamic world. The comparative study of these “peripheries” is, I would argue, important for various reasons: While the conventional view is that the spiritual movements in the Islamic centres like Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi-Arabia or Iran will more or less mechanically apply to the peripheries throughout the Islamic world (e. g. Esposito 1983, 1987; Binder 1988; Tibi 1981, 1985), this study will recognize the fact that local communities remain creative in shaping their own ideas of the application of a general intellectual trend. The study wants to show the variety of such applications, and it will also show how such “peripheral” applications play a part in redesigning “central” discourse. This becomes even clearer if we look to patterns of exchange where conventional knowledge (cf. Roff 1967; Ende 1973; Boland 1971; Noer 1973; 1978; Schulze 1990; Abaza 1991, 1991a; Zaki 1978) remained tied to the view of a lopsided, one-way distribution of ideas from the centre to the peripheries. Quite in contrast to such views, I wish to develop the idea that the peripheries have, much more clearly than the centres, engaged in a process of Islamization which uses, if not instrumentalizes the religious worldview of Islam for secular orientations of development and change. It was in the 1980s that this idea of a “developmental” Islam emerged in Malaysia as much as in Indonesia (Abdullah and Siddique 1986; Siddique 1991); however, it was used – as we will demonstrate below – in quite different ways. Communities resist – i. e. once a certain image of an initial social achievement of religion is established, it turns out to be the least negotiable. I will attempt to show what the construction of such images and ideas and their resistances to as much as their potential for political strategies are. What does it mean to speak of “Malaysian State Islam”, “Minangkabau Islam”, “Javanese Islam” or “Multi-national, multi-cultural Islam”? These are all facets of local applications of Islam which, in a framework of the necessity of “authentication”, turn into sources of “difference” and as such to a source of strategic rationalization. On a broader level we could distinguish three types of Islamization: 1. Islamization “from below”; 2. Islamization as ideology of nation state formation and state functionaries; 3. Islamization as reaction to expansion of markets and more “civil society”. These types do not exclude each other. 39

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia At the same time, they denote a variety of factors and streams of thought which operate coincidentally in the political culture of different Muslim countries. They also represent the different strata of Islamic representation in local Muslim communities. On the macro-level, therefore, we could discuss these types as distinct forms of the social embeddedness of religious resurgence: The Islamization discourse in the Middle East is strongly dominated by the problem of the transformation of the natural economy and peasant and Bedouin society and the ruling secular political classes of military and aristocratic origin, and the ways of resisting a civil social status and the social incorporation of popular strata, Islamic forms of representation and legitimation for inclusive strategies from below and at the same time for strategies to resist inclusion (Stauth 1992a; Salvatore 1998; Werner 1998). On the level of central power in Malaysia however, we are confronted with a retarted and at the same time reverse situation. The Islamization discourse was, from its very inception, embedded in the needs of a colonial legal and political apparatus which had established a certain continuity but at the same time was in need of constructing a new national elite (Nagata 1984; Ibrahim 1987) Investigations here focus on exploring the specific unfolding of the discourse among the community of leading political and religious leaders and the institutions they created. In Indonesia, not unlike, the Middle East, there exists the continuity of a secular military government. However, since the establishment of Suharto’s New Order policies there has been an increased trend towards the Islamization of educational and cultural institutions based on government policies and a re-edition of a type “Islampolitik” or Islam policy which the Dutch once used as an instrument of governance of the immense variety of countries local communities and cultures. This includes the advocating of an own, specific Indonesian tradition of Islam as an element of the official state ideology and as a main component of the intellectual discourse of Islamization. The idea is to pursue Islamization as a model of civil Islam which would combine an open and loose articulation of local Islamic traditions with the new civil interests of a middle class emerging as a result of free market expansion. The methodological inclinations of this study could be summarized with two key words. First, I am trying to assess the visions and perceptions of Islamization as far as they relate to abstracted strategic differences between Malay- and Java-Islam. Second, I fully rely on oral statements of four prominent figures, re40

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée presenting a set of cultural morphologies with a view to the abstracted vision of social processes related to the ambiguous expansion of Islamic ideas5, and their imagined transposition from a pure form of a far away region to the “here and now” of the local cultures in Southeast Asia. A sort of pragmatic stand with respect to what I present here is to take the “subject”, in both its biographical and intellectual expressions as the location of objectification of social processes. Beyond any systematic description of morphologies of local settings, life projects and biographies, this work takes the intellectual outlook of individual leading actors as the product of convergent global and local social processes. In this respect Singapore, as a new model of civilizational progress, remains a – sometimes hidden, sometimes quite obvious – core issue on the agenda of culture and social change in Southeast Asia. I take the ideas and theoretical insights of intellectual figures as coincidental with modern sociology, tracing in individuals and their biographies the projects of identity formation (Berger et al. 1973). The overall methodological approach of this book, therefore, is very simple. It wishes to exemplify the “direct” ideas, i. e. the immediate oral invocation of ideas, of a variety of distinctive personalities in Malaysia and in Indonesia, with varying influence on Islamic perceptions of modernity in international, national and local scenes. Simply, I will attempt here to generate on the micro-level discussion and observation with these personalities some basic material for a comparative identification of varying “ideal types” of “Islamization”. I will broadly delineate some decisive features of varying oral histories as stated by individual personalities. This is to restrict myself to the presentation of some major issues which were central to the oral encounters which I had with four important figures in modern Islamic thought in the region and who I consider today in varying degrees very important intellectual personalities with respect to specific local traditions and their interplay with modern Islamic ideas. These are as follows: Firstly, Abdurrahman Wahid who is – and was already before his election as President of Indonesia – a significant historical figure in Javanese and Indonesian Islam as such. As the leader of a mass religious organization, the Nahdatul Ulama (NU), his influence on Indonesian Islam and politics remains decisive. Secondly, Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, who is certainly a most influential figure in Islamic thought in Malaysia. His impact on certain trends of reconstruction of Malay Islamization is important, and indeed some of his ideas are visible in the Middle East and America; however, he is essentially a local Malaysian Islamic thinker. 41

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Thirdly, Mukhtar Naim is a local Minangkabau leading intellectual, perhaps the only and the most radical thinker in terms of reconstruction of local traditions of the Minangkabau within a modern Islamic framework. Fourthly, Amien Ra’is was the chairman of Muhammadiyya and an academic at Gadjamda University in Yokyakarta, and is now President of the National Assembly. He can be considered together with Abdurrahman Wahid an architect of the political transformations after the “New Order” regime. I should mention here in advance that these four figures are all very different characters with respect to their intellectual stature, their political instincts and their scholarly inclinations. The cultural locations to which these figures relate are: a) the Minangkabau region, in West-Sumatra, Indonesia, one of the most influential local Islamic centres, and one which has great influence on Indonesian Islam (Muhammadiyya) and strong links to the Middle East b) Jakarta, Indonesia, capital and intellectual centre of modern Islam in Indonesia, with a variety of influential Islamic institutions and organizations (NU; ICMI; Muhammadiyya). c) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, intellectual capital of modern Islam in Malaysia and the location of most influential Islamic institutions and organizations (e. g. ISTAC, International Islamic University, IKIM); it should be pointed out here that apart from these institutions, which to a large extent are influenced by a lower international brand of modern Islamic intellectualism, there is no local Malay intellectual tradition or hinterland to which this could have recourse. d) Yokykarta as a cultural centre of “Javanese Islam”, with all the hinterland networks of the NU and Muhammadiyya organizations. These are very different locations of what was conventionally ill-perceived as “peripheral” Islam, referring to Islamic countries which have been Islamized only in a later period of the expansion of Islam.

Notes 1

This is what one would have thought before the June 1999 elections. However, Rais’ movement turned out even much weaker than one would have expected, specifically in ist deep inclinement with social issues and promises for change to the poor. 2 For a more detailed discussion see my “Leonard Binder and the Hermeneutic of Authenticity: A Critical Note”, Stauth 1993. 42

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1. Renaissance, Civilization, Mediterranée 3

See below Chapter 4. As for the material side of Eastern presence in the West, see Goody 1996. 4 The concept is generally used as a measure of cultural “Islamic” distinction between a Middle Eastern original and pure Islam and a syncretistic and perverted Islam of Southeast Asia, reluctant to erase the traditions of prevalent civilizations, e. g. Geertz (1965); as for Germany, where one such conceptualisations are adored. That the creation of such complexes was part of the “Islampolitik” project of Islamic modernization of Dutch colonial policies and of the very biographical experiences of Snouck Hurgronje, the famous Dutch Islamologist, is often forgotten. It was Middle Eastern Muslim scholars conducting research in the region who stressed on the contrary the similarities between adat both in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia; e. g. Keddi (1987) and Abaza (1994). 5 We restrict ourselves to ideas. A preliminary sketch on the potential of exchanges between the Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian belief systems, forms of education and life style was given by Abaza (1994).

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam …

2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam and the Multi-Ethnic Condition of Asia

Visions of the Historical Process of Islamization and the Governmental and Structural Modes of Embeddedness of Islam, Malaysia – Indonesia Connecting Malaysia and Indonesia Dealing with Islamization in the region makes it difficult to separate the state territories of Malaysia and Indonesia into two different territorial units: the history of the two countries is short in comparison with the history of Islam. The problem is still more complicated if one acknowledges the fact that written history is as much a mirror of colonial dominance as one of nation state formation in the post-colonial period. Boundaries and frontiers of the modern nation states do not rank high in the theories of Islamization of the region, the theories which attempt to systematize the scant knowledge about how the people of the Archipelago have converted to Islam. On the other hand, much of what is written on the development of Islam in the past relates to perspectives which are closely tied to the territories of the single states. Clearly, the issue is linked to the problem of modern authentication of nation state culture. In this context, it is important to note that – despite variety and sophistication in presenting material and argument – there are two controversial perspectives on the historical process of Islamization which are of great importance in understanding the situation of Islam in both countries today. We may note here that the disagreement relates to the directions and to the material and spiritual forms of expansion. Conventional Indonesianists, few of them familiar with classical Islamic history and thought, would stress the variety of schemes of Islamization, their dependence on trade route networks and, therefore, on a sort of “second hand” distribution through Indian or even Chinese Islamic networking; this would account, they would say, for Islam’s becoming important to the region as a whole only rather late, from the 15th century onward. With respect to the spiritual inclinations of the process of conversion, they would argue for the initial importance of “low” cultural and material factors, namely the convergence between popular mystic elements of pre-Islamic local cultures with Sufi traditions of seafaring, and the preponderance of Indian merchants (accounting for the importance of Sanskrit concepts in early Islamic texts 45

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia written in Jawi) and the significance of their economic success. Moreover, they would stress the generally syncretic nature of Islam in the region and the continuity of adherence to pre-Islamic ritual traditions. On the level of the perception and conceptualization of Islamization, the model of East Java and the fall of Majapahit in the 16th century seems to be generally valid in this perspective, while Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula seem to be considered of secondary importance. As the main protagonists of this perspective we may identify a number of Dutch and Australian scholars (Drewes 1968; Johns 1961a, 1980; Ricklefs 1979). Of course, Clifford Geertz (1963, 1968) has already incorporated this perspective into a wider and influential “narrative” of modern Islam in Indonesia. Perhaps the only serious attempt to challenge this reading of the recorded evidence of the conventional history of Islamization was undertaken by the Malaysian Oxford-trained scholar Syed Muhammad Naguib al-Attas, who views the first significant stage of Islamization (13th to 14th century) on Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula as a decisive break with local cultural traditions: based on fiqh, i. e. the Islamic legal system, this wave of Islamization spread in Malay court society rather than local material culture (the problem of Sanskrit, to al-Attas, is one of wording rather than essence). Being himself a specialist in Malay Sufism, he then traces a second stage Sufism, or as he terms it, tasawwuf, which he locates in the 15th to 18th century; this features the specificity of Malay Islam. His main point is that Sufism has nothing to do with continuity of pre-Islamic mysticism and ritual inclinations; on the contrary, it is an essential completion of the spirituality of Islam. From the 19th century onwards he sees the convergence of the related Shari‘a and Sufism as the decisive factor.1 For al-Attas, the role of Arabs and the direct contact to the heartlands of Islam is a key issue.2 It is important to note from this debate that, not at all unlike the different readings of the Islamization of the region, Islamic self-perception in Southeast Asia today moves between two extreme poles: a self-affirmed high cultural tradition of Islam, in close contact from early times with the heartlands of Islam and its spiritual developments there and disseminated through the various networks of Malay court society on the one hand, or a “peripheral” Islam, far away from the Islamic heartlands and based on “adat”, incorporating unbroken continuity of pre-Islamic spiritual and material cultural inclinations. As will become clearer in the course of this book, these two different perceptions of Islamic expansion in the region play a decisive role both in the communication between the two countries today as well as with respect to the different outlooks of the modern role of 46

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … Islam in the society and with respect to change. One of the major factors of the large degree of “difference” in the way in which the elites in both countries perceive their Islamic “origins” lies perhaps in the fact that the hierarchical court culture in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsulawas Islamized in the pre-colonial period, while the court ideologies in pre-colonial and colonial Java to a great extent remained linked to ideologies of the indigenous states.3 Patterns of Diversity Malaysia and Indonesia today are two countries with fundamental differences as far as population, geography and their recent history are concerned, and as such they are of different geo-strategic importance. With respect to population Indonesia is one of the biggest countries in the world, only fourth after China, India and the USA. Malaysia is a comparatively small country which has gained international importance as a model for Islamic and former Third World countries in terms of economic growth and social development However, much though the setting differs, there are areas of similarity and coincidence. Both countries belong to the “exotic” world of the East Indies, the world of the Malay Archipelago and, therefore, combining certain characteristics. In pre- and early colonial times migration was frequent between the two countries. Like Indonesia, Malaysia has since early historical times been a place of immigration. In various waves Javanese, Thais, Minangkabaus, Persians, Arabs, Bengalis, Burmese, Dayaks, Bugis, Indians and Chinese mixed at various places all over the Archipelago. In the coastal areas of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Java – adherents of the great religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, as well as Sikhs and Taoists, came from various directions with these very early migration movements. In the 19th century new waves of Indian and Chinese mass immigration take place, this time principally as labour migration for colonial estates or as urban “coolies”. In Malaysia in 1980 of an overall population of 13.07 million 6.9 million were Muslims. In the 1980 census the Malays made up 63.9 per cent of the population, the Chinese 25.5 per cent and Indians 9.7 per cent. In Indonesia in the early 1990s there were about 180 million people with an ethnic diversity of about 300 groups and 200 languages and dialects. Between 90 and 100 million live on the central island of Java; between 80 and 90 per cent of these people are Muslims. The country has a strong Christian minority (between 5-8 per cent) and an economically extremely important minority group of Chinese (about 4 million). All these data have to be read with the awareness that they are subject 47

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia to debate and therefore to political manipulation. Whom does Malaysia belong to? Who is Malaysian? These have been decisive debates in the history of the constitution of modern Malaysia. Indians and Chinese are large minority groups who have long considered themselves Malaysians, but from the beginning they were only given citizenship rights of a second order. However, in contrast to Indonesia the question of the relationship between Islam and the state was developed only in the 1970s and 1980s, when there was a considerable change in the public culture of Malaysia: the discourse of Malayness was overtaken by the discourse of Islamization. Who is a Muslim and what is a Muslim became decisive questions in Indonesia in this period also. However, the question of the relationship between state and Islam was formally already ruled out in the early process of the constitution of Indonesia in the debates between Sukarno and his then Prime Minister Muhammad Natzir.4 Javanese culture is certainly a dominant cultural contention in Indonesia, but Sumatra is populated largely by Malays and the networks of the old Malay kingdoms ensured strong historical ties between Sumatra and the Malay peninsula. The formation period of Malaysia was linked to the establishment of a Malay Muslim dominance in the state. This was not the case in Indonesia with respect to Malays or Javanese. The Indonesian discourse of independence and state culture depended on the negotiation between Malay and Minangkabau Muslims in Sumatra on the one hand and the Muslims of Java on the other, the Muhammadiyya being a Muslim mass organization well represented on both islands. Nevertheless, both Javanese and Malay Muslims in Indonesia celebrated their roots in pre-Islamic culture as a specific condition of Islam in the region. In both cases early National Culture remained secular and thus allowed the culturation of local ethnic traditions first. In Indonesia the “Javanese system” was built on the coincident recognition of Minangkabau, Riau and Sundanese cultures and local traditions. In Indonesia Islam always remained a dimension of the social and political inclination of the masses, because Islam here, much more so than in Malaysia, played a decisive role in the anti-colonial emancipation process. The ambiguous eclipse of the Muslim mass organizations Muhammadiyya and Nahdatul Ulama in the formation of the independent state is largely responsible for a “Muslim underdog” feeling and resentments among leading Muslim groups with respect to the state. As we will discuss in greater detail below, this is one decisive reason for the fundamental differences in the discourse of Islamization in both countries in the 1980 and 1990s and indeed today. It is only in the 1980s and 1990s, the period of economic consolidation in both countries, that Islamization became embedded in a 48

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … global discourse about development and cultural emancipation, recognition and authenticity took a grip. However, here again there are major differences in the layers and intensity of the international embeddedness of the Islamic discourse, which partly relate to the very diverse ways and points of time when actors entered the global sphere as independent political players. But let us remember that the cultures of independence – as in Fanon’s observations – remained tied to the colonial visions, in Malaysia and in Indonesia to the visions of the natural and cultural environment in the tropes and the enchantments of oriental traditions and rituals, Malay and Javanese in the main.5 It is the period of economic growth and “Asian wonder” and partly linked to the “look East” perspective of “Asian” authentication that Islam took on a new self-assertiveness. The Colonial and the Post-Colonial Heritage It should be recalled that in both countries Muslims are, again, in different degrees, the majority part of the population. One of the paradoxes in comparing the two countries with respect to the state-embeddedness of Islam is that in Indonesia, the country with by far the greatest Muslim population, more than 85 per cent being Muslims6, Islam is not the official religion. In contrast, in Malaysia, where Muslims hardly count more than half of the population, Islam is the state religion. In Indonesia the Ministry of Religious Affairs is there above all to control the balance between the different religions according to the constitutional ideological principle of Pancasila. In contrast, Malaysia, a country with only about 20 million inhabitants, and only 55 per cent of them Muslims, has declared Islam the state religion. In comparing these conditions, one would have to go a step further and to ask about the modes in which the Islamic resurgence in recent years has affected the restructuration of the social and political sphere and the forms of state representation of Islam. While for Malaysia the Islamic resurgence was from the very beginning visible as social movement in the student and the Dakwah movements of the 1980s, the “New Order” of the Suhartoregime since 1965 had absorbed all Islamic organizations in terms of functionally and hierarchically placing them within the networks of state patronage and rigid administrative control. ABIM and branches of the Dakwah movement in Malaysia in the 1970s and 1980s formed independent oragnizations later co-opted into the dominant party system and government institutions. Islamic organization in Indonesia relates to “old” movements and parties, huge mass organizations with moderating bureaucratic machines or at least established codes of religious and political be49

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia haviour. Geared to the public, ruled by bureaucrats or orthodox scholars, Indonesian Islamic organizations remained largely conventional. Fundamentalism from below and attempts at linking state-independent social emancipation with religion had no chance in Indonesia. That also means that the state representation of Islam remained tied to ritual and bureaucratic aspects of religion in institutions and education at large, whereas in Malaysia the government took advantage wherever possible of spiritual and political thought in the religious movement as sources of cultural and institutional reconstruction. Of course, these differences had already taken shape in colonial times. There are great differences between Dutch and British forms of colonial governance and specifically two different modes of rule as regards attitudes towards Islam, local cultures and ethnic groups. The different institutional settings, encouraging or dismantling Islamic self-organization – as we will describe in greater detail below – are all decisive here. The British established the idea of citizenship and civil law and at the same time with respect to the various religious and ethnic communities maintained differences in legal status which were based on the idea of general rule of law and acknowledgment of self-government of the communities. The Dutch, in contrast, with ideas of a universalist Dutch nationhood, geared their interest towards the civilizational mission of conversion or converting Islam into something compatible with modernity and universalism. All state and official culture was geared towards the specificities of communities on the village level, of native states and customary law. Quite paradoxically, this indeed led to softening the impact of the modern West on local social life. The Dutch, more than the British, developed concepts for a “mode of government” and a “‘culture system’ which is the source of all the wealth the Dutch derive from Java, and is subject of much abuse in this country, because it is the reverse of the ‘free trade’” story of Dutch colonial rule (see Wallace 1986: 105ff.; here 105f.) and of their own status within the future of an “East Indian Society”.7 Their Ethical Policies were to modernize local cultures and Islam and adat from inside and Snouck Hurgronje’s “Islam” was specifically to balance the different orientations and practices in Islam as an instrument of colonial rule. It is this “indigenism” of major Western scholars like Snouk Hurgronje and later Clifford Geertz, combining ethnographic insistence on describing people and place with the political instinct of producing favourable modes of self-authentication of the “natives” that is so characteristic for the development of culture and politics in Indonesia.8 In contrast, in Malaysia Islamic resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s 50

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … was more political and institutional, it was more local, social and cultural and in its very practical sense more educational than in Indonesia.

Islamization and the Pondok/Pesantren System Combining Local Tradition with Islamic Education The second and most obvious dimension of the structural embeddedness of Islam in Southeast Asia is the pesantren or pondok pesantren system. It resembles both a continuation of traditional pre-Islamic youth houses, where adolescents would interact before initation to adulthood away from their parents’ homes and the kuttab, the place of learning and rehearsing of Qur’an reading. It seems that the latter was almost universally applied in Islamic lands as a sort of Muslim beginners’ school. They seem to have already spread during the Umayyad era in the wake of the conquering armies. The kuttab system was widespread in early Abbasid times and it could be located in any sort of room available, a tent in the desert or even (as in Egyptian villages) in the open street just in front of the teacher’s house. By the 1970s in Egypt the kuttab had however largely disappeared, although recently there was a new wave of kuttab being set up in Egyptian villages and urban neighbourhoods, and what was once one form of access to young minds of the lower strata became a broadly based phenomenon, with local Azhar graduates being appointed, not as unpaid volunteers, as Eccel (1984: 534) suggests, to serve Islam by teaching neighbourhood children under the supervision of the imam, but rather to open their own private “schools” run on a fee-paying basis. In the Ottoman period, kuttab were specially constructed: they then consisted of a large hall in which all the pupils sat crosslegged on mattresses in a rough semi-circle, usually next to low desks. Since the mid-19th century, some reforms have been promoted bycolonial rulers or secular states, as in the Muslim parts of the French possessions south of the Sahara, where the authorities initiated a campaign to supervise these schools and improve their quality. Elsewhere the kuttab were in competition with the newly-imported Western type primary schools, which also imparted a Muslim education but in more efficient ways. The kuttab has maintained its own tradition in Egypt, partly because this was the first Arab country that attempted to adapt to modern requirements and integrate it into the state system. The achievements of the kuttab in the 20th century have accordingly varied and practically in all newly-independent Arab states, as well as in Pakistan, it was attempted to incorporate the katatib into the national school system. Accordingly in Malaysia 51

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia and in Indonesia, the pondok or pondok pesantren were subject to state regulation. However, the pesantren system represents a specific presence of Islam in the Indonesian educational system as a whole. It is a way of absorbing Islamic education into the modern Indonesian style. The decisive element is the Javanese pesantren and similar types of institution elsewhere – all of which are called pesantren or pondok pesantren today. The pondok pesantren is central in maintaining religious networks and ties among the Muslim community; however, in recent years it has only been accorded prestige and recognition when combining the state system of education on the primary and secondary levels with Islamic teaching. Perhaps it is difficult to see any equivalent to the Middle East, where in the kuttab the children are merely taught the Qur’an. There is indeed a great difference between these institutions. In Indonesia they are religious boarding schools depending largely on donations and representing an Indonesian cultural specificity in its originally rural character. Zamakhsyari Dhofier argues that despite the fact that social organizations such as the Muhammadiyya and Nahdatul Ulama are urban, most pesantren and madrasah are located in rural areas (Dhofier 1985: 26). In terms of their educational programme, the pesantren go beyond merely teaching the Qur’an and combine it with something akin to a reduced programme of classical Islamic learning. The tradition of the pesantren culture is derived from the Indian tradition with ashrams around the mosque, and certainly the pondok pesantren, as an educational system, also spread in Malaysia and particularly in the regions of Kedah and Kelantan as well as in Southern Thailand, specifically in the Patani region. The word pondok comes from the Arabic word funduq, meaning “inn”; in a broad sense today one might consider it as a boarding school for Qur’anic and other religious subjects. The word pesantren comes from santri “religious students”. In such a school there is a teacher-leader, the kijaji/kiyayi (the Arabic equivalent is the sheykh), and a group of male pupils, ranging in number from three or four to a thousand, called santris. The santris reside in the pondok in dormitories, cook their own food and wash their own clothes. By and large all this depends on the idea of the active assistance of the students in organizing the material and the spiritual life of the place. There are also pesantrens for female students and yet others with segregated male and female quarters. The students travel from one pesantren to another to obtain a certificate (ijazah) in various religious subjects, but they always return the mother pesantren once a year to maintain the link. The santris lead a very disciplined and regulated religious life. The functioning 52

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … of most of the pesantrens in Indonesia relies heavily on the person of the kiyayi. The pesantren usually faces decline with the death of the kiyayi and thus lacks continuity. In Indonesia there are around forty thousand pesantren teaching eight million students. Most of these schools are in rural areas. Perhaps what makes a pesantren different from the traditional Middle Eastern madrasah is the fact that the former never belonged to royal patrons, nor did they rely on waqf funding; they are instead dependent on personal contributions. Recently important changes have occurred in some pesantren with the introduction of classes, chairs, and tables and the simultaneous introduction of secular teaching in many of them. While we have millions of students attending such “schools”, we have further millions who attend secular schools or enter upon some type of work very early in the floating mass of the Indonesian informal economic sector. We may certainly take the contradictions which relate to the difference as regards life perspectives between the religious student and the man of purely economic undertaking as one of the major contradictions in Indonesian society. Conventionally this also reflects a contradiction within the national political culture which on the one hand advocates religious pluralism and acceptance of non-practising Muslims while on the other hand the system forms a “class” of deeply committed Muslim students and preachers with the perspective of practising an “authentic” Islamic way of life based on visions and principles which often derive from the Middle East and not from local Islamic traditions. One could hold this contradiction as accountable for high degree of legitimacy of Islamic organizations as opposed to the state: however, as we will see below the specific type of interwovenness of “administration” and “religion” have a certain modulating effect on socio-religious movement from below. Today with respect to the obvious political load as well as to changes in mass consumption, the new middle class and the decline of the “old” class of Javanese, the once academically celebrated distinction between santris/kiyayi and abangan/priyayi, between the religious class and the aristocratic class, has largely vanished. The pesantren, however, are not only an expression of the dominance of the “Javanese system”; they also channel the networks of local representation in central government. The idea of authentic Islamic teaching is largely maintained through Arabic texts (collected in the famous Yellow Booklets, kitab kucing) and through the idea of “talab al-‘ilm” searching for knowledge in the famous schools of the Islamic heartlands.9 “In Indonesia, orthodox learning at a high level was hardly cultivated before the beginning of the twentieth century. Beginning with the year 1900, certain Indone-

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia sians who had gone to Mecca and spent years there cultivating orthodox Islamic intellectualism – notably orthodox theology and Hadith – began spreading their learning in the Indonesian pesantrens, which gradually develped into madrasahs. In the 1930s the influence of Cairo’s al-Azhar assumed a certain dominance in Indonesian Islam. It is highly interesting and significant, as we shall see in greater detail later, that those Indonesian ‘ulama who were trained in Cairo became members of the more progressive and modernist Muhammadiyya organization, while those coming from Mecca enroled largely in the conservative and more typically Javanese Nahdat al-‘Ulama, which was nearer to the folk Islam of Java than was the former” (Rahman 1982: 45f.).

Certainly, there were over the centuries contacts through the Azhar in Cairo, Saudi Arabian institutions in Mecca, or more recently through “ecumenical” Islamic congresses. These were not, of course, without effects on the religious and general political orientation of students. Historically these contacts often became “focusses of new orientations in Muslim thought and action” (Waardenburg 1984: 50). The conventional view is – and possibly many Indonesians, and probably most Southeast Asian Muslims, believe this themselves – that the religious boarding schools, with their various layers of teaching and organization, form the backbone of a flourishing religious and intellectual culture. However, one would be greatly misled if one took the mere quantity of what are in fact these “private” schools as an indicator for a blossoming Islamic civil society, developing the initiatives and ideas for education and intellectual life with specific Islamic flavours. As we will elaborate later in greater detail, for Indonesia, it is the state which articulates all religious institutions, organizations and committees with great efficiency and thus controls, if not actually releases the modern process of Islam into the society. The pesantren as well as all other Islamic initiatives and organizations are today integrated elements of an interweaving machinery of control and guidance, forming a modern “body” of Islam in Indonesian society. It is the “physique” of this body that has attracted our attention and we will deal with it in a fairly well defined local society, that of the Minankabau Region in West Sumatra (see Chapter 3). The pesantren culture denominates a certain arena of local institutionalization of Islam where the borderlines between politics and culture in the society are difficult to separate. This is certainly one aspect of the case of Indonesia with its mass rural population as it stands now: in this context it becomes clear why cultural interpretations of politics are still to be reckoned with in understanding modern Indonesia. 54

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … Middle Eastern Ideals We could, perhaps, in this integration of early educational systems and the pesantren, trace very well that ambiguous relationship to the Islamic heartlands in the Middle East. As we have already seen above, the concept of Islamization is not only one of historical expansion of Islam, but is linked strongly to the problem of modern authentication of Islam. It is not, as Pelras clearly states for the case of South Sulawesi, a closed historical issue: “… the main question should concern the validity for South Sulawesi of the concept of ‘Islamization’ as it is commonly used. Indeed it seems to me that ‘Islamization’ is too often taken as pointing to an event, or a series of events, all precisely dated, whereas one should understand it as a process, and a long one for that matter, including two important phases: first, the coming of Islam and its final official acceptance; and then, the long struggle lasting often until now, for its complete implementation. In both phases, the same dynamics, made up of the opposition of constant contradictory forces, appear to be at work. And one has to identify these forces in order to understand better the vicissitudes of Islamization in a broader sense in South Sulawesi” (Pelras 1993: 134).

Perceptions of Middle Eastern Islam do then translate today into the objective history of Islam in the Malay world and the East Indian Archipelago, as Islamic expansion does relate to the effective history of “Islamization” in the sense of a deepening of religious inclinations in social life. This also relates to the intellectual exchanges between the Middle East and Southeast Asia, but also to the structural and organizational patterns created within the framework of these exchanges. The history of Islamization in its written form contributed and still contributes much to the inner contradictions as much as the integrative perceptions of the social dynamics in Southeast Asia. What is of interest for us here is the effective history of what has been written. Whilst not denying that historians aim at an ever clearer and coherent understanding of the various objective processes that lead to the “Islamization” of the region, it also cannot be denied that the typification of these processes and the formation of a certain number of “ideal types” of “Islamization” have led to certain perceptions (in giving weight here and there to different characteristics) which form today core theorems of historical consciousness, intellectual history and political culture. These are, certainly, linked with competing interests as much as with strategic futuristic outlooks on the relationship between politics and Islam, both in Indonesia and in Malaysia. This type of history construction will have to be related to the effective history of 55

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia ideas and the construction of perceptions of “Islamization” and stands in close relation to the geopolitical classification of landscapes and their emancipation and recognition within a global cultural context. The idea of the specificity of Islam in Southeast Asia was first maintained with respect to the fact that it came to the region not by way of conquest or military defeat. Second, Islamization in the region was seen as very specific and peripheral because it was never linked with the period of formation of the Islamic dogma; the Malay world was a latecomer. It had to struggle with Islamic dogma as a ready made fact. Third, the conflict between pre-given local traditions and Islamic dogma was examined as very specific again because it was resolved in the region through a specific form of amalgamation which Orientalists like Snouck Hurgronje called adat-Islam. In this sense, the emergence of the objective history of Islamization is intrinsically linked with this idea of a peripheral Islam which is perceived as a sort of minor, minimal version of the authentic, the Middle Eastern Islam, the Islam of the Centre. The most prominent proponent of the idea is Snouck Hurgronje. He was a scholar of international stature in his time, a leading Orientalist and a Dutch Colonial Officer. One way to approach the morphology of Islam in such a local cultural setting would be to highlight the various modernist official intellectual approaches which were developed within it. However, when we leave aside the historically settled process of unfolding of such ideas, it is very difficult to trace an ongoing discourse in a setting of oral encounters with local actors. This has various reasons, historical ones as much as structural and cultural ones, which we will not further elaborate here. We are, therefore, not predominantly concerned with the modernist intellectual discussions and with educational and religious ideas of individuals. As in the West, the process of the construction of the individual and individualism in Indonesia seems to rely strongly rather on structural than on purely cultural constellations. As one prominent observer noticed: “One could simply identify oneself by anything and join a suitable solidarity group, but the internal capacity of the identification of self is based on a commonly shared definition of self. Identification is the label with which you want people to recognize you, but the definition of self is related to the basic traits of your identity. In other words the label that is self identification is more a political and ideological category than a religious or cultural one. Or to put it differently, if religion can be conceived to

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … have two mutually inclusive aspects (Geertz 1968) then one could say that self-identification is more a reflection of its structural than its cultural aspect. Self identification in its official forms in participation in voluntary associations or solidarity groups is a way to place oneself in a certain place in the social and political constellation. As such the commitment to an identification is determined by the degree of confidence that one has about the extent to which the cultural definition of self has already been secured” (Abdullah 1985: 154).

In having talked to people about their lives as much as about their work in institutions, we looked at the physical incorporation of the ideas of Islam and Modernity into the social morphology of local everyday and institutional life. A major area of concern remained indeed this question of self-identification and modern individualism, which is certainly tied to the process of institutional formalization of cultural and religious definitions of the self and the related cultural technologies of self-construction. As for the way this study wishes to approach Islam as a reconstructing force in this society, we should recall from the conventional sociology of religion that “ideas” can have a very factual impact on the social process as such. In this they can have an entirely opposite effect to their being institutionally incorporated and formalized by structurally secured definitions: they can evolve within a reverse process of cultural empowerment. The Relational Aspects to the Middle East The pesantren systen relates strongly to the cross-regional religious exchange of students, teachers, and the circulation of ideas and publications between the Middle East and Southeast Asia. This is a subject that has gained growing academic attention in recent years. Classical studies are Snouck Hurgronje’s Mecca in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century (1970) and Van den Berg’s Le Hadramaut et Les Colonies Arabes dans L‘ Archipel Indien (1886). The educational exchange of the Middle East and Islam in Southeast Asia was first more specifically addressed in Roff’s study on “Indonesian and Malay students in Cairo in the 1920’s”. Middle East graduates contributed to political Indonesian life more than in Malaysia. In the 1920s and 1930s the impact of Azharites was felt in the foundation of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Indonesia and later on also in the creation of the Institute Agama Islam Negeri (I.A.I.N.) and their curriculum borrowed extensively from al-Azhar University (Noer 1978: 16, 33-35). However, only recently have the depth and intensity of the asymmetrical circulation between the Arabian lands of the Umma and the “lands below the wind” (negeri di-bawah angin) been revealed (Abaza 1991, 1994; 57

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Von der Mehden 1993). With the flourishing of OPEC and the foundation of the Islamic World League and the creation of various Islamic institutions (see Siddique 1985; Schulze 1990), it became possible to talk of international Muslim relations where conferences and inaugurations of Mosques reveal a good deal of travelling among the ‘ulama. In fact al-Azhar University and Mosque maintained cosmopolitan networks well before the Islamic World League. In spite of strong critiques which are directed against the methods of education in al-Azhar, the institution seems to maintain extensive relations to the Muslim world. Today’s Indonesian student exchange specifically to Egypt has become a “modern” phenomenon with very universal aims, in the sense that these students come to seek knowledge in an established institution, like any other one in the Western world. They expect that the Azhar degree will open doors on the job market in their home, and enhance their social status as returning alumni who have mastered the language of the Qur’an. It can also offer them better opportunities in the oil-producing countries in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. One could also interpret their stay in Egypt in a pragmatic manner in the sense that these young men and women aspire to escape from the limits of communal and village life. Through travelling and seeing the world they seek a better life, and a better means of earning their living in the oil producing countries. In fact from a historical point of view there exists a long tradition of scholarship related to travelling and cross-regional exchange, which played a significant role in spreading reformist ideas in the Muslim world (Abaza 1994). Abaza has identified a tendency among the students to adopt a purified version of Islam. Perhaps this has to do with the ghettoization and disappointments during their long stay in remote housing areas in Cairo, but could also be a reaction to the hock of experiencing popular life in what was believed to be a “high” land of Islam. Indonesian Azharites of rural origin seem to return to their villages and to create pesantren there. Since there is no real certificate needed to teach in pesantren, even those who did not manage to obtain any degree in Cairo, are generally reintegrated in the pesantren life in Indonesia. As Abaza (1994) shows, currently only around 30 per cent of the Indonesian students manage to obtain a certificate, so that most of the generation of the late seventies and eighties might end up participating in rural pesantren life. Perhaps disappointment with Cairean life and the failure to obtain a degree, in addition to the general wave of fundamentalism of the seventies and eighties, leads to further isolation in the vast domain of remote pesantrens.10 58

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … With respect to the Middle East the al-Azhar mosque and madrasah in Egypt (and various similar institutions in other countries of classical Islam) have played a powerful role in the process of modern ideological and intellectual reformulation of religion and new application of Islam. However, on the bottom line of the society and in the social processes which encompassed the transformation of everyday life and social institutions, the al-Azhar system had a very limited influence in Egypt. In contrast, in Turkey, an example of another secular state, and specifically in rural Turkey, the unfolding of a secular polity coincides with the new foundation of religious schools in remote places, which has had a decisive impact on rural society (see Reed 1980). It is important to note that some major pesantrens in Indonesia often have a cosmopolitan tradition of receiving and sending students to the Middle East. Here, special attention should be drawn to the very famous Gontor Pondok Modéren, “Pendidikan Darrusalam” at Gontor Ponorogo in East Java. This pesantren is among the most significant ones in sending students to the Middle East. Arabic and English are the mediums of instruction.11 The pesantren itself has a great number of returning Indonesian graduates from the Middle East who teach there.12 The Gontor certificate fully recognized in al-Azhar and students can enter immediately at the University level; this is the major reason for students coming to study at al-Azhar. Informants said the same thing concerning certain universities in Madinah (Saudi Arabia).13 Another important pesantren that sends out students is the Pesantren Darul Da‘wah wal Irshad DDI, in Pare-Pare in South Sulawesi. In 1993, there were around 200 Bugis from Sulawesi in Cairo. Seventy-five of them had studied in Darul Da‘wah wal Irshad DDI, and their certificate was recognized by al-Azhar. Lombard argues that most of the pesantrens in Indonesia are recently created and their functioning relies heavily on the person of the Kiyayi (Lombard 1990: II, 114). In Indonesia there are around 40,000 pesantren which teach eight million students. The most prestigious ones in Java, according to Lombard, are: Kaliwungu, near Demak, al-Hidayat, Lasem, Kebarongan, near Banyumas, Tegalrejo, Pabelan et Payaman, in the region of Magelang, Krapyak in Yokya, Jamsaren in Solo, Tegalsari near Madiun, Takeran, near Magetan, Gontor, near Ponorogo, Termas, near Pacitan, Tambakberas near Rejoso, Tebu Ireng, near Jombang, Lirboyo, near Kediri, maskumambang, near Gresik, Blok Agung in Madura (ibid. 123f.). The religious side of general education in Indonesia has been drawn upon by Boland, who names the pesanten first, then madrasah diniyya (religious school), that is to say, schools which give additional religious 59

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia instruction to state school pupils between the ages of seven and twenty. This takes place in class, about 10 hours a week, in the afternoon, at the elementary levels (4 years for the former, and 3 or 6 years for the latter). After completion of a state secondary schooling, these people would be admitted to religious studies at an academic level. Then he refers to the private madrasahs, i. e. modernized pesantrens, where as well as religious instruction general subjects are offered. Usually the aim is to spend 60-65 per cent of the time-table on general subjects and about 35-40 per cent on religious ones. These schools are divided into madrasahs for elementary and further education, named as follows: a. the six-year madrasah ibtida’iyya (“primary school”) b. the three-year madrasah thanawiya (Ind. tsanwiyah, “secondary school”) c. the three-year madrasah aliya (“high school”). Fourthly: madrasah ibtida‘iya negeri (M.I.N.), the six-year elementary state madrasah, where the ratio of religious instruction to general subjects is about 1:2. Further education can be pursued at a madrasah thanawiya negeri, or (after an extra seventh year) pupils can go to a vocational school, for example, a four year training college for teachers of religion at state primary schools, after which a further two years’ training completes the course for teachers of religion at secondary schools (Boland 1971: 113). Perhaps at this stage it is interesting to introduce some views on similar systems in other countries in Southeast Asia. In any of these cases, the presence of pre-Islamic elements is very obvious. As Boland elaborated, the students, the seekers of spiritual knowledge, would construct small huts around the master’s dwelling. The conclaves and the students’ huts are known as the ashram. They became religious institutions that served to propagate spiritual knowledge and provide spiritual sanctuaries for the layman who felt the need for withdrawal from daily life. The word “ashram” connotes an act of psychological separation and abandonment of the secular life and entering into communitas, ashram, a spiritual lodging. In rural Southeast Asia however, the ashram was the only institution that could approximate to the madrasah. In short, since there was no mosque to begin with, there could be no equivalent institution such as the kuttab or the maktib in the Malay milieu. The ashram, of course, was already in existence. To accept and to Islamize it, it was given an Arabic designation as the fondok (motel) in Malay pondok. The role of the kiyayi and their conclaves of the ashram had long been valued in Indic cultures, and the Muslim missionaries merely adopted them as their own and gave them Arabic titles. Thus the sage became the ‘alim and the ashram or religious hostels became the pondok.

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … In the greater Patani region in particular, the pondok institutions have grown to symbolize the Malay Muslims’ pride in their Islamic ideals. When Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat launched his national development programme in the early 1960s, the Pondoks became the target of government penetration and efforts were made to transform them into regular private schools with special emphasis on religious education. Thus the sacred institutions became secularized through governmental patronage and regulation. The students at the pondok are considered needy. They are the masakeenor outcasts and the abna’ al-sabil (the seekers of truth). The most important contributions the students of the pondok make, even as they are studying, are their proselytizing activities among the faithful, who live far away from the centre of learning. Thus during the fasting month of Ramadan and other religious holidays, such as the Prophet’s birthday, the Hajj celebrations and the harvest times, the students of the pondok will be found travelling in the countryside preaching their faith and accepting alms from people (Boland 1971: 175-182). As for the late 1950s, Geertz reported that the pondok lies at the centre of the tradtional school system. “A Pondok consists of a teacher-leader, commonly a pilgrim (hadji), who is called a Kijaji, and a group of male pupils, anywhere from three or four to a thousand, called santris. Traditionally, and still to an extent today, the santris live at the pondok in cloister-like dormitories, cook their own food, and wash their own clothes” (Geertz 1960a: 177). “For the study of the conservative school in Modjokuto, the madrasah ranks first. The next interval along the scale toward the secularized school is represented by the NU schools which one finds in almost every heavily Santri village. These schools, independent of any pondok or kijaji connections, are typical NU compromises with modernism, and as such are still not always accepted by the most conservative” (ibid.: 188).

NU schools at that time were called madrasah, which means religious school, in contrast to pondok, at least in Java. There were eleven such madrasahs in the Modjokuto subdistrict. Secular subjects like algebra, geometry, English, Indonesian, pedagogy (ibid.: 187-190) are taught. Arab Families A specific field of interest is the influence of the Arab community in the Southeast Asian Archipelago and in particular in Singapore as a crossroads 61

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia for sending pilgrims to Mecca and controlling the pilgrimage industry. By keeping ties with the centres of the Middle East, Hadramis often sent their children to study under the patronage of famous scholars in Mecca and Hadramawt. They brought back with them not only Arab habits but also books and religious ideas. Arabs in Singapore also imported ‘ulama to teach in their schools, and created organizations and schools which kept close links with the Orient. Roff in fact argues that Hadramis played an important role in feeding a “constant stream of revivified “orthodox” Muslim thought from the Hegaz into the peninsula and Archipelago” (Roff 1967: 83). Reid, on the other hand, argues that the returning hajji’s and Hadrami Syeds tended to emphasize their superior knowledge of pure Islam as opposed to the established adat system. During the nineteenth century the Hadramis had gained a natural respect in the world of Southeast Asia. They were impressively influential in states like Atjeh, Siak, Palembang and Pontianak. The Arabs also played a significant role in the publication and distribution of religious writings. The Arab community in Southeast Asia has been prominent for spreading Orthodox Islam and reformist ideas from the Middle East. The first reformist journal was al-Imam, which was launched in 1906 and survived until 1908. The connection and resemblance between the Egyptian magazine al-Manar, which was published by Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida, and the Singaporean Imam has been analysed by Roff (1967: 59). Roff mentions the following: “Al-Imam itself assisted in the establishment in Singapore in 1908 of the Madrasah al-Ikbal al-Islamiyyah, run by an Egyptian, Othman Effendi Rafat, who returned to Egypt to engage some of his teaching staff” (ibid.: 66).

What is nevertheless interesting is the fact that the Arab community during the 1930s controlled the press in the Malay language: “The Alsagoff family launched the Warta Melayu, which was published daily from 1930 to 1941. Onn bin Jaafar, who edited the Warta Melayu for the first three years, then founded and edited the Lambaga Malaya, which was Arab-financed and was published in Singapore from 1934 to 1937, after which it moved to Johor Bahru” (Turnbull 1977: 147).14

Up to the present, the Arab community in Singapore15 maintains close links to the Middle East. According to the Singaporean Straits Times the Arab community consists of around 9,000 people.16 Roff has nevertheless 62

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … pointed to the fact that the Arab population in Singapore has been ethnically mixed due to the embargo on female emigration from Hadramawt (Roff 1967: 41). Thus many Arabs intermarried with the Malay population. Today, in the houses of Arab families and the shops of Arab street in Singapore one can meet relatives of the al-Junied family who established themselves in Saudi Arabia and Tanzania, while maintaining contacts to Hadramaut (in Southern Yemen) and who have perpetuated the tradition of religious scholarship. The trade networks today with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries are of no less significance in maintaining the link with the Middle East.17 Some members of the al-Attas family for instance maintain strong religious ties to Saudi Arabia. In September 1990, Shaikh Amin Aqeel Attas, the Assistant Secretary General of Rabita Al Alam Al Islami (The World Islamic League) in Mecca visited the Islamic Centre Jamiyah (Jami‘yya ad-da‘wa al-islamiyya Singhafura – [Arabic], Persekutuan Seruan Islam Singapura – [Malay]) and was received by the President of the Centre together with the Imam Hassan Mohammed Alatas18 (the same family) who lived for a long period in Saudi Arabia.19 There exists today a Singapore Arab Association (Rabitat al-Wahda al-Arabiyya) which celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 1986. It was officially registered a voluntary association in November 1946. Today this association promotes various activities such as offering courses in Arabic, religious classes and lectures.20 The association is today located in Arab Street. Although there is a list of 36 Islamic religious schools, madrasah, in Singapore, only four schools offer both primary and secondary education. Madrasah al-Junied al-Islamiah in Victoria street, founded in 1927 by an Arab religious scholar, Syed Abdul Rahman bin Juneid Omar al-Juneid. Madrasah Wak Tanjong, which was founded in 1958 by the religious teacher Mohammed Noor Taib. Madrasah Alsagoff in Jalan Sultan, which was founded in 1912 by Arab philanthropist Syed Mohammed bin Ahad Alsagoff, and madrasah al-Maarif al-Islamiah in Ipoh Lane Katongin, which was founded in 1936 by theologian Shaykh Muhammad Fudlullah Suhaimi.21 Since 1971 the Council of Education for Muslim Children and the government support these institutions.22 The madrasahs in Singapore are the link to the Middle East and success is measured by whether a student makes it to study at al-Azhar university or any other Middle Eastern one. They also show the very specific importance of the Islamic education system all over, as well of the “hajjiindustry” for the social, economic and in a strong intellectual sense also for the political integration of the Arab community into the social systems of Southeast Asian countries, specificallly Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. 63

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia However, beyond educational systems of Islamic teaching in Southeast Asia, there is the incorporation of the discourse of Islamization into the general framework of international exchange and circulation of ideas which broadly relate to the field of tension between modern social reconstruction and religion.

Embeddedness of Islamization in the Intellectual Discourse of Modernity Asian “Mediterranée” The Malay Archipelago in its geographical setting has often been perceived as a location of mediation and innovation with respect to its complex relation to the grand civilizations in Asia and in the West. Renaissance and Mediterranée have been the inventive terms to describe this position. For a long time, historians have debated about the civilizational status of Southeast Asia. Can one speak of an “autonomous history”? Would one have to position the region necessarily into a sort of appendix of civilizational developments in India, China, and later the Middle East? From the perspective of a Second World War liberation from Japanese occupation the region gained a more independent status. However, a Braudel type of analysis of the networks and physics of intercostal relations in the Archipelago would require drawing a cohesive picture of cultural interdependency of the developments among the Malay and Javanese kingdoms in the period of transition to colonialism and build-up of the world economic system. In the perspective of the late Denys Lombard (1998), the region gained its importance – and certainly the specificity of Islam related to it – in constituting the crossroads between China and the West. Lombard’s concept of carrefour would certainly link the civilizational record of Southeast Asia with the type of openness and culturally productive mélange which a broader embeddedness in world history would bring about (Lombard 1990).23 Unquestionably, the notion of a Southeast Asian “Mediterranean” would very effectively translate the matrix of Islamization, Asian Wonders and Asian Values. However, local historiography and politics of authentication remain tied to the cultural needs – both emancipative and self-assertive – and to the notion of Renaissance. The theatre remains one of a crossroads of great civilizations and at the same time of the collective memory of the communities: building a greater social cohesiveness is envisaged not only in mere history, but also in shared values and the search for common ethical ground (see Ibrahim 1996: 124). 64

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … In the futuristic voice of Malaysian perspectives from the early 1990s, the new Southeast Asian Islam is to avoid “Sectarian conflicts, ideological struggle and petty politics (which) in recent years have left the Muslims poorer in every sense of the word, making them the bugbear of the global community” (ibid.: 121).

Open multi-ethnic communication through trade and peaceful cultural and religious exchange is a vision that is encapsulated in the idea of ever more intensive global social relations, extending beyond the boundaries of the nation state. In this context, the concept of the Mediterranean, a body of water both separating and uniting Europe and the Middle East, is considered to be central to the foundation and reconstruction of world civilizations (Braudel et al. 1990). In contrast, the world of the Eastern Indies, the India of the Islands, as the French have it, remains in a peripheral position with respect to the great civilizations, but also in a position of comparative strength and possessing innovative powers with respect to Islam. Recent discussions of the new role of Asia as a capitalist growth centre have raised the issue of Islam in the light of the reconstruction of a new independent Asian civilization which could link capitalist achievements with alternative civilizational challenges (see Ibrahim 1996). It is not clear yet whether the Asian crisis has made this scenario a totally obsolete one. Civilizations are inscriptions of modes of economic activities, forms of governance, attitudes towards and perceptions of nature, inscribed in landscapes and networks of peoples, the historically prevailing senses of life in a certain unity of space. Western industrial societies in particular have been described by sociologists as a civilization set up by the close interconnection between religious institutions, everyday behaviour and social change. However, quite in contrast to conventional sociological wisdom, economic growth in Southeast Asia was not paralleled by a continuous secular drift but rather coincided with the continuous strengthening of religious organization, participation and mobilization (see Northcott 1992: 270). The question of Islam, therefore, cannot be merely linked with resacralization and the need for modern identity. In the history of the societies of Southeast Asia, Islam and economics have always played a role in the ambiguous relationship between the seafaring people and the populations in the interior of islands and peninsulas. Similarly, civilizational aspects of trading and travel, and the sea-lanes which have linked the Insulindes for more than three millennia, at least, to the Great Civilizations in the West and the Far East, relate to the role and modern rise of Islam. We cannot 65

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia give greater attention here to these conditions, which are specific to the world of the tropics and to the civilizing processes which relate to economic boom, Asian Renaissance and Islam. Certainly, to an unpretentious Western observer the basic question emerging in this context is how a religion which, in its visions and principles, lags centuries behind, indeed possibly a whole millennium behind, in terms of legal, rational and spiritual transformation, can support the rise and unprecedented success of capitalist growth and technological progress which was witnessed in the region in the 1990s. Islam might be perceived by Westerners and Muslims alike today still in the form of a pre-modern religion more closely allied to the styles of the old empires of Oriental Antiquity than to modern achievements. This is largely the perception of the glory of the past Islamic Civilization if one would only reinstate its inner logic: the eternal challenge of the Sultan, the man of military power and politics, by the legacy of the Prophet, by which the stream of life of the ordinary people is only casually affected. Would one ever dream that such a cyclical sameness of public affairs could ever develop the powers to challenge modernity and the West? Islamic reformism and Islamic modernism, in contrast, have been new streams of thought developed in the late 19th and early 20th century in order to transform orthodox and traditionalist religious attitudes and political affirmation, attempting to raise Islam itself to a powerful tool of modern cultural transformation. The question was how to make religion the instrument with which to cope with capitalism, science and technology and at the same time compete with modern Western religious attitudes and secular ideologies. In this respect, we would possibly have to raise the question whether “Islamic Modernism” has really fostered the types of social and institutional settings that could evolve as a powerful tool of civilizational transformation? Tradition and orthodoxy, however, remain considerable forces within Islam, and, therefore a continuing challenge to modern civilizational needs. How can Islam be linked with the future of Asian capitalism, is a question, then, that moves governments, intellectuals and people in the largely Muslim countries of the Insulindes. Such questions can today no longer be raised in a conventional Weberian manner. The allegedly “backward” religious attitude of Islam or the appraisal of its intellectual potentials can no longer be linked directly with the new “capitalist spirit” in the world of the Insulindes of Southeast Asia. Quite in contrast, what needs to be understood is how perceptions and ideas of Islam and the West have moved and, even more so, still today 66

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … move between these islands and peninsulas and between them and the outer world of Western and Eastern civilizations. They are shaping the conditions for social change and civilizational transformation in one of the most crucial places on the crossroads of the global project today. To make it clear from the start, what was perceived as religion in the “Insulindes”, as the French say, relates to the experience of an incomplete past. Much more than in other regions of the Islamic World, this feeling of an inadequate and unfinished Islamic project lead to recurrent streams of innovation and reform, an openness to ideas from the outside, from the other which we do not find in the conventional Islamic countries. Islam, then, also relates to far-away centres of civilization which are often believed to be “higher”, more coherent and authentic then one’s own cultural and religious achievements. What is perceived as “true” Islam in the Middle Eastern sense, certainly, relates to the Islamic appearances and realities which we can observe in the spheres of the “obvious”, the streams and organizations of everyday life, in harbours, cities and Kampungs alike: “correct” Islamic attire, ritual correctness and open pious devotion. However, beyond these extremes, which often evoke an indulgent smile from Middle Eastern visitors, there are visions and ideas which were taken from that other, far away civilizational setting of the Middle East and which – as we will attempt to show – constitute a Southeast Asian reality in its own right today. Floating on top of the streams of local life worlds, these ideas then take a substantial role in guiding the general directions of the social machine and leaving its imprints on bureaucracies and political organizations and from there drawing the potentials for any type of social transformation and political stream that occurs. Islamic Civilization and Progress Islamic perceptions and ideas are neither “backward” nor “progressive” as such. It is, perhaps, the way in which they are applied, the way in which then they direct the stream of life, that would account for the very success of economic, technical, but even more though, moral and social achievements. It its, for a Westerner at least, appalling to see, how such reactionary attitudes of political leaders, relating to “backward” ideas such as “race” and “intellectual superiority” have helped to engineer out ethnic conflict and the underdog attitudes of poverty in some of the Insulide societies, and specifically in the case of Singapore. Has the intellectual world of Islam played a role there? Can it play a role there in the future? Or rather, was there any specific political treatment of religion involved that helped to encourrage such transformations? 67

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia It is generally believed that Islam is more than a religion; it is a civilization. But the concept of civilization is in itself not clearly defined. Some relate to the concept of civilization the mere sense or even art of life that people share with one another, the pure and unadulterated repetition of forms of behaviour in the same style – what French historians have called “mentalities”. Others would believe that civilization would necessarily imply the construction of a central state power, like the empires of old antiquity or modern “nation-states”. For the purpose of this book, the reader might be well advised to relate the issue of civilization to some kind of a broader relationship shaped by the interplay between “mentalities” (having their roots in past constructions of senses of life and behaviour in a combination of religion and empire) and “nation-states” (defining the borderlines of the political, economic and social “effective history” of mentalities and placing them within the limits of collective consciousness, reconstructing the idea of mentalities and a shared past). In the understanding of Norbert Elias, civilizing processes are based on state-modulated, stategoverned, if not indeed state-run “mentalities”. Keeping these reflections in mind, we might be able to speak of the Islamic civilization of the 8th to 15th century as the dominating civilization of the Mediterranean basin. But also, with respect to the Muslim world today, we might speak of the Islamic civilization as an attempt to link Islamic “mentalities” closely with nation and state building. In this later sense “Islamic civilization” turns into an idea that serves the purpose of nation-state formation and nation building related to principles of modern organization of life, religious beliefs and modes of governance. In this sense, I hope it has become clear what we mean by perceptions and ideas governing the streams of life of people in the very sense that they would believe the idea of Islam to develop a way to find their own modern self. Islam as perceived visions and ideas, here, does indeed transform into a modern civilizational project. Therefore, coming back to the role of Islam in the contemporary world of the Insulides, the point is that Islam is perceived, here, as a religion that has left a civilization behind. This would imply that the idea of Islam where it is restricted to beliefs and attitudes of people with only limited effects on the legal and administrative forms of state construction and governance, turns into powerful new projects of modern social transformation. In this sense, where the historical, military, state-formative aspect of Islamic civilization is left behind as a necessity of its own local civilizational involvement, Insulide Islam turns out to be a more radical, more tolerant and extremely open programme of change than 68

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … anything the Islam of the Middle Eastern centre was ever able to develop. Many scholars believe that Islam in the Insulides is a religion based on ideals and visions of the far away, not a civilization; and that this is to be the result of the way in which Islam came to this region and also that this constitutes the very potential of Islam in fostering the necessary transformations in the local societies. The idea of a limited civilizational incorporation of Insulide Islam leaves many questions open with respect to the role of Islam in the making of the growth nations of Southeast Asia. We will raise these questions by way of distinguishing two general models of a new civilizational involvement of Islam in the Insulides, namely in Malaysia and Indonesia. We will (whilst regarding it as in a sense an “outsider” with respect to the general dimensions of involvement of religion), treat Singapore is a third model. However, beyond the issue of mutual involvement of religion and state in the actual process of transformation of Insulinde societies, we will introduce some very specific hotpoints of local social involvements of Islam and Islamic ideas, focusing on places such as the Minangkabau region, the region of Central and East Java, Kuala Lumpur as a “place” and Kelantan and Patani in East Malaysia and Southern Thailand. Here, the local social potentials of transformation of Islamic ideas will be given specific attention. Western perceptions of Islam were often linked with the idea of counter-civilization – counter to progress and modernity: The Mediterranean space of the Middle East is linked to this eternal issue – if we speak about civilizational reconstruction – of origin. All civilization which in essence is linked with the idea of one God originated in this region and all civilizational progress depended on this idea and the cross-civilizational and interregional exchanges and transitions related to it. The paradox is that real transition and affirmative culture came into being only in the form of selfreflection, authenticating and purifying an imagined idea of civilizational origin. The revolutionary re-invention of Roman and Greek republican life in France at the turn to the 19th century is an obvious case for this. In this respect, the Mediterranean East was always in one way or another a location of Western origin. This relates to Islam in many specific ways. First, there is the Islam of transmitting Greek civilization, its written and ideal side – philosophy, philology, the sciences – to the West. But also Islam is the only civilization that absorbs and at the same time rejects these advances in thought and science, creating itself a science of authentication which is known to us as the Islamic sciences of Hadith and 69

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia with it the invention of Arab grammatology and philology. These are good examples of original Islamic ways of developing a scientific stand toward authentication. This is and was the intriguing fact for the – let me put this discursively – political philologists of modernity like Ignaz Goldziher and Snouck Hurgronje, who recognized the very “scientific” powers of early Islamic authentication. Second, Islamic civilization is about the symbolic reconstruction of the material side of life, the art of administration and monitoring of markets and monetary relations beyond the culture of the Oikos (the household of the prince), the art of architecture and construction, the symbolic arrangement of space in the public-private divide. Islamic civilization develops all these achievements with a very loose and open relationship to religious dogma and beyond the immediate control of the class of religious interpreters and examiners. Third, that religion is linked to the letter is most obvious in Islam and religious intellectualism – what has been called the Oriental scholasticism – is probably the invention of Islam. The emergence of a relatively independent class of religious intellectuals is – as we might stress here however – not only a prelude to Western scholasticism. Fourth, and possibly most important in terms of the premises of this book, Islam is the mediating civilization between the great empires of the East and their civilizations in India and China. But so is the Islam that practically exercises this role, while ideally reconstructing itself as a civilization in its own right. To speak of origin and cultural authenticity within this framework of civilizational mix and transition, certainly, is paradoxical in itself. There seems to be no reasonable synthesis of “Islamic Civilization” as a whole. However, as becomes fully evident with this ambiguous and antinomic civilizational phenomenon of modernity, there is no proper process of civilization without this pathological quest for origin. This genealogical project has its purifying effects, totalizing the claim for synthesis even where there never was any search for synthesis, absolutizing the holism of culture even where there never was any cultural holism. Islam, as we will attempt to show, is more than any other non-Western civilization involved in this genealogical project, developing with its most intensive dialogical relationship with Europe the extremes of a very specific turn. Some of the most important issues, then, in dealing with the “civilization” of the Southeast Asian world are those of perspectives on coherence and differentiation of the social process. It is true that there always remained that great feeling in the West of a coincidence of the individual’s 70

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … personal ethics, perceptions and ways of ordering of everyday life, and the structural embeddedness in state institutions, market structures and broader communal relations. There was the dominance of the belief that individual perceptions and activities in gender relations, for example, and in family life – and also that the liberation of our moral behaviour and sexual relations – would strongly depend on specific structures of the economy and democracy and that to maintain these structures individual asceticism and responsibility in the private sphere would be necessary to maintain these public structures. Much of what has been developed in the last two centuries or so in terms of great political and social and economic structures in SEA, and of the literature about it, show a clear and definitive difference between the spheres of individual ethics and the other social and economic and political structures. The paradox is, that where we begin to understand that the relationship between personal ethics and the realm of the individual and its everyday orders is much more complicated (see e. g. Foucault 1984) and that there is, perhaps no direct analytical or necessary link between these spheres and that the world of the social as such and even its potentials for “development” depend on a much stronger pattern of differentiation, sexual, communal, mental patterns of change and tradition, unfolding separately and challengingly within the machine of (mass) culture, the SEA perspective – in two different ways – regenerates the idea of a strong coherence of state, economy and religion. Modernity and the Socio-Pathology of Religious Intellectualism Islam today, and specifically Islam in Southeast Asia, is no less part of the socio-pathology of religion in its relation to modernity than Christianity is and was. The proclaimed cultural revolution of modernity as the transition from religion to science, has in fact never really attempted or never really succeeded in doing away with religion. This has its specific expression in local Islamic intellectualism today and specifically with respect to its selfacclaimed spiritual strengths towards the deficiencies of the materiality and instrumentality of Western secular thought. A casual glance at the works of the grand theorists of modernity, from Marx to Nietzsche, from Renan and Freud to Weber and Durkheim, would reveal the accuracy of such a simple statement as this: modernity is about religion. We will therefore, before turning to the steamy clouds of the new, Asian type of Islamic spirituality, develop some conceptual understanding of the instrumental and pathological relationship between the Eastern claim to spirituality and the search for 71

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia a substitute for Western modernity. More precisely we have to show what we mean by the socio-pathology of the new religious counter-intellectualism, aspiring to reconstruct an old and at the same time to construct a new civilization. The question we are posing here is the one of the renewed quest for a religious morality that would have to dominate in human and social relations in order to establish lasting and effective patterns of interaction which would evolve into a project of change and intense cultural and civilizational productivity. Can Islam take such a position? We could enhance a study of the emergence of the quest for religion and its socio-pathological effects by comparing the lifestyle of people and the cultural attainments and aspirations, current achievements and expectations of the future. There has been a classical theorem of the self-perception of modernity since the late 19th century, according to which change causes injury, and the sacrifices imposed by transformation and transition may only be reorganized in a culturally productive way by the development of new religious – or religiously substituted – forms of morality. We call this idea the psycho-sociology of transformation, describing the forms of socio-pathology of the human transition of lifestyles. The conventional perception of modernity was very much related to the Parsonian idea of the relative separateness and autonomy of the sphere of professional life and the emotional world of the household, in a broader interactionist framework between institutions and lifeworlds. Culture and religion were largely depicted as the type of institutional knit which would mould the world of emotional morality into the world of instrumentality and reason. It has become – since the emergence of feminism as a modern dominant ideology – a common conviction in the West of sociologists and philosophers, that the idea of separation between emotions and professions, between instinct and interest, between sex and function, cannot be maintained. Hence, what we call the pattern of transformation and transition in contemporary societies is strongly related to the processes of cultural and civilizational convergence of emotional and institutional worlds, of love and profession, sex and function. This also relates to processes of the dissolution of the household as a place of family and monogamous marriage and the demands made on the sexes to connect sexual and professional intercourse and to educate children in single parent households. The reactions to this are manifold; the most obvious is the differentiation between sexual behaviour and emotional loyalty and professional function, and the invention of a new topography of ordering these various commit-

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … ments in a variety of places and social spaces. Elective affinity, selection by vitality and selection by choice, are only the varied slogans of this new quest for an increased maximum of humanity, hygiene and functional effectivity and creativity. The extraordinary achievements of modern times, the utilization of media, technology and the knowledge of science in ever-extending fields of social life have resulted also in a great mental transformation and a new efficiency of the individual of either sex. This individualization of the mode of life leaves countless people with a horrid gap in the emotional organization of life, with an abundance of anti-moral factors which make it difficult to understand the social environment beyond the tasks and efforts of the day. The fateful increase of religious commitment in the global world is foremost related to the devastating changes in people’s forms of occupation, social position, property relations and an almost unlimited overflow of symbolism and imagery exchanges, leading to an ever greater expenditure of emotional and physical energy. This is extremely evident in the Muslim world today, where education, the use of contraceptives and an increased expectation of professional roles leads to the delaying of marriage and subsequently to significant changes in family structures, women’s socio-economic status and perforce, transformed gender behaviour (see Wolf 1992; Heatton 1996). Being religious is a reaction to the injurious influence of a material civilization that ties all symbolic and emotional commitment to function and success. There is a new affluence of sexual life as a matter of request for professional performance of the individual, and this new “civilized” sexual morality is prevalent in all societies today. This causes a silent coercion to mechanical, instrumental sexuality, and love affairs beyond the still-expanding realm of monogamous marriage. Professional performance and marriage performance are often at the same time related to the civil task of “instinctive” sexuality as a mode of emancipation of the modern self. This differentiation in the various spheres of bodily interaction creates counter-needs for sublimation or, at the same time, for fulfilled eroticism in a search for coherent inclinations with spirit, eros and libido. The contemporary resurgence of religion could be understood in terms of the modern individual’s search for a coherence between spirituality and emotional and sexual morality. We may call this correspondence between the new process of differentiation between professional and emotional worlds and the resurgence of

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia religion a new stage of modernity where the increase of religion is linked to its function of creating realms of emotional coherence and monogamous marriage as opposed to the new sexual realms of professionalism. The socio-pathology of these new forms of differentiation relate in all societies to new forms of absolute individualism and the constitution of a new form of civilized emotional morality. With Islam and its moral rules of extensive sexual submission of the woman in – what has also become in most Muslim countries a similar pattern – monogamous marriage, we may witness today all pathological aspects of sexual suppression that Freud once described as related to the civilizational stage of monogamous marriage as the exclusive realm of sexual intercourse. At the very proper transition to this stage – and at the same time also moving to the fourth stage of perceiving professionalism and the related forms of sexual liberation – in Muslim societies today we rarely have any open discussion of institutional concerns about the type of social pathology it creates. The hejab, jilbab, the new Islamic attire of women, is widely discussed among feminists, anthropologists and sociologists alike as the symbolic expression of this wonderful new expansion of the religious drive: however, little attention is given to the new forms of sexual pathology which relate to it – namely, total monogamous suppression with sublimation possible only when related to religious spirituality and individual salvation. This is the other side of the socio-pathological relationship between religion and modernity. Religion in this type of new modern civilized life turns into the expression of both the crisis of the individual trying to cope with the quest for traditional satisfaction of needs and of coherence of emotional world and sexuality and regeneration, and the crisis of public welfare which emerges through the individualistic search for salvation pulling a veil over public debate and denying the need to raise these questions of crisis on a general level of institutional concern. Islam and Proto-Institutionalization Islam, in the discourse of modernity, was largely made responsible for a certain gap between and double-facedness when it came to ethical ideas and individual commitment to them – a lack of cohesiveness between individual life world rationalization and institutional functioning, or, to use the terms of the political scientist, a lack of impersonal rule. The Southeast Asian crisis today, in different ways in Malaysia and Indonesia, could easily be seen as strongly depending on this type of deficiency in modern govern74

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … ing modes. There exists a continuing default in Western social theory in explaining why rationalization in non-Western cultural environments would not lead to the type of affirmative institutionalization of social regulation and legal and administrative security and assertiveness which we witness today as exclusive patterns of Western civilization. There is – in other words – a failure by Weberian and post-Weberian theory to understand the lack of institutional rationalization in the non-Western, and most notably, in the Islamic world. We therefore suggest it would be preferable to omit any attempt to understand Islam in Weberian terms and to proceed with the help of some other contemporary thinkers in the enterprise of understanding the civilizational logic of Islam from within. Our argument, here, is that looking at Islam from within can only be accompanied by an attempt at positioning Islam in a broader framework of cultural globalization. The question, therefore, is what does Islam mean within this global world? What are the social and philosophical messages that evolve in the course of the civilizational reconstruction of Islam within the context of globalization? What do today Muslim thinkers intend to gain from Islam in civilizational terms? What do they want to stress as original achievements of Islamic civilization, what do they “not speak about”, or what do they – obviously – want to omit? Theseare sociological questions which I want to raise, not ideological or a political ones. I would like to open this discussion in a very practical manner by suggesting that the material world of globalization has become a common idea to all people in the world. In other words, I suggest that we all wish to be transported by vehicles which give rise to less pollution and destruction to the social and natural environment; we all wish to use, I submit, functioning washing machines, live in buildings that do not fall down, use lifts that operate, enjoy legal justice, relatively equal treatment of tax payers, etc. I name things which have become trivial – sometimes not so trivial – but undeniably mundane issues of everyday life everywhere, even if they where not immediately accessible, because they are at the same time subject to “higher” discourse, namely, whether we should have them or not or whether it is in God’s grace to use them or not. More openly, it is Muslims who have questioned directly the usefulness of these things. However, nowhere in the world have I seen Muslims rejecting these things the very moment they where accessible to them. We are well reminded in this context of the eternally repeated argument about the “modernity” of Islamic fundamentalists, that even while rejecting Western materialism and the instrumentality of Western science, they were seen to be using computers and other technological marvels for “God’s own good”. If we want, however, to know 75

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia what is behind this obvious antagonistic way of utilizing Western technology, we need to see what the practical impact of using these things “for God’s own grace” is. It is not the intention to ask what it means to the psyche of the individual using the thing; rather, it is to ask what this way of using Western technology means in social and civilizational terms. Here, we have, certainly, to turn back to the concept of civilization, and of Islamic civilization in particular, as discussed above and to find out what the specific usage of technology means to Muslims as a way of life. It is in this sense that we can understand the civilizational “power” of using Western achievements in Islamic terms. The grand narratives of Islamic Civilization fall into three decisive complexes: the palace, the mosque and an unhampered stream of life in city quarters and villages, and in a broader sense deserts and waters between them. These complexes appear as almost separate material as well as cultural worlds with little “ideal” or “philosophical” or “logistical” interconnection between them. The mosque rarely interconnects with the palace, the sulta or the military, it rarely interconnects with the material life of the everyday worlds. Each of these worlds takes its own stand as affirmative traditional cultures in their own right and with – in a Weberian sense – little tensions enforcing inner rationalization with respect to one another. In this positive affirmation of outworldly vision, thisworldly power and material life, Islam figures until today as the Counter-Occident, a “complementary enemy” as one French historian would have it. Islam as the counter-image of Europe derives from a concept of this image of the Orient as a static recreation of organization of life within these three different social spheres of the state, the religion and the material life of the populace, being relatively autonomous spheres with minor tensions building a conceptual coherence among them. Topographically this constellation of a sacred separateness of social spheres re-erects its realm with unchallenged continuity from Oriental antiquity until today and Islam, the new religion only temporarily seems to have threatened this continuity in its early phase and then quite flexibly to have gone on to re-affirm the old values and the substance of this separation between palace, mosque and economic life, between military, the scribe and the peasant, between sulta, din, and dunya. Only for a short moment in history did the prophecy of the desert threaten the sacred coincidence of these three separate worlds and for that moment it looked like as if the intellectual construction of an ideal coherent realm of religion under the spell of Greek philosophy could encompass a mode of institutional, legal and practical organization of social

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … life, leading into a coherent totality of social rationalization similar to that which took hold in Occidental civilization at the end of the Middle Ages. However, the civilizational grip went on to resurrect within Islamic Civilization its old arch-powers and the religious naturalism of the prophecy of the desert was moulded again into the culture of scribes with little substantial effect on the accountability of rule and governance in the hand of the military and the palace, and with little effect on education, regulation and technological advances in the realm of the material production of life among the masses. Since the 19th century Orientalists have attempted to explain this in terms of the waves of transformation that were related to the relatively limited effects of the Roman conquest of Carthage in 146 B.C. and the subsequent occupation of the East: the generality and mundane, pragmatic orientation of Roman Law never grew to any real conviction as towards the old oriental arts of life with their “wise” separation of the spheres of social life and organization. Islam then, nearly a thousand years later, was seen rather as having been welcomed as a “known” power of Eastern transformation, flexible enough to be retransformed into a powerful new expression of oriental styles and arts of life (Braudel et al. 1990: 97ff.). As for this “Eastern”, “Oriental” rationality of the sacred separation of spheres of social organization – what type of social encounter has it led to in modern times? Certainly, no other religious and intellectual power than Islam today defends this sacred separation of the trinity of power, religion and life. Despite the various attempts of militant movements and intellectual rationalization of religious ideas, the Islamic world today, from Morocco to Indonesia, from Turkey to Egypt – despite all ritual and formal religious or democratic disguise of blunt military power – adheres unchallenged to this “Oriental” pattern of civilization, keeping power and the sovereignty of the military aside from control and ideas of human justice and legitimacy in the realms of justice and religion and the mundane necessities of order and regulation. The sovereignty of the state remains the sovereignty of the palaces and their guards. The sovereignty of religion is maintained in two different and sometimes opposing ways: by revealed Law on the one hand and by saints and martyrs on the other. In relation to the concept of the topographical and geo-political impact of civilizations, one would really have to ask the question whether Southeast Asia in becoming an arena of Islamic expansion and transformation has, as one observer claims, really left behind its civilization, and therefore, is only of limited importance to the region. If civilizations constitute the

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia permanent realities of life and at the same time entail a continuity in a topographical sense, then, of what civilization do we have to speak in dealing with this region of the Insulindes?

The Postmodern Vision of Islam and Southeast Asian Islam Transmission of Ideas and Perceptions from the Middle East The conventional history of Islam in Southeast Asia is one of an intellectual intrusion from far away – from the outside world of the Middle East – destabilizing pre-given cultural and politico-administrative structures. The history of integration and of reconstruction of a Southeast Asian Islam “of its own” in the region started in the period of new economic and political assertiveness The new period of differentiation of religion and politics started with the Islamization of the economic, political and social discourse. Islam becomes transformed into a pattern of cultural appropriations of religious ideas in the fields of economic and social reconstruction. This is where today both orthodoxism and fundamentalism are to be externalized a) as systems of ritual application and religious training and b) as an ideology of resurgence. Modernity, here, in all these divergent movements, has to be understood not in terms of the alternative modernity of Islam but, in fact, in terms of a process of a very modern reconstruction of Southeast Asian societies with respect to the contradictions between functional and structural differentiation and the quest for cultural coherence and reconstruction. The specific way in which this is expressed in Southeast Asia today makes it a leading case, a model of “modern” transformation not only for other regions in the so-called Third World, but also for Western problems and potentials. The “Irrationality” of Postmodernism The idea of a continuous separation of personal ethics and the great political and social and economic structures of capitalism was first developed by Daniel Bell, who argued that the hedonism of modern capitalist consumer society stood in antagonism to the moral basis of capitalist economic rationality. If the libertarianism of modernity was ruining so radically the protestant everyday morals and, therefore, the rationalist imperatives of economy and bureaucracy, then there is only one instrument to bring an end to the destructive forces of self-realization, namely, the reinstitution of religion. 78

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, however, affirming the rationality of differentiation believes that only professionalism can tie together the necessarily and functionally separated spheres of modern capitalist culture, namely, Science, Morality and Art. He argues that the reification of everyday life through mass culture can only be countered if the separate spheres of modern culture are kept separate and at the same time “communicate” on the level of expertise and professionalism. This new discourse about the hedonist culture of modernity and the negative social and cultural effects of the media and consumer culture on the one hand and the attempts to overcome such deficiencies either in terms of the communicative “morals” of professionalism or a new sacralization of the political and academic public is not just a “Western” discourse. On the contrary, it is deeply rooted in all debates on the cultural future of the non-Western world and specifically of SEA. Habermas proclaimed the existence of a professionally guided and mutually communicative differentiation of the life worlds and argued strongly that there was what he believed to be a sort of terrorizing holism of anti-modern visions of a self-declared and decentred cultural subjectivity which would, quite paradoxically, on the other hand, strive for its political liberation (Habermas 1983). Certainly, one could easily see that Habermas, also never in direct contact with the cultural idiosyncrasies of the non-western world with his own conservative rationalism, would not really be able to respond to what socio-religious emancipation really meant to post-colonial societies and specifically the Muslim countries of SEA. However, his rejection of Western, “religiously” inspired pre-modern traditionalists and at the same time of the new prophets of emotional emancipation and sexual self-realization, point to the very issues which lie at the heart of the discourse of Islam and Postmodernism. What for Habermas seem to be pre-modern solutions, for others appear as a holistic concept of civilizational emancipation, a new social potential of culture which, with some wrong allusions to Jacob Burckhardt’s concept of “civilization”, namely, “Cultur” as the integration of Science and Technology and the unhampered evolution of mass society and capitalism, seemed to be applied in the political discourse on “Islamic Renaissance” in Southeast Asia. This allusion is wrong because Burckhardt, in his matrix of “die drei Potenzen” (the three potentials), state, religion, “culture”, which he developed in his famous lecture “Über das Studium der Geschichte” (on the study of history), considered state and religion as “potentials” based on power, while he considered “Cultur” a third, all-embracing new dimension of the social, namely the material 79

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia culture of capitalism as a new potential challenge to the “old” powers and the coercive structures they would embark on. What, however, are those post-narrative attempts at emancipation which today emerge on the international scene of globalized cultural and economic exchanges? They operate – so they claim – against materialist, destructive and elitist western imperialist modernism. At the beginning of the 1990s Akbar Ahmed und Ernest Gellner dealt with such questions with respect to the idea of Islam as an emerging global player in the realms of postmodernism. Certainly, here, the idea of the new “condition of postmodernity” remains limited to the new aspect of religious revivalism. All too obviously, this is an ideological discourse. The various most important levels of inclusion end exclusion and the dynamics of extensive cross-cultural exchange are by and large completely neglected in this debate. Though it is linked to issues of renewal, these are not subjected to further analysis. Both authors remain within an ideological framework of enlightenment and rationalism. Both claim a “modern” rationalist position for Islam, which, with its new faces, openly operates against such a framework, and, from a Habermasian point of view would immediately run the risk of seeming an apology for a new pre-modern totalitarian way of thinking. According to Akbar Ahmad, who in 1986 called for a mild version of an Islamic anthropology, argues here as a Muslim – “from a vantage point” (Ahmad 1986: 263), i. e. from a pragmatic position, for a floating world of postmodern tolerance in which Islam, with an opening for that ambiguous door of ijtihad, could be brought to a new reality of social development. Following the reactions to Edward Said’s orientalism thesis, he sees two foundations for such a process. First, there is a growing recognition of the diversity of Islamic ideas and of local Islamic cultures. Second, the end of colonialism also brought forth a reduction of antagonisms between Orient and Occident, and a new generation of African, Asian and Western scientists and academics emerged. This point, as he reads it, figures as the new condition for a global civilization which would be liberated from the lopsided domination of the West. Certainly, Ahmad is much concerned with the world of media and the Anglo-Saxon perception of Islam dominant in it. The comparison between Islamist movements and the new social movements in the West, like the political rise of ecologically-oriented “Green” parties in various countries – bears the same paradigmatic stamp of the Western discourse of ethics and the future of the industrial and consumer society. What then is Islamic postmodernism? It is true that in figures like Rushdie and Madonna we can find the hallmarks of a media80

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … backed cross-cultural exchange between “Europe” and Islam; however, at the same time they signal the fractures and schisms of a “Kulturkampf”, a clash of cultures, which, contrary to Ahmad’s belief, will not so easily be smoothened out by the emotional worlds of postmodern tolerance. While Ahmad does show convincingly that the interactions in the context of the “communication society” have indeed become more frequent, varied and open, it is nevertheless highly questionable whether there could ever be, as Ahmad hopes, something akin to a relationship entered into by choice between the postmodern deconstruction of the “European centre” and the renewal and global rehabilitation of Islam. Ahmed believes that the destructive powers of the media could be overcome by the moral-ideological potentials of the “postmoderns”. However, in everyday life the “Condition of Postmodernity” determines very fixed patterns of global cultural exchange. What, however, is more important than the type of religion in postmodernity is the question of the new position of religion, the role of its symbolic or moral consistencies within the new type of social processes. Islam or any other religion could hardly function within a postmodern setting given its unchanged pre-modern character. In other words global civilization today is about new forms of religion and the way they open up to the mental and emotional challenges of the postmodern condition, not about this or that type of religion and its unhampered premodern character. This is where Ernest Gellner attempts to trace some prominent “Western” continuities in the religion of Islam. For him, it seems, it was modernity with all its empathy for non-European culture which reinvented a decaying premodern religion called Islam: “… the world of Islam demonstrates that it is possible to run a modern, or at any rate modernizing, economy, reasonably permeated by the appropriate technological, educational, organization principles, and combine it with a strong pervasive, powerfully internalized Muslim conviction and identification. A puritan and scripturalist world religion does not seem necessarily doomed to erosion by modern conditions. It may on the contrary be favoured by them” (Gellner 1992: 22).

Gellner votes for an illuminated rationalist fundamentalism and finds the roots of this in Islamic puritanism and scripturalism. We may remind ourselves that conventional Orientalism, indeed, would have understood Islam as the world religion (with some deep roots in the Axial Age civilizations) which transported, albeit with some (very modest) restrictions, the 81

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia enchantments of the old oriental erotic cultures into the drudgery of the modern world. And we might be able to take this point as the real factor in understanding Islam in modernity as the “exotic” culture of the other. Gellner in contrast, attempts to abolish the image of the continuity of “Eastern” eros. And it is true that Ahmad, on the other hand, remained loyal to all attempts to erase such a dualism within the conventional separations of Western materialism and Eastern spiritualism, while Gellner attempts to build that great rationalist link between Islam and modernity, evoking the sublimating achievements of puritanism and scripturalism against “eros”. For Gellner, Postmodernism equals cultural relativism He argues that this subjectivist relativism could be understood only as a reaction to colonialist objectivism. However, he believes that subjectivism refuses to recognize the “other” because it would reject any deeper understanding of the truth of his religion. In Gellner’s view it is relativism that lacks any understanding of the rationalist character of the Islamic civilization. There is a strange feeling in both these texts that one of the great tasks of the social sciences of this century would be to draw, beyond the pure up-to-date tastes of the sacralazation of the “Zeitgeist”, the lines and pave the ways for the necessary futures of Islam in a globalized world. Whether pure apologies for a “tolerant, postmodern” Islam or a “rationalist, fundamentalist” Islam would be helpful in opening up to the Islamic future in the coming century might be doubted, however. It is interesting to note in the context of this study that for Malaysia and – even more so – for Indonesia these discussions on postmodernity and modernity with respect to Islam have beome crucial issues of political debate. In Indonesia most of these titles are quickly translated into bahasa. And in both countries the academically trained Muslim youth and Muslim intellectuals create a lively intellectual culture in debating these books. Islamic Futures Gellner and Tibi argue that Islamism today, as a postmodern project, is a defensive response to the cultural modernity of the West (Tibi 1995: 7). Islam under the auspices of what is designated “Islamic Renaissance” in Southeast Asia is an offensive strategy of cultural recognition and economic growth. As we will describe in greater detail below, in certain cases intellectualism and politics worded this in terms of a defensive terminology such as “de-westernization” – specifically in Malaysia. However, these were rhetorical rather than practical issues. At no moment in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, was there any attempt to abolish the path of Western growth society 82

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam … and to dismantle the fairly internationalized capitalist machine. In intellectual terms one soon turned from “negative” language like “de-westernization” to a more positive terminology, choosing expressions like “Islamization”, “Islamic Renaissance” or “Islamic civil society”. Certainly, in academic circles the debates were about “doubt” or “conjecture” as alternative scientific methodologies, the primacy of “belief” as a basis of affirmation founded in a theocentric and monotheistic word view and the unity of will between God and the world as opposed to a concept of science based on the “self-assertiveness of ability” (ibid.: 11). It is vital to take seriously those Islamic intellectuals who, in their societies today, are deeply engaged in developing new social roles for culture and religion and looking to their potential for establishing social order in a “postmodern” era, and not to brand them “fundamentalists”, as Tibi does. In combination, Ahmad and Gellner have shown that the antinomies of the Western concept of science lie much deeper. Beyond polemics, there is no reason why the emerging capitalist societies in SEA should not develop their own methodologies in the cultural sciences and a new matrix for the inclusion of ethics in applying science and technology. Medical treatment, gender relations, ecological issues are major fields for applying and rethinking alternatives in the domain of “Islamization”. The problem is whether what is intended is a real bettering of the human condition as the creation of God, or some scripturalist mumbo-jumbo which could indeed be characterized as the “eclipse of substantative rationality”, to take a formulation from Critical Theory and the Morroccan Islamic historian and philosopher al-Jabri into account. If social theory today did indeed take into account the Heideggerian necessities of the hermeneutics of authenticity, as some Muslim sociologist of Islamization would have us to believe (e. g. Safi 1994), it would also have to understand the effective potentials of these hermeneutics of authenticity in social reconstruction. The postmodern condition calls for new perceptions of social order and there is naturally and necessarily a competition in applying “state”, “religion” and “culture” in their immediate responses to the international machine of consumer and growth societies. This competition is about the future of a global civilization and with this specific outline it could hardly be understood in terms of “Clashes of Civilizations” or “Challenges of Modernity”. The question raised is the one of the inner reconstruction of societies and their consistencies and “order” everywhere in the world. From here the question turns from one of overcoming backwardness or the dangers of communism to one of what the role of Islam really is with respect to the postmodern condition of local 83

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia communities and national societies. This question has been addressed convincingly by Ziauddin Sardar (1995) in an article which was recently published in Malaysia.24 Today, we are witnessing how the ideas of Islam expanding into a global postmodern ambience is vanishing with the decline of growth and at the same time the increase of conflict. Nevertheless, on whatever limited, clandestine or underground basis, the ideas will not totally disappear: “The effort to revive the spirit of inquiry and reasoned discourse (tajdid) required no less than a thorough transformation of mental outlook. To regain their central position in society, the ulama need to manifest intellectual vigour and societal relevance” (Ibrahim 1996: 117f.).

Pointing to the “background of traditional Islamic scholarship” and the “fiqh al-awlawiyyat, the understanding of priorities, as a juristic basis for social policies”. Anwar Ibrahim states: “Under this approach, which appears to be gaining acceptance among the mainstream ulama of Southeast asia, the application of the hudud, fixed punishment prescribed by the Quran and the Traditions of the Prophet of Islam for certain offences, is not necessarily among the top priorities of contemporary Muslim societies” (ibid.: 119).

Referring to al-Faruqi’s essay “Is the Muslim definable in terms of his economic pursuits?” he states that there is no contradiction between Islam and the continuous struggle to improve economic well-being. “He (Al-Faruqi) thought in terms of homo islamicus, a concept that demands a balanced emphasis on material and spiritual well-being. The economic imperative of development is equally borne out by the fact that some of the ideals of Islam such as justice, the pursuit of knowledge, and the promotion of the arts and culture, can only be realized within the context of economic prosperity” (ibid.: 112).

Notes 1

For a valuable account of the theories and their impacts see Kratz: 1988: 125-145. 2 For a Western “Orientalist” affirmation of initial Arab influence on

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2. Indonesia – Malaysia: Structures of Embeddedness of Islam …

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the spread of Islam in Southeast Asia see Heine and Stipek 1984: 65 ff. For a description of the translation of indigenous state ideologies in pre-colonial Java into the recent state political culture of the “New Order” see Liddle 1996: 27 ff. See Chapter 5. It is interesting to note that there the self-perception of national culture as “secular” has its complementary reading in the western social science discourse on the cultural condition of post-colonial society, in its tendency “to diminish conceptually the place and role of the religion and culture of “Islam now and in the past” in Southeast Asian societies”, see. Roff 1985: 7. I have fairly reliable figures available for 1985: ca. 160 million Indonesians of which 142.5 million, i. e. about 87 per cent, were Muslims. About 10 per cent were Christians with the remaining 3 per cent Hindus, Buddhists and Others. Source: P3M Jakarta. Population estimates for 1995 were 195 million inhabitants. For further details of this famous, flattering story of Dutch colonial rule see Wallace 1986: 105-107, here 105f. I am indebted to Joost Coté of Deakin University, Victoria, for his stimulating paper on “Colonialism and the Location of Islam: The Orientalism of Snouck Hurgronje” (Coté 1995). For further detail about the various religious pesantren and schools in Indonesia see Dhofier 1980b: 264-265). Concerning the disputed origins of the pesantren see Lombard 1990, Tome II: 114-119. This would indeed require a study of its own. One has to here confess that due to the limited field research time in Indonesia in addition to the wide geographical variations where one could find enclaves of Azharites (in Kalimantan, Sumatra and Eastern Java), it has been impossible to clearly analyse the practical impact of Azharites in rural life and their current rejection or absorbtion of the aspects of Arabic culture they acquired in the Middle East. This pesantren produced well-known intellectuals such as Nurkholish Madjid, who was a central ideologue of the Muslim Youth Association (HMI) in the seventies, and an important contributor of new ideas in Islamic political thought during the New Order phase. The sons of the founder of this pesantren, K.H. Imam Zarkashy, have studied in Egypt. Amal Fathullah Zarkashy, who wrote a thesis on “The Salafi Trend in Contemprorary Islamic Thought in Indone-

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sia” in 1986, studied at Dar al-‘Ulum and currently teaches at the pesantren Gontor. The other son of K.H. Zarkashy, Hidayatullah, studied in Egypt and Pakistan. There are also other Dar al-‘Ulum alumni working in this pesantren, such as Mr. Imam Subakir, Muhammad Ghufron, Hassan Abdullah, Sutadzi Tadzuddin and M.A. Azhar, who are all teaching at Gontor. On Gontor see also Chapter 4. On the other hand, lecturers from the I.A.I.N. of Yokyakarta reported that since 1982, the S.M.A. Certificate of Gontor is no longer accepted for further studies in IAIN, since it is not a state school but a private one; a reason which might encourage many to travel to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It would seem that this pesantren strongly encourages its students to study in Cairo. C.M. Turnbull, A History of Singapore 1819-1975, Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 147. In 1988, the population of Singapore numbered 2,647,100. The Chinese constituted 76 per cent of the population, the Malays 15.1 per cent, the Indians 6.5 and persons of other ethnic groups 2.4 per cent. Singapore, Facts and Pictures 1989. Published by The Information Division Ministry of Communication and Information. Islam is the religion of the majority of the Malays; there are also Indian Muslims. Straits Times (Singapore daily) 2 November, 1988. In Arab Street in Singapore one can meet Saudi Arabian traders who constantly travel between the Middle East and Singapore. Hassan Alatas is currently the Imam of the well-known Ba‘alawi mosque in Singapore, which is renowned for its active social work among the underprivileged Malays and in particular women. See Abaza 1995. Voice of Islam, Periodical Magazine published by Muslim Missionary Society, Jamiyah. 31/2/90 vol. III no. 183. Activities Of Arab Association in Singapore (pamphlet), n.d. Straits Times (Singapore daily) 8 April, 1989. Ibid. p. 204. For extensive discussions of the these issues see Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s, “Writing History ‘Backwards’: Southeast Asian History (and the Annales) at the Crossroads” (1994), and his “Notes on Circulation and Asymmetry in Two Mediterraneans” (1998). Sardar’s “Understanding Modernism” is the attempt to translate Western modernism into an Islamic language. I am grateful to Professor Clive Kessler, Sidney, for having drawn my attention to this article.

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam …

3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam in the Minangkabau Region of West Sumatra

“The soil of Indonesia, Java in particular, with its wild growth of all sorts of organized spiritualities – most of which are either survivals from the recrudescences of pre-Islamic religions – could on principle furnish an excellent climate for the growth of a progressive interpretation of Islam, and there is no doubt that on certain important social, economic, and political issues that are proving to be poisonous hang-ups in the Middle Eastern societies (questions of segregation of women, bank interest, and Islamic socioeconomic justice or “Islamic socialism”), Indonesian Islam has cast its die for progress. But a miscalculation of the religious situation in Indonesia, where these wilder anomian, or even antinomian, spiritualities have from time to time tantalized rulers as forms of religious liberalism and escapes from conservative or fundamentalist Islam, could backfire with disastrous results – despite the statements of many Western scholarly observers and analysts. There appears to be a widespread belief in these circles and even in many Indonesian groups that if only these “spiritual” ideologies could succeed, then their quiescent waters, rid of stormy conservative and fundamentalist activism, could be channelled in any “liberal” direction. The basic trouble with this view is that in the depths of such “spiritual” waters, there are hardly ever to be found “social pearls”. And without denying the value and, indeed, necessity of the spiritual element in the social life of the individuals, it also seems indisputable that no spiritualism per se has been positively conductive to the establishment of any moral-social order, which is the desideratum of all world societies today” (Rahman 1982: 127f.).

Religion as Institution and Event Working for Institutions Possibly like in many other local settings in Indonesia, Islam in the Minangkabau region was – integrated and sometimes in conflict with the local court and, given its special case, the matriarchal land inheritance system – the most decisive factor in the local process of institutionalization. The role of Islam in institution building became even more decisive in the postindependence period. This finds its expression not only in the appraisal and modern presentation of the Minangkabau Sheykhs, the founding fathers of Islam in the region, but also in the extensive list of leaders and intellectuals

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia like Hamka and Muhammad Natzir, who became famous in Jakarta and beyond as religious and political heroes. Certainly, since the days of struggle for national independence, Indonesian Muslims have discussed the possible contribution of Islam in forming a cohesive society and in contributing to further economic development with great intensity (Noer 1973: 275ff.; Legge 1977: 67; Boland 1971). Islamic ideas, which have recently been seen as emerging with a strong dependence on the “South-South” exchanges of Islam and the anti-colonial network of cultural exchange between the Middle East and Southeast Asia1, were conventionally assessed with respect to their furthering of commercial and capitalist activities (Castles 1967; Siegel 1969). What has been largely missing in the accounts of such combinations of Western and Islamic discourse in the rise of Indonesian Nationalism is the outcome of this with respect to the relation between the growth of individualism and bureaucratic religious institutionalization. On a theoretical level this was discussed in greater detail above, where we have developed the concept of “proto-institutionalization”, which denotes the strengthening of the separation of the spheres of individual Islamic practice (rites, values, religiosity) in a process of increased etatization of the Islamic institutions and public Islamic discourse. As for the local setting and the forms of presence of governmental institutions, the later remained, in statute and form, military and bureaucratic. Until today it is not only the number – as Siegel mentions – that functions as both an equalizing and self-authenticating factor of state bureaucrats, but more decisively the uniform and the recreation within the military-bureaucratic setting of the office with the performance of communal and collective rites such as the slemantan or the everyday pre- and postservice assemblies in office courtyards which symbolize state culture as “tradition” and self-elevation of the officials. Islam stands beyond such traditions. This lack of religious representation in state culture – and the belief that such representation was an inherent characteristic of heartland Islam – may have become one of the reasons why perhaps in the name of Islam such large and distinct institutions of a sometimes overwhelmingly bureaucratic nature had to be created in certain regions of Indonesia; certainly in the Minangkabau region. This type of Islam is linked with the organization of Muhammadiyya representing the conventional modernist branch of Indonesian Islam; what we may call it its bureaucratic branch. Despite its deep roots in Minangkabau Islam and its dominant presence in West-Sumatra today, the Muhammadiyya was founded in Yokyakarta and

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … has its main office there, and this is why we will deal with its present politics in the next chapter. The above discussion about Islam as an appropriate ideological framework for modernity and capitalism showed it was not limited in its function to increasing Muslim participation in the modern economic process. It has put Islamic ideas and organizations into the forefront of the socio-political discourse of the country, at least in the period of the “New Order”, 19651998. It is within this positioning of Islam that we have to assess the forms of its institutionalization and mass-organization in Indonesia. As we have stated above it is possibly not the case that the pesantren culture is in itself an intellectually vibrant or an independent component of civil society. The bureaucratic nature of this type of envisioning of religious education in Islam is not unique, however, in the case of the local society of the Minankabau Region in West-Sumatra, it seems that pesantren became linked to a whole tradition of the production of state officials and bureaucrats. One way to approach the morphology of Islam in the Minangkabau cultural setting would be to highlight the various modernist official intellectual approaches which are part and parcel of the state machine of religious control. However, if we leave aside the historically settled process of unfolding of such ideas, it is very difficult to trace an emerging intellectual discourse in the encounters with local actors and social and cultural interaction on the scene. As we will see in greater detail below, there is an intellectual discourse, and this has various origins, historical ones as much as structural and cultural ones. The often celebrated modernist intellectual discussions and educational and religious ideas of individuals are conventional and traditional and always stand in close relation to the state process where religious ideas are state representations, religious practice a controlled collective enterprise, belief a very private matter. As in the West, the process of the construction of the individual and individualism in Indonesia seems to rely strongly on a type of dichotomy between purely structural and purely cultural constellations. In this respect Taufik Abdullah’s observations are symptomatic: “One could simply identify oneself by anything and join a suitable solidarity group, but the internal capacity of the identification of self is based on a commonly shared definition of self. Identification is the label with which you want people to recognize you, but the definition of self is related to the basic traits of your identity. In other words the label that is self identification is more a political and ideological category

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia than a religious or cultural one. Or to put it differently, if religion can be conceived to have two mutually inclusive aspects (Geertz 1968) then one could say that self-identification is more a reflection of its structural than its cultural aspect. Self identification in its official forms in participation in voluntary associations or solidarity groups is a way to place oneself in a certain place in the social and political constellation. As such the commitment to an identification is determined by the degree of confidence that one has about the extent of which the cultural definition of self has already been secured” (Abdullah 1985: 154).

Waves of Modern Ideological Incorporation People’s work in state-dominated institutions also means a type of physical incorporation of their ideas. Islam here encompasses the social morphology of institutional life. This side of self-identification and individualism, which is tied to the process of institutional formalization, externalizes the cultural and religious definitions of the self and the related cultural technologies of self construction to the ritual religious form. It leaves very little space for the self-incorporation of ideas. Over long periods of time Islam has been a reconstructing force in this society; however, it remained in a strange position of the strict separateness and, at the same time, of spiritual cohesion of the spheres of political and bureaucratic work. The conventional sociology of religion, that “ideas” and soteriological visions can have a very factual impact on organizing protest and change in the social process may be restricted in this context to extremely rare events. They have an affirmative, not an oppositional effect, in being institutionally incorporated and formalized by structurally secured definitions: they can hardly evolve within a reverse process of cultural empowerment from below. Indonesians themselves are aware of this ambiguity. In the Minangkabau region of West Sumatra – since the early days of this century – Muslims seem to have been predominantly preoccupied with two competing “ideas”. First, Islam incorporated in state structures and bureaucracy as “modernity”. Second, spiritual Islam incorporated in religious rituals. These ideas have sometimes been viewed as mutually exclusive. However, in contrast to this conceptual hostility, in factually unfolding in the everyday social process, the two “ideas” happened to be more and more integrative and mutually inclusive. This is where intellectuals obviously felt the need for new conceptualizations and visions which would combine or in fact integrate these two “ideas”. However, as a matter of the political and secular stand of the Indonesian government, the discussion about the combination or integration of the ideas of Islam and Modernity never took the form of fidgeting them into one coherent idea that would 90

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … possibly enhance a simple but nevertheless problematic project, namely, to put culture and religion into the only guiding position of “Islamizing modernity” with some false measures of conceptual incorporation on the surface level. Indonesians never felt the need of unbalancing, total integrations. They themselves completely avoid this concept of Islamization and use a different one: the concept of modernist Islam or Islamic modernism. The unfolding of the issue of Islam and Modernity in West Sumatra – if not in Indonesia as a whole – relates to three conceptual aspects which are characteristic for the various historical settings of religious discourse in the society, but which are – in different forms of intensity – present today. In the early 19th century, and specifically with the Padri-movement (18171837), the issue of Islam and modernity was related to the problem of how to civilize the pagans. Islam in this context was meant to suppress or to integrate non-Islamic or even pagan practices and ideas. The way this discourse over the civilizing attitude of Islam against or in relation to local pagan traditions of Minangkabau culture (and specifically, in its most purist version, even against the rantau, symbolizing the matriarchal system of inheritance), as it developed in the 19th and 20th century, continues until today to give a specific imprint to the discourse of modernity and Islam, although, as one might think, a less immediate one than in the early 19th century. It figures today as a general problem of Indonesian Islam, or what is sometimes negatively called Adad-Islam. The second and even more important conceptual aspect of Islam and Modernity in the historical process is related to the specific anti-colonial role of Islamic ideas and Islamic groups and organizations in the process of independence and nation-state formation. This specific involvement of Islam in modern politics was most obvious for Sumatra in the Acceh War (1873-1914) and the specific local attitudes and reactions in West-Sumatra to the “Islampolitik” of the Dutch colonial government. This concept of “Islampolitik” remains – as we will see in greater detail below – determining for the actual position of the secular Indonesian state towards Islam, an aspect which has specific connotations in the Minangkabau region. The third conceptual aspect of the unfolding of the discourse of Islam and Modernity established its traits long ago in the first discussions of modern Muslims about their relation to modern science. But for Indonesia, this discourse of Islam and science took a distinctive shape after the foundation of the Islamic Universities in Jakarta and Yokyakarta in 1960 and eventually in nearly all major towns in Indonesia. These I.A.I.N.s (Institut Agama Islam Negeri – State Institute of Islamic Religion) depended on a 91

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia very specific mode of integration of traditional and classical teaching of Islam and modern sciences which today is decisive for both the specific local type of discourse on science and Islam as well as for the structuration of the various contemporary educational enterprises of Islam. It is within this specific organization of the relationship between Islam and science that Muslim intellectuals today aim to develop a vision, a programme to encounter the challenges of modernity and new prospects for the future. Modernity and Islam here enter into a new stage of their relationship in addressing the secular, the technical and instrumental sides of contemporary life within an Islamic worldview.

Minangkabau Adat and Islamic Organization The Protestant View on Local Traditions In the early 19th century the region of West Sumatra witnessed one of the earliest and most radical reform movements of Islam, one which in many ways anticipated similar movements in Java and Acceh in the second half and at the end of that century. “By about 1900 intellectual influences from the Middle East began penetrating Indonesia. Indonesian Pilgrims who had settled in Mecca or Medina and other teachers taught further incoming pilgrims from Indonesia who, after studying for a few years in the holy cities, went back to their country, setting up new pesantrins and higher-level madrasahs. A little later, influence from Cairo became more powerful, and the impact of the reformist ideas of ‘Abduh and his school began to be felt. As a result, a conflict between the ‘conservatives’ (kaum tua) and the ‘modernists’ (kaum muda) – like the one that had occurred in Egypt itself – started in West Sumatra and subsequently spread to Java” (Rahman 1982: 82).

For sociologists history is not a “finished chapter”; social reconstruction starts where the works of conceptually perceived “history” begin. Leading intellectuals of the Minangkabau region continue to reflect the local position and organization of Islam in terms of the past. One could, however, justifiably ask whether this “past” of the Minangkabau culture is of any specific relevance for social reconstruction and Islam today. The surau, for example, the centre of Minangkabau pre-Islamic and early Islamic local social organization, has largely been replaced by the overall Indonesian place of education of Islamic youth, the pesantren. Nevertheless, one could ask whether the adoption of the pesantren was shaped by very specific ideas 92

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … and principles representing the continuity of certain traits of the Minangkabau tradition. The problem of adat (tradition) – for various reasons which relate more substantially to the status of periphery rather than to the necessary recognition of inner-Islamic differentiation between popular and official Islam – has captured the minds of local intellectuals as much as of Western scholars. Of the latter the writings of two figures are of notable influence on the Indonesians’ own perception of the specificity of Southeast Asian Islam: Christian Snouck Hurgronje, the Orientalist and colonial administrator, and Clifford Geertz, the anthropologist and cultural theorist. Snouck Hurgronje could be made responsible for the pejorative concept of “adat-Islam” as opposed to the real Islam of the centres of scriptural learning in the Middle East. His idea that Muslims in the Archipelago should develop the traditions of high learning and religious administration of Law and that this would also enable them to acquire a sort of “scientific religion” as the necessary preconditions of modern cultural universalism and “Dutch citizenship”, influenced the modernist streams of Indonesian Islam deeply. As for Geertz, since the mid-80s specialists in the region have begun to question the adequacy and sophistication of his conceptualization of the cleavages between abangan, santri and priyayi cultural drives (aliran). Notwithstanding, much of Islamic self-perception until today centres around Geertz’ conceptual dichotomy. Certainly, in these times of “globalization”, when culture has become an issue of political correctness, the awareness of this split among Indonesian Muslims has led to Indonesian Islam being regarded as being more “open” and “rational” than heartland Islam, driven by sectarianism. There is – as everywhere in the Muslim World – of course this intriguing evidence of a certain continuity of pre-Islamic traditions which until today apply as strongly to public affairs and state rites as to personal lives. As Pelras notes here: “When confronting such contradictory evidence, one can raise several questions. One, of course, is to what extent do these apparently contradictory elements really coexist? And, if so, how is this possible in a society which claims to be genuinely Islamic, and what led to such a situation? Unavoidably, one will have to question the appropriateness of using here categories similar to those of santri/abangan/priyayi coined by Clifford Geertz for Java” (Pelras 1993: 134).

Long before Geertz, Snouck Hurgronje, the famous Dutch orientalist who came to Indonesia as a colonial officer, had introduced the contradiction 93

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia between “adat” and “high” Islam. As the first European “Muslim” in modern times, Snouck Hurgronje had spent nearly an entire year in Mecca and acquired a basic training in and insights into shafi‘ite law, teaching, methods and textbooks from local scholars, and developed a network with “jawi”-sheykhs there. It is interesting to note that in Batavia Snouck Hurgronje unfolded a similar position promoting the need for the purification of Islam as so many sheykhs in the 18th and 19th century returning home from their travels in search of Islamic knowledge, ‘ilm, did, in becoming “reformers” of the idea of Islam in Sumatra, in Acceh and the Minangkabau region. Snouck Hurgronje’s “Islampolitik”, pointing to the “misconception of the significance of Islam for its Indonesian adherents” (see Snouck Hurgronje 1906, II: 269) became part of the Dutch colonial Ethical Politics programme. Geertz, more than half a century later, seems to have been specifically concerned with local practice; however, he reinterpreted the “adat” cleavages with little reference to the history of “real” Islam and its stance in ritual, books and networks to the classical countries of Islam in the Middle East, and what it really meant for Indonesia. It would certainly contribute little to a profound understanding of the dilemma of West Sumatrans who want to maintain both a serious stand towards local traditions and there role in shaping Minangkabau history and Islam, to counterpose an “enchanted” world of adat with the disenchantments of Islamic reform and modernist Islam as an invention of “Orientalism” and colonial culture. With a view from the Middle East, however, the stress on the dialectics of adat and Islam seems more than superfluous. It is true that there was an increasing number of attempts to outline the existence of popular Islamic cultures as separate from official Islam in the 1970s and 198Os; however, until today a Moroccan or Egyptian scholar would hardly view any features of Moroccan or Egyptian identity and history merely in terms of the challenge of popular Islam. Recent anthropological research on Egypt stresses the fact of a coincidental presence of texts and their administration both in popular practices as well as in contexts of high learning (Abu-Zahra 1997). In this perspective, and beyond all mere listing of texts in pesantren libraries and courses, emerges an “anthropology of texts”. As for Southeast Asia, and the Minangkabau in particular, it is the peripheral status and the potential cultural de-classifications linked with it that gives the adat this position of undivided attention. The point is that while in the Middle East “adat” relates to the relative tolerance of orthodox legal scholars toward popular traditions of Bedouins or Fellaheen, in the Minankabau periphery we are confronted with the continuity of “high” 94

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … local traditions. The Minangkabau laws of inheritance, property and child custody in case of divorce remained in operation without being replaced by Islamic ones, in the “court” as much as in the village. This then is the specific flavour of the problem and certainly the reason why not only Western scholars, but even more so, local Minangkabau scholars today continue to maintain this distinction between adat and Islam. Furthermore, the Padri-Movement early in the past century meant some type of spiritual invocation of local politics – a cultural point of view, resisting court and colonial domination. This is why Minangkabau Islam is known for having a taste for reformism and representing a modern Islam in later on following the path of the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh, who focussed on the Qur’an and preferred individual judgement based on interpretation (ijtihad) to the strict legal application of the shari‘a (Keddie 1987: 2). It is this tradition in Southeast Asia that is often invoked for the new potential of Islam in redirecting and ordering modern society. Minangkabau reformist thinkers are known for their relative openness towards Western science and education. Within this framework one might certainly trace a certain direction among Minangkabau Muslim thinkers in interpreting adat in terms of the coincidence of legal prescription of the shari‘a and bureaucratic traditions of the old Minangkabau court society. Indeed, there is this long tradition in the region, both among Muslims and non-Muslims, of looking upon Middle Eastern developments as authentic. Middle Easterners are considered good or strict Muslims, while the inhabitants of the more recently converted areas are bad, syncretic or nominal Muslims. Keddie (1987: 3) refers to Edwin Loeb’s description of Minangkabau as emphasizing only non-Islamic practices (see Loeb 1972: 120-127). She similarly points to Joel Kahn’s views on religious laxness (Kahn 1978: 112) but counters this with the entirely different observation that Minangkabau Muslims “prayed more regularly than did anyone I had similarly observed in pre-revolutionary Iran” (Keddie 1987: 24). Be this as it may, and leaving everybody to judge his own way of praying and intensity of prayer and observation of religious duties, coming from the Middle East is, for the Minangkabau, a fact that denotes “high” Muslim observance; and one is certainly impressed by the extent to which ibadiyah (worship) structures a major part of both public and private life in Minangkabau culture. However, there is a missing point in Keddie’s observations: namely, that all these attitudes may rely much more on structural conditions and specifically governmental influences and traditions of “Islampolitik” than on perceptions of history and Middle Eastern religious thought. 95

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Nevertheless, it is important to note that Keddie develops the most important point that for a strict perception of orthodox views in terms of applied social correctness (basically a modern Protestant idea), the coexistence of adat and Islam seems strange. However, her argument, ultimately, brings all the talk about adat syncreticism in Indonesian and Minangkabau Islam down to its obvious nullity and bias of local political flavours and strategies of power – that is, that if the wide-spread character of traditional folk beliefs of the dukun and adat culture were to be “taken as proofs that Islam is only a veneer, then much of North Africa and the Near East would have to be put in the same category, as traditional or ‘folk’”. But Keddie does little to develop this point beyond the terminological question between areas of “the periphery of Islam” and “areas of late conversion”. Consequently she makes the point that “there still appears to be at least one basic difference that is a corollary of different date of Muslim conquest and/or conversion” and that to her knowledge has not been “spelled out as a separate factor” (Keddie 1987: 4). Keddie’s idealistic view on the Middle East in conceptualizing late conversion leads to two most relevant points: First, she makes clear that the saying of the Minangkabau that the shari‘a is based on adat and adat on the shari‘a is not only a pattern of Minangkabau rationalization of their late-comer position, but that it is true also for the development of shari‘a as such. The difference here stems from the length of time in which the life of people and their intellectual culture has been incorporated into the perspective set up by shari‘a. Second, she stresses the point that the Qur’an itself in fact relates to a condition of great economic and social change demanding new visions and institutional reconstruction, which was a similar condition of Islamic renovation and implantation in many “peripheral” areas. However, she sees that this also reflects a condition of any specific Middle Eastern society on the verge of Muhammad’s own experience. It therefore reflects “deeper” social and cultural conflicts embedded in the traditions of the Middle East and Islam. “The stress of Minankabau Islam on matters worship and individual ethics and its relative neglect of this-worldly aspects of classical Near Eastern Islam has created a flexible Islam, whose adherents see both modern education and modern property and inheritance laws as compatible with their beliefs” (Keddie 1987: 22).

A Bridge over Dualism Certainly, within that perspective one could, however, rarely trace the functioning of mutual perception in differing “central” or “peripheral” Islamic 96

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … conditions. Perhaps the history of Islam in the Minangkabau, denominates very clearly the patterns of mutual exoticiziation of cultural practices between local and heartland Islam. Taufik Abdullah refers to this classical tension between adat and Islam with respect to a significant social dimension, namely, the old situation of a dual structure represented on the one hand by the nagari-council, the balai, and the king’s court in Minanagkabau society. The introduction of Islam meant the rise of a third independent dimension and of possible threat to royalty: the religious centres under the leadership of the tuanku began to become religious enclaves within the community. Despite continuing jealousies and doctrinal conflicts between them, the mobility of the religious pupils from one madrasah (school) to another, meant the small, scattered religious enclaves became a potential challenge to the royalty as the symbol of the “great tradition”. Within the context of this perspective, it becomes clearer how the symbolic hegemonies were played as part of a social struggle. “These religious centers were part of the commoners’ community when viewed vis-à-vis royalty, but they were also challengers of the social structure as a whole in that leadership of the enclaves being inherited either spiritually from teacher to pupil or genealogically from father to son, the religious communities followed a paternal line of inheritance that was unlike the commoner but like the royal family system” (Abdullah 1966: 13).

Abdullah sees the position of the modernists assimilarly establishing a mediation between taqlid and itjtihad in the sense that “… the modernists were more concerned with the rediscovery of the true Islamic spirit than with law for its own sake. They opposed the other-worldly attitude of the tariqah schools as well as the taqlid of the orthodox ulama. By establishing modern schools, publishing books and magazines, and holding tabligh – the public religious gatherings – the modernists attempted to create a situation in which their goals could be smoothly achieved” (ibid.: 22).

This is where Abdullah rejects Snouck Hurgronje’s lop-sided and formalistic separation between the religious doctrine, which “regulates man’s relationship with the transcendental being, and adat, which is supposed to govern his social relationships” (ibid.: 23). One thing that is most striking if one comes from the Middle East, is the very sincere interaction of local intellectuals and students of all disciplines with the “grand”, the historical figures, the syekhs, who gave Minangkabau Islam its shape. It is this spe97

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia cific engagement with the intellectual history of religion in the region, the attempt to construct a “centre” in the “periphery” which until today accounts for the tenacity of local intellectualism, even when moving out from the region into the wider world of intellectual enterprise. Of course the conventional view is one of the history of the adat continuity and the struggle of Islam in terms of adjustments to structural and economic changes. This point is to be taken into consideration, even if one would prefer the fact of a certain autonomous cultural and dialogical relation between central and peripheral Islam. Abdullah points for example to the relative vacuum of power in the supra-village sphere, which made the need for the consolidation of the notion of the spiritual community greater. Ironically, however, this need caused the anti-structural propensity of the community to be called into question – the ‘ulama felt the urge to consider power as a possible alternative. This was the situation of the early 19th century Padri movement. Naturally, in order to understand this movement other historical circumstances should not be ignored. The universal character of Islam made this religion very vulnerable to the influence from the centre of the Islamic world. The intensification of the Padri movement, which eventually drove Minangkanau to years of civil and religious strife, took its radical and sometimes extreme posture particularly after the return of the three Wahabi-influenced ‘ulamas. The involvement of the Dutch (1821), however, not only distorted the indigenous character of the conflict, but also disrupted whatever social and cultural consequences the conflict may have had (Abdullah 1985: 152). In fact, considering the advice of one of these three Padri imams to his son before his death, we can see how reconciliatory and indeed how balanced the result of this movement might have been, establishing a longranging and enduring balanced relationship between, adat, Islam and central secular government or between adat, pengulu and ‘ulama: The best friend, he was reported to have said in the memoir of his son, is the learned (‘ulama), who knows what to believe and what not to believe. Furthermore, acknowledge the authority of the pengulu, follow his regulations; those who are not obeyed are not worthy pengulu, they are only the bearers of titles. Be as strongly loyal as possible to adat and if your (religious) knowledge is not adequate, study the twenty qualities of Allah (Abdullah 1985: 152). As for the way we should discuss this relationship between pre-Islamic practices and new purification movements, Fazlur Rahman gives the following hints: We could consider the prevalence of these pre-Islamic Minangkabau inclinations as a 98

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … “kind of secularism (which) appeared in the Muslim World in premodernist times because of the stagnation of Islamic thinking in general and, more particularly, because of the failure of Shari‘a law and institutions to develop themselves to meet the changing needs of the society. This affected the course of modern Islam” (Rahman 1982: 43).

This relates strongly to the question of “the character of the organization of the ‘ulama, or religious leadership, and the character of their relationship with the governing institutions before the colonial encroachment”, however, as in the Indonesian case, and, more importantly, to their relationship towards colonial government and colonial religious and cultural policies. With respect to organization, ‘ulama in Indonesia before colonialism, although always a powerful element in the state, were quite scattered and had hardly any aura of official power (Watson 1985). The unfolding of the discourse over Islamic Modernism and traditionalism, as in the Middle East, emerged on the level of lifestyle and everyday order. It took a political stance only through the specific colonial situation in which the civilizing process was put under a specific aspect of instrumentalizing religion for political and general reasons of regulation and order administration.

Minangkabau Islamic Education Systems Schooling and Officialdom An initial discussion and research period carried us to the places of learning and the very famous Islamic institutions in the Minangkabau and helped us to trace the various layers of institutional and intellectual representations of Islam in this Indonesian provincial setting between the towns of Padang, Padang Panjang, Bukittinggi, Payakumbu and Pariaman and the villages around Lake Maninjau in West Sumatra. We relied intensely on the expertise of Dr. Bustanuddin Agus from the social science faculty of Andalas University in Padang, who comes from a village near Bukittinggi, from where he once made his way to the al-Azhar University in Cairo. He showed us around and acquainted us with the important figures in administrations, schools and informal groups. Most interviews were conducted in a rather collective than in a personal or individual setting. With the few exceptions of those who had studied in England or America, in France or in Germany, we relied mainly on Arabic-speaking informants. To converse in a foreign language with one or two persons while groups of people, stu99

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia dents, colleagues or family members of the interviewed sit or stand around, observe or interfere with questions, gives it a very special atmosphere beyond the everyday and institutional routine. Arabic in particular is considered a sacred language, especially among non-Arab Muslims. When conversed in for the practical purpose of seeking knowledge, it certainly raised the curiosity and interest of those who have otherwise to learn the language in the place itself. I do not believe that all these conditions were by any means unfortunate or that they hindered the flow of communication and knowledge. The place of Minangkabau Islam, as for Indonesian Islam in general, is the pesantren (the traditional Minangkabau term surau is often used until today). In general it relates historically to two traditions. One is the tradition of rantau, the travelling of youth and their being hosted in specific youth houses (surau) in the villages.2 The second is, as Snouck Hurgonje points out, the tradition that from the very beginning elementary education such as reciting the Qur’an and the elements of knowledge of ceremonial law is given. The pesantren are not only a type of institute for advanced theological training, but also they are the “property” of the teacher (kiyayi). In general it is supposed that the kiyayi lives in the pesantren complex and that at the same time the young men live there too, in dormitories (pondok – sometimes the pesantren are called pondok) which is often far away from their family and for the duration of the instruction forms a type of communal youth camp. Often these places are to be identified only in the physical appearance of the houses of the teachers and their assistants, a chapel, only occasionally a Friday Mosque. As regards the local communities, the pesantren have a life of their own, as Snouck Hurgronje pointed out. Little has changed since the days of Snouck Hurgronje, when he described it as follows: “The student life of Muhammedans in the Archipelago would furnish an attractive subject for a monograph. The pesantrens of Java have been described in a number of essays, but in these nothing is to be found but a superficial view of the question, which has never been closely examined. … even if we admit the erroneous term ‘priests’ or ‘clergy’ as applied to the pengulus, naibs, modins, lebes etc. in Java, the pesantrens cannot in any sense be regarded as training schools for the holders of these offices” (Snouck Hurgronje 1906, II: 23).

This today is only partly true, since the pesantren, at least in West Sumatra, are today very well integrated into an educational system which provides for 100

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … both religious and secular officialdom paid for by the state. However, Snouck Hurgronje’s crucial question remains the same. It is indeed quite unclear which professions or positions the graduates of these schools could qualify for. The original contradictions, then, between santri and pengulu, to which Snouck Hurgronje refers, the bulk of the latter absolutely rejecting thisworldly interest in state positions or religious officialdom, and regarding such offices with contempt or hatred, can be said by and large to have vanished. However, there are still no “jobs” available for the bulk of this graduates. Perhaps the strained relations between the guru or kiyayi, the nonofficial or teaching pandits, and the pengulus and their subordinates only exist as a pattern of lived cultural tradition without material substance today. Kiyayi and pengulus were administrators of Islamic inheritance and marriage laws. They controlled the great mosques and concluded marriage contracts. Snouck Hurgronje regarded the kiyayis as “a vexatious, quarrelsome, hairsplitting, arrogant and even fanatical sort of people; while these teachers on their part, accuse the pengulus of ignorance, worldliness, venality and sometimes of evil living” (ibid.: 24).

To be clear with respect to the pesantren, or pondoks in Java or suraus in mid-Sumatra or rangkangs in Acceh, their coincidental presence in all these diverse regions in pre-independence and pre-colonial times would not a prioiri suggest, as some local intellectuals do, that the institution of the pesantren as such should be regarded as an element of the “Javanese system”, meaning a sort of domination of Javanese culture all over Indonesia today. At that time – and possibly today – an undeclared cultural gap between the Javanese kiyayi and Minankabau pengulu existed. This relates in principle to the latters’ taste for officialdom and office and the formers’ distaste forit. Most pesantren were, as Snouck Hurgronje observed at his time, maintained by teachers or pandits “who disdain rather than desire office” (ibid.). At the same time the pengulus practised Islam as court scribes and “directors” of major mosques. A second gap relates to the long-ranging principle of religious distrust in office. Students of the pesantren at the time of Snouck Hurgronje were: “young men of devout families, sons of the wealthy and distinguished whose parents consider it benefiting …, lads who study from an innate love and impulse towards learning, … some few who are later on to be pengulus, naibs teungkus of meunasahs or kalis …” (ibid.).

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Snouck Hurgronje works here on an Islamic cultural pattern which had been prominent in the Middle East since early Islam as well. The strong contradiction between the free religious literati, the malems and ‘ulamas as against the “so-called ‘priestly offices’, sold as these are to Mammon” (ibid.: 25) These antagonisms reveal a strong competition in different ways of interfering and administering “matters affecting property and domestic life” (ibid.). As it is today among good Muslims, “to be esteemed as such (‘alim or ‘ulama) in the place of birth, he must have acquired his learning outside its limits” (ibid.). This might be even more radical among the kiyayi in Java. Although Snouck Hurgronje speaks of the proverbial uncleanness of the students’ living quaters in the pesantren (ibid.: 30), today one can ascertain – at least in most places visited in West Sumatra and in Java – that the quarters are kept fairly clean. However, depending on wealth and mental orientation of the kiyayi, general living conditions can be fairly limited, if not bad. The pengulu, i. e. director, headman, is considered the secular and religious chief administrator or mosque official: “The official representatives of religion are organized there on the same scheme as the native administrative officials.” Certainly the old functions of the district pengulu, naib, namely, marriage, zakat, family law and waqf, is no longer done through the pondoks; however, a melange of things and functions might have occurred on the village level where pondoks stand at the outskirts. This “priest” as an invention of colonial administration revealing quite an early mixture of state and religious institutional life. As it were, Snouck Hurgronje saw the variety of pesantren, where the traditional schools of qur’anic teaching lay emphasis on the founder’s traditional teachings and ways of reading the Qur’an. These may depend on a rigid traditional understanding of orthodox Islamic teachings or be related to rather innovative and interpretative exercises in integrating the teachings of Islam with local cultural traditions of the Minangkabau region. Heritage from the Past Traditional Minangkabau madrasahs of this latter type were the surau, which later came, by means of imitation, under strong Javanese pesantren influence. This ambiguous position of the surau in being a central institution of Minangkabau tradition and at the same time the location of Islam and Islamic teaching even in the most remote villages, deserves our attention. If one listens carefully to those who have spent their youth in the surau or whose fathers were surau syekhs, one gets the impression that the 102

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … function of the surau in traditional Minangkabau culture was the location of collective transition and initiation from youth into adulthood. Each clan (suku) had its own surau. It was the place where adolescent and unmarried men – but, we have been told, also in a separate part girls and unmarried women – passed their time away from the rumah (the house) of their mothers. They spent the nights there, and trained themselves in rites and in techniques of fighting and hunting. The surau and its immediate surroundings seem to have been the public place in the Minangkabau social setting where travellers and merchants passing through the village could spend the night, where story-tellers found their listeners, where the wise old men interacted with youth, where rites of collective drinking of tuak (fermented coconut juice, often together with the imperative cock-fights) were performed. Some of these social functions of the surau were preserved all through the period of Islam entering the region and in some remote places and villages even until today. “The group of houses would also contain a building for the lineage surau, a gathering-place and sleeping place for adolescent and adult males, who did not stay overnight in the mother’s house and did so infrequently at the wife’s” (Dobbin 1983: 13).

and “An important facet of life in any Minankabau village was the surau, the house where young men lived after puberty away from the lineage house, which was the dwelling place of women and children” (ibid.: 120).

It is this place and its cultural meaning which leaves us with so much ambiguity relating to the type of interaction between Islam and local traditions. We may very well see here that Islam, obviously with various layers of intensity and with different weight at certain periods, interacted in a double mode, with the traditions “from below” as much as with those of the court. “In certain villages, therefore, Islam constructed a whole edifice of learning on the basis of the pre-Islamic surau” (ibid.: 121). Here, of course, the dimension of brotherhoods and the role of sufism in relating to local communal practices and world perceptions and of nature grew to the specific importance which it has until today. “These tarekat and their schools could fit into the existing surau system of minangkabau without the least disruption, and so become an acceptable addition to village life in certain villages” (ibid.).

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia However, it is also true that from the very beginning of the expansion of specific Sufi orders like the Naqshbandiyya Order – an Ottoman latecomer among the Sufi orders – in Sumatra that these related to “centre” rather than to periphery: “It is impossible to construct a religious geography for the tarekat, other than to say that the Naqshbandiyya, like the other tarekat, established surau near large, prosperous agricultural villages, rich mining villages, or villages located at the junction of trade routes” (ibid.).

Like Abdullah, Dobbin explains Islamic revivalism at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century in terms of the needs of commerce and new wealth. This obviously reflects the stand of the Dutch at the time as Dobbin concedes (ibid.: 136). Here, indeed it seems that the Minagkabau region took part in the modern quest for education and religious foundation of a modern worldview construction as a sort of new role given to them as an opportunity within a colonial framework of regional division of labour: “The case of Agam is particularly instructive. In the 1780s and 1790s its Islamic surau had responded rapidly to the problems posed by the new commerce in agricultural commodities; in the early nineteenth century its hill villages, where these commodities were grown, had attempted to reorganize their polity to cope with the effects of the new agricultural and commercial pattern; in the 1840s, with the failure of their rebellion and faced with the realities of the colonial rule, certain families in these villages decided to look for advancement on the best terms available. They proved to have chosen wisely. Wheras in the past these villages produced family clusters of traders and artisans, they now produced clusters of schoolteachers, bureaucrats, doctors or lawyers, certain families often specializing in a particular kind of ‘intellectual profession’…” (ibid.: 241).

And certainly this would also combine with the revival or continued relevance of the traditional village “education”, where there was the fact that “Available evidence indicates that the surau continued to play an important role in educating Minangkabau youth throughout the nineteenth century, and both small village surau founded by one teacher and the major tarekat surau appear to have flourished.”

and similarly 104

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … “It was reported in 1869 that no reasonable sized village was without its own small surau where pupils learnt at least the Arabic alphabet, and many villages had two or three, often established by an individual who had returned from Mecca” (ibid.: 241f.).

Some authors stress the Hindu-Buddhist influence in the shaping of the pesantren. Partly, they identify this influence as coming from the pre-Islamic form of gonjong, the peaks of the storeyed roofs. However, these might also reflect a later Javanese influence. The most interesting point of the role of the surau in combining Islam with Minangkabau culture is, however, that the early convergence of Islam and local culture in the Minangkabau region relied fully on sufi orders. Rais (1994: 26) convincingly identifies two points which mark this convergence significantly. First, there is the aspect of initiation, which relies on the relation between murid (student) and syekh. It is worth noting here that this relationship does not only rely on the teaching of the Qur’an and its commentaries, rules and methods of higher consciousness, but also that he passes on his own ilmu, his esoteric knowledge about “methods of selfdefense, means of making oneself invulnerable in the face of weapons and ways of consulting numerological treatises to determine auspicious days”. It becomes very clear here, as Rais states, that “such learning, with its pre-Islamic overtones and magical coloring, had been readily assimilated by Minangkabau Islam” (ibid.). A second feature of the introduction of Islam through Sufi orders in Minangkabau was that the organization of the orders itself centred on the surau. The System There is officially no relation between surau and madrasah, apart from the madrasah being a kind of the modernization of the surau system. There are different subjects in the madrasah system today; in surau there was only one syekh who taught many subjects. There was no fixed curriculum and period of study. Enrolment of students in the surau was also very informal. Pesantren have pondoks, madrasahs do not, and also pesantren engage the students’ attention intensively, since they are present round the clock. Madrasahs are under the direction of the Department of Religious Affairs, while the pesantren have a free hand in teaching, in general, resulting in a deeper religious orientation in the pesantren. There is a new structure emerging in many pesantren in that they do not only teach religious subjects but also subjects which lead to the ijaza for secular studies at the university. Many pesantren today offer the two ijazas. These are closer to the Government 105

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia system, adopted by the Professor Hamka pesantren and Nurul Ikhlas. They deliver the ijaza SMA and SMP (Sekolah Menengah Adas – Sekolah Menengah Pertamah/Senior and Junior Secondary levels). The others have only the religious subjects, but the madrasah aliya diniyya hukumiyya, the governmental religious secondary school, can, with good marks, also give access to the secular universities; otherwise they only qualify for the I.A.I.N. – a point that makes it quite clear that the religious education as such in the governmental perspective remains a type of second rate qualification. Down at the bottom of the village level there is – albeit quite rarely today – a stratum of village preachers and popular Islamic “intellectuals”, the dukun, magicians and healers at the same time, who are often linked to some type of Sufi activity, carry out traditional healing practices or today sometimes, as futurists, might enter more openly into the urban “spiritual” market. Today the general type of teaching in Minangkabau pesantren derives from a model that was developed in East Java. It seems that all the “Pondok Pesantren Modéren” are more or less applying the system which was developed at the Pondok Modéren Gontor at Ponorogon, which has a curriculum called Kulliyatul Mu’allimin Al Islamiyah (Islamic Teachers’ School): general knowledge, religious knowledge, modern Arabic (Rahardjo 1986: 33f.). In all the schools today there is the pengajian weton, that is, teaching through recitation (ibid.: 34)3 and the majalah dinding, wall magazines in English and Arabic and Indonesian. All pesantren, besides the leaders and the founding syekh, employ a variety of other teachers: sometimes, as in the case of the Javanese Pondok Pabelan described by Rahardjo, teachers who are first (sarjana muda) or second degree (sarjana) graduates of I.A.I.N., Institut Agama Islam Negeri, or English teachers who are graduates from IKIP, the teacher training institute, Institut Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan, etc. (ibid.: 34). As we have seen earlier there is a great density of institutional articulations in the local contexts between religious and secular, between “free” and state-controlled teaching (see e. g. ibid.: 35). Muhammadiyya is indeed very inventive in providing as many schools as possible, either public or religious. Other organizations like the al Ittihadul Ma‘hadil Islamiyya, with 68 affiliated pesantren, emphasizes religious learning based on Kitab Kuning (the Yellow Books) with specific reference to Indonesian, not Arabic authors (ibid.: 33). Special attention should be drawn to the very famous pesantren Gontor Pondok Modéren, “Pendidikan Darrusalam”, at Gontor Ponorogo in East Java. In the early 1960s Lance Castles described the system Pondok Mo106

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … déren, and the pesantren reform at Gontor. According to Castles Gontor aims at: 1. “a strong, religiously based sense of right and wrong (an inner-directed ethic in contrast to an ‘other-directed’ ethic inculcated in the state schools);” 2. “a confidence in one’s ability to earn one’s living in other ways and without loss of status (as Gontor sees it, the honest trader is more honorable than the ambtenaar):” 3. “and an ability to live frugally (again without humiliation)” (Castles 1966: 32). On the conditions of admission we might state that nothing seems to have changed since the days of Castles’ analysis, namely that there is in general an examination of the candidates who come from primary or junior secondary schools, which is normally based on proof of proficiency in the Indonesian language, in mathematics and in Arabic. Today, some pesantren of Muhammadiyya use IQ-tests on top of such an examination. All pesantren which we have visited are systematic in organization and training; they all do devote a considerable time to secular learning. “Gontor differs from the old-style in that it is more …; [children] are subject to the discipline of a full day’s activities and the unobtrusive but nevertheless continuous supervision of a strong-minded individual” (Castles 1966: 32).

This pesantren is among the most significant ones in sending students to the Middle East. Arabic and English are the mediums of instruction. Gontor graduates are known, even if they have never set foot in the Middle East, to have an impressive command of Arabic. Islamic intellectuals such as Nurkholish Madjid, who was an ideologue of the Muslim Youth Association (HMI) in the seventies, was there. It was of course also his links to Gontor which made him an important contributor to new ideas in Islamic political thought during the New Order period. The pesantren itself has a great number of returning Indonesian graduates from the Middle East who teach there. The sons of the founder, K.H. Imam Zarkashy, have studied in Egypt. Amal Fathullah Zarkashy, who wrote a thesis on “The Salafi Trend in Contemprorary Islamic Thought in Indonesia” in 1986, studied Dar al-‘Ulum, and currently teaches at the pesantren Gontor. The other son of K.H. Zarkashy, Hidayatullah, studied in Egypt and Pakistan. There are also a few Dar al-‘Ulum alumni teaching at Gontor. The Gontor certificate is fully recognized at al-Azhar and students can enter immediately at the University level. 107

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia There is a certain ambiguity as relates to the political orientation of pesantren students with respect to anti-Western orientations and fundamentalism. As Castles observed in the early 1960s: “The result is an uneasy paralysis of politics and concentration on religious concerns, providing potential recruits nevertheless for future anomic and probably futile outbursts against ‘communism’ or ‘atheism’.”

And he wonders whether “there may be a lot of secret political discussion which would be quite important, considering the wide geographical dispersion of the students.” And with respect to the overall influence of such an important school for Indonesian culture and politics, Castles argued that “Such organizations could play an important role in a restoration of Islamic unity in Indonesia.”

and “Ultimately, one’s judgement of Gontor depends on whether such a restoration is likely or not. If one assumes that no group other than the PKI will now be able to grapple effectively with the ills of Indonesian society, and that the PKI will eventually get its chance, then the fine old kiyayi become black reactionaries and their engaging youngsters lambs being bred for the slaughter. But if political Islam still has a major role to play, then Gontor, producing modern men who are still in close touch with the santri masses, can make an important contribution” (Castles 1966: 44f.).

There is another dimension of Islamic representation which is exclusively government-based and, although the provincial Office of the Ministry of Religious Affairs for West-Sumatra administers the coincidental presence of all religions, it is certainly in the main engaged with specific relations to the Muslim community and with Muhammadiyya. The head of the office is Fauzan Misra (automn 1994), an old gradute of the famous al-Azhar University, actually possibly the first, or one of the first Azhar-graduates after Indonesian independence from the Minangkabau region. The Ministry plays a very active role in settling local religious disputes, deciding about contents of curricula of religious teaching and about funding of Islamic cultural activities. These representations seem to go counter the conventional view that

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … Indonesian Islamic intellectualism has to be divided alongside the lines of traditional and modernist Islam or on the basis of further deep-rooted cultural conceptions, separating a mundane popular culture from a hierarchically oriented culture of purists and orthodoxists. Both the Conservatives and the Reformists are adherents of modern Islam, the one faction wanting to preserve the tradition (adat), the other seeking for a radical purification of religion. However, it seems difficult today to depend on these conventional divides in Indonesian Islam alone in developing anthropological or theological conceptualizations. The reason for this is pragmatic and in many ways depends on the local research and discussion situation. It was pure coincidence that we met people who could by and large be assigned to these five categories. This is partly the case because we found the West Sumatra region on the whole to embrace religious convictions which largely derived from the Muhammadiyya reformist movement, which preaches Islam as open to occidental rationalism and laic nationalism. Muhammadiyya is a sort of social missionary organization with methods and techniques of cultural reconstruction similar to social-democratic organizations in the West and which also has local Minangkabau traits and in a very modern sense is deeply committed to defending local cultural traditions – a point which contradicts the conventional divides between traditionalism and modernism. NU, the Nahdatul Ulama, is similarly involved in local traditions. However, they were always much more strongly denied and neglected the laic elements and fully depended both in religious matters and in social action on the tastes of orthodox “literati”. In the Minnangkabau context the split became more political with Muhammadiyya’s hard stance against the old Tarekat Islam party. If Indonesian officials believe that the Indonesian students from pesantren would migrate to the Middle East intentionally as opposition to the government, there is also the idea among students that travel is important in fostering endurance and maturity. In fact, there are well established educational networks between the Middle East and Indonesia and these are often the extension of family networks of kiyayi or pesantren teachers or governmment administrators and university professors in the field of Islam. Many Muslim figures send their sons to study in the Middle East. The accomplishing of the Hajj is another aspect of travelling for knowledge and often combined with the completion of the studies in Middle Eastern institutions of high learning. All in all most of the students sent to the Middle East could be considered as the extension of various educational

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia institutions such as the pesantren, madrasahs and I.A.I.N. (Islamic Universities) in Indonesia. It is also true that a lot of these students are of rural origins.

Visiting the Pesantren in the Minangkabau – The Dense Networks of Muhammadiyya Conventional studies on the pesantren focus in the main on educational prospects and on Islamic teaching, supporting the view that the immense efforts of religious teaching among the Indonesian youth masses would lead to the formation of a class of the religiously educated who are at the same time unfit for living in the world of things, for mundane enterprise, and for social and economic development. The point was that they could or would contribute immensely to the Islamization of the society, challenging the secular state and multi-religious tolerance in Indonesia. The official version of the government network stands in opposition to this view and would stress the immense efforts of the Government, local and international organizations and development aid from Australia for example, which led to the increased secular training and social and economic contribution of the Indonesian pesantren. The study of a variety of pesantren in the Minankabau region which we undertook in 1994 reveals another, a different function of the pesantren system: namely, the core state organized, mass mobilization of Muslim youth which is structurally linked with the formation of a Muslim state class depending on the revenues of the family-run pesantrens. This function with its various networks becomes very obvious if one looks at the most significant pesantrens in the Minagkabau region, and more specifically at the Muhammadiyya pesantrens of various types. For example the recently founded Pesantren Moderen Prof. Dr. Hamka, Padang belongs to its founder and current head, Dr. Mansur Malik, who is at the same time the Rector of the I.A.I.N. in Padang. The school is situated about five miles outside of Padang on the main road to Padang Panjang. It has about 500 pupils. It has a state secondary school licence and a religious school licence at the same time. Secular subjects are taught in the morning, the religious subjects at night. The school is built on about 3 hectares of land which was given as a religious donation (wakaf ). There are ten cooks in the school, though the students do maintenance jobs and have to clean their rooms themselves. When we visited the school on a Friday, there was no teaching and a crowd of students was sitting in the open hall that serves also as 110

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … student dining room, watching TV. The other buildings consist of the Mosque, the classrooms and the dormitories and houses for the teachers and a sports ground. Dr. Malik does not live in the pesantren, but at his house in Padang, where he maintains close relations to other state officials like the Director of the West Sumatra division of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and from where he often commutes to Djakarta. Later at the I.A.I.N. “Iman Bongol”, Padang, we talked to the Rector, Prof. Dr. Mansur Malik, who gave us an overview of the faculties and the general intellectual and social impact of the I.A.I.N. in the Minangkabau region. His Ph.D. thesis was about scientific thought in the Qur’an. He explains to us that the Qur’an incorporates well-accepted thought on government and society. His overall educational orientation sticks strongly to a positivistic approach in science, which he wants to introduce in his Hamka pesantren. As he says, we don’t want to create a new type of kiyayi. Travelling further up hill to Padang Panjang, the mountain resort just before Bukittinggi, we were introduced to the place as the site of “origin” of modernist Islamic thought. It is, as Peacock teaches us, the educational showplace of the Muhammadiyya (see Peacock 1978: 66f.). First we reached the religious school of Perguruan Diniyyah Puteri, Padang Panjang which is the first Islamic women’s and girls’ college in the Minangkabau, if not in Indonesia as a whole. It was founded in 1923 by Rahma al-Yusnuniyah, the sister of Zainuddin Labai al-Yunisi, who was a famous ‘ulama and among the founding fathers of Muhammadiyya. The school is directed by Dr. Huda Hanum, the wife of Fawzan Misri al-Muhammady. Indeed, this is the family pesantren of Fauwzan Misra, the Director of the local West Sumatra administration of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The present Minister, Taher Nazir (autumn 1994), being himself of Minangkabau regional origin. We have discussed the local governmental influence of the Ministry of Religious Affairs earlier. At this point it becomes quite clear that even in terms of family ties the interwovenness of the government and the pesantren system is intense. It is therefore appropriate to give details about Drs. H. Fawzan Misra al-Muhammady, M.A., the Kepala Kantor Wilayah Departemen Agama, Chief of Regional Office of the Department of Religious Affairs, Sumatra Barat: Born 6 July, 1939 in Padang-Panjang, he obtained primary education in school and also in the afternoons in religious school. He also mentioned the impact of the surau upon his childhood; he used to sleep there at night after learning the Qur’an. He then received further education at the Madrasah Tawalib, which was founded by the father of the famous Islamic thinker 111

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia and writer HAMKA, from 1953 to 1957. He continued his studies at the Ma‘had al-mu‘alimin al-diniyyah al-‘ulia al-hukumiyya, the government religious school from where he then joined the Islamic University of Darul Hikmah in Padang. In 1959 he joined Kulliyya Usuluddin at al-Azhar, where in 1964 he graduated from the Department of Philosophy. He obtained the Alamiyyah (general) degree and later the Takhassus (special) degree in 1966. He wrote his thesis on al-Ghazali’s theory of knowledge. The Dean of the Faculty at that time was Abdul Halim Mahmoud, the famous al-Azhar scholar. In 1968, he returned to Indonesia and worked in the I.A.I.N. at Padang as a teacher of Philosophy and Comparative Religions. From 1971 to 1974, he was Dean of the Faculty of Usuluddin, from 1974 to 1976 he was Ra’is Majlis al-Riyyasah, 1976 to 1978 he was Wakil al-mudir lil-shuun al-‘ilmiyyah. from 1982 to 1992 he was Na’ib Mudir al-jami‘a lil-shu‘n al-‘ilmiyya. He said he profited greatly from al-Azhar, participated in the camps of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the Azhar summer camps, read all the newspapers, and made contact with many Egyptians. He lived in Madinat al-Bu‘uth from 1959 to 1964, then moved to M. Farid Street in Bab al-Luq in Cairo. He refused to criticize al-Azhar education and argued that in his department of philosophy they had full freedom of discussion. He knows all the streets of Cairo very well, and emphasized that since the first day of his arrival in Cairo he had used the tramway and travelled all over the place. About his reading he said he reads everything. We may take Fauzan’s career as quite typical for the Muhammadiyya elite of his generation: local Islamic training in Muhammadiyya schools, which was later enhanced with classical training in the Middle East. On his return, the career pattern is wholly tied into the mix of networks and relations between “privately” owned schools, based on Muhammadiyya sponsoring and student fees, organizational work within Muhammadiyya and government office. The Madrasah Tawalib hosts around 1500 female students in primary, preparatory and secondary branches and also in the Faculty of Tarbiyya (teacher education), a four-year course. The religious subjects constitute 65 per cent of all those taught. There are 1,200 students who reside in the school. It follows the pesantren system and teaching hours are from 8 to 5 with an hour-long break. The alumni can become teachers in primary and preparatory schools, where they teach religious subjects: to enter the I.A.I.N. one would need an equivalence. There are contacts with Al-Azhar University in Cairo and in 1994, a 112

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … group of six female students travelled to Cairo to take courses there: every year there are five to six students who do this. The school was created, as already mentioned, by Rahmah al-Yusnuniyyah in November 1923 when she was 23 years old. It was constructed on her own land. During her time, women in Minangkabau were not allowed to go about in public or leave the house. She was among the first to build a women’s school. In fact, when the Sheykh of al-Azhar visited Padang Panjang and her school, he was inspired by her achievements to create the Kulliyya al-Banat at al-Azhar. Today, the students come from various parts of Indonesia such as from Sulawesi and Timor to study there. An entrance exam is needed in religious subjects and Qur’an reading. Some of the teachers are employed by the government as a form of charity or donation from the state. But the school is in the main dependent on the students’ fees. The computer course which the school offers is financed by donations from the families of the students. All these networks are interesting and the fact that we met a Ph. D. candidate of the famous Japanese Indonesianist Nakamura at the school speaks for itself. All senior personnel of the school spoke Arabic. Of a similar importance is the Perguruan Tawalib, Padang Panjang or Sumatra Tawalib. The head of this school is Haj Mawardi Muhammad. However, if one meets the hajji it soon becomes very clear that he himself – quite in contrast to the more recent Muhammadiyya personnel – has no direct part in the government machine; free learning seems to be his calling. The school is of considerable symbolic value for the Islamic actors in the region and Muhammadiyya. It was founded in 1911 by Dr. Haj Karim Amrullah, the father of Professor Hamka, both leading figures in Islamic reformism in Indonesia. It is considered the first real pesantren in Sumatra. The school has about 1,500 students, 1,000 boys and 500 girls, the girls living elsewhere. The students pay fees on a monthly basiss, the better off on a yearly basis. It is a dual study system which leads to the SMA and to the religious ijaza. Each student cooks for himself. They said that they faced problems with water. The school was founded on some wakaf land; however, students do not work on the land. The school sends about five students to the al-Azhar in Cairo every year. At the time, they had no student who had returned from al-Azhar to teach. However, there are some I.A.I.N. teachers who also teach at the school. The head of school is proud to say that there is no formal control of management, teaching methods and curriculum by the government. As we have seen, the current Head of the Department of Religious Affairs of West Sumatra, Pak Fauwzan Misra, graduated from this school before he went to al-Azhar University in Cairo. 113

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia The girls’ school section of Sumatra Tawalib had been opened only recently. The school receives students from all over Indonesia, though the biggest share comes from Sumatra. A Westerner’s possibly somewhat critical view of the general conditions there are influenced by glimpses of a large house with a garden for the head. The students looked rather poor. The campus (qauman) includes a set of various Muhammadiyya institutions, including a faculty of mubaligh, a branch of the Muhammadiyya University, a secular high school and the pondok pesantren itself. There is a plan to rebuild the whole complex on a new campus. Sumatra Tawalib has various extensions and branches at other places. We visited the Pesantren Sumatra Thawalib, Parabek near Bukittinggi with its director Kamal, Sh., who was proud to say that he is a governmental official (sajanah hukum). The famous school was founded by Sheykh Hajji Ibrahim Mousa Parabek in 1918. He is considered a famous ‘ulama, author of Islamic books, written in Arabic. Sheykh Ibrahim Mousa studied in Mecca and went there twice before he finally returning for good in 1908. This pesantren teaches Usuluddun, Da‘wah, Fiqh Arabic language besides modern subjects such as mathematics and geography. The secular subjects constitute 25 per cent of all the subjects taught. The students sit for two exams: one for the pesantren and another one for the government. There are 65 teachers for one thousand students. The group of teachers is also eager to stress that the organization also has a teachers’ ‘ulama union, PGAI, which was already founded in 1908. The president of this mu’assasa institution and also of this school is Kamal Azhar. It is interesting to note with respect to the interwovenness of positions and relations between government institutions, religious and educational organizations and councils that Amir Sharifuddin (Padang, see below), and also Mukhtar Na‘im are members of the majlis of the institute. During the time of Natzir, students used to be sent to al-Azhar in Egypt every year, though this no longer occurs today. We were told proudly that there are 14 members of the Majlis al-‘Ulama in Jakarta, and that a considerable proportion of them graduated from the Sumatra Tawaleb. A further example for the close interlinkage of the famous religious schools of Muhammadiyya and government is the Pondok Pesantren Modéren Nurul Ihlas, Padang Panjang. The school teaches both Arabic and English is under the leadership of H. Azwar Anas, an engineer and Da’i, who in autumn 1994, the time of research, was “superminister” for the people’s welfare affairs in Jakarta: mentri koordinateur kesejanteraan rakyat. The current director of this school is Hajji Reza Muhammad. It was founded by Zainul Din Labay al-Janussi in 1915; he died in 1924. The further construc114

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … tion of this pesantren was stopped and only when the nephew of al-Janussi, H. Riza M. Junus, a graduate of pesantren Gontor, opened it in 1989. It is a private pesantren, There are 662 students, focussing above all on Arabic. The pesantren offers a six year education: SMP, three years junior secondary school and SMA, three years higher secondary school. There are 69 teachers and one can see that, as a private enterprise, it is rather a substantial economic undertaking. Teaching in this pesantren is very much inspired by the pesantren Gontor; the languages used among students are Arabic and English, with the emphasis upon Arabic. The pesantren requires the students to reside there. There is also a student organization responsible for the students’ activities, a secretarial section, financial section, art section, sport section, student canteen, reception section, handicraft section, photography section, laundry section and advisory council for the students’ organization. Subjects in Arabic: al-Fiqh, al-Qur’an, an-Nahw al-Imla’ (dictation), al-Hadith, al-Mahfuzat, al-Tarjamah (translation), Tarikh Islam (history of Islam). The pesantren appears to be very well organized and is housed in a vast complex of modern buildings. The teaching personnel who received us spoke very good Arabic. There are a number of smaller pesantren in the region, like the Pesantren Tinggi Islam Aqaba, Bukittinggi, with its director Yisril Jamarin. The school was founded by a leading local ‘ulama, Aswir Harun, chair of the Aqaba foundation. As in so many other conversations, Jusril complains about the obstacles to detecting the true Qur’anic meaning today, and that is why he participates in the Academy of Religious Language, the Akademi Agama Bahasa. Another smaller, but nevertheless prestigious and internationally wellconnected institute in the region is the PTI Aqabah at Bukittinggi: with 155 students of both sexes in mixed classes, and 28 teachers. It was created in 1973 as an institution of higher learning in Arabic and religious studies. The director speaks very good Arabic. He lived in Saudi Arabia (at the University of King Bin Saud) for three years after having studied in this pesantren and in Kalimantan; he learned Arabic from religious texts and journals, and the emphasis in this pesantren is upon language and grammar. They attempt to teach modern books in Arabic as well. In tafsir for instance they use Ibn Kathir, al-Galalayn, Ali al-Sabouni Mukhtasar Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Kitab al-tawhid by M. Ibn Abdel Wahhab. The students here learn Arabic and ‘Ulum al-shar‘iyya, so that they can choose the texts they want. The degree here is not recognized by the Indonesian state, and this is why the students go abroad for further studies. Those who can afford it 115

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia would go to Pakistan (The International Islamic University), to Malaysia (The International Islamic University), to Saudi Arabia (The University of King Saud in Ryad) or to Sudan (The International Islamic Centre). However, the number of the students is very low because they depend upon private sources of funding. Some of the students who studied in Malaysia and Pakistan taught afterwards at the I.A.I.N. in Padang and in Riau. This pesantren was inspired by the ideas of Muhammed Natzir and Datuk Palimocairo (a former Ambassador to Iraq) and was created by the regional Majlis of Ulama of West Sumatra in 1973. Why aqabah, meaning track or mountain pass? The answer is that, despite difficulties, they continued undaunted. They do not get any official financial help. Some of the students live on campus, others live outside. As for prospects for jobs after their studies, students go on to work as Imams and Khatibs in schools. There are no formal relations with I.A.I.N. but many teachers from IAIN come and teach here. They have close contacts to the Muhammadiyya. Some of the female students from Dinniyah Putri do teach here afterwards. Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Pendedikan (kulliyya tarbiyya) STIKIP-PERTI is an institute of an organization which was deeply involved in the 1958 Islamic separatist movement in Sumatra, PERTI, Persatuan Tarbiyya Islamiyyah, which was a political party and turned into a social organization. The officially retired but still active head of the school is Haj Ma’ana Hasduti Datuk Tan Palawan, an old Azhar graduate. This institution was created in 1961, and H. Ma’ana was its founder together with Sheykh Abdurrahman Rasuli, the most influential sheykh in PERTI. The government offers very little to finance the school and there are no waqf to support it. The institute lives almost exclusively from the fees of the students. The schools has a preparatory, then an aliat (secondary) branch (SMP and SMA) and then also an academy, a ma‘had ‘ali lil tarbiyyah, an academy of higher education which entails two braches again, one for general higher education and one for Islamic education. Usually the students enter for both exams, (general higher education and Islamic education) and if they fail in one they enter for the other; otherwise they have the choice. The degree can allow a student to enter the I.A.I.N. Most of the graduates go on to become government employees or teachers. It was stressed that the institute relates to shafi‘i teaching, distinguishing itself from the Muhammadiyya, which, they say, does not adhere to any, whereas “we are shafi‘i, following ahlusunna, and Asha‘ari. The N.U. for instance, are open and take from the four

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … schools while we are here strong shafi‘i.” Nevertheless, it is claimed that there are no political differences between N.U., Muhammadiyya and STKIP: “The differences would be in the number of raq‘at in salat al-tarawih”. Then there is Madrasah al-tarbiyya al-islamiyya in Bugittingi, founded by Sheykh Abdul Rahman al-Rasouli in 1928. It started as a Halaqa in a Surau and as a traditionalist foundation. This traditionalist movement also had a union, al-ittihad al-ulama, Minangkabau. The president of the first organisation, mu’assasa, was H. Bahruddin Muslim. We spoke to H. Izzuddin Marzouqi, who is a member of the institution and organisation. It is telling that Marzouqi was in Egypt from 1956 to 1961 and that for a long period of time he was also member of the provincial parliament of West Sumatra. The institute is a large one, with 750 girl and 839 boy students and 65 teachers. 7 government-employed teachers teach Indonesian. They all praise Pancasila as the leading ideology on religious subjects. However, at the same time they insist that all religious subjects should be taught in Arabic. There are, however, of the more than 1 500 students only 300 boarding students, occupying the two separate hostels for boys and for girls. The remaining students rent rooms in the surrounding areas. Around 30 per cent of the students come from the region while the remainder come from the rest of Sumatra and Java. The students enter for two exams (one degree, pesantren and another government). Each student cooks for himself. They teach a large number of Arabic books and in particular Fiqh. It is interesting that they have waqf land, supporting the managing of the pesantren. However, there are no formal educational relations to international Muslim organizations and institutes. The committee of the institution consists of around 10 people. A lot of them are Kepala Kampung (head of the village) in surrounding villages. Further up in remote Minangkabau hill sites there is still another famous, though only recently constructed pesantren, the Pesantren al-Kawthar at Payah Kumbu. It was founded in about 1990 under the auspices of the Muhammadiyya. A rich Kuwaiti donor helped to finance it. We were told that the money came through a network set up by an influential Jakarta politician named Lukman Harun; however, that there are no direct links to Middle Eastern institutions. There are 30 teachers and 110 students, only males. They all live on campus. The students sit for two shahadat, and the same “modéren” system of combined Islamic pesantren and government teaching is applied. The students come from all over Sumatra and reside here. They come from

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Riau, Jambi and West Sumatra. The organization that donated the money is called Bina Marhama. There is one teacher in this pesantren who is a graduate of Riad University in Saudi Arabia. It would be inappropriate to speak about religion and religious institutions and ideas in the Minangkabau region of West Sumatra without mentioning Lake Maninjau. It reminds us of the mystical and at the same time pleasurable views offered by Swiss mountain lakes; however, Maninjau lies in the folds of tropical hills and is often mysteriously darkened by miraculous-seeming mists and clouds. There is a whole variety of madrasahs, pesantren, and mosques around the lake, sometimes in very remote places, and some of these are with great significance as points of collective memory and history of the Islamic movement, most notably the Hamka-House, a modest place of birth of an intellectual venture in West Sumatra and all Indonesia. There are still, one should add, the ruined relics of what once must have been a library of Arab books and journals, mostly publications from Egypt. Each one of the Islamic locations and institutions is very neatly registered in a school map which is hanging at the wall of one of the smallest pesantren at a very remote site of the lake, the Pesantren Muhammadiyya, Maninjau. This is a small village pesantren with only 11 teachers, all from Maninjau, except two of them: young 19-year-old women, who come from middle Java. They both studied in Solo in Pesantren al-Mu’min, a pesantren, which was founded by Imam Rashidi. It was a moving moment meeting these committed young girls, village teachers here in this remote place, speaking perfectly well a language which for those else who listened to it had only a religious meaning: Arabic. There are 60 students among which are 18 girls, and there is a pondok attached for some outsiders and the women teachers. Most of the children come from the surrounding villages. This is a new school which was founded three years ago and it belongs to the chain of the Yayasan Pondok Pesantren Hamka, which was created in 1926. It offers primary education. the school itself only has 3 classrooms and one general room for administration and teachers’ meetings. In this latter room there is the map of the lake Minanjau which has all religious instititions around the river of the lake marked on it. The room has also paintings of the faces of the founding fathers of Muhammadiyya Islam in Sumatra Barat and specifically of the Minanjau area, which indeed, with Hamka and his father in the centre, seems to have been very active in creating leadership personalities of local Islam.

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … Minangkabau and the State Intellectuals of Islam – Intellectual Landscape and Voices of the Islamic Opposition in 1994 Certainly, if we speak of the creation of local Islamic intellectualism and its influence on local power strategies and governmental politics, the Minangkabau pesantren, as we have seen, are of utmost importance. However, reconstructive religious ideas need the environment of larger institutions, the environnment of local metropolis and the experience of study abroad. Roughly speaking, there are only two institutions in the region which can supply the necessary conditions for such an endeavour regarding religious ideas and Islamic representations in the regional Minangkabau context today, the Anadalas University and the I.A.I.N. in Padang, the regional capital. First, there is the new campus of Andalas University in Padang. Islam there, apart from the huge government Mosque at the centre of the Campus and the clearly visible Islamic dress of the majority of the hijab/jilbabwearing female student population, there is little obvious Islamic representation on the campus. Also there is no faculty of theology or any formal teaching in the traditional sciences of Islam, the ‘usul ad-din. All that is taught at the university level is strictly secular. Islam enters the scene by way of the convictions of the staff and students. Our interlocutors told us that above all in the last ten years it has been possible to observe that an increasing number of university teachers in the various fields of the secular sciences have entered the camp of Islam by ways of a primarily modern interpretation of the Qur’an based on their specific knowledge in the positive and natural sciences. These “new Islamic scientists” tend to assemble in a specific type of religiously-inspired brotherly social gathering, discussing religion and the affairs of the modern world, politics included. Some of the group members lead the Friday Prayers at the Campus Mosque and, in the khutba, introduce a type of qur’anic interpretation which relates to natural science, affirming and comparing the order of God with the order of nature. This religious preaching by modern scientists seems to have attracted the attention of modern Muslims in the town quite strongly, as the former have also found their way to conventional Muhammadiyya Mosques. As one local observer stated, their khutba are much more popular than the ones of the traditional ‘ulama. Many of these scientists have been trained at Western universities, for example in Germany and in France, in biology, physics and mathematics. UNAND – the Universitas Andalas of Padang – is not however the 119

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia only university in the local setting. There is the Muhammadiyya University with its two faculties, soon to be expanded to three Faculties. As we learned, there are intentions to set up a private Islamic University with the help of international Islamic institutions. One of the leaders of this movement for an Islamic University is Mukhtar Naim, a local sociologist who is known for his thesis on the convergence of Minangkabau local culture and Islam and who wrote on the Minangkabau migration systems to the outside world (Naim 1973). Mokhtar Naim is in early retirement from the Andalas University, where he once championed the setting-up of a social science faculty, the FISIP – Fakultas Ilmu Social dan Ilmu Politik. In university life today Islam plays a major role in contributing to the moral conduct of students, for example in opposing corrupt attitudes and preventing adultery on the campus. We should, however, be aware that there are various social strata of students and that this only counts for the committed Islamic community among them. A further positive effect is that the belief aspect of some teaching contributes to creating confidence in daily activities and to creating optimism and patience in facing daily problems. Islam on the level of the individual contributes to constructing personalities with character, responsibility and good work ethics. Thus there are two kinds of contributions: protection against the negative sides of social life and the creation of positive outlook. As far as discipline is concerned, a young lecturer told us: “I myself consider Islam for me to be the reason why I would keep lecture hours and appointments on time.” It is very interesting to note that many students and teachers believe today that there is no contradiction between Islam and science, that they go together and that this going together could be a very productive way of changing traditional social behaviours. Some of the young lecturers’ voices should be heard. They are symptomatic of the type of local intellectualism in the periphery, both as relates to the religious centres and to the centre of political power in Indonesia. Among the group of Muslim scientists at the Andalas University Padang was Dr. Shamsi Ibrahim, Head of Department of Chemistry, Andalas University Padang. He speaks fluent French and begins with the statement that for him there is no problem in following Islam: “One only needs to give it the spirit. In Islam one has to work hard to find the truth, in science one has to find the laws of nature. One has to use one’s head and there are no laws in Islam which contradict the laws of science. There is a parallelism. In Islam, in the Qur’an, if one wants to mount up into the sky, one needs to use some kind of a machine, one cannot arrive there by means of magic, one needs a machine.

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … The Qur’an says that it is the volcano that protects all the materials on the surface of the earth. The Qur’an says that there are frontiers between the waters of the oceans, today natural scientists have found such frontiers. If you read the Qur’an you will find many scientific explanations.”

Ibrahim was born 12 October 1949 in Solok, where he also attended the general schools of the state, primary and secondary, so he had no Islamic training and therefore, as he concedes, little understanding of Islam. He then studied chemistry for 3 years, one year at the University Andalas, then 2 years at the famous Bandung Institut of Technology (ITB). He first started to be strongly engaged with religion when he was in Bandung. He learned the teachings of Islam by reading two books about Islam every day, if possible. Until 1980, he says, he had never understood anything about Islam. “But then in Bandung, I searched for books at the Salman Mosque. I was there until 1983, and I bought a lot of Islamic books there. I have now about 400 books about Islam. We were a group of students in Bandung who worked hard during the day in the laboratories and who in the night read books on Islam. Later in Padang, I was director of an informal college of Islam, Baitul Rahma (house of grace of God). This was a moderate, private Sunni organization. We call Sunni the moderate way in Islam. In 1984, I learned French for two months and in January 1985, I travelled to France, where I had to learn French first for 6 months and in September 1985, I entered the University in Montpellier. I went to France on a government fellowship. There were about 500 Indonesians in France at that period and I was President of the Association of Indonesian Students in France. I took my Doctarat in Organic Chemistry on a synthesis for the production of pesticides and on research on a medicine against an illness called herpes. In 1990, after my return to Indonesia, I was invited by Habibi, the Minister of Technology, to participate in a national committee on our technological future. This is (pointing to a picture on the wall) where I was presented to President Soeharto. I was returned from France in 1989, and when I had adapted again here, I gave the Friday khutba, I also gave seminars about Islam. For me this is not a problem. But because I am not an ulama, I had to search in the Qur’an first. In Islam there are no rules that say who is allowed to give a khutba. I do not see any difference between me and an ‘alim. But I only give a khutba one or two times a year, much less then our friend Bustanuddin (see below), who gives up to ten khutba a year. Yes, I am member of the scientific committee of ICMI. For our Islamic future I do not see any problem, there should be freedom in the way people pursue religion also in terms of the local Minangkabau traditions. Yes, I have read the books of

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Hamka, but also of Bucailles, a Christian scientific theoretician. (He quotes the French titles in Arabic: Muftah Farid; Fuwad wa da’wa, qarim jamila). I also read texts of Ali Shari‘ati, Sayyed Qutb, Hassan al-Banna and of the Egyptian Sheykh Shaltut. We should work on a scientific dictionary of the Qur’an.”

Another member of the Islamic scientists’ group is Dr. Ardinis Arba’im, lecturer in Biology, Head of the Center for Ecological Studies and Research at UNAND (Dr. Ardinis converses in perfect German): “My first encounter with Islam was on the village level in my childhood. I was born in a little Village near Bugittinggi. I entered the formal state school system there, but in the evenings I went to the madrasah mahat Islami of the village, which was founded by my grandfather who was a labai, as we call the village madrasah teacher, who differs from the buja, who is already a small version of a learned ‘ulama. My grandfather was also the imam of the village mosque. His orientation was closer to the NU, since he was a student of syekh Ibrahim Musa who led the Sumatra Tawalib movement, representing the local modernists, the quaum muda. After my secondary school certificate which I took from Padang, I studied Biology at the Gadjamada University in Yokyakarta, where I did my BA and my DRS from 1971 to 1980. Then I took up the post of a junior lecturer at UNAND until 1983. I was then sent to Germany on a fellowship of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), first to Goettingen to learn German at the Goethe-Institute; and in 1984 I took up my studies in Heidelberg, where I did my doctoral degree. There were 15 of us DAAD-Fellows from Indonesia, of whom only 12 stayed on in Germany. I was very lucky in Heidelberg. I lived in a student hostel, Studentenwohnheim, where I met a student who had just converted to Islam and was very interested in religious discussions. We often sat together. His Islamic name was Muhammad Isma’il (Andreas Mohr). We read many books together, especially from Egypt and Iran, which were translated into German. We then organized an Islamic Week with seminars and collective prayers together with other Muslims in Heidelberg. Muslims from all over Germany came, from Islamic Centres in Hamburg and Munich. There was Ahmad von Denfer from Munich, who is an Islamic leader there. We also came into contact with Muhammad Siddique, who has a Malaysian wife and has created an “Islamhaus” somewhere in a village in the Odenwald. This was in the times of the Salman Rushdi affair and we had many discussions with students and with Christians in Churches near Heidelberg. They were very tolerant and came to our Islamic Week and we gave seminars in their church. They even gave us a place to pray in their church. I also participated in editing the journal Tafsir al-Qur’an together with the centres in Hamburg and Munich. It appeared every 3 months.4

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … Here in Indonesia, we really have no time for discussing and for developing such initiatives. There are no deep discussions in religious matters. Yes we do come together but we sit there and tell stories. I am member of the Council of the Muhammadiyya University. I am invited to participate in the ICMI meetings but I do not know whether I am member of ICMI, or considered as such. I was never asked to sign up for formal membership. ICMI is not necessary for me. The importance lies in where we can be active and for what. I do not write about religious matters. Only sometimes when we have informal discussions with students in the evening and they ask me challenging questions, do I write down what I think about certain problems. But the main problem here is that in general we as teachers, we deliver monologues and that there are no challenging questions. Only in the circle of Muchtar Naim, which is called Yayasan Kabahkita Islam (Auferstehung des Islam/awakening of Islam), do we have serious discussions. But the project of an Islamic University turns out to be more and more a secularly oriented bureaucratic project with traditional secular subjects as the focus, due to government and financial necessities. As for the relation between Islam and Science, I have just given a seminar to students entering the Muhammadiyya University on this topic. My main point here is that science cannot be derived from the Qur’an in any immediate sense. One cannot judge from the Qur’an for example whether the theory of evolution is right or not. The Qur’an enters there on a totally different level. For example, one cannot just oppose the scientific statement that humankind was created through evolution, with the statement of the Qur’an that man was made out of earth. The Qur’anic statement does not mean that the theory of evolution is wrong. One cannot amend science with statements from the Qur’an, nor the other way around. We have here two different levels of knowledge. The statements of the Qur’an can give guidance for science and we certainly know that tafsir (interpretation) is not a fixed thing, that one just reads al-Ghazzali or Sujuti and that is it. Tafsir depends on context and changes with the development and the formation of humankind. That is why the Qur’an cannot be an encyclopedia of science. I do not think this is possible. This is not the purpose of Qur’anic revelation. The Qur’an has its own elementary orientation to promote science. It has its own social psychology which adheres to science. In my own Friday khutba I have spoken out against the false idea that everything in science is already written down in the Qur’an. Yes, I give such khutba about five times a year, in the UNAN mosque in Ramadan and also in the al-Azhar mosque of the teacher training college on religion and theory of evolution, biology and ecology. My point is for example that in biology we might develop a new idea which had,

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia in its focus and in its direction, already been offered in the Qur’an. Biology could take its direction from such ideas. In the Qur’an there are many statements which one could trace as such invocations of science. This, however, does not mean that everything what one can know in science is already written in the Qur’an. And also there have been very wrong interpretations of the theory of evolution, merely focussing on the image that man developed from apes, etc. It is, however, clearly evident that there is no science which stands in contrast to the Qur’an. The Qur’an is more a type of an integration of science that promotes science and creates a climate for a new science. This is the importance of the Qur’an for science. From time to time of course I read hadith and fiqh books, then I develop my own ideas from them. But I read also Bucaille, ‘The Bible, the Qur’an and Science’ and ‘What is the origin of man’. Some books of Ali Shari‘ati etc.”

The Muhammadiyya Local Politics: Modern Education, Islam, State One evening we sat down with Dr. Bustanuddin Agus, lecturer, Department of Sociology, FISIP (Faculty of Sociology and Political Science), UNAN, Padang, in his own house to discuss his ideas about Islam and the future of the Minankabau region. He is both with respect to his educational background and his convictions an intellectual of a decisively different orientation than the Islamic scientists and he does not really belong to that group. He is rather a conventional Muhammadiyya activist, in blank words a bread and butter Islamist with strong leanings toward Middle Eastern purist antinomies. He was born 3 August 1947 in Bukittinggi, where his father was a builder. He has four brothers and five sisters. The family is all in all of modest origins; typically of this type of “social democracy”, however, the Muhammadiyya network enabled him and his brothers to acquire the privilege of education, both religious and secular. He has three brothers who obtained Ph.D.s, one in Agronomy in the U. S.A., another in Pharmacology from Montpellier in France, and Bustauddin himself in Sociology, however, with a strong leaning to the local brand. He started his education in Bukittinggi in the primary school, Sekolah Dasar Bukittinggi. He continued in the preparatory school at madrasah mu‘alimin al-diniyyah al-hukumiyyah, then he went to the Pendidikan Guru Agamam Negri empat tahun to become a state licensed religious teacher. After that he completed a real secondary education in Padang with secular 124

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … subjects. He entered kulliyya al-shari‘a of the I.A.I.N. in Bukittinggi, while at the same time studying in the second and third year at the kuliyya l-tarbiyya (general teacher training) from where he obtained his first licence. He then succeeded in obtaining an al-Azhar-scholarship offered to I.A.I.N. students after a rigorous competition. The competition was at the I.A.I.N. in Padang. Among the three examiners was the al-Azhar missionary, al-mab‘uth, Abdel-Halim Badawi. Bagus travelled in 1971 after the exams. He wanted originally to study in Cairo at the kuliyya ‘Usuluddin, in the department of philosophy. He failed and was instead accepted at the kuliyya al-shari‘a, from where he obtained a licence after two years. He continued his studies in Cairo to obtain an M.A. from the al-Azhar Department of ‘Usulul Fiqh in 1975. He lived in Madinat al-Bu‘uth and had friends from Uganda, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia. At that time there were around 500 students and he used to participate in the activities of the students’ association in organizing seminars. With respect to the al-Azhar teaching, he states: “Al-Azhar only teaches traditional sciences and offer little concerning contemporary problems which the Muslims face today. We only studied ‘Usulul fiqh, but there is no relationship to modern problems. But the importance of studying at al-Azhar was that we bought books from everywhere. My reading was important, specifically of journals like al-Da‘wa, al-‘Itissam, al-Fikr al-Islami, al-Wa‘i al-Islami, al-Musawwar.” (All Cairean journals, the last a more open-minded secular weekly; G.S.)

As his favourite writers he names Muhammad al-Bahi and M. Qutb, whom he prefers to Sayyed Qutb, Mustafa Mahmoud, Wahiduddin Khan, Maududi. He returned to Jakarta in 1977 where he taught at a private university, the Jayabaya University, from 1977 to 1981. He was then appointed to Andalas in Padang and obtained a Ph.D. from I.A.I.N. in cooperation with Universitas Indonesia. His supervisor was Harun Nasution, a famous Indonesian Islamic teacher at Jakarta who is also member of the majlis at I.A.I.N. Padang. Bustanuddin Agus’ thesis was about Islam and science. Of course, in a direct religious sense, the I.A.I.N. (Institut Agama Islam Negeri), the national religious institute of Islam, although it is more openly inclined towards Islamic teaching, has less to contribute to the intellectual challenge of religious ideas. The Institute has branches in all important cities throughout Indonesia. Subsequently, we also visited the one in Yokyakarta. The I.A.I.N. in Padang has 5 Faculties: Da‘wah, Shari‘a, Tarbiyya, ‘Usuluddin, Adab. Giving it a local Minangkabau flavour, the Padang 125

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia I.A.I.N. is named after a famous Sufi founder of local Islam, “Imam Bongol”. The main office, Rector’s office and postgraduate studies are in Jalan Sudirman in Padang, while the campus is in Lubuk Lintah, Padang. As we have already seen there is also a branch in Padang Panjang related to the Faculty of ‘Usuluddin, and a further one in Bukittinggi for the new faculty of Shari‘a, and in Batusankar for the Faculty of Tarbiyya These are all of course extensions of the faculties in Lubuk Lintah. The Rector, Prof. Dr. Mansur Malik, gave us an overview of the faculties’ work and their general intellectual and social impact on the Minangkabau region. “This is an institute of higher learning and teaching and is oriented to allowing a young person to become an Islamic scholar who contributes to the development of the society. I.A.I.N. teaching is in Arabic and Indonesian, but now it is mostly in Bahasa Indonesia. The teaching relies on Arabic sources, like in Fikh and Tafsir, but the issues of our teaching are related to Indonesian conditions. We are studying Islamic Teaching, but not the same way as the traditional institutions like the al-Azhar; rather, we face social problems based on Islamic teaching. Although the material is classical we use it to face modern problems, especially in development. The graduates have contributed in many seminars and meetings in the public domain of the Islamic community. They become government officials, for example in the Department of Information, or the Department of Population. Islam contributes to introducing a new ethos in the society and shows the way to create a new culture. In the perspective of the IAIN there is no contradiction between Islam and science and technology; however, the question of their integration is, rather, a definition of modernization. If we say modernization we should not speak just about westernization. This we do refuse. However, we do believe that Islam does not contradict modernity.”

There are critical voices in the Middle East who say of all this Islamic revival that it only serves a class of priests who do not contribute but rather eat the contributions of others? “There might be such a criticism in Egypt, but we are in Indonesia, we have no criticism. Secular scientists here are becoming more and more interested in religion. There is now critique of the ‘ulama. Habibi has gathered a group of scientists who are interested in religion.”

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … “Officially of course, there are no such relations. However, a lot of ICMI members are teachers and graduates. They always invite I.A.I.N. teachers to participate in public seminars. But I.A.I.N. teachers also contribute by teaching for example at the Muhammadiyah University. There is a student organisation called SMI and SMF. In the IAIN students are represented on the various boards at the faculty, at the Institute and the Department level. The Muhammadiyya has its own student organization and here in Padang many of them are I.A.I.N. students.”

The Campus in Padang has about 5,000 students and 178 Teachers. There are five teachers who have been trained in Egypt. Hassan Mahdi, for example, the Dean of the Faculty of Shari‘a in Bukittinggi Campus. Ten years ago there were also Egyptian teachers who came here on a government programme to teach for two years. It is always difficult to discuss and extract ideas from official personnel at the various institutes, especially the universities, and more specifically when discussions or interviews took place in offices. However, at the STKIP Ahlusunna Bukittinggi, we met H. Ma‘ana Hastuti Datuk Tan Pahlawan, a veteran in struggle for the cause of Islam and specifically for a sort of partitionist Islam which still was prevalent in Sumatra in the 1950s. He is a blind man and he spoke very openly to us even when in the office. About his life, he tells us that he was born in 1926 in Solok, a Sumatra mountain town. He entered the school there in 1937, learning the Qur’an in a Surau. In 1936 he moved to Madrasah al-Tarbiyya al-Islamiyya, which was founded by Sheykh Mohammed Jamil, an ‘alim of Minangkabau and one of the founders of Jami‘a al-Tarbiyya al-Islamiyya (PERTI) in PadangPanjang. In 1946, at the time of independence, he left the school for the army, and participated in the popular Islamic army LASKA (Asqar Muslimi Andounisia) which was founded by PERTI. During that time there were different Islamic armies; the Muhammadiyya-founded Hizbullah, PERTI Laska, Sabilallah was another militant group, albeit a non-party-based organisation. H. Ma’ana remained in Jami‘a Shabab Andounisia from 1946 to 1950. In 1950 he travelled to Jakarta, and he wanted to travel to Egypt but the doors were not open to him. From 1950 to 1956, he studied in Universitas Islam Jakarta. In 1956 he travelled to Egypt by ship, entering the Suez Canal on 27 September 1956, the day of the tripartite invasion; on 30 September, the war started. He started studies at al-Azhar in 1957. There was no recognition of Indonesian degrees, and he had to register at the secondary level for for127

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia eign students: “I used to study at the mosque”, he said. In 1959 he entered the Faculty of Shari‘a; 1961 was the year of al-Azhar transformation and secularization. He had to study one extra year and obtained his licence in five years. He then entered the Masters degree programme of Usulul Fiqh and personal affairs and obtained his M.A. in 1966. After his degree, he worked as a teacher in the Indonesian school in Cairo until 1968. In 1968, he returned to Indonesia and was appointed a teacher in the Faculty of Shari‘a in Bukittinggi, which was attached to the I.A.I.N. “Imam Bonjol” of Padang. He also taught afterwards in Padang-Panjang in the Faculty of Education, and the Faculty of Literature in Paya Kumbuh. In 1968 he was appointed Director the of section of Qada’ (law) in Bukittinggi and in 1972, he became Wakil al-‘Amid (Assistant of the Dean) of the Faculty of Shari‘a I.A.I.N. until 1975. In 1976 he was appointed a member of parliament as a Golkar representative, having left PERTI in 1969. He thus resided in Jakarta as a member of parliament for five years, from 1977 to 1982. He returned to Bukittinggi in 1982 when he went on pension. Before he left to Jakarta, he created this Faculty and the Jami‘a Ahlul Sunna, Persatuan Tarbiyya Islamiyya, which was a political party and then became a social organization. When he was there, there were around 200 students in Cairo. He mentions that he used to visit the tomb of al-Imam al-Shafi’i at least once a month; he lived in Madinat al-Bu‘uth. At the time he was very much influenced by the writings of: M. Abu Zahra, Mahmoud Shaltout, Mohammed al-Madani (Dean of the Faculty of Shari‘a), and of Abdul-Wahid al-Wafi (sociologist, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University); and he was influenced by the feminist writings of al-Wafi. “Egypt taught me tolerance in ‘ibadat, tolerance among the different Sunni schools, while in Indonesia we are still too fanatical about Shafi‘ism. I am for tolerance, but ‘talfiq’ ‘intiqal’ or mixing between the different schools is not possible. The blurring of Mathhab, the disappearance of Mathhab is an impossibility. Although M. ‘Abduh attempted to do so, it will nevertheless remain a controversial point in the Muslim community.”

Why is there such an intolerance in Indonesia where the mathhab is concerned? “Because Indonesians are strong Shafi’is and there is no tradition of comparing the four schools as in Egypt. My teacher in Indonesia was Mahmoud Junus, who was a student of Rashid Rida, the famous Egyptian reformist and student of Muhammad

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … ‘Abduh, who told him, ‘If you return to Indonesia attempt to ‘taqarub’ (bring together) the madhabs but do not eliminate them, because it is impossible.’”

Among his contemporaries in Cairo were such famous Indonesian Muslim leaders as Abdurrahman Wahid, Ahmed Bashir (now deceased), who was the former President of the Muhammadiyya, Quraishi Shihab and Harun Nasution. If one asks about the importance of Islamic organizations with social and political influence today, one would receive the answer that without a doubt, Muhammadiyya is of overwhelming importance in the Minangkabau region. It is, however, obvious from all its religious, cultural and social activities that it could hardly count as an innovative force. From all that is to be seen, Muhammadiyya, contrary to its own rhetoric and that of its leader, Amien Rais, is fully incorporated into the bureaucratic machine of state power as well as well affiliated with Golkar. Quite in contrast to the informal intellectual groups which are at least attempting to follow up the challenge of Islamic ideas coming from the national and international scene, Muhammadiyya seems to be a pure local political and social power machine with a type of social-democratic flavour whose main goal is offering opportunities to the lower and lowest middle classes on the fringes of village administration and urban settings. In a way it could be compared with Nasserite social organizations in Egypt, with the basic difference of its quest for religious education and teaching. In Sumatra for example, there are 5 Muhammadiyya Universities; the Muhammadiyya University for West Sumatra has four campuses, of which the new campus in Padang, which is now in the process of construction, will be the central focus. The campus now has one building, at present hosting two faculties, the Faculty of Economics and the Faculty of Shari‘a. The campus will eventually extend to four faculties, adding a Faculty of Tarbiyya (Education) and Teknik (Technology). The focus of the Muhammadiyya University in West Sumatra lies in one of the oldest Muhammadiyya institutions in Padang Panjang, a village in the mountain area near Bukittinggi. During the 1958 civil war and the Masjumi uprising against the central government, the Faculty of Shari‘a in Padang Panjang, being a stronghold of Masjumi resistance, was transferred to Java. It is standard for all Muhammadiyya officials to declare that the Muhammadiya in the Minankabau region is a continuation of the Masjumi oppositional stand, but that the NU, being tolerant and supportive of the Tarekat movement, would always be strictly cooperative with the government. The idea of a Muhammadiyya University in West Sumatra relied on 129

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia the will to reestablish the traditional Faculty of Shari‘a and to re unite it with that of Bukittingi and the Faculty of Agriculture in Paya Kumbuh. The only building now on the Padang Campus was erected two years ago. The Rector of the University, a former English teacher with some additional religious training, was proud to tell us that all financial support rested on local Muhammadiyya and that the ground of the campus is a religious donation (wakaf ). The two faculties now have about 800 students and the operation of the university is dependent upon student fees. The graduates of the Shari‘a Faculty will all become civil servants, both Muhammadiyya or government officials. Apart from the ideological and historical relicts of opposition the Muhammadiyya operates in strong relation to the government, which is also demonstrated by the fact that the Rector himself is government-appointed. Asked about his personal stand, yes, he would label himself an Islamic intellectual, and points immediately to the new initiative of the government in creating the ICMI, the group of Islamic Intellectuals, which also has its local branch in Padang. Regretfully he remarks that he did not graduate from an Islamic School. But as he states that through education one can develop the human. The Muhammadiyya has a Faculty of ‘Usuluddin in Padang Panjang, which was formerly called the Faculty of Da‘wah and was then integrated into Usuluddin. These da’wa students will contribute to propagating the rules and the principles of Islam, for example during Ramadan. They are sent to the Suraus, or Musallahs, the small daily prayer mosques and Qur’anic schools to supervise teaching of Islam. As a main point of discussion with the Vice-Rector of the School, who graduated in Da‘wah from the University of Medina, we found that the discourse is on the sources and principles of Da‘wah as a means of purification of religion. It was interesting to note that there is obviously a general trend to unify and equalize such sources and principles and to amalgamate them into one syncretistic perspective of purified Indonesian Islam, at least in the perspective of these Muhammadiyya people. For example, the 18th century movement of the Wahabiya in Arabia is valued as being, both in concepts and in aims, absolutely identical method of purification to the late 19th century attempts at an intellectual modernization of Islam in an already highly westernized society like Egypt, through Muhammad ‘Abduh. After such discussions one has quickly the impression that “anything goes” and that the dependence on both money and the government is high. Similarly, though the plans for a Muhammadiyya-run university, competing with the I.A.I.N. may be valid, the quest for education and ideas, although there is a lot of goodwill, appears to lack motivation. 130

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … The low profile of this “university” is also reflected in the fact that most of its staff is from other universities. The curriculum is similar to that of other universities, Except that there is Muhammadiyya-Studies as a discipline, i. e. the history, aims, ideology and approach to Islamic studies of the organization.

Islam, Socialism and the Muhammadiyya Bureaucratism Could one speak of an intellectual history of Muhammadiyya as an organization? The arrival of Muhammadiyya in Minangkabau was in 1925 but Islamic modernism had already achieved a high respectability through the works of the founding fathers of Minangkabau Islamic modernism, namely Hajji Abdullah Ahmad, Hajji Abdul Karim Amrullah (the grandfather of Hamka and alias Hajji Rasul) and Syekh Djambek. With Islamic modernism two Islamic modernist school systems had emerged at the beginning of the 1920s in Minangkabau: the Sumatra Tawalib and the Madrasah Diniyya. Within the development of Islamic modernism contradictions similar to those that had already existed in Sumatra in the 19th century, namely between the ‘ulama and the pengulu to which Snouck Hurgronje (1906, II: 23ff.) had already referred, seemed to have found a new and possibly even deeper accentuation within the 1920s disputes between the kaum muda and the kaum kolot or kaum kuno or kaum tua. One can hardly underestimate the social and political of importance of Muhammdiyya for the Padang area and in a broader sense for Indonesia: “Since the beginning of the nineteenth century we have discovered that the traditional authoritative position of Kaum Adat – as the ruling elite of the society – had always been challenged and jeopardized by the rise of religious revivalism and modernism” (Alfian 1989: 241f.).

Claiming the Wahabi-influenced puritans of the padri movement, and the Muslim modernists as ancestors, Alfian states, that for the few years after 1927 “Muhammadiyya was indeed more or less like a mass political movement” (ibid.: 243f.). “On June 20, 1925, an organization called Tabligh Muhammadiyya was established by a number of Muslim modernists at Padang Panjang, of whom Djamaan Sidi Suan and Makmur Salim were to become its chairman and secretary respectively” (ibid.: 245).

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia After attending a congress al-Islam in Yokyakarta in August 1925 two leading members returned home to create a full branch of Muhammadiyya in Padang Panjang in June 1926, while in Maninjau such a branch had already been in existence since January 1926. Many of the children and relatives of Hajji Rasul and Syekh Djambek who became full members and advisors to Muhammadiyya were afterwards important teachers and leaders of the movement in the region. Sutan Mansur was the son-in-law of Hajji Rasul and became the official representative of Muhammadiyya for Sumatra. His daughter Fatimah, the wife of Sultan Mansur, was to become Aisjiah’s, the Muhammadiyya women’s section, official representative. His son Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah, HAMKA, his younger brother Hajji Yusuf Amrullah, his sister Hafsa in Maninjau, and similarly relatives of Syekh Djambek in Bukittinggi were leaders of the Muhammadiyya (see ibid.: 248). The story of the coincidence of Islamic reformist ideas and socialism in the first quarter of the 20th century is not yet written. However, one gets a clear taste of the deep-rooted relationship between socialist and Islamic ideas on such occasions as the celebration of the day of foundation of Muhammadiyah. We participated in the 82nd anniversary of the Muhammadiyya in a theatre hall in Padang at 12 September 1994 with more than 1,000 people gathering in the place. Quite visibly, because of a type of segregated sitting order, there were more women present than men. With the exception of a very few young women, all the women, even girls younger than 10 years old, were wearing the veil (jilbab). The active student girls, however, differed in that they were wearing a particularly nun-like long, white jilbab falling from the head down over the shoulders over a blue skirt. These girls, about 30 in number, are all students of the of the Kulliyya Diniyya Pudri in Pandang Panjang. They were the most active in the cultural programme of the evening: Qur’an singing, announcing the speakers, singing the national hymn and the hymn of the Muhammadiyya, performing a sketch on alleviating poverty through religion and social, if not socialist, rhetoric.5 There are also about ten boy students who only joined in for the singing of the anthems, dressed in blue trousers and white shirts. The men’s group consisted of young, jeans-clad youth, and of elder men wearing traditional darkish batik shirts, or a nationlist style suit and a traditional type of fez (kopiyah ). Speakers were I.A.I.N. students praising the preparation activities for the anniversary, the Chairman of the Muhammadiyya in Padang, Vice-Chairman of the Muhammadiyya of West Sumatra Provinz (the Chairman being absent on a trip in Saudi Arabia), the Representative 132

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … of the Governor (Governor being absent in Jakarta). The Chairman of the Muhammadiyya in Padang recited a long piece of poetry about his village. We had the impression that there was practically no representation of the bourgeoisie or the local businesses and new professional classes. There were the old honoraries, like the Imam of the Muhammadiyya Mosque, with whom we had a short conversation and who knew some Arabic from his stay in Egypt some years ago, or youngsters from a “leftish” 1969 follow-up group, who performed a type of drop out “Che-style”. The whole event was organized in a very disciplined way and continued for 3 hours in the hall, which had no air-conditioning and was therefore exceedingly hot. However there was no exaggerated solemnity and everyone was given space to move the way he wished. The flags displayed on the stage were similar to those of German and Dutch Gesangsvereine (village choirs) or SPD Ortsvereine (German social democrats’ local unions). The whole undertaking indeed reminded the European observer very much of such local and village organizations in Germany and the Netherlands. The boys and girls of Padang Panjang pesantren where present in large numbers, and when not involved in stage performance, were sitting at the back of the hall, mixed sexes chatting to each other quite freely, however without any obvious violation of the code. To a Middle Easterner, this utmost secularism in code and behaviour would look for quite strange in a meeting which was otherwise heavily laden with religious speech and expressions. This leads us back to the organization and its “oral” history as described by our informant: Muhammadiyah is an important reformist organization in Indonesia and was founded 1912 by Ahmad Dahlan. It certainly took its inspiration from the Salafiyya movement in Egypt, seeking to return to the essential sources (the Qur’an and the Hadith) and to eliminate what they thought to be pagan practices which had entered Indonesian Islam; in particular, they were opposed to the type of Islam represented by Tarekat Islam. One of their enduring effects was the introduction of the khutba, the Friday preaching, in the Indonesian language, also introducing huge religious open-air assemblies. In its social activities it imitates the methods of Christian Missionaries in founding schools, hospitals, kindergartens and so on. The organization also has a strong women’s organization, the Aisyiyya, which gives special attention to the problems of women and the education of children. While in its origins the organization was strong only in the Minangkabau and the Yokyakarta region, it has now spread all over Indonisia and is said to have had about 8 million members in 1987. Muhammadiyya members are proud to report that the organization 133

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia has more social and economic activities than all other organizations, like universities, madrasahs and apotiks and hospitals and peasant cooperatives, etc. One of the standard points of difference from the Nahdatul Ulama Muhammadiyya members always stress is the social welfare provisions like orphanages etc., the education system from kindergarten to the university, mosques, da’wa etc.; NU by contrast is said to stress only the pesantren-kiyayi pattern as opposed to sarjana, the scientist. Rarely does one find kiyayi who are members of Muahammadiyah, and rarely are there scientists in NU. The central government-sponsored council of Islamic scholars, Majlis al-‘Ulama, has its local branch with a formal office at the I.A.I.N. in Padang, the Majlis al-‘Ulama Sumatra Barat. Prof. Dr. Amir Saifuddin is the ra’is al-majlis. He is a former Rector of the IAIN and now heads the BAZIS movement with the Lajna al-Zakat wal Infaq sadaka. This movement was founded in 1993 and again it is based on a governmental decision, the idea coming from the religious department and the department of internal affairs (we visited the place and it made a very poor impression on us). Dr. Saifuddin is also head of the postgraduate programme of I.A.I.N. in Padang. He tells us that the majlis was created in 1975 as a united body of all West Sumatran ‘ulama. It was Prof. Hamka who was its first Chairman. The body serves as a bridge between the Government, the ‘ulama and the people. What does the government want from the ‘ulama and what do the ‘ulama want from the government, we ask. He points to the issue of Family Planning as an example. Addressing this issue was only possible with the strong participation of the ‘ulama in the motivation of the people for family planning. What do you mean by an ‘ulama? “We mean with this a man who is knowledgeable of Islam and can do something for the whole, who learned of Islam and who can be a leader in Islam. I personally think there are three aspects, knowledge, personality, leadership. I myself have good knowledge, but I am not a leader. I question whetherI am an ulama or not”.

He also reports that the majlis has a regular meeting once a year and has 14 members. Once a year there is an official meeting of all members of all provinces. “Two weeks ago we had a Darul-Arqam meeting with the decision that Darul-Arqam is wrong. We asked the government to abolish all its activities in Indonesia. Yes, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei were before us, But the West Sumatra branch of the majlis was the first to ask for this step.

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … The majlis was formally established in Indonesia in 1975. But the Muhammadiyya in West Sumatra had already a majlis of ‘ulama before that I think since 1963, but its name was different.”

With respect to the general situation of Islam and the state, he says: “The state promotes religion in Indonesia. This is not a secular but a religious state. The state gives all people the freedom to follow their religions and also facilities are given to all religions by the governmentt. However, I personally believe that Islamic education and Da‘wah should be promoted more. There is no Mufti in Indonesia, we only have a majlis of ulama, not as an institution, but as an advisory body to the government. Our voice is the voice of all ulama in Indonesia – a kind of ijma’ if you want.”

Giving us a view on his international activities, he tells us: “2 Years ago I spent 10 days in Canada at McGill University in Montreal. All 14 I.A.I.N.s were represented there and they gave presentations about teaching and their structure. … I was been trained by Muhwir Zasali, former Minister of Religious Affairs, who did a great deal to promote the contacts between IAINs and universities in Europe and student and research exchange in Islamic Studies with Western universities.”

Finally, in order to show the depth of bureaucratic inventions for the cultural promotion of Islam we should refer to the diwan da’wa islamiyya indonesia, which has offices called majlis al-‘ala al-indonesi lil-da’wa in Bukittinggi and Padang. This is a foundation that goes back to Muhammad Natzir, who died in 1992, and who was born at a village on the Lake of Maninjau, was Prime Minister, chairman of National Parti, and Chair Bukittinggi Masjumi. After he gave up these functions in government, he became the founder of this majlis and its leader. In accordance with Natzir’s ideas, the programme of this organization is Islamic transformation of the society and the Islamization of Culture. However, their influence is very limited. They developed a an Islamic Centre, where about 30 IGIP (higher school of education) students now live. Further activities consist of organizing lectures on Islam and inviting speakers from Padang.

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia An Example: Muchtar Naim Muchtar Naim was about 60 years old when we interviewed him in September 1994. He was born in 1934, probably, in Bukittinggi, where he had an Islamic training in a surau, the traditional “Malay” gathering place for the youth which was used at the same time as a guest house. Later this became the traditional village school, the place of learning the reading of the Qur’an. This local institution, the place of his first introduction to the texts of Islam, for Naim represents a cultural duality and influenced his vision of the need for integration of Minangkabau culture and Islam. As time went on, it became quite clear that, for Naim, in his vision of a cultural integration of these two components, Islam emerges as his main concept of a modernist reconstruction of Minangkabau culture. It is Islam and Islamic education that gives the impetus for social change and modernity. Naim received further training at the Islamic Institute in Yokyakarta, where he took his first degree in Islamic Studies. The Islamic Institute P.T.A.I.N. was later transformed into the I.A.I.N. of Yokyakarta. In 1959 he went to McGill University in Canada, where at the time Fazlur Rahman and William Cantwell Smith, two outstanding figures of the modernist discourse of Islamic revival, were teaching. He obtained his M.A. at McGill with a thesis on the organizational history of Nahdatul Ulama, NU (Naim 1960). He later came to Singapore, where he took his Ph.D. degree with a thesis on Minangkabau Migration (Naim 1973).6 He was largely instrumental in founding and planning the Faculty of Arts, FISIP, at Andalas University in Padang. However – as was hinted by former colleagues at the FISIP – a sophisticated system of university promotion left no chance for a full professorship for him. As it was explained to me, the complicated university career system and Naim’s Curriculum Vitae failed to match up. Naim’s planning to set up a Private Islamic University in Padang, a project which is supported by some of the junior lecturers of the FISIP at Andalas University, but also by senior staff of other local Universities. The project aims to start with a Faculty of Dakwah, which will follow the model of the Dakwah Faculties of the I.A.I.N.7 I had two to three hour encounter with Muchtar Naim in his house in a modest middle class suburban area in Padang. With respect to “Islamization”, I wish to summarize these conversations into two major points. First, his perception of the Islamization of the Minangkabau region and Sumatra as a process linked to social movements of liberation and emancipation of local people. Second, his idea of the consecutive integration of Minangkabau Islam into what he calls the 136

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … “Javanese system” coinciding with a progressive decline of local Islamic intellectualism. Certainly, Naim lays a strong emphasis on Islamic rationalism and believes in a successful reinstitution of Minangkabau Islamic intellectualism and of rationalism. I wish to summarize issues discussed with respect to “Islamization” briefly here: 1. Islamization is a socioreligious movement of liberation and emancipation of local people: The concept of “Islamization” entertained by Muchtar Naim, the Minangkabau Islamic Intellectual, relates to the history of Islam and its establishment as the dominant religion in the Minangkabau region.8 He offers a picture of Minangkabau Islam as opposed to the Acceh being introduced (11th century) or that of the Eastern Sumatra regions (very early, some oral sources claim Islam was introduced here even in the Umayyad period, late 7th century) at a very late stage, namely, in the 17th century, and showing a very strong inclination to local Minangkabau traditions which were only very loosely influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism – the Minangkabau adat. In the early 19th century Minangkabau witnessed the Padri movement (1817-1837), which, similarly to the war of Diponegoro in Java (1825-1830) and to the Acceh war (1873-1914) showed that Islam was a power for gathering all the dissatisfied and at the same time is implied in all uprisings which were to see the light of the day during the colonial periods, but also until today. As for Minangkabau the Padri movement was a first drive for the purification of Islam and was introduced by three Hajjis returning from Mekka, Hajji Miskin, Hajji Peobang and Hajji Soemani. This movement was launched just in the period of the opening of the Suez Canal and before. It should be noticed that these are well-known historical facts, and we leave them here without further commentary the way in which they were presented in Naim’s depiction. He also points to Ahmad Khatib, who was influential on Sh. Hashim Asha’ari, the founder of NU. While Khatib initially followed the Naqshbandiyya Order, he then, while staying in Mecca, got interested in Islamic jurisprudence, fiqh. After his return, he opposed the cultural inheritance in Sumatra; nevertheless his influence was based on the fact that he conversed in Malay and by this attracted many students from all over the Archipelago. According to Naim, another source of Islamic renovation was the ideas of nationalism that where first spread in Java and then brought over to Sumatra as ideas of independence. 137

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia 2. Islamization also means the consecutive integration of Minangkabau into the “Javanese system”, coinciding with a progressive decline of local Islamic intellectualism Naim states a continuous progression of revivalist forces to Islam up to Independence after the Second World War. This for Naim was the milestone of decline of Islamic renewal in West Sumatra: the mixture between adat, Islam, Nationalism and Global Culture, preventing in his view any true force of renovation from developing. Naim’s view on the decline of renovating powers in Minangkabau Islam also depend largely on his interpretation of the overwhelming influence of Javanese culture, linked with the spread of nationalism. Before the Second World War people in West Sumatra felt first Minangkabau, then Indonesian. If Muslims, of course, they would feel Muslim. However, he says there is a situation today where the Minangkabau people feel that they are “pressed like a sandwich” by the superpowers of external cultures and specifically by being branded as provincial and parochial in comparison to the Javanese. Naim has himself dedicated a number of writings to explaining this issue as one of deep cultural conflict between the Javanese and Minangkabau cultures (e. g. Naim 1987). For him, the Javanese exercise a form of cultural domination, not only because they are the majority, about two thirds of the population being Javanese, but they feel superior because they always want to consolidate, to unite, to integrate, to equalize everything. They “Javanize” the language and thus appropriate it according to their values. “A slight exception is the weekly journal, Tempo, which did not hesitate on the one hand to use Javanese terminology, but on the other hand attempted to transform it into a new, in a way a corrected structure, namely, to be the forerunner of a modern scientific language.”

Asked what are the types of resistance against these unifying and equalizing powers, Naim gives a very enlightened, perhaps too strategic answer: “It would be a misunderstanding to build any major contradiction between the generalizing system and local cultures. The system itself is based on the intention to localize and although one might fail to see that the system is really adapting to local flavours, it nonetheless is very persuasive. Although the generalizing superstructure does not accommodate or adjust to the very local situation, it nevertheless penetrates on very fixed terms, so that you have to follow.”

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … It is interesting to note Naim’s reactions to the question of the pesantren as specific local institutions, representing local tastes. Naim beliefs that this is exactly where what he has called the persuasiveness of the Javanese system comes into play: namely, that what one calls pesantren is primarily an institution in Javanese culture which was spread all over Indonesia. “We in the Minangkabau region, however, had our own local schools of Islamic learning, the Surau schools, which were based on a combination between Minangkabau and Islamic systems of teaching. However, in the last decade they have gradually been replaced by pesantren and the whole local system of madrasas changed its flavour”.

If we look further down to the village and community level, what about Sufi activities and orders? “We can observe the same procedures; the government assists the Sufi sects and puts them under the same umbrella of sponsorship, mainly involving the Golkar party apparatus. This sponsorship is part of the Government’s ‘Islampolitik’ in the sense that it uses the Tarekat/Shari‘a split of polarization and at the same time of conflict management, controlling the challenge of Masjumi revival from within the local level.”

Could we say that possibly on the level of a convergence between Sufi and village magic practices there might be a focus of resistance of traditional village culture against the system? “We might find in some incidences among the Tarekat some representations of the dukun, the traditional village healer; however, because of modernization, education and the introduction of the modern health system into the village, the dukun’s role has greatly decreased.”

As relates to the issue of intellectuals, religion and the state, and the specific social role of the intellectuals and their very ambiguous position here, Naim addresses the issue of Minangkabau intellectuals without relating to Indonesia as a whole. “Most Minangkabau intellectuals live in Jakarta. And what remained here in West Sumatra is the secondary, if not the tertiary class of intellectuals, mostly bureaucrats, university teachers etc. They are not active. They do not put their thinking in writing. The fact is that we have 3,000 university lecturers in West Sumatra and about

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia 30,000 students at Andalas, I.A.I.N. and several private universities. And also there are the thousands of the Sekolah Tinggi, the high schools. So there is a large number and as far as quantity is concerned, West Sumatra surpasses – in terms of the extent of literacy, students and teachers – all other provinces in Indonesia. However, the quality is the problem. They all went to Jakarta. And if one listens to someone like Taufik Abdullah in Jakarta or at some other LIPI (Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia – Institute for Islamic and Arab Science) intellectuals, one will find that they still feel that they are Minangkabau, but at the same time they are the forerunners of Democracy and Globalism. So I am very sorry to say that there is nothing any more in this specific region that could be called an original Minangkabau Islamic Intellectualism.”

Naim is vehement in his rejection of the West and Western Orientalism; however, at the same time he strongly emphasizes the development of inherent Islamic rationalism: the future Minangkabau Islamic intellectualism and Naim’s struggle for new forms of institutionalization of Islam are central problems which came across in these communications. As he stated on various occasions, for him, the quantity of the Islamic mass institutions, students and teachers in the Minangkabau region does not mean quality. With respect to the question as to the use of all this for the society, as to what the state, the country Indonesia, is going to do with this mass of – as he himself said – third rate religious bureaucrats, he answered: “I don’t know what to do. They are useless; they are good of course as teachers, but the quality of their teaching is low. They do not read books. Their knowledge of foreign languages is so limited. Their logic is limited. There is no intellectual push. And even when they are sent to study abroad, when they return they adapt to the old world.”

Notes 1

This issue has become increasingly important since Abaza wrote her pioneering work (1992), cf. Von der Mehden 1994 and more recently Laffan 1998. 2 Possibly also a tradition which was followed in Javanese villages. 3 Wetonan is considered the method of teaching Islam based on the classical scriptures, or Kitab Kuning (Rahardjo 1986: 34). 4 It would be interesting to explore the type of study that would enlighten us about the nature and extent of these Christian-Muslim 140

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3. Bureaucratism and Proto-Institutionalization of Islam … inter-religious exchanges on the grass root level of communities and local political arenas in Germany. To my knowledge there is no study at all that could explore the cultural meaning of such exchanges, the intellectual challenge of ideas exchanged and the reconstructive effects on both sides. As for the inner dynamics with respect to social ranking and charisma in the construction of a sufi community in Germany, see Hüttermann’s pioneering study of a sufi “milieu” in Bielefeld (Hüttermann 1998). 5 On the relationship between Muslim modernists, especially in Sumatra Tawalib and communists in the early 1920s and the infiltration see Alfian 1989: 254, Ruth McVey, The rise of Indonesian Communism, pp. 174-84, Hamka, Ajahku, 113-121. 6 As for Naim’s writings until 1975, see Naim and Naim 1975: 93. 7 With the Dakwah-movement a new type of a modernist Islam was created, Islam as an ethic of development (Labrousse and Soemagono 1985). 8 For the history of Islamization of Sumatra see Johns (1980).

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition

4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition

Visioning the Postmodern Condition in Javanese Tradition Java and the Postmodern Condition Pramoeya Anate Toer describes the decline of Java’s dominance of the seas and the concomitant rise of Dutch control. He shows the decline of Sultan Agun’s reign in Mataram, which coincided with the purely symbolic standardization of Nyai Roro Kidal, the Queen of the South Sea, the lover of each king of Mataram, generation after generation. Pramoedya Anate Toer develops the idea that the advent of Islam in Java is a side story of the European expansion and control of the sea-lanes to the far East: “Strange but true, all this took place at the same time Java was, practically, beginning to embrace Islam. The spread of this new religion was not accompanied by its civilization, as had been the case with Hinduism, because it was, practically, a side effect of the chasing of Muslim traders from the sea-lanes by the power of the Christian West, a continuation of the expulsion of Arab power from the Iberian peninsula. One might say the spread of Islam was a side effect of the international Pan-Islamic movement of the period” (Toer 1996: 3).

And then, the memory of fate: real Javanese civilization ended where the “kampung”-civilization started and “verlichtung” (enlightenment) never really ever started. This voice against hybridization stands alone in Indonesia, but perhaps it only symbolizes the process of post-colonial hybridization itself. Indonesianists, anthropologists and historians alike have often told us that nothing is real in Indonesian culture. The topos of this symbolic ambiguity is “shadow-theatre”. The spirit of national Revolution “fetish”-ized traditional Javanese culture. The post-colonial revolutionary society – we are told – then took up this fetish and turned it into a new monetary spill of New Order consumerism and materialism. We are often, in Western assessments, told that the Indonesian middle-class has no real middle class values and no expertise in true consumer habits. Perhaps the list could be prolonged to more sophisticated issues such as “no real” Islam and “no real” religious and intellectual modernism as compared to the Middle East. The criticism and ambiguity also relate to the split between authoritarian, self-affirmed institutions and the unchallenged idiosyncrasies of the life143

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia world. Everything seems unreal, the truth hidden in the shadows of the Wayang. It would be ludicrous should I myself, a passing observer of the country and its culture, having experienced the overwhelming hospitality and friendliness of Indonesian people, attempt to prove such orthodoxy an invention. The specialists in the disciplines have their own view of things and often also their own cultural inclinations. However, it is striking, in fact, that there is a certain uniformity when it comes to the scholarly eye on Indonesia and its culture. If there is something “unreal”, then there must be something which is “real” too. The difference from Java (and with different emphasis Sumatra) is that Javanese civilization both disappeared and continued to exist with the spread of Islam as well as with the spread of modernity. So why did this not happen everywhere, in Europe, in the Middle East, in Latin America? Why are things different in Indonesia, and most notably in Sumatra and Java, with their high culture background dating from pre-modern and pre-Islamic times? Since Clifford Geertz’ pioneering work on the interpretation of Indonesian culture, Indonesia has become a sort of international battlefield for issues like “authentic culture”, “native’s point of view”, “indigenous truths”, “real and imagined communities” and “local knowledge” – a place of self-understanding, exotic modelling and at the same time of attempts to deconstruct and obscure the models and come down to the “real”, to the “authentic”. The point is, possibly, that no where else in the world is where “exotic modelling”, social anthropology and political science was so closely linked with the process of self-understanding and nation building as in Indonesia. Javanese and Balinese culture have become standard topoi of the discourse of “exoticism”, cultural studies and debates on science and tradition in the human sciences. The last-named issue can only be of marginal interest in the context of this book. However, if one speaks of local Islams today, the issue of Java and Javanese Culture cannot be left out. The more recent inclinations, when it comes to Javanese culture, are those of a convergence of material and spiritual needs. In the centre of the recognition of such a convergence stands the “New Order spiritual economy’s preoccupation with wealth” (Pemberton 1994: 287). The argument is that we should get rid of “old-school ascetic exercises” and that “the material/spiritual distinction is so central to New Order Cultural production” (ibid.: 282). It is interesting to note that within the interpretative framework of New Order mystical practices and survival of beliefs in magic, a certain postmodern professional attitude seems to be emerging. The consumerist 144

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition convergence between lifestyle and commodity, art and money – none too specific to Indonesian culture – are now turning into basic concepts of structural analysis of a culture of “difference”. Here then, to the New Order public symbolism turns into the “human-made landscape of monuments in the form of grave stones and mausoleums”. “Although many professionals such as dukun still meditate up to their necks in spirit-endowed waters in the pursuit of ngèlmu, the spiritual attentions of most contemporary Central Javanese are focused on grave sites and the possible blessings they contain” (ibid.: 276).

Can we subscribe to a statement of postmodern affluence which turns the social enterprise as a whole into an exercise of spiritual symbolism? “For superimposed on the supernatural landscape of idiosyncrasies is a vast topography of monumental power. It is this topography of monuments that now dominates Javanese spiritual pursuits” (ibid.).

Pemberton describes the process of resurgence of local culture and authority of local traditions. This process is not unique to Javanese culture and New Order politics in Indonesia; however, he observes it as something distinct to the object of his investigation: the traditions of “Java”. “The palaces remained nearly inactive until the early 1970s when, encouraged by New Order visions of what would come to be thought as cultural ‘renaissance’ (renaissence), they suddenly re-emerged as site of origins for recalling the authority of ‘Java’” (ibid.: 150).

As Pemberton shows us, the Revolution in Indonesian politics of authenticity is best described in terms of the symbolic rebuilding of the New Order “Beautiful Indonesia” in Taman Mini Park in Jakarta. Referring to the opening speech of late Mrs. Soeharto, the “cultural inheritance (warisan kebudayaan)” is becoming “a quasi-spiritual form of inheritance which, if left unguarded, might be destroyed by the lowly, purely material demands of a developing people” (ibid.: 154). Would it not be worth noticing in this context that the material/spiritual split has specific connotations in postcolonial social and cultural engineering between Western riches and eastern have-nots. Furthermore it connotes European philosophical discourse. The new hybridity derives from “authenticity” built on Eastern self-perception of the connotations of 145

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia this discourse. Pemberton points only to the duplicity of the “palace” in having in each of its regional versions a large and a small form (spiritual/ material). About the Audience Hall of the Kraton in Surakarta, rebuilt in Mini Park, he says: “Not unlike the founding of the Kraton Surakarta 230 years earlier when banyan trees were ceremoniously planted and all was ‘in good order,’ the founding of the Great Palace-of Importance Audience Hall at Mini circumvented the implications of the past by reclaiming the past in the form of built-in authenticity. The procession of 1745 recalled the royal progress to perform as a sign of what the procession was not; the dedication of an oversized Audience Hall elaborated on that contradiction with reference to origins. The hall lay at the heart of ‘Beautiful Indonesia’’s logic of authenticity and, in its very ‘palace’-ness recalled not only what the grand hall may be but what it is not, a palace elsewhere” (ibid.: 160).

Pemberton raises important and sensitive topics with respect to Western “postmodern” social theory and so far unacknowledged, far-reaching consequences for the social process in Third World Countries under the given global condition. We were able to distinguish four main fields of postmodern discourse which are important with respect to social transformation in the Third World: Culture raises the problem of self-embodiment and the issue of “selforganization from below” as a sort of story of the end of the state. Selfguidance, self-decision, autopoesis, self-rule, self-help etc. are new miracle words which relate to the symbolism of “authenticity”. The point is whether Foucault’s “technologies of the self” and the “small powers” of the Self will have a chance in Indonesian society to appropriate the symbolism of institutional hegemony. Could culture really operate beyond the state in Indonesia? Pemberton shows how the state itself figures as an overdue residuum of “history”, a Moloch of cultural reinvention. How then could Javanese culture, or, at other end, Islam, help in appropriations and struggles for liberated realms of self-constitution and legitimate power “from below”? “Difference” is another key issue in postmodern culturalist debate. The new importance given to all intersubjective relations transforms every real thing into an appendix of the encountered subject, an “Aufhebung” of the object in all subjects. Pemberton shows the symbolism of this “Aufhebung” of the real. But he makes it a point of exotic difference. He relates it purely to the differing conditions of self-constitution in Indonesian culture. The reinvention of the “ritual” is a major issue of social regulation and public social life overruling the functional and political realms of the state 146

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition and the institutions. Rituals have also gained an overwhelming power in all fields of intersubjective exchange. It is the ritual that provides the reference for the symbolic occupation of public space and the emergence of a new topography of space. As we have said above, this is not only an Indonesian affair. “Vision” and “picture”, with their own language, seem to overrule functional and rational systems of reference, replacing them with new mass aesthetics, myths and the symbolic restructuration of space in terms of visions of the past, cultural homogeneity and autochthonous traditions. Pemberton familiarizes us with the shift of cultural sentiments from Weberian issues like “asceticism” and “work ethics” to the new mental arrangements of consumer society, which reverses the conventional split of materiality and spirituality into a new vision of coherence and cultural economics. That the “work” of this transition is that of an anthropologist, and not the work of local intelligentsia or the otherwise appraised Islamic intellectualism, is a noteworthy fact. Java and Post-Colonial Identity Likewise Siegel, a well known Indonesionist and historian, inspired by Pemberton’s postmodern visions, attempts to turn this reversion into a different sphere of cultural and political reconstruction, namely, the visioning of the end of history as it relates to the end of utopias and futuristic model-building. Reflecting the 1965/6 blood clash events as an eternally present theme in Indonesian memory, Siegel develops the Frantz Fanon issue of colonial/postcolonial violence into a pure issue of hermeneutics of Indonesian “authenticity”: “In place of a model, one has to think of violence and of what promotes liberation and its opposite. This book, which does not reach to those events, is nonetheless informed by them. There is another to follow which will take them up. But my comprehension of Indonesian history is made in the light of this occurrence. My understanding of the forces at play comes from reading Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Martin Heidegger. I am particularly indebted to the work of Jacques Derrida; I do not mean to assimilate the three to each other. It seems to me that the path of thought he has opened, though it is becoming better known in the Anglophone world, has yet to be exploited by anthropologists and historians in the way it might be. It is in the first place because he shows the impossibility of our disciplines, precisely their lack of foundation. To continue after him means to accept this impossibility. But we must respond all the same, taking up in a context never imagined by him issues he has raised” (Siegel 1997: ixf.).

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia The condition of post-colonialism places the forms of national government in an archetype of alienation, namely, its rootedness in forms of foreign domination and violence.: “the pre-history of the Indonesian nation commences with the forces that dislodged the relation between Dutch and ‘natives’ precisely by making the world audible. It is the story of the decay of hierarchy. At the same time, it is the story of its reformation” (ibid.: 6).

Similarly he argues: “It is clear that to some degree the forms of national authority in Indonesia today reproduce the colonial model.” (Javanese, Dutch inheritance) “I believe that there is yet another source of this hierarchy and that it is to be found in the very processes of the formation of nationalism that led to the revolution” (ibid.).

What is different in postcolonial Indonesia, for example, are the subtle cultural measures to rebuild a certain distinction and alienness into the special public and private recognition of civil servants. National government needs the symbolic effort of distinction and develops it into the obscure “neutrality” of a civil servant’s number. It is the “long number identifying them as civil servants … One might have received one’s civil service number with the help of someone else to whom one is grateful and owes allegiance. This much alone would make it merely a matter of patrons and clients. But the number is not merely an administrative designation. It is taken as a form of national recognition. One may feel indebted to the person who helped one get it, but it seems to come, mystically enough, from the nation itself. The nation seems to have found one: with that, one belongs to Indonesia in a profound sense. One supposes oneself truly at home; more than in one’s house of origin” (Siegel 1997: 7).

What is so specially Indonesian about that? Only the long personal number? It is true that appointments in Western government services entail a more discreet and at the same time more direct and open stance with respect to the social position of a civil servant: the number is visible and thus a source of immediate recognition; on the other hand, it demonstrates “equality” and “neutrality”. For Siegel it demonstrates a specific sort of social and cultural recognition: “I intent to trace the path by which recognition became centered in the Indonesian nation” (ibid.). Siegel’s theory then is based on two extreme poles: the plural society 148

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition which connects its segments through mediative forces which become visible in the history of “communication” and, on the other hand, the history of lifeworld and community of the Indonesians in the 19th and 20th century, where: They are then “connected” and that in the way “that the airplane connects the present and the revolutionary past, quite apart from the content of the stories it then evokes.” He claims that Indonesian national history then can only be traced in the double effects of connecting “autochthonous sources” with “foreign borrowings” (ibid.). Siegel’s book is the analysis of the interplay of different languages in Indonesian writing which have taken part in the development of the national hierarchy. He relates this analysis closely to postmodern concepts of communication and recognition. “I rely on a notion of communication that has best been expounded by Jacques Derrida, who is the most powerful thinker today in the line that continues the thinking of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, and Martin Heidegger, to name only the most immediate of his predecessors. Even so, I might not avoid accusation. Are not these theories, though they appear secular, a revision of religious ideas?” (ibid.: 8)

Siegel is aware of the transformations of the Self, once it realizes its fate within modern politics of identity: “I have used the word ‘identity’. I do not mean to imply, however, that identity is ever fully achieved. My view is contrary, therefore, to the stream of current thought that sees identity as achieved, negotiated, crafted, and in other ways the product of a self which, knowingly following its interests, invents itself. I think of it in the tradition of Hegel. There, to find a place of self-definition is to be thrown off balance unless one can be convincingly self-deceiving. Identity exists only at the price of enormous confusions and contradictions. I intend to make some of these confusions clear because it is against these complicating factors that identity becomes almost achieved” (ibid.: 9).

From the other angle of critical theory, Siegel develops as an analytical measure the concept of “fetish” and relates it specifically to the process of commodification of the lifeworld of the “natives”, starting to dress in Western clothes etc. “At the same time, they were wrapped in what to the eyes of the police was foreign fashion. ‘Natives’ were astonished to find that they might pass for someone from

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia another social segment. I call this failed possibility the ‘fetish of appearance’. It is the fetish in the Hegelian sense of an orientation to a power which cannot be appropriated but which, nonetheless, one feels one possesses.”

and “There were not only forms of dress and language and ideas to mark one, there were also inventions of a nationalist leaders who verified one’s national credentials. The fetish of appearance relied on an orientation to an other who could recognize, even if initially that recognition was conflicted, on the one hand, attributing to the person recognized the capacity to change identities and on the other condemning him for it” (ibid.: 10).

What then is the fetish of appearance? If it relates solely to the Lingua Franca, Melayu, as an intermediary, anonymous language between Dutch and Javanese, is this the sort of hybridized Indonesian culture that would serve the cultural view to include Indonesia and Java into the arena of global discourse and “Weltgesellschaft”? The intriguing question, however, would remain: What are the futures of Islamic styles, ideas and rituals within such a perspective?

“Civil Society” and Javanese Islam At this point it is perhaps useful to ask why Islamic “ideas” meant so little in the Asian Crisis and the events it brought about in Indonesia. Following Pemberton and Siegel, from an Islamic point of view, there would be space enough to imagine that Islam in its politico-cultural features could have played a decisive role in rooting the idea of cultural economics, postmodern visions and cultural foundations of society, of “moral economy” and social coherence in the new world of consumer society and in overthrowing “secular” authoritarianism. However, the decline of the New Order regime of Soeharto in 1998 had one astonishing effect: it spelt a most decisive break with “culture” and a return to politics. 1998 also implied the end of the vision that active Islamic intellectualism could form a new ideological base for democratic movements, civil society and liberalism and that economic growth should be linked to the new ethics of cultural authenticity. To find an answer to the question why Islam and the politics of cultural resistance and “authenticity” had so little weight among the students and their movements who turned the crisis in a type of “small revolution” in 150

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition 1998, is a task for future academic exploration. Here we can only refer to some type of pre-crisis discussions which took place in Yokyakarta in summer 1997, exemplifying the debating civil society’s controversial and converging issues. Defending the Civil Role of Islam At the time, one of the most interesting questions for the development of the country remained the “quest” for Islam and the way in which Islam could find a more active role in Indonesian society. Islamic ideas of selfconfidence and intellectual vigour – how could they serve as a basis for social reconstruction? I had put these questions to a number of Yokya intellectuals, but discussed them more intensely with two Australian scholars who had made Yokyakarta their second home. If the Yokya-Culture is a case of modelling what “civil society” in a future Indonesia could be, then Herb Faith and Lance Castles are the international element, holding some type of intellectual key to it. They are “detached and involved” outsiders – in the spirtit of Norbert Elias, the theorist of civilizing processes – who have lived in Indonesia and specifically in Yokyakarta for a long period of time and made the social analysis of events and structural transformation in Indonesia their “calling”. Today they play an intellectual and academic role in the Yokya-culture.1 It is interesting to note that in this encounter ethnic and class conflicts played a minor role and that the fact that there has in recent years been a continuing increase in religious expansion relating to figures of mosque attendance, women’s veiling and the political hegemony of Islamic ideas has become a major issue of social and political transformation. There was no doubt in the discussions, therefore, that Islam will play a decisive role in the process of restructuration of Indonesian society. Discussions went further to see whether this was a valid argument. The factual evidence of general religious expansion exists; however, it could be questioned whether “Islam” in Indonesia has the intellectual resources to occupy the leading place in generating the visions of the future of the country. The point is that long before “crisis” and “revolution” there was a most visible “secular” machinery of modernity at work. This machinery – which is not just linked to the traditional abangan social stratum any longer – is evolving today as mass culture and has an ambiguous relationship to the build-up of religious thought and public Islam. Nobody would argue any longer in terms of the conventional correlation between increase in technology and science, on the one hand, and decrease in religion on the other. However, the answer of studies on fundamentalism and those by political scientists, that 151

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia the Islamists’ firm grasp of technology and science proves the conventional correlations of modernization theory to be wrong, is similarly simplistic. Religion itself has become a factor in the field of mass culture and consumer society. On the other hand, the modernity machine is also linked to the rationalization of religion with respect to social order. Where are these dimensions coming to the fore and giving reference to the future of religion and modernity in Indonesia? It is certain that the perception of the West is a major element in this rationalization process. Confronting the West, there is – in writing as much as in public statement – a visible intellectual rationalization of Islam. The cultural tools of this rationalization, whether dialogical or confrontational, are however themselves Western, not indigenous, although they employ concepts and principles from “indigenous” religion. To make this more understandable, for example, the identification of an Islamic concept of social justice is inseparably linked with the works of Western enlightened thinking. Since the French revolution, in Muslim countries, although from a traditional Islamic perspective, certainly, justice and social balance have had a prominent status. The stress, however, lies with innerworldliness, namely, the instrumentality of such concepts for social reconstruction. We may also trace the paradoxical use of concepts such as “hisba” and “muhtassib”, which relate to the regulation of medieval markets for political purposes within a strategic framework of Islamization of law. There is the “public religion”-machine which, from a rediscovery of the very modern role of religion, reaffirms the deprivatization of religion in a global perspective, with Islamic and American fundamentalist movements making the case for an unbroken continuity of “public religion”. We should, in this respect, certainly, be aware that the concept of public religion rides on the back of that old European understanding of a publicly communicated political and cultural process of decision making of the old res publica with which neither fundamentalism nor Islamism have anything to do. Furthermore, if we speak of Islamic continuities then the Islamic Public undeniably has utterly different contours from those associated with the conventional concept of a communicative public. Another angle from which to approach the public is the symbolic occupation of public space which was once used by the 68 movements and later by Islamist groups in Iran, Egypt, Malaysia and Algeria, and today in a late move in Turkey and Indonesia. To which extent in Indonesia, for example, for obvious reasons of military suppression, might Islamic groups constitute a new public in terms of communicative ideas and group processes which relate to these types of religious rationalization? There is an international machine of 152

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition Islamic modernity and futures related to the religious reinvention of science, gender relations, human rights, civil society, ecology and sustained development. How does this effect local discourse? Such issues were present in the local discussion in Yokyakarta. But there were no answers. No doubt, the international machine is present! Globalization – that was also part of the discussion – is about what we ourselves are doing. The spread of hegemonic thought and ideas, life style and the material side of it. But for us the “pharaonic state” provides the wanted style which we negate in teaching: this is the contradiction of our own presence here, as was made clear. However, here was the turning point in the discussion. The problem of the social role of Islam could be addressed from two differentt angles. First, there is the crucial point of religious institutions and their embeddedness in the broader framework of the state’s political and administrative apparatus. From here, one could argue that it is the institutions which give shape to the ideal of the individual Muslim and of the Islamic constituencies. Second, there is the perspective “from below”, religion as a social movement which is important with respect to the historical movements and their role in social emancipation and the momentum of cultural recognition and inclusion. Can one really say that there is a type of “from below” reality in its own logic, or is it rather part of the re-invention of institutions? It is important how this local knowledge “from below” is made to the structure of discourse itself. The assumption of an independent “from below” sector in which the necessities of religious and political discourse are shaped would focus exclusively on local Islamic constituencies as a source of future construction of religious and social discourse. It is exactly this focus which itself contributes to the constitution of local groups within a perspective of global cultural discourse. On the other hand, the pure focus on Islamic high culture and state discourse would exclude any knowledge of the “hinterlands” of local constituencies, where legitimation is brewed and the inclusion and exclusion of certain ideas and the way in which they have to be shaped in order to take a legitimate stance is decided upon. In this respect the case of Indonesia is of great significance. The state co-opts a type of intellectualized radical Islamism and with it institutionalizes a species of anti-Western legitimacy of authoritarianism while at the same time promoting an extremely intensive process of material Westernization. We have seen these types of “Asian” policies in Singapore and in Malaysia, where under conditions of a strong state based on the rule of law this policy had the effect of integrating the Islamic and ethnic cultural 153

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia movements into the social and political process and thus instrumentalizing it for development and growth. In Singapore this took place, leading to new patterns of engineering state functions and social modulation which are – for the developing world – the most prominent and at the same time most civilizing and advanced modes of modern governance under accepted conditions of globalization. Could Singapore be a model for the region? In contrast to Singapore, Indonesia represents the case of an extreme at the other end of the scale: the case of “lost” local constituencies as opposed the state and a “lost” state with respect to smoothening and engineering functions for the local effects of globalization. The military and bureaucratic gap between the apparatus of the state and the local constituencies seems to be very strong. There is a lagging behind in the social engineering of economic and cultural transformation. The question is whether in the long run these gaps can be closed by NGOs operating within the “from below” perspective, but at the same time enforcing a recognition of the “authentic” into the discourse, which is counterproductive to effecting a modulative balance between state institutions and lifeworlds. The central issue within this perspective, therefore, is the question of what happens to the Muslim organizations. In Indonesia there are three dominant Muslim organizations, two of them mass organizations with millions of members, the Nahdatul Ulama (NU), the Muhammadiyya, and ICMI, an Islamic branch organization of the New Order type.2 Normally, all these organizations are religious and social, not political, not party- or state-guided institutions, although as in the case of ICMI above all, the government is an ever-present factor within and from outside these organizations. This fact, certainly, relates to the “pharaonic” condition of the state; one subject to continuous misunderstandings and ambiguities. It is useless to say that this state of affairs – as we will discuss below – does not contribute to any positive development with respect to a coherent representation of the constituencies or with respect to the social rationalization of state functions and legitimate regulative powers of public institutions which would be able to respond to the material and cultural pressures of globalization. The history of the Islamic organizations in Indonesia is well known and subject to ongoing academic debate. However, what is of interest for us, are the main issues of the actual constitution of forward and backward linkages of the various local constituencies with these organizations, on the one hand, and between the organizations and the government, on the other hand. It is part of the “Yokyakarta-culture” that “world-scholars” like Mo154

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition hammad Arkoun and Richard Falk, a Princeton Law Professor,3 for example, and sometimes less known scholars from Australia, America and Europe come to Gadjamada University to give lectures or visit the central Office of Muhammadiyya, or tap into the NGO networks of the place. These tightly-woven networks extend into a structural form of globalization, namely, the diverse constructions of visions and intellectual exchanges in a sort of decentred centre-periphery exchange. This certainly implies a type of ideological reconstruction of visions of local elites, a self-referential local machine for perceiving “us” and “the world”. The arrangement of a public lectures at the University or at NGO premises, for example, on a comparison of feminism in Egypt and Turkey is a good example of how the machine operates: decisive, but casual and pragmatic. Falk is kindred spirit to Herb Faith in terms of his thinking and ideas about global Human Rights policies, and Herb has organized his invitations to Gadjamada and Jakarta Universities. The Limits of Religious Rationalization There is an underlying general idea in all this, namely, the idea of active citizens organizing their “own” public beyond the state – seen as a dead power apparatus with all the evils of suppression and domination – and building networks which relate to the deeper commitments within the local communities, their authentic cultural traditions, and the idea that all this could serve as a new framework for global social integrations. For the pioneers of the civil society concept the problem is the “pharaonic” state. One could argue that behind this critique of the state there is a “fundamenatalist” concept of democracy, supporting the imperative acceptance of an affirmative application of Muslim “rights”, the tolerance for and the appreciation of the rights of “majorities”, the majority of the Muslim population, the Muslim state. The right to state publicly their religious and political convictions in speech, dress, habitus, legal regulation etc.- the importance lies with cultural traditions and with the majority being affirmed as “authentic” and recognized as “just”. Since this position takes its stand from concepts such as democracy and equality which took shape in the French Revolution and in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, it has considerable trouble dealing with the specific cultural traits and expressions of non-Western cultures and the specific way they adhere to positions of modernity, science and democracy. The two cases of importance are today Algeria and Turkey. The complexity of the Algerian situation for example can be described in the type of transformations that took place in the 1990s, namely, the 155

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia “authenticity” of mass “bread riots” versus the “authenticity” of mass “Islamic” riots. There were massive anti-government and anti-IMF and antiWorld Bank bread-riots in the early 1990s in Algeria which were “secular” in vocabulary and symbolism. After the FIS reorganisation, taking considerable advantage as the only “real” opposition to “Western” policies such as the austerity rules imposed by IMF, World Bank and local government, the FIS gained considerable recognition in local popular constituencies and at the same time was about to win the majority of parliament seats in the 1994 elections. It was interesting to note how the “fundamentalist” democracy position was taken up by influential “Western” press, opting for the acceptance of majority vote by the local government. Although there were clear signs – like in the election night’s mass prayers in the Kasba – that a Muslim government would take an immediate revenge on all explicit “seculars” and establish an authoritarian rule, non less authoritarian than the military government which supposedly rules only by the grace of the West, fundamental democrats would argue for the “rights” of the culturally “authentic” majority. Democratic fundamentalists take a similar stand toward the military and its Kemalist secular tradition in Turkey, although the Rifka party so far has only attracted 20 per cent of the votes and was in 1997 promoted to government only because of Ciller’s grip on power. The most intriguing point, however, is that a civil-society perspective ultimately would avoid recognizing local democratic institutions or postcolonial national constitutions which have emerged after intensive emancipative struggles for national liberation in both these countries. However, they use, they believe, deeper and further-reaching arguments about local civilization and authenticity of culture, as the very traits of political identity for a “population of majority”. At the same time they would claim that the given constitutions are “undemocratic by nature”, since they were an import from the times of Western imperialism. Such arguments play an important role in international politics today, in both governmental and non-governmental organizations. The point of the discussion in Yokyakarta was that there is no solution as regards the role of the state. The challenge is how to develop the necessary apparatuses to secure individual rights – beyond religion and ethnic or communal patterns in the smoothest possible way, and how to assure at the same time that the social activities within the local constituencies continue. In the context of this problem, perhaps, it is important to note that the rhetoric offered often only by NGO-created paper, would often contribute little to 156

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition pinning down state functions so as to serve new social prospects for transformation and modernization and to create the social assurance of actors in the civil fields of gender relations, ecology, science and democracy. There is also the neglect of the longstanding political separations of politics from religion and the concepts of sulta and justice. There is a specificity of Islamic intellectualism in Indonesia with respect to the paradoxical position of Middle Eastern intellectuals, remnants of the old left and the heterodoxies of the café house culture of modern metropolism, competing for some type of a state position, whereas in Indonesia today, primarily, there is the patronage of intellectuals by NGOs. There is a contradiction in visioning the state as the overwhelming power in the society and demanding its retreat, and the expanding role of civil society in a situation where the state has not yet evolved as a force of engineering and modulation of society. Foreign NGOs execute social welfare and legal advice functions, a process that would point to the retreat of the state from society and its reduction to a military and administrative power machine. On the other hand, can a civil society evolve without the state itself participating as a modulating and regulative power within the society? The issue is that while an international debate on the potential role of Islam and Islamists and Islamic fundamentalists in the fight for civil society and citizenship rights is perceived and financed with the support of all Western founding institutions, a vague dispute about “bringing the state back in” and weak international pressure ensures the continuity of the “pharaonic” nature of the state as a machine of robbery and military suppression of its own people in the name of global necessities and social order. While legal rationalization and the individual rights situation and rational modulation of everyday worlds in Western countries certainly do allow for a stronger retreat of the state and deeper civil involvement in organizing of public functions, we do not find the equivalent assertive and interested constituencies in countries like Egypt and Indonesia for example, that could take over such functions. NGOs, based on foreign money and institutions as well as often being alien to the constituencies of the everyday trouble, cannot do the job; indeed, they may reinforce the “pharaonic” character of the state. Today it is the “pharaonic” weakness of the state and its incapacities to respond to globalization that shape underdevelopment. On the other hand, the “pharaonic” state leaves behind the uncivilized constituencies of a “wild”, non-regulated, non-modulated, non-educated civil society, a broad realm of social unrest and informal economic and legal devices, which does indeed add up to a type of civil society which 157

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia remains self-constituted, floating and has great sensitivity and flexibility towards material structures and symbolic issues of globalization. One could argue that, indeed, these are the most advanced devices of globalization and the real realms of a new postmodern society. However, it is clear that these realms have nothing of their “own” beyond a wild opposition to the “pharaonic state” which, in its own wildness, is only the other side of the same coin. Then how to break this deadlock? Our point, at least as far as Southeast Asia is concerned, is that Malaysia and Singapore have in a way responded to the deadlock and are now deeply involved in a dependent competition with the West, mainly on the basis of reinventing a strong socially active state, a moderate welfare system, and an institutionalized discourse of cultural reconstruction of the nation with respect to the needs of globalization and global cultural discourse. It goes without saying that any future political make-up in Indonesia will have to respond to these models of Singapore and Malaysia, and that any idea of “civil society” based on pure “Islamic” constituencies is a model which falls short of the formal needs of a national rebuild and will lead back into the development of a deadlock in the already existing institutional crisis. Certainly, the references to the essentials of the “Islamic” discourse in Indonesia weigh strongly. If it is true that as “Deliar Nuer says, Islam comprises ‘both a religious and a civil and political society’” (Legge 1977: 67) then it is certainly true that there are extreme difficulties in placing Islam within a coherent pattern of Indonesian society as a whole. Whatever the specific historical conditions are, Sumatra-Islam – as we have seen – is biased, with a strong incorporation into the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. This type of immediate interwovenness of Islam with the state apparatus seems to be softened on the other hand by the mediative symbolism of Javanese traditions. Java Islam as expressed in the specific – ambiguous, indeed, and sometimes tenuous – melange of ‘ulama/kiyayi with kingdom/priyayi traditions shows a relative independence and stronger civil societal and cultural inclinations with respect to state institutions. This largely relates to the cultural revolution which was brought about in re-inventing the “authenticity” of the Javanese tradition. Beyond the idea of modernization and development the post-colonial regimes elaborated strategic cultural programmes which activated the “authenticity” of Javanese peasantry and court society, “little and big traditions”, at the same time as being a means of intervention and self-reflection in terms of community, nation and the state. The struggle for a modern social function of Islam in Indonesia was 158

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition linked with the reformist idea to “offer a unifying faith capable of coping with the problems of transition in the modern world and able to supplant the other distinct variants of the Indonesian cultural tradition” (ibid.). It was Muhammd Natzir’s idea of “Progressive Islam”4 and his rational fundamentalism which early revolted against the pragmatic solutions offered by the Sukarno regime and later by the “New Order” of Suharto. As we have seen in the case of the Minangkabau region the state uses its power to control and to promote Islamic education and recruits its cadres largely – however only in non-military arenas – from the gallery of Islamic learning. However, the state never lost its “pharaonic” and military nature. Could Islam bring about a deeper inclination of the state in relation with the cultural and civil societal approaches of modern Islam? Natzir wished to put Islam into a central position in politics and society. He was not satified with Islam only occupying a “throne in the heart”, i. e. the reduction of Islam to merely spiritual and eschatological issues. Quoting H.A.R. Gibb – the British orientalist – Natzir said that Islam was more than a religion; it was a complete civilization. Therefore, according to him, Muslims, like Christians or communists, had their own outlook, Weltanschauung (world-view) and ideology (Ihza 1995: 136). Because there is no church in Islam, Natzir argues that there is no need for the separation between state and Islam. Natzir’s slogan, “unity between religion and state”, relates to the idea of a religiously founded moral attitude of Muslims, the idea of akhlaq al-karimah. This idea leads Muslims to follow the hudud-laws, promoting the articulation between state and citizens (ibid.). This idea today sounds like a postmodern conceptualization of social organization “from below”, based on the political spirituality of religion. However, for Natzir it meant that there is no specific form of governance in Islam or a specific foundation of the nation state, that Islam does not contradict the idea of Pancasila. For Natzir, quite astonishingly, the principle of Pancasila was not, as for many politicians of the old and of the New Order, a secular principle, but rather a religious one.

Two Organizations – Two Islams in Indonesia? – Yokyakarta-Culture Involvements The Muhammadiyya Administration In the later period of the Suharto-regime there have been three Islamic organizations of importance: Muhammadiyya, NU and ICMI, the later being a type of a Golkar hyperorganization with Muhammadiyya represen159

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia tation in the main.5 Like in so many cases of state presence in Indonesia we find a manifold involvement of state officials in these Islamic organizations. B.D., the Dean of I.A.I.N. of the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Yokya, who has an Indonesian-Dutch Ph.D. in Islamic Studies, is at the same time member of the local ICMI Committee (there levels: Governorate Committees, Local Committees and the National Committee) and member of the Muhammadiyya. Strikingly enough the first ICMI congress was organized by B.J. Habibie in Malang, 6-8 December 1990 (see Makka and Mashad 1997: 7). There were 49 founding fathers of the organization. B.D., although he claimed to be one of them, is not named by Makka and Mashad, who list them (ibid.: 6). For him the major event in Islamic matters in the last three years is the strengthening of ICMI and the strong collaboration between ICMI and Muhammadiyya. He confirms that the social basis of the Muhammadiyya in Java is comparatively weak with respect to the Minangkabau stronghold, he himself being of West-Sumatran origin. Muhammadiyya for him represent state and state officials while the Nahdatul-Ulama, the NU, its strongest support in the strata of rural preachers and popular Islam. However, for Y.A., a lecturer at the same Faculty and of local Yokya origin, who is a member of NU, the most significant and important event in Indonesian Islam was the transformiation of the NU’s approach and its becoming more intellectually oriented and involved in modern discourse. It is interesting to see that, in contrast, by B.D. the leader of NU, Abdurrahman Wahid, is considered a politically lonely person today, not to be trusted any more. “He is only liked by the Western Christians”. Because his followers cannot read and write, he can manipulate power over so many people. A. Wahid’s jump from Megawati (daughter of Sukarno and leader of the Democratic Party) to Tutu (daughter of Suharto and involved in business and corruption affairs) is commented on as being the latest manoeuvre cementing people’s loss of confidence in Wahid. Typically for so many reactions of Muhammadiyya-type middle cadres, B.D. would support a government move toward Islamizing the world of state officials. As he put it: “We have to tolerate the jilbab in office and in school”. However, B.D. would give no response when asked if as a corollary, we should also uphold the rights of those who do not want to wear the jilbab. He was just in the last stage of preparing his 10-day trip to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and affirmed that the models of public organization in these countries could serve as a type of order model for Islamic Indonesia. The relationships between Muhammadiyya and state become more obvious in the discussion where we were informed that 70 per cent of Golkar mem160

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition bership is Muhammadiyya. Muhammadiyya and close to ICMI. However, at the same time he tells us that NU is losing influence because of government cooperation. He would not see the contradiction but argued vehemently for the principle split between Muhammadiyya, bound to the phengulu bureaucratic representation, and NU, bound to santri-kiyayi representation. Why is the idea of state power so personalized? Why are organizations personalized? Although in the case of Muhammadiyya, B.D. strongly believes that Amien Rais, the then Chairmman of Muhammadiyya – specifically in his recent anti-government statements – is one thing and Muhammadiyya is another one, he quite often refers to the two organizations in terms of the style of their leaders. However, that Amien Rais’ politics have to be seen quite separately from Muhammadiyya as an organization became fairly clear in recent developments when Amien Rais created his own party and prepared to run in the presidential election later in 1999. Muhammadiyya’s promotion of scientific bureaucratism could be framed as a clear example of acculturation of an inferior to a superior culture, to use the metaphor of Leonard Binder, teacher of both Amien Rais and Nurhulush Madjid in Chicago. Certainly the impact of Binder’s and of Fazlur Rahman’s science politics in addressing the issue of Islam in terms of a liberal and modernist recognition of Islamic civilization bore fruit in Indonesia. Binder is quoted today in his early contention of visioning the massive role of Islam in becoming part of the modern nation-state culture: “If Islam is to be preserved as a social and political force in Indonesia, someone will have to serve as cultural mediator between that Islam and the new national culture in Indonesia” (Binder 1960: 256). It is true that NU, although cooperating largely with the international NGO culture and at the same time having its own members who are part of the government machine and Golkar is virtually free from deep ranging influences of Islamic modernism and State Islam. It is important to note that the networks to the Middle East and US have a special role for Muhammadiyya modernism in featuring their own perception of Islam. To put it in the words of one Gadjamada Lecturer and Gontor-Pesantren graduate, visioning the specific Islamic traditions in Java and the pioneering role of Muhammadiyya: “Muslims in the Middle East, they think religion out as a problem of modernity. We do, meaning we live religion out within modernity”. Certainly, this is a pragmatic statement of Shafi’i Ma’arif, Vice-President of Muhammadiyya, regional member of ICMI, and a resident in Yokyakarta, who has a strong appreciation of Middle Eastern Islamic mod161

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia ernist intellectuals. He believes that the intellectual foundations of Islam in Indonesia are very weak, and that the rethinking of Islam here has not been very serious, specifically with respect to rahma and tolerance. Ma’arif was born in 1935 in rural West Sumatra. He attended the Madrasah Muhammadiyya Ibtida’iyya in Sumpur-Kuddus at the border area to Riau. Then in Yokyakarta he continued in Madrasah Muslimin and Gadjamada University. He came with a scholarship to Ohio State University in Athens where he completed a M.A. thesis on “Islam under Suharto’s Guided Democracy” in 1969. After a short period back in Indonesia he completed his graduate studies in Chicago under Fazlur Rahman – at the time, as he stressed, when Amien Rais was finishing his studies there, and Nurcholish Majid had just arrived. In 1984 he submitted his Ph.D. thesis: “The Islamic Political Ideas as Reflected in the Constitutional Debate in Indonesia”.6 Meanwhile in June 1983 he undertook the Umrah at the holy places in Saudi Arabia. His report on the activities of Muhammadiyya is short and concise: We have 14,000 schools at all levels. He characterizes Muhammadiyya as a self-help network. Official membership numbers about 1 million; however, there are about 30 million informal followers in the various suborganizations such as ‘Asyiyya – the women’s organization – etc. “Muhammadiyya is Muhammad ‘Abduh in action”, he says, however, he would acknowledge that while Muhammad ‘Abduh has triggered off a secular type of intellectualism in Egypt and advocated a clear separation between state and the public role of religion, the Muhammadiyya in Indonesia today is more and more involved in projects which relate to giving a sort of a Muslim shape to state institutions: “We have a positive thinking about the bureaucracy, however, we keep distance and we don’t want to be co-opted within this state, rather we prefer to do social work and work within the society”. He states further in explaining the activities of Muhammadiyya: “How to help the people understand Islam will include Islam as a full human project … schools, hospitals, will help to integrate secular subjects. 25 Muhammadiyya Universities in Indonesia, with Malang being the biggest with three complexes. We maintain a number of orphanages and we also have organized many cooperatives to further economic development.”

Strengthening the “Sumatra-focus” of the organization, besides its having the main office in Yokyakarta, he says: “Before the 1958 uprising in Sumatra, Muhammadiyya was the strongest Muslim organization. However, this uprising weakened the organization.” 162

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition Referring to his leanings towards Western roots of cultural criticism and transposing them to Islam, it is interesting to note the ambiguous mixture of his youth cultural inclinations: “I have studied Iqbal in Persian with Fazlur Rahman and I have also studied, coming from Iqbal, Nietzsche. I have ‘Zarathustra’ at home.” The NU-Networks While the University and the I.A.I.N. staff seem to have stronger leanings to Muhammadiyya and ICMI, Yokyakarta cultural and political Islamic inclinations seem otherwise to lean overwhelmingly on the culturalist and NGO orientations of the NU. The attempt to share in modernizing Islam and to participate in the modernist thought of Islam is most visible here. Most significant is the LKIS 2, a NU venture of young students and intellectuals, organizing discussion groups, translating and publishing books. At first glance, LKIS 2 seems to be a student hostel which was possibly financed by a local sponsor or by NU. When we met the group, their aim was to set up a type of adult education course for those inclined in new Islamic ideas. The “new” is the problem. It seems that the group had worked together for quite some time on translating new books from the Middle East by authors such as Fatima Mernissi, Mohammad Arkoun, Fuad Zakariyya, Said al-Ashmawi, etc. The issues they wish to raise are globalization, gender, Middle Eastern visions of Islamic modernism. It seems that these issues were brought to their minds by young Indonesionists working specifically closely with NU issues and are supported by Abdurrahman Wahid. Two or three of them speak English fairly well, while others have some knowledge of Arabic. They were introduced to us as a very original student youth group at NU, one which is attempting in its demand for democracy and civil society as well as intellectual reconstruction of Islam to go even further than NU and its leader in opposing Indonesian government policies and “allowed” positions. Yet after the short talk and the various interventions of the leaders of the group it became rather clear that nearly all perceptions that were handled among the group were at length channelled through the varying body of international young scholars who “discovered” the intellectual originality of the local group and at the same time include them in their analysis of the neo-modern progressiveness of traditional Islam in Indonesia. It is, therefore, a matter of scholarly responsibility not to fall into the same trap and study the group as an original local Islamic youth group which by its own outlook developed a certain knowledge of the internation163

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia al scene and respective networks but rather to attempt to show how the structure of the group and their intellectual perceptions depend largely on the ideas drained into the local context through international channels. When work started, texts of Arabic thinkers to be translated and discussed had to be selected. Furthermore, lectures and discussions were arranged: one on recent debates in Egypt, one on intercultural discourse between Islam and the West and another on Globalization, Modernity and Islam. It is important to understand that such arrangements and discussions leave behind a sort of crash course on ideas and debates and also an important intellectual affirmation of the local group in terms of their abilities to select and channel ideas they regard as more important than conventional academic inclination. The traditionalist face of NU in the Yokyakarta region is represented by the variety of Pesantren. Al-Munawwir, for example, a place which we approached through LKIS 2 channels. It is a famous NU place with the official name of Pondok Pesantren Yazasan Ali Maksum, al-Munawwir at Krapyak, a suburb of Yokyakarta. The name of the Pesantren derives from K. H. Ali Maksum, a son of Mbah Maksum, one of the founders of NU.7 The Pesantren was founded in 1938 and obviously based on the teachings of kiyayi al-Munawwir, who died in 1942 and was considered as one of the best Arabic and Islam teachers in Central Java. The Pesantren was then led and managed by Ali Maksum, who became a leader of NU and sponsor of Abdurrahman Wahid. A.M. died in December 1989 a few months after the Pesantrens’ greatest event, hosting the 28th Muktamar of the Nahdatul Ulama.8 The small but famous Pesantren Nur al-Umma is located in the outskirts of Yokyakarta. The name by chance includes the initials of NU, Nahdatul Ulama. It was founded only in 1986 by the father of the present kiyayi, Asyhari Marzuqi (another NU leader). The school has a beautiful and substantial mosque; however, the quarters of the students appear poor and provisional. There are 350 male and 150 female students. The model of this pesantren is a rather rare one because it does not intermingle with the government schooling system and only issues ijazas in religious training, ‘usul ad-din and fiqh Therefore, it is called in modernist NU-student circles the salafi-pesantren. In fact it is not more than a student hostel which hosts Islamic students of any Yokyakarta university or subject but training them in early morning and late evening hours in religious matters. Many students who now go to Gadjamada or I.A.I.N. but who were pesantren trained in Gontor and Cumbang, for example, prefer to stay within a traditionalist NU network and so join this pesantren. 164

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition A. Marzuqi is specialist in Qur’an reading and a member of the sufitariqa al-shattariyya. He spent five years in Bagdad, partly in the time when “Gus Dur”, Abdurrahman Wahid, the present NU leader, was there. Similarly the Pesantren of Pandanaran, near Yokyakarta, which we visited during the month of September 1997, is a rather recent creation. This pesantren was founded by kiyayi (equivalent to Sheykh in Arabic) Mufid Mas’ud, in 1976. The people in the pesantren perpetuate a myth that the founder of the pesantren belongs to the family tree of the saint Sunan Pandanaran, who was a student of Wali Sunan Kalijogo, one the nine saints who spread the message of Islam in Indonesia. Until today people go for a ziyarah to see the tomb of the wali Pandanaran in the village of Bayat near Yokyakarta. They read the fatiha, the opening Sura, and uphold the tahlil (repeat la ilah illa Allah). Other visitors make conditional wishes and reconcile Javanese rites with the Muslim prayers. The maqam or tomb is located on top of a hill and the visitors have to climb many stairs. The architecture of the maqam symbolises the fusion of Hindu tradition with Islam. The kiyayis who found new pesantrens always belong to a “mother” pesantren and they relate emotionally and educationally to their teachers. Quite often also the kiyayi marries his daughter to his pupil. This is how religious and family networks are maintained. The Pesantren Pandanaran quite typically is an extension of the above Pesantren al-Munawwir in Krapyak. This is a very traditional way of extending of religious networks in Southeast Asia. However, in the case of the Nahdatul Ulama networks near Yokyakarta the upholding, if not inventing of specific traditions of Islamic learning with reference to the Middle Eastern schools of high learning, the reference to the genealogy of early Indonesian Islam, the intermingling of sufi hierarchies with narratives of Javanese Kingdoms and the envisioning of “ancestors” in far away countries, in Morocco, Iran etc. – all this gives the networks of the Nahdatul Ulama a specific “Javanese” cultural flavour. Pesantren Pandanaran consists of one thousand students, with around 600 hundred female students and the rest males. There are 20 workers who cook, clean and do the maintenance. The pesantren consists of four units or four schools which are: Madrasah Diniyya Takhassus and ‘Ummumiyyah, Madrasah Aliyah Keagamaan, Madrasah Aliyah Umam, Madrasah Thanawiyya. Pesantren Pandanaran is known for teaching the Qur’an for a period of two years; after having finished learning the Qur’an the student becomes a hafiz al-Qur’an and is given the ijaza. Like Nur al-Umma this pesantren is known to be a salafi one. The pesantren has two curricula, one which is recognized by the government in addition to the religious subjects. The 165

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia girls sit with the boys in the same class. The students start their classes at 7: 30 in the morning until 1: 30. After the prayers of ‘Asr they continue with religious subjects until the night. Such schools have a military aspect as regards order and discipline. Since the founding of this pesantren, there are three students who have been sent to study in Arabian countries. There is currently one female student who is studying in Syria and another female and one male who are currently studying at al-Azhar University. The director of this pesantren, Mr. Drs. Hajji Masykur Muhammad, who is married to the daughter of the kiyayi, studied in Cairo at the al-Azhar University and later at the Ma‘had al-Dirassat al-Islamiyya in Zamalek. He was in Cairo from 1972 until 1977 and obtained a degree, a “license” from the Faculty of Shari‘a from al-Azhar. When he was in Cairo he lived in Madinat al-Bu‘uth, the al-Azhar student quarter in ‘Abasiyya. He was proud to have named his son Mohammed Rifa‘at after his teacher in Cairo. This reveals to us the vitality of the Islamic networks ranging to Cairo, and Mecca where the Jawi community (the Southeast Asian origin community in Saudi Arabia) still maintains relations to Indonesia. Not to forget that to study at the religious centres of the Middle East for the Muslim world of Southeast Asia is still a prestigious matter. These returning students are the cultural carriers; they transport back Arabic books, music and certainly all sorts of religious ideologies existent in Egypt.9 To participate in the event of the Hawl in Pondok Pesantren al-Munawwir in Krapyak, Yokyakarta, was of special importance, as it enabled us to trace both the very traditionalist face of NU as well as its deep roots in Islamic Orthodoxy, with blurred references to the Middle East. Hawl means in Arabic circuit or rotation. To be more precise, in Indonesia and Singapore among the Muslim community, it takes a very similar form to the moulids, the patronage feasts of local sheykhs which have a great importance in popular Islam in Egypt for example. The hawl, in fact, is the yearly commemoration of the death the Sheykh or kiyayi (in Indonesian), who founded the Pesantren. The hawl takes place once a year.The hawl we attended in Yokyakarta was in memory of the above-mentioned Kiyayi Hajji Ali Maksum, the founder of the pesantren in Krapyak. He passed away eight years ago, in 1989, and his death is celebrated every year on the 11th of September. We were received by the various members of his family, and in particular by the female members. Reminiscently of the moulids of Egypt, during the night the streets around the pesantren become filled with street vendors selling talismans, exotic gadgets, cassettes, food, sweets, perfume, and all sorts of religious 166

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition books and goods. Tables for eating are set. It becomes a lively occasion; gangs of youths and old people wander around the streets surrounding the religious school. By the end the streets become extremely crowded and to keep together, one has to hold hands tightly. Huge numbers of people, men and women, come to sit in the large complex of the pesantren. Modernity has also entered the remote village life in Indonesia. For instance, televisions and videos are all over the place to transmit the Qur’an readers and other guest speakers, to be watched by the huge numbers of guests. These speakers are placed on the stage. The masses come to listen to Qur’an reading; for instance the small surats of the Qur’an are repeated for a long time followed by the Du‘a. Sessions of tahlil, (the repetition of la illah illa Allah) are performed as well. Groups of women and men move around the pesantren in a very orderly manner. Chairs are set outside in the garden, but loudspeakers for those in the streets are everywhere. There are also speeches in commemoration of religious leaders. The performance lasts until very late at night; the entertainment aspect of the speeches is interesting. Food is offered to the guests too. A great many women are present; they thus sit on the floor. Food is offered on a segregated basis. When we arrived we were received by the grand-daughter of the kiyayi: she received us in the complex where there were only women. Relatives of the Sheykh or kiyayi come from all over Java to attend the feast. We were told that many of the women present in that hawl run their own pesantren for females. They seem to be very independent and have strong characters. The atmosphere among the crowds thronging the streets is festive. A lot of people just come in and out; it takes the form of a visit. Perhaps it should be said that the most important pesantren upholding the NU network in the Yokyakarta area are al-Munawwir, in Krapyat, the Ali Maqsum, Wahid Hashim, Mlangi Pesantren, the Maslahat al-Ra’iyya, Imokiri Pesantren, the Masyarakat Ummum, Nur al-Umma, Kodagde, Asyhari Marzuqi, ra’is shuun asy-syuriyya, wilayat Yokyakarta, and the pesantren of Mufid Mas’ud.

Two Javanese Leaders of Islam in Indonesia: Two Offices and the Fate of Indonesian Politics Perhaps the differences of “mentality” are best signified in presenting a short description of the morphological and iconographic setting of the offices of the two most prominent leaders of Islam in Indonesia today. If 167

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia this belongs to the structure of reality which interknits the ideas and the life perspective of people so strongly, the differences in the everyday office situation of this two Islamic leaders, who both play an important role in Indonesian politics, should perhaps also signify some of the differences in their practical outlook. Paradoxically, the Muhammadiyya was founded in Yokyakarta (not in Padang or Bukittinggi) and maintains its main office here. In contrast, the NU (representing Java if not East-Java Islam most strongly) resides in Jakarta, in the classical area of business, government and banking. Muhammadiyya central office in Yokyakarta is situated in an area close to the Kraton of the Yokyakarta sultans. It is a neat setting of colonial bungalow-style restored offices with a little green courtyard, a very busy place with many officials, library, documentation, computers etc. In contrary, the NU office is a building styled in the modernity of the 1950s or early 1960s; however, it rather looks somewhat under-organized and appealingly outdated, possibly ressembling similar offices of public organizations in Cairo or Baghdad. There is a personal secretary, a sort of Middle Eastern style farrash or coffee-cooker, a cat, dust, furniture from the 1950s, reminiscent of the “old” class. In other words the NU office very much resembles the offices of leading sheykhs of al-Azhar in Cairo. Quite contrary to this, the Muhammadiyya office in Yokyakarta clearly prides itself on its modern NGO-style setting of bureaucratic competence. Accordingly, the leaders’ system of setting up and keeping appointments differs strongly. A. Wahid – beyond a comprehensive agenda which is arranged through family and home based – seems to come to his office for special appointments, no rush, no other guests waiting, no pressing for other dates; our discussions were often very personal, and our interlocutor was often very theoretical, spiritually eager to develop ideas, eager to be understood by his guests. Amien Rais, in contrast, seems to have a permanent full booking of dates and various “antechambers” with people waiting, and other guests “on hold”. The impression is that the place is very busy and that dates are fixed, sometimes not to be kept because the leader had to lead his staff’s prayers in the “office-mosque” etc. Such religious undertakings, for Wahid, are sometimes a very private matter or highly sensitive public matters with thousands of people participating. The “office” is not the place for prayer; it is one of Wahid’s places for meeting people and for discussing or presenting views. To engage Amien Rais in such an enterprise, one can hardly catch him in his own office. However, he is and was friendly enough to arrange for special sessions with a more friendly setting in the evenings in one of the Yokyakarta quarters of Muhammadiyya in a social services centre. We never came across or were introduced to other bypassers in A. 168

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition Wahid’s NU offices in Jakarta. Amien Rais’ main office was always frequented by other people on the waiting list. It should be noted here that on one of these occasions we met Permadi, the “magician”, a type of postmodern “dukun”, dressed “Foucault-style” – a famous man in Jakarta power arenas. We met him in Amien Rais’ waiting room in Yokyakarta and we casually engaged in an intensive discussion and exchange of views. Here in September 1997 he solemnly predicted that Soeharto’s Government would end within 6 months and that everything would break down. He seemed to be close to nearly all army, government and religious leaders and his “postmodern” black outfit resembled that of a very fine intellectual, a product of the “old” Yokyakarta class around the Kraton. In this context it is not astonishing that Permadi predicted in 1997 the revolution and decline of the New Order regime. In spring 1999 he anticipated a quite different scenario: “the highly-reputed soothsayer Permadi Sattrio Wiwoho, a trained jurist, thinks the political comeback of Suharto is possible”.10

Amien Rais and Muhammadiyya 11 Amien Rais – in autumn 1997 Chairman of Muhammadiyya – was born in 1944 in Solo, and grew up in Muhammadiyya schools in Solo and Yokyakarta. In 1974, he completed his M.A. in Political Science at Gadjamada University in Yokyakarta. In 1975 he entered the School of Middle Eastern and Arabic Studies at Chicago University as a postgraduate. His supervisor was no less a scholar than Leonard Binder and for Binder in 1978/9 he undertook field studies in Cairo, entering the networks of the Ihwan alMuslimin for research purposes. He met Muhammad Mashur and other leading figures of the Ihwan in Cairo and Alexandria. When reporting his stay in Egypt, he was very emotional about the fact that he was first, coming from America, received with great suspicion, but then, however, having performed well in leading the prayers and showing his responsibilities as a real Muslim, he was taken most seriously and welcomed very warmly into the brotherhood. In 1981, he obtained his Ph.D. from Chicago. The thesis was never published; however it relates to a comparative study of the Ihwan al Muslimin in Egypt and the Masjumi in Indonesia. Returning to Indonesia in 1981, he joined the Muhammadiyya office in Yokyakarta as an employee in the Da‘wah department, and was very engaged in the training of young cadres for the Da‘wah movement of the organization. 1985 he became one of the 13 members of the Central Board of Muhammadiyya and 169

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Chairman of the majlis tabligh wa da’wa. This was a kind of breakthrough, a position from which all former chairmen of the organization had emerged. He says he was very proud, because he was the first to rise to such positions without having had his training in the traditional Islamic schools: “I came from secular education”. His policy then was to co-opt and recruit friends and colleagues from the Gadjamada University to central positions in the organization: “I recruited seven Ph.D.s in different fields to be member of the majlis”. This he considered as important because their biggest success was the Da‘wah Muhammadiyya Symposium launched in 1990, restructuring the organization and its aims into a more direct approach to mobilize sections of the society. In 1990 at the national Congress of Muhammadiyya he was elected Chairman with 88 per cent of the votes, the highest ever reached in such an election, as he proudly stated. The organization “… has 3 million official members and about 28 million followers in various sub-organizations.”12 We have memorized the ideas of Muhammad ‘Abduh and his fatwa on Zakat criticizing its being used purely for the building of mosques, instead we are building schools and hospitals. Eleven thousand high and primary schools, a hundred and eighty-four hospitals, a hundred and fourteen universities, seven of them big universities. We have no appreciation for the remnants of feudalism, namely, to kiss the hand of an ‘alim, etc. We want to encourage critique for the sake of the improvement of our work. From where does our organizational structure derive? The answer is, as we are told by our elders: almahad bila nizham iqlibuhu al-batil bi-nitham (an organization without order turns it into a meaningless order). We have to be ordered, disciplined, we must not take Islam half heartedly. The Qur’an teaches you to be punctual in time and place. This is missing in NU. We invited NU leaders like Abdarrizaq Fahruddin, the Chairman at the time, to our 1990 Congress in Solo and normal NU members were very surprised how openly we spoke to this leader, even though we were very young and critical. He appeared to NU people as untouchable. Today, this position of the ra’is ‘am would be filled by Elias Ruchiat. No, otherwhise we have good relations with NU which can be seen in the fact that Gus Dur visited me. In Egypt there is a gap between ‘ulama and normal people, they form a special class. However, in Indonesia there is an integration of the ‘ulama and the secular intellectuals. What we call Muslim intellectuals today are in fact secularly trained intellectuals who are similarly considered as authorities in Islamic matters. This integration is important for Indonesia. On a broader level we are very happy today that our relations with NU are now 170

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition very cooperative. There is an exchange of ideas which leads into a new convergence. We all feel the need for this convergence. Is there the possibility of a future disintegration of the country? Yes, the danger exists. We have 200 local languages and 3 official religions, however, what we have witnessed in the past is that we all, all leaders in groups and organizations, that we are spiritually indebted to “unity in diversity” (our national symbol: pineka tunga lika) as a basic principle of national foundation. We all stand as such within this debt to struggle for a pluralistic society and nation. Our conclusion is that it is too dangerous to question the principle of Pancasila. Islam has to be build as a religion in which there is mutual respect as regards other religions. In this respect we can see that Islamic Renaissance in Asia can be a model for a unity of Islam and the Islamic world, putting Islam on a footing as a global religion and giving it the status of global recognition again. Here we point to the inner conviction shown in the performance of Ramadan at Gadjamda University were Muslim students without any basic organizational display there expressed their Islamic feelings in gatherings and candle-lit discussions at night. Yes, there is a special Islam-state relation in Indonesia. For example, the state supplies Muhammadiyya schools with teachers; however, it would not interfere with matters of the organization. We are bureaucratically thus interlinked with the state, but we keep our spiritual and active independence. There is no state machine of Islam. But also there is nothing like a purely independent Islamic civil society! – These contradictions of the Muhammadiyya model as outlined by Amien Rais are probably well represented in a more academic Muhammadiyya statement: “(1) the revitalization of Islamic culture in order to prepare the ground for Islamic polity, (2) the politicization of Islam through its involvement, although indirect, in practical politics, (3) the ‘depoliticization’ of Islam in the sense of a withdrawal from practical politics, and (4) the repoliticization of Islam, by exercizing allocative politics” (Syamsuddin 1995: 40).13

A closer look to the Muhammadiyya strategies in recent years and specifically after the foundation of ICMI, would track down the concept of “allocative politics” as an attempt to use principles of representative democracy for a strategic implementation of some Islamic principles in a framework of adequate Muslim representation in state politics, specifically with respect to marriage laws (1973, Mass Organization, 1885, the so-called Pancasila problem, Islamic Judiciary, 1989 (ibid.: 48), but even more though 171

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia lately with respect to parliamentary and ministerial representation of Muslims.14 There is a very ambiguous situation within the Muhammadiyya with respect to the potential political role of Amien Rais. On the one hand, we can see his strong appreciation for American liberalism and constitutional representative democracy. His son, having been born in America, holds an American passport, on the other hand, there is an unmistakeable continuous anti-Western, anti-Christian resentment which certainly derive from his close connections to the Middle Eastern realms and the Muslim Brotherhood. He has a point in criticizing the diversity of treatment of passport holders from Muslim countries among themselves and of people from Western countries like the USA, who can travel everywhere in the Middle East without visas. He told us his story of a stop-over in Cairo, where his son was allowed to move freely around the city and visit the sites and see the places where his father had lived as a student, while he himself, the father, with his Indonesian passport, had to spend the night in the Airport-Hotel. As is a well known fact and documented in the coverage of the election campaign period in Indonesia by the international press, there were many incidents where Christian churches and communities have been aggressed by Muslims, principally in NU areas. Abdurraman Wahid has interpreted this as a type of army and government involvement to lower the liberalist credibility of NU in international circles, while at the same time ICMI and Muhammadiyya members close to ICMI had been preparing the ideological grounds for inter-religious and interethnic violence. There is no doubt that in this issue there is a certain rivalry between the two leaders and their organisations. Both claim to be victims of government policies. Amien Rais says he was literally forced to step down from the Chairmanship of the Dewan Pakar of ICMI and to become an ordinary member due to his government criticism in the so-called goldmine-affair – this was said in a personal communication and obviously Amien was summoned by Habibie on the suggestion of the president and asked to resign. Indeed, it is finally the government which takes advantage of the various cultural interethnic and local-political terrains to redirect the masses according to a majority-based centre of power. This state of the art in Indonesian politics seems to be a permanent playing with fire, where the game itself is only played by very few individuals who control huge organizations or constituencies of great social and economic relevance. As a result of the “Pancasilaization”, Muhammadiyya started to rethink 172

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition the basic ideas of the organization with respect to new emphases on the relationship between religion and community organizations and the relationship between religion and Pancasila itself (Syamsuddin 1995: 54). This was also done with a MUH move on the Draft Law on National Education with specific reference to religious education. Allocative politics, therefore, seem to be based on the strategic sense of the relevance of Islam as a religion to modern times, “and of politics as an agent for implanting Islamic values into modern society” (Samson 1972: 118, q. Syamsuddin 1995: 61). All these strategies, in the end, could easily be, as some observers do, regarded as a strong inclination to religious conservatism in contrast to the reformist modernist claims and a theological dead-lock with a certain dogmatic involution that could lead to the failure of real modernist religious thought being disseminated in the society (see ibid.: 63ff.).

Nahdatul Ulama and Abdurrahman Wahid The new entente between government and NU is described by Andrée Feillard is finding its manifest expression in the modernization of teaching in the NU pesantren and specifically the cross teaching of secular and religious subjects there (Feillard 1993: 94). In the 1970s the government managed to open the madrasahs up in introducing a curriculum with 70 per cent general and 30 per cent religious subjects, which allowed for the NU schools to send their students for higher education in public schools and universities. This was received very well by NU leaders, who felt the necessity to open up to the society and economic development (ibid.). It should be explained in advance that the classic studies on the history of Indonesian politics and religion have never given the NU any straightforward importance. Fatefully, NU was bemoaned corrupt and opportunist by Western scholars. However, for more than 10 years now, NU has been involved in one political or economic initiative after another and this is, obviously the reason why the NU today increasingly attracts the attention of scholars from all over the world. The major point of these projects is that the history of the NU has to be rewritten in the light of its recent rationalism, openness, democratism and national inclinations rather than pure traditionalist religious attitudes. By and large, a new understanding of Islam and politics in Indonesia 173

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia should emerge through Andrée Feillard’s re-evaluation of NU politics (1995), which arose after times of army collaboration against the communists and of crisis in oppositional politics, as a social, religious organization which in a return to the spirit of 1926 enhanced the chances for a deeper penetration of the society, taking its depoliticization as an opportunity to exercise influence, including political influence, everywhere – in the army, in all three political parties, and in non-governmental organizations. The strategy worked, and NU became a stronghold of pro-democracy activism and until 1994 a focus the movement for more civil rights and social engagement. However, already with the foundation of ICMI in 1990 a re-alignment between the “traditional” Islamic modernists (Muhammadiyya) and the authoritarian regime emerged: tensions between ICMI and Abdurrahman Wahid were part of a broader build up of Islam in Indonasian politics. We should review the talks with Amien Rais and his case with the government in 1996 on the gold-mining issue, plus the re-alignment of A. Wahid with the daughter of Soeharto as the signs of fundamental re-arrangements in Indonesian politics and the modernists’ answer to the challenge of NU to return to the game of modernist politics. Islamic traditionalism, therefore, is to be re-evaluated in its historical and contemporary outlooks with respect to its deep commitments to nationalist values, openness to social and educational reform and their dialogue with Javanese culture. In this context we have to understand the new insights of the Failey/ Barton book. It is advertised by Abdurrahman Wahid as “the first non-Indonesian book to discuss Nahdatul Ulama (NU) in detail. It gives an interesting picture of the organization as it has developed both politically and morally” (Wahid 1996: xiii).

As Abdurrahman Wahid states, “Traditionalists are widely supposed to be rather backward in orientation and ossified in their understanding of Islamic society and thought. … their determined adherence to the scholasticism of al-Asy’ari and al-Maturidi is said to have resulted in a fatalistic understanding of submission to God’s will …. The articles of this book in fact give another picture: that of a community with sufficient vitality to be able to absorb and deal with social change in a rational fashion” (ibid.).

He stresses various areas of profound importance: 174

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition – the right of women to obtain an education equal to that of their male counterparts – readiness to apply principles of Islamic law to issues such as family planning, birth control and modern banking practices (“demonstrating a capacity to adjust religious imperatives to the realities of life.”) He then stresses the “rigidity of thought evident in certain puritanical movements in the Islamic world – movements often referred to as ‘modernist’ – NU’s religious teachings allow flexibility. … NU’s role in contemporary Indonesia has been to bring about changes in the attitudes and world-views of a very large number of Muslims, especially in adapting to the challenges of modernization” (ibid.: xiv).

According to Horikoshi (1977), a Japanese dissertation on NU, which A. Wahid quotes, this view of the role of pesantren kiyayi, which was held to constitute one of the most important elements of NU leadership (the view of Geertz seeing the kiyayi as a “cultural broker” selecting which aspects of modernization to accept and which to reject, also implies that the “cultural brokers” are themselves lacking in original opinions and approaches.), was refuted by the research of Hiroko Horikoshi. In fact, according to Wahid she showed the social function of kiyayi in West Java and “that the impetus for change comes from within the core of religious thought following a prolonged interaction with the processes of modernization itself” (Wahid 1996: xv). Abdurrahman Wahid then describes these functions with respect of the 1980s and 1990s NU moves, through “a series of forums to discuss the relationship between established Islamic teaching and different aspects of modern life such as science and technology, law reform, the role of parliament and local legislatures, organ transplantation for human beings, and the functions of modern economic institutions like insurance companies and stock exchanges” (ibid.).

The ambiguity of such a stand in local and national politics of change is well documented in such statements as the following: “This ability to develop positive responses to the challenges of modernization is dependent upon the resilience of NU’s core teachings in withstanding the full impact of Westernization. It has, however, been severely tested by developments over the past five years, when NU has stood accused of infidility to the established under-

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia standing of the ‘Islamic concept of life’. This has occurred in the face of a push for the ‘Islamization of society’ on the part of those who wish to legislate the teachings of Islam into national life. Included in this group are the politically active sections of the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI)” (ibid.: xvi).

It is very important here that Abdurrahman Wahid in 1986, already long before his alleged betrayal realigning NU with the centre of Government, sees the thread of ICMI and part of the Muhammadiyya, who, in filtering their politics in government circles, opted for a complete, and in the view of Wahid and many others, dangerous, project of totalizing Islam within the Indonesian society. He states: “The call to ‘Islamize’ important aspects of modern life, including technology and science even the economy (through the development of ‘Islamic Economics’), clearly demonstrates a serious challenge to the kind of ‘nativization of Islam’ that NU has striven to achieve” (ibid.).

The “tradtionalist” way to modernity is more clearly concerned with cultural and symbolic issues than with the radical transformation of Islam into a project of political and social transformation. Wahid’s abandonment of the concept of developing an “Indonesian society where Muslims are free to follow the teachings of their religion voluntarily” was strongly critisized by other Muslim organizations. Abdurrahman Wahid then calls for the development of Islamic teachings for “social ethics” rather than for legislation and states: “This notion of the ‘Islamic way of life’ (syar’ah) operating as moral force in society rather than a set of formal rules, is at odds with the ideal of achieving an ‘Islamic society’ which has become an article of faith for the Islamists” (ibid.).

It is also interesting to note that there is a straightforward concept of difference towards ICMI and Muhammadiyya – much more direct than vice versa, as we have seen in the statements of Amien Rais. Wahid states: “The passionate discourse between the two approaches is a sign of the mutual suspicion between NU and a large part of the Islamic movement in Indonesia today. Of course, we can resolve the contradiction between these two approaches in a more positive fashion by saying that many Muslims in Indonesia welcome both the Indonesianization of Islam and the Islamization of Indonesia” (ibid.).

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition In a discussion with LKIS in Yokyakarta students jokingly revealed their criticisms of the ICMI and the mainstream leaders of Islamic organizations, claiming that “we are jahl (pagan in knowledge)”. – Yes, but there is the hope for the youth and its future, if the youth does not know, who should? “The youth is a myth, in reality the youth does not exist in this country!” One piece of striking evidence about the relationship of the Middle East and Southeast Asia in the reconstruction of Islamic thought and intellectualism is the fact that, indeed, the type of intellectual who would figure in the Middle East as “secular” – i. e. by training and social status and beyond taking into account his devotion and basic inclination towards Islam – would figure in the “Asian” context as the “Muslim Intellectual” – i. e. basically secular by training and social status, but nevertheless adhering to Islamic thought and implementing it in a social or political endeavour. This has been recently discussed with great effect on the different levels of self-understanding. What then is the new Indonesian intellectualism’s basic problem? It is how to come to grips with the constitutional and actual power expressions of the Indonesian state and political culture? The essential point there is how to circumvent the dominant idea of the political class, namely, that the military lies at the essence of political rule (al-sulta). The so-called new intellectualism is a result of the “Islamic Legalism and Formalism” reactivated by political Islam throughout the Muslim World since the Iranian Revolution. On the other hand, the history of relative suppression of Islam in Indonesia by a Government of declared secular rule and absolute military power contributed to giving organizations and leaders of Islam a leading function in cultural and social guidance. This is where in Indonesia the basic principles of the new challenge of Islam developed with respect to the idea of a social re-actualization and intellectual and cultural role of Islam with “low” political aspirations. The position then developed was against an inflexible religio-political behaviour and at the same time the inflexible perception of the national principles and nationalism and military government. This is where Effendy sees five priniciples of the new intellectual movement: 1. “No clear-cut evidence that the Qur’an and Sunnah oblige Muslims to establish an Islamic state” 2. Islam “contains a set of socio-political principles”. But Islam (s.o.) “is not an ideology” (s.o.). There is no reductionism in Islam. 3. Islam and its understanding should (s.o.) “not be confined to its formal 177

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia and legal sense … it should be based on thorough interpretations which apply its textual or doctrinal denotation to the contemporary situation” 4. There is no priesthood in Islam and, therefore, no absolute reality in Islam to be grasped for the humanity. True knowledge is to God only. Therefore, there is the need of (s.o.) “transformation of Islam into a contemporary set of principles and practices” (Effendy 1995: 106f.). The elaborators of this story are HMI activists: Ahmad Wahib, Dawam Rahardjo, Mansur Hamid, Djohan Effendi, Mukti Ali, Nurcholish Madjid.15 Beyond these characteristics of Islamic modernism and intellectualism in Indonesia, NU and its leadership base their modernist cultural outlooks quite strongly on the myths and the strength of popular Islam. Western study of Islam has always been perplexed by the tolerant duality between practical everyday organization of life and religious law, between homogeneity of rite and doctrine and variety of group practices and perceptions, between what has become in recent years the conceptual perception of the gap between scriptural and oral Islamic culture (Arkoun), between official and popular Islam (Waardenburg). As for Indonesia this differentiation has led to the fatal understanding that Indonesian Islam in its peripheral position to the centres of scriptural Islamic culture is essentially shaped by local traditions and a relatively unchallenged continuity of pre-Islamic cultural self-perception. Indonesian culture and politics, therefore, have been largely perceived as the continuous clash between the realms of local non-Islamic cultural inclinations and re-emerging waves of scripturalist Islamic hegemony, rooted in Middle Eastern Islam but essentially alien to the autochthonous local cultures of Southeast Asia. The kiyayi-santri antagonisms which made the case for a powerful theory of interpretative cultural anthropology (Geertz) could be described as a myth of modern Indonesian self-perception, a form of an unchallenged dominant framework of understanding, both local and Western, of what Indonesian Islam and politics is about. The inconsistencies and ambiguities of this situation have recently been exploited by young Western scholars to point to the potential intellectual richness of Southeast Asian, and most notably of Indonesian Islam, as a source of modernist mobilization and intellectual foundation of social regulation with respect to the tasks of technological, moral and mass cultural transformation and globalization (see Abaza, Barton, Feillard, van Bruinessen). The message is to employ a relatively open situation of religious intellectual discourse which links itself more and more to Western centres of Islamic learning and increasingly frees itself from Middle Eastern bondage and burdens of history for a take-off into a new step into Is178

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition lamic modernity. For some a relatively marginal concept of the late Fazlur Rahman, Islamic neo-modernism, has become a sort of trade-mark of Indonesian intellectual Islam.

An Example: Abdurrahman Wahid Abdurrahman Wahid is a rare player on the Indonesian political and intellectual scene. Coming from a line of well-known Indonesian religious scholars, Abdurrahman Wahid, the leader of the Nahdatul Ulama (Renaissance of Scholars) is perhaps a real representative of the Javanese way of Islamization or of what Muchtar Naim would have called the “Javanese system”. His intellectual roots and his early publications lie fully within the boundaries of that system (Sumardi 1983: 86). It is interesting to note in this respect the very close relationship between the institution of the pondok pesantren and the history of Javanese Islamization of which Denys Lombard (1990, II: 77-130) so convincingly reminds us.16 Wahid’s capacities of intellectual absorption and syncreticism are enormous. His call for an enlightened civil religion on the basis of traditional Islam and in consideration of the specific local forms of Islamization are unique. With this he remains an enlightened representative of political Islam in Indonesia. Abdurrahman Wahid is perhaps the best known figure in Indonesian Islam today. His name has its own entry in the new Oxford Encyclopaedia of Islam by the Japanese Indonesianist Nakamura (1995). His ideas and his biography have been frequently noted by Indonesianists.17 Born in 1940 in East Java, Wahid is the grandson of the NU-founder, the Kiyayi Hasyim Asy’ari. Perhaps what is most significant for the formation of Abdurrahman Wahid is that he studied in the Middle East in the 1960s, first for two years at al-Azhar University in Cairo, then for four years in Baghdad, Iraq, and not at a Western University. However, he is well-versed in both Western and Arabic Islamic Culture, and he always makes it a point that he never felt really at ease with the rigid traditional religious training at al-Azhar University in Cairo and that his intellectual formation was strongly linked with the emerging national secular culture in Egypt and Iraq at that period of study and formation (see also Abaza 1994: 87-90). Wahid was in the 1980s and early 1990s a constant discussant at conferences on Islamic issues both in the Arabic and in the Western world. He is known for the critical and controversial positions he has adopted in many aspects of religious life and politics. I have had five encounters of between two and three hours each with 179

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Wahid in Jakarta (in May 1995). Three took place in the Central Building of Nahdatul Ulama in Jakarta, one in his late mother’s and now family house in Jakarta on the occasion of Aidul Adha and one in my home in Geelong, Australia during his conference visit in Melbourne in June 1995. All interviews were conducted together with Mona Abaza and our latest interview was published in al-Ahram Weekly (Wahid 1998). “In Indonesia” he comments, “we have developed original thought of our own, and have a store of our own experiences” (ibid.). I will summarize his stated vision of Islamization and Indonesian Islam in a few main points: First, his conceptualization of the history of Islamization remains unambiguously linked to the views of Western orientalists, mainly Dutch scholars and, giving it a very secular, objectivistic flair, he is influenced by leading Indonesian historians such as Taufiq Abdullah. Second, he is an intellectual and a politician. That means he perceives Islam in terms of Indonesian day-to-day politics. Third, with varying degrees of success, he attempts to reposition Islamic traditionalism into a modern religion within the context of civil society. As relates to Islamization and Javanese syncreticism, Wahid deliberately aims to show how to ground the modern vision of a traditionalist Islamic tolerance in the Javanese model and the history of Islamization of Java. For Wahid, there are three waves and accordingly three traditions of Islamization in Southeast Asia: First, there is the trade relation to the Middle East which dates back to pre-Islamic times. This very early inclusion of the region into the process of Arab expansion is characteristic for the early wave of “Islamization” as well. He sees Arab Muslims coming to the region without any real effect with respect to the spread of the religion of Islam. For him, the discovery of the tomb stone of Fatima Bint Maimuna from the 10th century brought evidence for strong ties to Morocco at that time, especially Fez. He also points to the presence of many Maghrebi names in Indonesia. In addition there were the ancient trade routes from Oman, as he believes from the 5th and 6th century onwards. His point here are the Arab sources and stories of travel and trade with the Southeast Asian Archipelago beyond religious expansion. Wahid then develops three stages of Islamization as Islamic expansion, and as the stages in which the intensive relationship between Southeast Asia and the Middle East evolved, and he treats it as “a very important question for our own self-understanding”: In the 17th and the 18th century, we have the Islamization based on a 180

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition Kurdish element through Mecca, to which Martin van Bruinessen referred in an article published in Bijdragen about three years ago (possibly: Van Bruinessen 1987). A wave that continued in the late 19th century. On top of that we have the relationship to al-Azhar which is a more recent phenomenon in the late 19th and 20th century. There are of course Iranian and Shi’a episodes of influence. We know from the celebration of the Ashura at the tomb of Burhanuddin in Uluk and the tabuh tradition in West-Sumatra. In Java we have the extraordinary phenomenon in the village of Ciboleh (this is to be distinguished from the West-Javanese Cirebon18) in the north-eastern part of central Java, where about 180 gears ago Hajji Mutamakin was summoned by a religious judge for spreading “deviating” traditions of Islam, namely Shi’ism.19 This man then wrote a long poem on the proper way of teaching Islam. Until today however on the Ashura day hundreds of thousands of people congregate in the village with the story that the convert to the proper Islam later became the son-in-law of the King. The very village until today produces the most knowledgeable ‘ulama and it is believed that the man was the grand-grand-father of gus dur himself. Then, certainly, there is this strong Egyptian influence which is based on the dominant role of the al-Azhar University in Islamic learning, as the dissertation of Mona Abaza has clearly shown, but also a long history of deep relationships between Egypt and Indonesia. Quite similarly to Naim, Islamization has for Wahid (who in contrast is the leader of a traditionalist organization)20 a very modernist connotation. On the question of his vision of Islam and politics in Indonesia today, he elaborates as follows: NU has a very strong democratic tradition. Wherever in modern history of Indonesia the right of shura was minimized we disagreed. This is why we left the Masjumi party. We have an organizational body which is based on two leading committees a) al-hay’a al-tanfidhiyya b) al-hay’a al-shuriyya (administrative and consultative). The latter has the highest authority. Middle Eastern influences? No! For us al-Faruqi21, for example, is the continuation of al-Ihwan al-muslimun. However, with the decreasing influence of Saudi-Arabia, Faruqui’s influence has decreased. Our younger generation is engaged and at the same time satisfied with the search for truth and sources of knowledge without any fixed position. The most respected and most supported position is the one that has been called Neo-Modernism and is propagated by figures like Nurchulish Majid.22 He, however, never reveals a clear position on democracy and human rights. He opens his mouth only when things are safe. Suharto 181

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia appointed him to the presidency of the Commission of Human Rights. He never, however, revealed his real position. When there was the famous case of the woman strike leader in central Java who was killed by an army squad in detention and then the Commission wanted to open the case against the army, N. Majid disappeared for two weeks and since then we call him the “Sheykh who was found with a piece of HAM – name of the committee – in his throat”.

Madjid, ICMI and the Islamic Future Madjid is another example of the Javanese “neo-modernist” brand; as Abdurrahman Wahid indicated, his influence was in decline already before the 1998 events. We met him in Jakarta in September 1997 in his house in a very pleasant and polite atmosphere and for a couple of hours we had a very intensive discussion. It is important to understand that N. Madjid (b. 1939) belongs to one of the Cumbang kiyayi families, which were closely related to each other, and Madjid’s father was very close to the grandfather of Abdurrahman Wahid, K.H. Hasjim Asj’ari. Whether things are really so clearcut as Madjid puts them? For him Muhammadiyya people are mainly urban petit bourgeois, while NU people come from rural areas: “it is clear that they are rural, because they were non-cooperative against the Dutch, they were aristocrats”. His first pesantren was Tegal Sari in the South of Ponorogo, the leading kiyayi there being K.H. Raden Hassan Besari, who came from Solo aristocrats and who was charged with the education of princes and princesses there. Many kiyayi have an aristocratic background and they are often closely related to each other, memorizing all the family background. He reports of his time in the pesantren that he was not happy there, because he was teased as the son of a Masjumi father and because Masjumi had split from NU. His mother was a campaigner for Masjumi on the village level. “We stayed with Masjumi because of the Great Sheykh Hasjim Asj’ari, the grandfather of gus dur. I then went to Gontor, it was a kind of Masjumi pesantren, and in 6 years I could speak Arabic. When I was finished there I was offered the chance to go to al-Azhar, but then there was a crisis in the monetary system and the chances of going to Egypt were slim. So I was sent to Ciputet to the kulliyya al-adab in 1961. I became active in the student movement in 1963 and in 1963 elected president. At that time, I was given the chance to go to al-Azhar in Cairo again but I gave the

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition chance to the son of Abdullah Shukri, who was the head at Gontor at the time. In 1978 I went to Chicago and of course later many Muslim intellectuals in ICMI came to study there. Immaduddin, for example, who later invited Fazlur Rahman to Indonesia. Immaduddin wanted the experience of the intellectuals in America to be extended to all, and at least in 1986 we began pioneering this idea. Immaduddin came from Bandung and he gave a lectgure in Malang. Emir Salem, a modern man and easy-going person, who does not pretend to be important, approached Habibie, who at first was very reluctant until an intervention came from Alam Shah. Habibie contacted his German connection Pertaso Sudira, one of the founders of HMI. Then I wrote a paper about what is the basic idea. We wanted an intellectual movement similar to the Young Muslim League or Young Java in the 1930s. At that time a young student at the Medical College, the young aristocrat Shammsul Rijal, a Raden, made the suggestion to promote nationalism by teaching Islam.23 It was Saleh Affif who convinced Habibie to contact Soeharto on the matter.”

Thus Soeharto read Madjid’s paper and called for a meeting on a Thursday. “Soeharto was fasting so we went without any food and were fasting as well. The meeting took 6 hours. Habibie was still very reluctant, but then Soeharto said: This is very good. The Muslims offer themselves. Habibie was still afraid to take this on, because of lack of religious knowledge. Soeharto dictated him what Islam is about: Muhammadiyya, Qur’an and Hadith, and told Habibie, now you can be a leader.”

Madjid’s paper was incorporated into the ICMI inaugural speech in Malang in 1990. Madjid was “only” elected Vice-President of the Council. “When we came back from Malang everybody expressed an idea of a khitta (plan) for the organization and was afraid that ICMI would encompass all streams of thought. We had failed to draw a khitta, but then I wrote a khitta. But the personality of Soeharto overshadowed all the ideas and the intellectual and not political ends of ICMI. He merely wanted the support of the ‘Muslims’ and underestimated the free-mindedness of intellectuals and scholars. This was the simple-mindedness of Soeharto. When Amien Rais – in the goldmine affair – made his statement, Soeharto was so upset. He summoned Habibie and Amien Rais had to leave the Council.”

Asked about Gus Dur, Madjid went back to the history. “NU was always non-cooperative with the Dutch and they called for the quest to sacrifice, but it was to sacrifice the poorest and the most deprived. The kiyayis are a force to seek the sacrifice, but physically they were disqualified. In those days in the

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia 1950s and 1960s there was a break between the ulama, the pesantren and the secular intellectuals. Gus Dur paved the way to modernization. This process is not finished”.24

Notes 1

2

3 4

5

6 7 8 9

10 11 12

Lance Castles and Herb Faith are visiting scholars at the Gadjamada University in Yokyakarta. I have had various dicussions in the period between 5th to 11th of August specifically with Lance Castles whose sympathy with “enlightened” Islam seemed to me unlimeted and challenging all over. I will not specifically deal with ICMI here. The organization remained a cover up undertaking in cultural and Islamic policies of the Soeharto regime. Interesting to note that Amien Rais and Nurchulus Madjid followed membership while Abdurrahman Wahid stayed apart. As for the specific Islamic policies of the New Order regime see Makka and Mashad (1997); Mahasin (1990); McVey (1983); Schwartz (1994); Liem Shoe Liong (1988); Hill (1988); Hefner (1993). Continued Discussions with Lance Castles (4th and 25th August). As with “Progressive Islam”, see the Natzir sponsored Journal of the Leiden and Amsterdam based Indonesian Muslim Youth Movement edited by Syed Hussein Alatas from 1952 to 1953. 19th August, discussion with Burhanudin Daya, Dean of Fakultas ‘Usuluddin, I.A.I.N. Sunan Kalijaga, Yokya and M. Yousron Asrofie, Lecturer. For a summary of the thesis see Ma’arif (1985). For a summary of the family story of Mbah Maksum see Lombard (1990, II: 130). A full account of the event gives van Bruinessen (1991). As for the very intense cultural exchanges between Egypt and Indonesia and the student and teacher networks between Cairo and Indonesia see Abaza (1994). This was reported by Erhard Haubold in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 3.2.1999 (28), p. 14. Interview with Amien Rais, Chairman of Muhammadiyya, Yokykarta 18.9.97. It is certainly noteworthy that figures given differ from those given by the Vice-President of Muhammadiyya Syafi’i Ma’arif (s.a.), however

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4. Java Islam: Civil Society and Symbolic Politics of Tradition

13

14

15

16 17

18 19 20

21

one should be aware of the the fact that this is a highly populated and relatively lowly homogenized in organization “archipelago”-country. M. Din Syamsuddin, “The Muhammadiyya Da‘wa and Allocative Politics in the New Order Indonesia”, Studia Islamika 2 (2), 1995, p. 40, pp. 35-71. Personal communication with the Chairman, Amien Rais, on August 22, 1997, referring to only 78 per cent parlamentary seats being hols by Muslims with almost 90 per cent Muslim population given and an only recently as part of the suiccess of ICMI established majority of Muslim Ministers in Cabinett. As for the HMI impact on “modernizing” the Islamic discourse in Indonesia in the 1970s and 1980s see further: Allan Samson’s “Indonesian Islam Since the New Order” (Samson 1985) and Muhammad Kamal Hassan’s “Muslim Intellectual Responses to ‘New Order’ Modernization in Indonesia” (Hassan 1982). See allso Tanji (1979), Federspiel (1992) and Barton (1995). As for a more recent account of rural Islamization in the “New Order” period see Hefner (1987). There are no limits for Indonesionists close to the NU scene to invent approbriate terminology for Abdurrahman Wahids overwhelming intellectual capacities for integration and absorbtion. After Fazlur Rahman’s appraisal of the great achievements in Indonesia to absorb the ideas of classical modernism (Rahman 1982: 82), “vital sythesis of traditional and modernist Islamic thought”, “new pluralism”, or rather “Neo-Modernism” seem to be the correct new terminology to describe what in Naim’s critical appraisal would be called “Javanese” Islamic intellectualism. While former students of Fazlur Rahman like Nurcholish Madjid sympathizes with this way of correctness (e. g. Barton 1994), Wahid, as we can see below in greater detail below, distances himself quite strongly from this type of encounter. As for the importance of Cirebon in the history of Islamization of Java see Muhaimin, Prelude, (Dhofier 1995: 3-10). About Shiism in Southeast Asia see also Ende (1973). As for the relative ideological convergence of traditionalist and modernist associations in Indonesia, namely, the Muhammadiyya and the Nahdatul Ulama see the remarkbly insightful article of Magnis-Suseno (1994). Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi (d. 1986), the Palestinian American theorist of “Islamization of Science”. Barton’s short note on Fazlur Rahman’s historical connection with “Indonesian Neo-Modernism” (1995: 361f.) 185

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia reminds us here that there is no comprehensive research on the impact of modern Islamic thinkers on the Indonesian intellectual scene. 22 For a fulfledged account of the “school” see Barton (1995). 23 This belongs to the history of the Young Islamisten Bond and the role of Ahmadiyya in Indonesia. The gathered around the Magazine “Het Lecht”. 24 There followed a number of issues which we discussed, however the do not change to the known positions of Nurchulish Madjid which were already documented in a similar interview conducted by Greg Barton and the analysis of his writings, cf. Barton (1995: 57-140).

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam

5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam

Society in Crisis It is well-understood in Southeast Asia that the recent debates on “Asian values” and, similarly principled, on the unique character of Southeast Asian Islam – rephrase the discourse of protestant foundations of Western capitalist culture (Chua 1998a,b). However, at the same time the Asian programme was to avoid Western individualism, feared as a source of decadence and social disorder. On the other hand, it is not just “collectivism” that forms the hidden matrix of the Islamization and Asian Values campaign, but rather it also expresses a deep-reaching contention with authoritarianism which is rooted in the colonial and in the pre-colonial past. The bourgeois revolution, if one could ever speak of something like this, in the context of the Southeast Asian “wonder”, or rather, as one would prefer to call it, the emergence of the “new middle” class (Kahn 1992, 1996), is intrinsically linked with the authoritarianism of the postcolonial state. In Malaysia, Islamization is a concerted government programme of co-opting and sponsoring Islamic intellectuals from a strong socio-religious movement of anti-establishment groups into recently-founded state educational and cultural institutions. This stands – as we have seen – in contrast to Indonesia where a late attempt to coordinate a concerted discourse between state officials, leaders and cadres of the established Islamic mass organizations has so far not been able to achieve a productive turn of an institutional encapsulation of Islam within the political centre. In Indonesia Islamization never took the form of a government-sponsored campaign of social and cultural mobilization. Therefore, Islamization always took an ambiguous stand between the conventional arbitrary positions of Islam – between the state and the movements of social and cultural emancipation and those of an antigovernment rally. At the same time, however, in both countries Islamization took on a third dimension, namely, in that it linked – in nearly all its cultural and political expressions since the mid 1980s – the new bourgeois and middle class cultural needs – both emancipative and self-assertive – to a type of unbroken continuity of the bureaucratic and political authoritarianism of the state. This convergence of interests of Islamic middle class and authoritarian rule took its toll in the recent crisis. None of the movements in Malaysia and Indonesia that revolted against state authoritarianism in 1998 was able or willing to bring the issue of Islam into the position 187

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia of an ideological lead. Quite in contrast to the belief that Islam could emerge as a force for establishing a civil society and – as a new social power of liberalism (Binder 1988) – of reducing the all-embracing powers of the state, the current crisis over the last two years has clearly shown that Islam and Islamic leaders – perhaps with the exception of Amien Rais and Abdurrahman Wahid, who had already orientated themselves towards secular trends in Islamic politics, are not playing will not play a leading role in the ongoing process of civil unrest and democratization as religio-political statements. In both countries Islamization was in different ways linked with and discredited by government authoritarianism and despite the presence of Islam and Islamic ideas as an underpinning for solidarity within the movements and their links with the popular basis and constituencies, revolution and crisis in 1998 Southeast Asia also symbolizes the end of the ideological powers that political scientists named “Political Islam” (Zubaida 1998). A few years ago all this sounded quite different. Islam and Islamization were considered to form a new coherent power for an economic and social take-off in Southeast Asia: “Southeast Asians will not forget that since time immemorial, their region has been the theatre where the great civilizations have crossed paths. But they are honest enough to know that the region is not a great melting pot. The collective memory of each community is as strong as ever. Yet, Southeast Asia today is moving towards greater cohesiveness, and a sense of community could not be fostered without shared values. The Indonesian motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) defines the region culturally. The challenge to Muslims and the people of other confessions is to effectively articulate their moral vision and intensify the search for common ethical ground” (Ibrahim 1996: 124).

In significant contrast to Indonesia, Islamization in the Malaysian scene developed a culture of social engineering. There are various factors contributing to this. One is the type of colonial rule that allowed for the rise of individualism related to communal emancipation which the British promoted by means of formalized civil law and the type of egalitarianism linked with it.1 It is within this context that one can speak – beyond Mahatir’s authoritarianism – of a relatively stable monopoly of state institutions and organizations with a certain rationale to control and integrate the social process and moral discourse (Larif-Beatrix 1994: 52). We could therefore conveniently argue that in contrast to Indonesia Malaysia seems to 188

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam promote a discourse of co-option and inclusion of intellectuals as technocrats and as advisors of the “prince”. “Asian Wonders” seem to have taken root in Malaysia more than in other parts of Southeast Asia. Indeed, the Malay Archipelago as a whole, from the perspective of international tourism, seems to be a wonder. However, the pictures of haze-covered cities in the region, affected by the smoke from rainforest fires in Borneo and Sumatra and other ecological disasters, only symbolize more deeply-rooted ecological and social problems. Today, as in colonial times, the Malay peninsula is covered by jungles, palm oil plantations and the relics of ecologically devastating tin-mining. Wonders and “tristesse” seem close together. Colonial writers like Fauconnier have seen it rather as a place of tropical, dangerous challenge to European pioneers and settlers. The enlightened wanderers in the tropical forests who – like Wallace – were obsessed with natural history and evolutionism made it themselves at home and could appreciate the wonders and variety of fauna and flora. The paradoxical visions of colonial explorers of the Malay world and its tropics, its cultures and nature, are today a decisive component of post-colonial self-estimation of the Malays. Malaysia – like Indonesia – is in a very modern sense of ethnic variety a plural society. However, the separation of ethnic groups and the forms of administering ethnic conflict are largely inherited from colonial times. The structure of these antagonisms restrict the potential for a liberal and democratic development. The conditions of the constitution itself give political power to the population of Malay origin, while at the same time the nonMalays, in the main the Chinese population, are considered as immigrants, although they plan, manage and controlthe economy to a large extent. From the beginning of the 1980s until the advent of the so-called “Asian Crisis” in 1997/8, Malaysia was economically and politically one of the most stable countries in Southeast Asia. Among the Islamic countries Malaysia symbolized a new dimension in politics of development and growth, namely, the convergence of Islam and capitalism. It stood as an example for the developmental potentials of integrated cultural and political policies. Malaysia was the outstanding case of a highly globalized economy and at the same time one pursuing its cultural self-assertion within a modernist Islamic perspective. This convergence between tradition and intensiv capitalist and industrialist development but also the relatively unattainable continuity between colonial and post-colonial structures could be seen as elements of stability. However, on the other hand, it is today easy to imagine that the ethnic and social conflicts which are a heritage from the foundation period of the modern state of Malaysia, could have an unprece189

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia dented come-back in a scenario in which the “Asian Crisis” deepens (see Jomo 1998). Following hard on the heels of the economic crisis of the major Asian countries, and specifically most of the so-called “tiger-economies”, came the political crisis. In Malaysia this was symbolized by the clash between the two most powerful players in the political system. On September 2nd 1998 Anwar Ibrahim (aged 51), the young Vice-Prime-Minister and Minister of Finance was released from office by the longs-serving elder statesman, Prime Minister Mahatir bin Mohamad (aged 73) and at the same time the secession of Malaysia from the international currency and finance markets was declared. With this step it seemed Mahatir, who was always a radical defender of capitalist development and open markets but also a harsh critic of Western “imperialist” interests, attempted to save his vision of Malaysian development, his Program 2020, against “crisis” and international currency speculation. The way in which this struggle emerged and was eventually fought, symbolized more than anything that the development of the 1980s and 1990s has made the political culture of the country very vulnerable to power competition, programmatic tensions and also to rivalries which have their origins in the diverse moral and religious inclinations of the leading elite with respect to politics (Jomo 1998: 38f.).2

Colonial Rule, Democratization and Refeudalization (1945-1998) Politics, economy and society of Malaysia are deeply rooted in the history of the foundation of the modern state. A late comer among the new post-colonial states, Malaysia reached its formal independence in 1963. Already in 1946 after the end of Japanese occupation (1942-1945) with the Malayan Union Act a slow, step-by-step progressive transition from colonial rule to democratic self-government started. The plan was to constitute a Federation of the Sultanates and Governorates of the Malay Peninsula and North-Borneo with the exclusion of Singapore. However, only in 1957 did Malaysia gain a certain independence as a state. The length and intensity of British colonial rule was related to a series of so-called racial, regional-strategic, but also internal political issues which concerned the status of Singapore and of the Territories in North-Borneo. Colonialism meant more than just rule. “Englishness” remained a type of cultural endeavor of the Malay elites, who had strong inclinations in favour of English education 190

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam and life style. It seems, therefore, that in Malay politics often the formal and emotional closeness to the Commonwealth (and in particular to Australia) turned into expressions of anti-colonial and anti-Western principles when this closeness appeared to be betrayed. Malaysia has a constitutional monarchy similar to Britain’s, and the constitution is based on a type of feudal federalism with 13 federal states; at the same time it is characterized by a type of democratic rule and central government. The colonial “Residents’-System” of the Sultanate of Malaya was transformed into a principle of governance of the modern state. The nine sultans are representatives of the state and kingship is shared, each of them taking a turn of 5 years. The institution of an office of religious affairs largely limited their religious and ritual powers; however, much of their symbolic and often irrational institutional privileges were kept in place. Thus the old Malay sultanates continue to exist as federal states, while Sabah, Sawarak, Penang und Malakka are administered by a Governor by appointment of the federal government. A short overview over the post-war history will easily make us aware of the type of ethnic and social conflicts between Chinese and Malays, who roughly form two numerically equivalent parts of the population, and shape the unique conditions of the development of this country. First, the Malayan Union Scheme of 1946 found little support among the Sultans, specifically because they felt it not to represent the overall significance of the Malayan element. It is also interesting to note that the U.M.N.O., the United Malays National Organization, which is until today a sort of centre-state party, at that time represented the interests of the Sultans, in resisting the Malay Union Act. In 1948 the British enacted the Federation of Malaya Agreement which included all territories of the abolished Malayan Union. Singapore remained a separate colony of the crown. A new federal government was constituted under the British High Commissioner; however, his appointment needed the agreement of the Sultans. Thus local states of the Malayan Federation were governed by the Sultans and Penang und Malakka by Resident-Commissioners flanked by British administrators. The Conference of Rulers, which came together three times a year, assured the Sultans the right to resist changes in the constitution and to reject appointments of high level administrators. It is certainly quite unique that this construction of a step by step integration of “colonial-feudal” elements into the modern constitution should allow for a balanced democratic system of citizenship and equal welfare. The Malay element gained priority and feudal Lords and Dynasties remained core-elements of the state-formation. All initiatives that seemed to challenge this construction were gradual191

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia ly excluded. The problem of the ethnic dominance of the Malays was seriously challenged in the periods of intensive negotiation over the integration of Singapore, with 80 per cent of its population being Chinese. The integration did not take place, although there was a tremendous pressure on the side of the Singaporeans. The issue was who gains ethnic or, in the terms of Lee Kuan Yew, the Singapore leader, “racial” superiority. From the meeting of communist leaders of Southeast Asia and Australia in February 1948 in Calcutta onwards it was quite clear that communist intervention would turn the ethnic problem into an issue of class struggle and social emancipation. The Malay Communist Party (MCP) organized a strike of in the main Chinese workers immediately after the inauguration of the Federation and in the second half of 1948 the general rebellion turned into armed struggle. In June 1948 the State of Emergency was declared both in the Federation and in Singapore. Since then the “State of Emergency” has overshadowed the modern history of Malaysia. In 1949 the state of emergency was transformed into a legal amendment which, basically, was directed against the communists. It allowed for imprisonment of suspects without trial. It should be noted here that large prison camps continue to characterize the political arena in Malaysia until today. It was of course predominantly Chinese who were suspected of communist activities. However, later all oppositional elements were possible suspects and internees. It is interesting in this context that it was in Malaysia that the counterinsurgency programme based on the resettling of villages which later on in Vietnam became a strategic programme of anti-communist policies was introduced. The “New Villages” created new problems of employment, infrastructure and control. Although high ranking British officers and even the British High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney, who was murdered in 1951, became victims of these struggles, the various initiatives for peace eventually gained some ground. Since 1951 civil war was contained to jungle areas and since 1949 a group of Chinese represented by the Malayan Chinese Association (M.A.C.) has taken part in the official political process. The growing sensitivity toward Chinese exclusionist policies was symbolized by a demonstrative act of a leading Malay politician, Dato Onn, who retreated from UMNO in 1951 because of its predominantly Malay character and founded the Independence of Malaya Party under his leadership. Dato Onn was the first Malay politician to propagate equal citizenship rights and political representation of the Chinese population and its integration into the political system. The Communist Party’s guerrilla war undoubtedly delayed the process 192

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam if independence. An attempt to negotiate with the CPM on some sort of political participation at a Constitutional Conference in February 1956 in London failed. However, on 31st August 1957 the first independent government of the Malaysian Federation was installed. Again ethnic antagonisms and new regulations of citizenship delayed the free election of a new government for two years. The old prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the leader of the “merdeka”, the independence movement, was installed as the new one. Then in 1959 his Alliance Party won the first elections after independence with an overwhelming majority. He would however not abolish the decrees of the Emergency and he continued to pursue the campaign against the communists with great vigour. The territorial integration of Malaysia remained just as strongly under threat from its neighbours as from communist guerrillas. A key factor was the position of Singapore and it became more and more obvious that the wish for its integration to the Federation was also linked with its challenge to the “ethnic balance”, i. e. the “supremacy of the Malays” policy of the Malaysian government and UMNO. It is quite appropriate to understand the new ethnic clashes in Malaysia in May 1969 and the terrible massacre they provoked as resulting from the tensions created in the negotiations between Lee Kuan Yee and Tunku Abdul Rahman. Only in 1961 did Lee Kuan Yew and Tunku Abdul Rahman agree to form a Federation of Malaysia including Singaopore and the British Territories of North-Borneo. In November 1961 this was formally negotiated with the British Government in London during a visit by Tunku Abdul Rahman. On 1 August 1962 the British Government and the Government of the Federation of Malaya declared jointly the foundation of the new federation, to be formed on 1 August 1963. In September 1962 it obtained the full support of the Singapore population in a referendum. So at the end of 1962 everything seemed to be clear sailing for the new Federation. First objections, however, came from the Sultan of Brunei, who belonged to an old dynasty and held power over a rich country. He refused to join the Federation. The more threatening objections against the integration of Sabah and Sarawak came from the Philippines and Indonesia. In 1963 they threatened to refuse to recognize the state of Malaysia as a whole. Indonesian guerrillas entered the territory of Sawarak using the Bornean province of Kalimantan as a base. The state of Malaysia was discredited by Communist and Nationalist forces in Southeast Asia as a whole as a neo-colonialist formation in the region. In January 1965 there were more than 10,000 British and Australian troops in Borneo involved in a jungle war with a mixed bag of enemies, Communists in the main. At this point, we can trace 193

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia two major events which determined all further developments in the region. First, Lee Kuan Yew, who had just won the elections in Singapore, proposed with his “Malaysia Solidarity Convention” that the issue of citizenship in the future Malaysian Federation should be treated in such a way that the whole “nation” should not be segmented and defined with respect to supremacy claims, specific wealth claims or interests of individual ethnic groups. This was perceived in Kuala Lumpur as a declaration of war against Malay interests, but the conflict was solved after negotiations between Lee Kuan Yew and Tunku Abdul Rahman with the joint declaration of 9th of August 1965 that Singapore and Malaysia would from now onwards form separate states. The second major event that shaped the new world of Southeast Asia was the end of the Sukarno-Regime in a coup d’état by the army, which was provoked by a simulated or real – whatever historians will have to say in the final analysis – attempt by the Communists to take over the government. These were then the two basic conditions under which a step by step arrangement between the states of the Malay Archipelago about their final state territories was achieved. This brought for Malaysia relative clarity with regard to its external borders. Unrest within Malaysia continued. The 1970s were in the main characterized by the government policy of the “Supremacy of the Malays” and a so-called New Economic Policy (NEP) which was designed to guarantee that Malays would be given preference in the economy and in state administration. A new educational policy was introduced and capital ownership by the Malay population was promoted. The rising star of the new Malay “middle class” was Mahatir bin Mohamed. The politics of supremacy of the “original” population, the Malays, the “bumiputras” (sons of the earth) had drastic effects on the society. First, the Malays were the part of the population with the lowest urbanization and education. Second, there is a colonial or at least premodern dimension in the political dominance of the Malays represented by the Sultans and at the same time a sort of “rentier”-distribution of wealth – similar to the petrocapital states in the Middle East. Achievements aside, Malays participate in capital gains and state and administrative positions where the “real” work is done by others. This policy of insulating the “autochthonous” Malay population gained a new impulse in the 1980s through the effects of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the projects of “Islamization” which were now promoted everywhere in the Islamic world. The ideological protagonist of this double-sided politics of ethnic and religious self-assertion of the Malays was Mahatir bin Mohamed, the medical doctor and intellectual who came to power as Prime Minister in 1981. More than any politician in Southeast 194

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam Asia, he represented “development” as a way to Third-World emancipation, the rise of a non-western middle class in the shadow of colonial compradors, local-dynasties of colonial rule and power brokers among ethnic minorities. He also represents this double-mindedness with respect to an unhampered positivistic belief in technological progress and capitalist growth on the one hand and the vision of the specificity of non-western civilization and the unique character of Asian moral and political inclinations on the other. He postulated the break with tradition and an iron affirmative modernism; however, he also saw the necessities of recognizing Islam, Malay conventionalism and value-conservativism. Like Lee Kuan Yew, Mahatir envisages the post-colonial “Third-Worldism” as a source of sovereignty in standing up against the hegemony of global forces. In the framework of these ideological components and coinciding with rapid capitalist growth, Malaysia headed for a step-by-step “Islamization” of state and society in the 1980s. We may well note that the process of growing integration into the international economic and financial system for which naturally Singapore served as both a symbol and a model, also secured the stability of the political system and encouraged the struggle for cultural recognition of the Malays as Muslims. Today the “bumiputras” are as economically as well off as the Chinese and rapid growth has allowed for the distribution of wealth without restricting the special role of the Chinese in economic management. Mahatir and his predecessor acquired control of major British companies and in 1975 the Malaysian state holding Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) took over the London Tin Company, at the time number two in tin mining worldwide. Under Mahatir then in the 1980s the PNB gained control of the huge British plantation company Sime Darby and Guthrie. Most of the shares which were now owned by the Malaysian state company were then redistributed among the Malay population. And at the beginning of the 1990s there were 3 million – nearly half of the adult Malay population – share-holders of these funds, with a volume of about 11 billion US-Dollars. Mahatir’s policy of economic emancipation of the Malays proved to be successful, one reason why his political survival so far has been beyond all “crisis”. Mahatirism then is the success story of a postcolonial economy which once was based merely on tin mining and tropical monocultures like palm oil and rubber. Following the Singapore model, Mahatir invited foreign capital to invest in Malaysia under favourable conditions. He also managed to attract the support of international organizations (ILO, United Nations Special Fund) for the training of the needed man-power. We may note that 195

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia the Islamization discourse contributed greatly to the puritanization of public life and the acceptance of rigid forms of work ethics, particularly among young women. With all those positive developments, however, gradually it was observed that the success story had negative side effects as well. Extensive consumerism among the population and import of modern technology contributed to a negative trade balance (1996: -5,2 per cent, 1995: -7,5 per cent; 1995: -4,6 per cent [IWF]). Rapid economic reconstruction, e. g. the very impressive Highway from Johor Bahru to Kuala Lumpur to Penang along the north-south track of the Malay Peninsula,the many prestigious high rise buildings and shopping mall landscapes, the luxurious middle class housing projects and ultramodern projects for high-tech communication, all this may have been factors contributing to the crisis which for Mahatir was a pure object of Western speculation and target of their resentment. However, the structural and ecological problems as much as the deficit in trade balance were reasons enough for the international markets to legitimate the revaluation of the country and its currency in the international system.

Malaysian Islamization: Alternative Modernization of State and Society One could certainly attempt to trace the paradox of growth and development aspirations in Southeast Asia in all the paraphrases of naming Islam a project of modernization and emancipation. For Mahatir in Malaysia this ideological construction was linked with a clearcut futuristic project. Malaysia was to be transformed into one great model of an Islamic growth society. Economic growth and technological progress was one vision of development, etatization and scientification of religion and culture was considered a second dimension of this very same developmental and civilizational vision (Khoo Boh Teik 1996). In the 1980s we were able to observe the worldwide awakening of postcolonial cultures and societies and specifically the model of Iran was an example on the basis of which many groups of intellectuals mapped out their “own” developmental progress, based on principles and visions which were considered to be deeply rooted in their respective pre-colonial civilizations. The second revolution of liberation from colonialism and imperialism was to be cultural not merely political. In many Third World countries competition arose among intellectual groups in terms of a political “hermeneutics of authenticity” and recognition of visions and principles of 196

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam pre-colonial traditions which were now re-conceptualized in terms of an unbroken continuity. As for Malaysia, the political elite was to learn the lesson of economic success from Singapore. However and at the same time there was a growing need to react towards the potential crisis of political legitimacy which arose from militant Islamists on the grassroots level of the society. In Singapore Lee Kuan Yew had already adopted the programme of “Asian Values” in order to invoke a cultural programme of acceptance of his authoritarian style of governance. We will describe in greater detail below how in fact this project took root and provided for new civilizational paths and achievements in the city state of Singapore. As for Malaysia it seemed appropriate to develop an “Asian Values” campaign in explicit terms of “Islamization” and with this develop a programme countering militant and radical forces of political Islam within the society. Here, Mahatir again appeared to be very flexible. He noticed quite early that his politics of “bumiputra” emancipation in state and society lacked the necessary cultural and political drive. He shifted early to a policy of step-by-step limited recognition of Islamic values, symbols and legal divides. He also saw that the Islamic movement in its international dimensions could bring a new drive to cultural innovation and to self-assertion of the regime and its elites as such. His limited and integrative reconstruction of formulas of political Islam also aimed at domestication of the basic fundamentalist movements in Malaysia, namely of ABIM (Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia Islamic Youth Movement, founded in 1969), of Darul Arkam and the Dakwah-movement. With this strategy he certainly avoided a potentially long range militant conflict, promoting a reinstitution of programmatic Islamic issues within the framework of official politics. We should note in this context that established university professors like S.N. al-Attas, who was then Dean of the Arts faculty, became a crucial figures in stimulating the students to read contemporary revivalist literature. He created a circle of students who met at his house. “With this new awareness came the understanding of the comprehensiveness of Islam’s ad-din (way of life), a compelling appeal that had infused the students” (Anwar 1987: 12f.).

Al-Attas’ concept of “de-westernization of knowledge” could be associated with the general mood of Islamic revivalism which affected universities in the early seventies and in particular after the 1969 ethnic riots between the Chinese and Muslims. It was after this incident, together with the policy of Islamization of the government, that Malays became more and more asso197

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia ciated with Islam. The movement was launched by Anwar Ibrahim, a charismatic student leader, at the Department of Malay studies, University of Malaya (ibid.: 12). Anwar Ibrahim, later Minister of Finance, is a former student of al-Attas’ and until 1998 was one of the sponsors of ISTAC (AlAttas’ Islamic Center). The Malaysian Islam-groups in one way or another represented local facets of the international Islamic movement. Darul Arqam operated quite similarly to “new age” groups and sects in America, integrating the total economic and social life perspective of their members into the organization, which in itself competed in a market oriented fashion with capitalist companies and vied in the social field with the welfare organizations of the state. The organization was prohibited in 1994 first in Indonesia than in Malaysia. The Dakwah-movement was of a more orthodox direction, and oriented toward internal and external missionary work and influenced by similar movements in the Middle East and specifically Pakistan. In reaction to these movements the government took a major step towards “Islamization”. One could observe Muslim preachers from Canada, from England, from the Middle East in a sudden plethora of religious programmes on TV. A series of international Islamic conferences were held in Malaysia, discussing the ideas of reformism and reconstruction of such international Islamic figures as Malek Bennabi, Ali Shari‘ati, Islam’il Raji al-Faruqi and others. Publishing houses and press companies established special branches for the translation and distribution of internationally known Muslim writers. Specifically in education these politics encouraged the youth to participate in public discourse over how to apply Islam in modern Malaysian society. A moderate policy of Islamization of government institutions in the field of education and also a very guided and controlled policy of introducing core principles of Islamic Law by means of legitimizing authoritarian government and civilized codes in public life were pursued. In officializing Islamic discourse, on the other hand Mahatir perceived the representative of political Islam, the PAS (Parti Islam seMalaysia), as his decalred enemy. PAS has its clientel in the main in the small peasant areas in north-east Malaysia, in the states of Kelantan and Trengganu, where they formed for some periods, and in Kelantan, until today the local government. On average PAS always received about 15 per cent of the votes in parliamentary elections (Stahr 1996: 169).

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam Success Story of Modernist Islamic Thought How did this type of productive convergence between Islamic movements and the state happen? What are the real forces of this Islamic drive to establish modern structures in the name of Allah and to mobilize the social forces for a competitive capitalism? One dimension certainly – as I have pointed out – is history and colonial rule and the way in which Islam became embedded here. A second agenda of Malaysian Islamization is the impact of Singapore and the imitation of the Asian Value discourse in Islamic terms. A third pillar of Islamization is rooted in Malaysian/AngloAmerican networks. This latter dimension also strongly relates to the theological discourse of modern Islam, engaging in the dialogical battle field of Muslim-Christian relations, religious studies and cross-civilizational analysis. In Indonesia, for example, modernist Islamic Scholars like Fazlur Rahman from Chicago University had students who became prominent Islamic intellectuals; however, they never developed a coherent “political” programme. As for Malaysia, however, some of Rahman’s ideas became in a more reductionist version part of the ideological construction of Political Islam, namely, by way of Ismal’il Raji al-Faruqi’s Islamizing Sociology. A short glance to Fazlur Rahman’s writings reveals that he attempted to construct a clearcut programme of inner Islamic modernization. Rahman was not such a simplistic modernizer as to believe that Islam could serve as a complete alternative to the West and its negative aspects. However, he doubted that the cultural system of the West could serve as “an ideal culture for the entire human race” and criticized the fact that it had unashamedly “imposed itself on all others” (Rahman 1980b: 234). For him neither Western secularism, nor the “modern” responses of traditional religious leaders can be used as a basis for an authentic project of Islamic modernity. And indeed such was the programme of Islamization later developed in Malaysia: an intrinsically Islamic modernized national state. For Rahman it was rather an Islamic critical historical re-interpretation of the Qur’an that he wishes to adopt. “But how is its theological content to be assessed or defined? It seldom finds direct expression in books or articles; and, though it may be reflected in the arguments and polemics of the ulama against the spread of secularism, we may be sure that in the invariable habit of preachers and polemists, they exaggerate, misrepresent, and distort the opinions and activities of which they disapprove” (Gibb 1947: 49).

We might well note here, that Rahman in his scholarly pragmatist English 199

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia outlook differs in emphasis and concern from the “liberation theologies” of Bennabi and Shari‘ati, who both. acquired a more decisive affection for the philosophical critique of modernity during their studies in France (e. g. Shari‘ati 1980; Bennabi 1980). Like so many modernists Rahman criticizised the orthodox ‘ulama for their frivolous monopoly of the “text”. Here, he developed the concept of Islamic society which through al-Faruqi was later so influential, in Malaysia. Rahman championed the idea of a dynamic reconstruction of society based on a tenable relationship of modernity with the Islamic concept of the presence of God. This already represents a “fundamental position of Iqbal. It leads him to reject the transcendent view of God, Whom he therefore regards, in the true tradition of Sufism, as being immanent in the World” (Rahman 1972: 49). The concept of a God that is immanent to this world leads necessarily to a type of religiously founded sociology. 3 With this Rahman limits himself to a substantive Islamic view on modernity which declares secularism its enemy. Perhaps we should note, here, that it is indeed this combination of interacting Cartesian technologies with an anti-Western cultivation of religion that has made this project of Islamic modernity so vulnerable to fundamentalism. For example Rahman follows an instrumental pragmatism in defining monotheism in terms of modern egalitarianism. “Monotheism becomes meaningful in the eyes of the Qur’an only if it results in the moral consequence of the basic equality of mankind. Divorced from this consequence, monotheism becomes meaningless and is, in fact monolatry (i. e. the worship of only one being)” (Rahman 1967: 105).4

Fully in the line with Iqbal’s sociological reconstruction of Islam, Rahman suggests that “Islam is primarily a ‘social religion’” (Rahman 1966c: 319) and that the Qur’an’s chief aim is to create a moral-social order. Viewing society as a divine institution of the social is a suggestion of Rahman’s which Islamic modernists have strongly relied on for years.5 Today it is widely accepted, if not overstressed among fundamentalist Islamisers.6 Finally, Rahman cherished the view of a resurrection of moral utilitarianism in Islam which he thought was an essential attitude of domination of early Muslims in the centuries of conquest and formulation of dogma. Similar sociological leanings and Cartesian technologies can be found in Bennabi7 and Shari‘ati.8 The Qur’an enunciates certain fundamental principles of social organi200

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam zation: social justice, cooperation, brotherhood and self-sacrifice for the sake of the common good. It is therefore directed towards a meaningful and positive equality among human beings. This is where the utilitarian realm of Islam with a thisworldly outlook can evolve. In order to achieve the society envisaged, it is necessary to create institutions capable of effectively constituting the proper instrument for the implementation of social values and ideals. “The society envisaged by Islam is a purposefully directed society, not a deliberately left-alone or neglected (‘free’) society (does man think he will be left free?) as is the case in some of the so-called ‘Welfare-States’ of the contemporary West. Social justice in Islam means a positive involvement in society” (Rahman 1966c: 319).

Islam in this view is actually to mould the modern social fabric.9 It would be naive to argue that Rahman’s anti-secularism is based on a misunderstanding of Gibb’s subtle moral perception of modernism and his call “to keep alive the spirit of reverence and the inner moral sense that we call the ‘voice of conscience’” (Gibb 1947: 53f.). There is a blunt identification of secularism with immorality in Rahman’s “attempt to derive law directly from the Qur’an” in a sociologically sound and intellectually honest, practical way. This is where his method by which to “‘Islamize’ (sic!) the legal and institutional materials that were simply adopted from outside Islam” (Rahman 1970: 332) sets the marks of the moves in Malaysian discourse from modernizing religion to Islamize modernity. Rahman thought that the intellectual pursuit of these issues implied a critical restatement of Islam, not the religious abolishment of modernity. He sought “an adequate presentation of Islam in terms that would be acceptable to, and meaningful for a modern mind” (Rahman 1966a: 253). However, his modernist imanism and anti-secularism which becomes more obvious in his late works (Rahman 1980a,b, 1982) indirectly propagated the conceptual cross marks of the Islamization discourse of today.10 More than any of the Islamic thinkers in the 1970s and 1980s, Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi, the “guerrilla scholar”11 , depended on Rahman’s visions (or vice versa?)12, the two indeed having collaborated closely in Karatchi in 1962. The biography of al-Faruqi is well documented13; what interests us here is the success story of his thoughts in Malaysia. Al-Faruqi was a key figure in creating the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur and the one in Islamabad. The International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur established a Department of Revealed Knowledge that pursues a programme of Islamization of knowledge. 201

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Al-Faruqi undertook many journeys to Malaysia and it would seem that he maintained close contacts with the student movement around Anwar Ibrahim and ABIM (Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia); he also developed a relationship to Mahatir Muhammad, the current Prime Minister of Malaysia, during his early years in the government as an advisor in the Islamization of culture. We are also told that he played a crucial role in bringing Mahatir and Anwar Ibrahim together in the early 1980s. He was convinced of the effect of Anwar’s modernist approach to Islam (Jomo and Cheek 1988: 858). Many of al-Faruqi’s followers and students who today hold academic posts in Malaysia recall him and his wife Lois Lamya al-Faruqi. According to Sardar, another influential intellectual figure on Islamic ideologization, al-Faruqi’s intention was to develop: “Alternative paradigms of knowledge for both natural and social sciences and to conceive and mould disciplines most relevant to the needs of contemporary Muslim societies” (Sardar 1988: 104).

This task would be undertaken by creating “The specific relevance of Islam to each area of modern knowledge”, because: “It is not Islam that needs to be made relevant to modern knowledge; it is modern knowledge that needs to be made relevant to Islam” (ibid.: 101). Al-Faruqi proposes a holistic project to Islamize knowledge which is taken by his followers and extended to the Islamization of education and science. Al-Faruqi’s programme advocates that all knowledge must reorder itself under the principle of Tawhid (unity with God) (Al-Faruqi 1981: 5). First of all the reason to promote such an endeavour is that Western social science is considered incomplete and “violates a crucial requirement of Islamic methodology” (ibid.: 4). The cross cultural dimension could give us an understanding al-Faruqi’s claim for da‘wah in America. The more one reads about him, the more one gets the feeling that his political activism, more than his academic career, have a great deal to do with Muslim-American associations and the remoulding of Islam into the American way of life.14 Thus, if Western social sciences are viewed as “incomplete and useless” for Muslims and that “truth is one, just as Allah is one” (Shafiq 1994: 100), the Islamizers remain, nevertheless, engaged with the social discourse of modernity, silently borrowing the militant language from Western social movements.15 Al-Faruqi’s Cultural Atlas of Islam was a grand project to use the phe202

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam nomenological method in re-writing history and as an alternative to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, recognizing its role in it (Al-Faruqi and al-Faruqi 1986). When it comes to the Malay basin (ibid.: 227ff.), for example, the Atlas seems to uphold the image of Islam as a high civilization as opposed to the primitiveness of the pre-Islamic period in the Malay Archipelago, similar to the Jahiliyyah, a period and a people without history, knowledge or culture.16 “Where the first outside influence upon the primitive mentality came from Hinduism or Buddhism, as in the Malay archipelago, it provided no exposure or link to the outside world and formed neither society nor empire. Instead of developing native trade and industry or laying down foundations for the development of learning and civilization, Hinduism pushed primitive mythology to a higher degree of complexity and sophistication.”

and “As to the impact of Buddhism, it may have taught the Malay how to build temples and carve statues to the Buddha (although it is by no means certain that Borobodour is the work of natives; rather it seems the work of imported crafstmen who left behind them no tradition of sculpture or architecture). But as in the other cases of contact, the primitive mentality remained primitive.”

to conclude that: “Islam transformed the primitive mentality completely. It eliminated superstition and spirits and ascribed all causation to one supreme creator … it ended cannibalism … It outlawed alcohol and nakedness … It banned ghazw (raiding) … It established schools” (Al-Faruqi and al-Faruqi 1986: 227).

This view of the purifying effects of Islam is designed to counteract Western Orientalism. However it is by no means less biased and reductionist. That at least Java-Islam developed a form of syncretism with Hindu-Buddhist elements, as the works of Geertz and many others after him showed, is ignored by al-Faruqi. One may be critical of Geertz’ views, on the level that his classifications of abangan, priyayi and santri Islam are questionable, and that syncretism in the way Geertz argued for Indonesia existed everywhere else in popular Islamic culture in general. Nonetheless, al-Faruqi seems to overlook the tensions and contradictions between high and low culture in Islam; as in any religious reasoning, there existed different 203

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia spheres of knowledge and practices. It was al-Faruqi’s aim to generalize “Islam” into an ideological concept of human emancipation and purity. Islam, here, is turned into a modernist Islamic state ideology of the new middle classes. What would al-Faruqi say about the persistence of the culture of Bomoh magic among the Malays17 in Malaysia and Singapore who consider themselves Muslims? Undeniably, the growing Islamization in Southeast Asia that took place in the seventies was an important factor in purifying and altering habits. This also created tensions with non-Muslims. Tensions and contradictions were to be observed within the Malay community about the constant redefinition and reshaping of a modern Islamic identity. Al-Faruqi’s main point – as is the case with all streams of political Islam – is the question of the Islamic state: “Such a Western state is radically different from the Islamic state. The latter does have a territory but this is not essential. It can exist without a territory, as well as with one devoid of definite boundaries. Indeed Islam asserts that the territory of the Islamic state is the whole earth or better, the whole cosmos since the possibility of space travel is not too remote. part of the earth may be under direct rule of the Islamic state and the rest may yet have to be included; the Islamic state is at any time restricted to a few of the world’s population, it does not matter as long as it wills to comprehend humanity” (ibid.: 61).

The Islamic state derives its constitution from the Covenant of Madinah which the Prophet granted to the city upon his emigration there in 622. According to the spirit of that covenant Islam, however, is a missionary religion. How then is this federal system accepted as a way of life between Muslims and non-Muslims? Mission is certainly endemic to Islam. It flows from its essence as a universal religion. Every Muslim wishes that Islam were the conscious religion of every person. In fact, Muslims believe that Islam was the original religion of every person but has been changed by time and culture into something else. The Islamic state is therefore not really a state but a world order, with a government, a court, a constitution, and an army. It was these ideas – visioning an Islamic future with a voice from America and its academic institutions, a voice expressing itself in English, not in Arabic or Urdu – which in the early years after the Islamic revolution in Iran made their way around the Islamic world. They were well received 204

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam in Malaysia and took their grip on the political discourse largely shaped by the problem of political and economic emancipation of a new “statepeople”, the Malays, and the struggle over cultural adaptation to rapid social change and economic growth.

Mahatirism and Islamization In 1981 when Mahatir took over the position of Prime Minister from Tunku Abdul Rahman, he followed Lee Kuan Yew in introducing a “Look East Policy”. In this context it is worth noticing that since the 1960s Southeast Asian social scientists had discussed Weber’s thesis on the coincidence of Protestantism and the rise of Capitalism with some intensity. As a consequence, many politicians and thinkers started to re-evaluate Asian religions in the light of their inherent rationality and asceticism. While in Singapore a Confucianism campaign took place stressing the need for cultural assertiveness as part of capitalist development, Mahatir propagated the “capitalist” values of Islam. First in his period as Minister of Education, he promoted the Malayization of the universities and local schools. Then, as Prime Minister, he introduced the Islamic card, which was to give recognition to the various groupings of the Islamist movement. Then, however, with a more sophisticated approach, Islamization was taken up as a key concept for the state-sponsored introduction of Islamic discourse in the society. In this sense, Islamization meant a new cultural performance of the state with respect to the cultural self-assertion of the rising new Malay middle class and the co-option of anti-establishment students and religious teachers into the social machine controlled by the state. By and large we can distinguish between three main domains of his Islamization policy in Malaysia: First, there was the social and cultural institutionalization of Islam. At a first glance this was symbolized by the rise of the former ABIM-leader, Anwar Ibrahim, who was first installed in the Prime Minister’s office and then became Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, and after that Agricultural Minister. In 1986 he was appointed Minister of Education and soon after Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister. Government policy was to rely on what is now a common word in Malaysia: “think-tanks”. The “think-tank”-policy had the double effect of job creation for oppositional intelligentsia and of Malay representation. It filtered militant and non-militant opposition groups and organisations into an ideological machine designating the official standpoint in intellectual, cultural, educational and 205

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia legal matters. The idea was to follow the latest “Islamic Thinker” to establish alternative paradigms in both natural and the social sciences in order to be able to develop the proper outlook for the constitution and development of a contemporary Muslim society. These “think-tanks” were laic at their outset and modernist in perspective. The “great figures” of modernist Islamic thought were brought to Malaysia, forums and seminars were organized and translation and publishing activities entered into. All these were activities which were earlier on a limited scale undertaken by organizations like ABIM. Professor Syed Naquib Mohammad al-Attas, the spiritual mentor of Anwar Ibrahim and conservative theoretician of Malay Sufi traditions, was appointed Director of the International Institute Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC). This Institute mixes English college style with Mediterranean Renaissance architecture. It was planned to compete with western Orientalism, Islamic Studies and Islamic Philosophy. In the academic circles of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur and in the Seminars of Syed Hussein Alatas, however, a new elite of “progressive” Islamic intelligentsia was formed. Second, Mahitir indeed sponsored a reinforcement of Orthodoxy and “clerical” traditions. To this end, Pusat Islam, the Islamic Centre, hosted scholars of classical Islamic education (‘ulama) who proposed and discussed measures of legal responses according to the Shari‘a, the Holy Law. More specifically they would advise government institutions on proper legal statements and responses to PAS positions and movements to introduce the Shari‘a punishments, the hudud-laws. In general through academic and student exchange schemes with the Cairean al-Azhar University and with Mecca the relations to the places of classical education in the Middle East was strengthened. This stratum of “orthodox” Islamic intelligentsia operated as something akin to government counsellors in social and legal religious matters. In the centre of the debate from the very beginning was the feasibilty of introducing the Shari‘a or just in a more specific and limited sense, the hudud-laws, the forms of legal punishment offered by the Qur’an and the Traditions. The government needed advice with respect to its Islamization policies and specifically with respect to its responses to the various fractions of political Islam demanding the recognition of the Islamic prescriptions in total within the modern state of the Nation. As Syed Ibrahim, the former ABIM and PAS leading cadre – today a business lawyer in downtown Kuala Lumpur – stated to us: “Western civil codes were introduced by colonial rule without any base in our own traditions and cultural values, they were introduced by degree and against our will. It

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam should, therefore, be possible to apply the Shari‘a and its legal system today – and even if it was from one day to another – much more easily than the British penal code and secular rule, since it was introduced to us by foreigners.”18

However, in general Mahatir’s government opted for a rather open and symbolic reference to the Shari‘a in public discourse. The exchanges with the classical institutions in the Middle East were ever increasingly deprived of their significance as sources of advice for Islamic social and legal change. They were consequently changed into programmes of academic teaching and student exchange with the institutions of classical learning. Third, the government supported a strong overall internationalization of the Islamic discourse, claiming a new position in the Islamic world and claiming a pioneering role in adopting the Islamic path for progress and development. International representation became a key issue of the Islamic policies, not only with respect to journalism and academics. This took shape also on the level of networking of ideas. As we have seen above, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we can observe the overwhelming influence of the American scholar in comparative religious studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Ismail Raji Faruqi, who had a Palestinian background and whose programmatic writings on “Islamization of Science” and the foundation of rules of social development in Islam, gave him a type of “prophetic” reputation among modernist Muslims in America. But also the writings of Fazlur Rahman, the leading scholar in Islamic Studies who had fled in the late 1960s from his Islamic Institute in Karachi to McGill and later Chicago University, came to have great importance. Students of Fazlur Rahman’s and Leonard Binder’s in Chicago became prominent figures not only in Malaysian but also of Southeast Asian Islam as a whole. There were conferences on Malik Bennabi, the Algerian Muslim thinker of the 1960s and 1970s. Apart from conferences and publication activities, many of the new appointments at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur and the other newly created Islamic Institutions were from the Middle East and Muslim countries in South Asia and Pakistan; in the main, however, most of them had an American or Anglo-Saxon educational background. In addition to these dimensions of international Islamic networking, the discourse within the country remained strongly tied to the government’s policy of overriding the challenge of oppositional political Islam, specifically represented by PAS, the Islamic party, which temporarily ruled in local states such as Kelantan and Terennganu. PAS governments always planned to introduce the hudud-laws where they governed on the local state level. As an effect of these struggles of the 1980s between UMNO and 207

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia PAS, central and local government, we can see a relative decline in the government’s interest in following the general pattern of forming the spearhead of political Islam and a tendency instead to impose a differentiated perspective on Islam itself. As Anwar Ibrahim had put it: “Serious problems which cried for urgent attention, including poverty, illiteracy and other forms of social malaise, ere ignored. Islamic scholarship was confined to textual studies of language, traditions and orthodox jurisprudence. It became absorbed, not in the urgent task of championing the broad vision and civilizational ideals of Islam in the face of the onslaught of the modern secular ideologies, but in attempting to unearth past solutions to resolve sometimes petty issues. Fazlur Rahman laments that while steady encroachments were being made upon the Shari‘a (Divine Law), not only by state-made law but also by state customary law of different cultural regions, the ‘ulama ‘clung tenaciously’ to two segments of the Shari‘a: the ‘five pillars’ of Islam, the ‘minimal Islam’, and the hudud, the ‘negative or punitive Islam’ when ‘the integral teaching of the Quran and the historic struggle of the prophet that provided the socio-moral context of these provisions … had already been lost sight of’” (Rahman 1982: 31; Ibrahim 1996: 117).

In general Malaysia in the 1990s witnesses a steady decline in the promotion of the legal and political aspects of the modern application of Islam in favour of cultural and civilizational dimensions of Islamic emancipation (see also the Inaugural Addresses of Anwar Ibrahim and Syed Naqib Muhammad al-Attas to the 1994 ISTAC-conference on Islam and Modernity: al-Attas 1996). As we have seen, Kuala Lumpur, with respect to its intellectual culture, is – with few exceptions – an empty landscape. In contrast to Indonesia and most other Muslim countries in the Middle East with vibrant civil societies, but quite similar to Singapore – perhaps with a strong influence of Chinese culture – in Malaysia all intellectualism is state based, rarely counter-state. Islamic intellectualism is official academic discourse in Malaysia. Of course, this was not the case in the period of independence and foundation of the Malaysian national state. Specifically the radical Islamic movements in the 1970s and 80s have brought forth an element of what has been called somewhere else as an Islamic civil society, namely, an oppositional Islamic student movement. However, this is all built into the state machine today. While in the 1980s the radical PAS won elections in Kelantan and took over local government there (see Roff 1974) and at the same time inspired the move to a step-by-step transformation of public policies into Islamic styles (Kessler 1974), the politics of Islamization in general were 208

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam rooted in the move to co-opt ABIM and and to establish some Islamic Institutions (Ibrahim 1987: 3ff.). It is indeed interesting to see how few intellectual figures were able to profit from the new wave of Islamization (see also Regan 1989). Of course, the specific form of inversion of the State with respect to religion created much academic debate. In the early 1990s, for example, the question was raised whether the state inversion could lead to a sort of “secularization” of religion coming to power in a multicultural society (Ackermann and Lee 1988; Lee 1990). However, it was also argued that Islamization is an expression of a general process of social rationalization in which religious values would take a new, a central role in constructing social coherence (Kessler 1978, 1991). Perhaps both such views today seem rather academic. However, both signalize the very moves of the religious dilemma in Malaysian society today. It was not the “ummah first” movements (Ibrahim 1987) that came out of this process as the leading forces, but rather after nearly 20 years of Islamization, both secularization and social rationalization of religion took a forceful grip on the society in transition to a global player. Naturally the 2nd of September 1998 will enter into the history of Malaysia – whether as the start of a black or of a golden age to come. Prime Minister Mahatir bin Mohammad dismissed his deputy and declared successor, Anwar Ibrahim. Malaysia ended its free market policies, binding its currency to the US Dollar on a fixed level and implementing a new stage in far-reaching currency controls. The plan, obviously, aims to insulate the country against the regional economic crisis. This event is significant in the context of this study, because the defeat of Anwar Ibrahim signals a decisive step in the whole situation. Paradoxically, the winner belongs intellectually to a generation of so-called ThirdWorld leaders who were nationalists first and then only pragmatic politicians with respect to both Western capitalism and the Islamic resurgence.

Mahatir – Anwar The moods of the political culture of the Mahatir-Anwar period (1981-1998) may be accurately summed up in the following two reported incidents: In Johor Baruh it was revealed that a preacher with ten wives “became Shi‘ite to justify marriage … All the ten wives of the self styled Singaporean preacher Abu Talib Harun chose to declare themselves Shi’ites half way through their trial, to evade persecution under Johor’s religious law, the Johor Syariah court

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia was told yesterday. Court Prosecutor Haji Abdul Karim Yusof said yesterday that the women were actually followers of Sunni Islam but decided to adopt the Shi’ite view of nikah mataah or temporary marriage to justify their union with the preacher. They were also accused under Johor’s Islamic Administration Enactment of cohabiting with the man and of having illicit sex with him at a house in Taman Seri Puteri, Skudai, here between December 1992 and their arrest at about one a.m. on April 10 last year” (Salim Osman, The Straits Times, Thursday, March 9, 1995). “It began with a 44 year old politician and a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. By the time Malaysia closed the political books on the affair last week, a state Chief Minister had stepped down, elections looked further away and – perhaps – a new code of conduct had been established in the nation’s public life. The fallout from the alliance of Malacca’s Rahim Tambi Chik with a teenager of uncertain repute also told Malaysians much about the delicate balance of power. Sooner or later, Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamad (aged 68) will pass the leadership to his deputy successor Anwar Ibrahim (aged 47)” (Asia Week, October 26, 1994).

All this is snow of yesteryear; however, the incidents in 1994 and 1995 quoted here remind us today that much of Malaysian politics remains tied to the uncertainties surrounding such corruption and sex stories, and the intervention of traditional magicians’ practices (boloh), if not charlatanism in the name of Islam. If “Islamization” was a project of social and cultural reconstruction, it nevertheless left the pre- and post-colonial concept of secular sovereignty of the state untouched. We may see here another “Islamic” dimension, namely, that even Islamic philosophy as such never really doubted this fact of the relative secular autonomy of the military power basis of the state and the necessity of the pursuit of mundane interests.19 One could see therefore quite clearly the fact that Anwar Ibrahim was threatening the secular power with moral-religious consciousness as a prelude to the story of his loss of power. There was this dominant component of Malaysian politics – for a long period of time accepted if not used by Mahatir – which was introduced by Anwar Ibrahim’s quest for the maintenance of the religious ethical foundation of the politico-economic discourse. However, in the time of the Asian crisis, it seems, the moral-cultural bias of internal politics was seen as a potential threat to Mahatir and on the economic front as an orientation limiting the spectrum of options for the financial and economic future of the nation, a surrender to international pressure. In terms of interior politics, suddenly, a fundamental structural change was on the table which would allow Islam the position of a real modern ethical power, limiting 210

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam Asian authoritarianism and sovereign action of the head of state. It was the structural continuity of Malay nationalism that played into the hands of Mahatir. In the times of crisis in 1997/98, Mahatir, it seems, reflected strongly again on the secular power basis of the state. This step shattered Malaysian Islamic self-understanding, however, with its rationale of defending middle class economic interests and political pragmatism – into which it rather cynically involved in the way Anwar Ibrahim was ousted from power – and turned it into a broadly accepted position. Mahatir knew his power base and what it meant to enact the Internal Security Act (ISA) against his own Deputy. Anwar Ibrahim knew what it meant; he had, by way of similar aleggations of corruption – less crude and less denigrating, but nevertheless no less cynical – ousted a variety of people from office. The case of Professor Syed Hussein Alatas, who was removed from office as ViceChancellor of the University of Malaya was only one case among others. Anwar Ibrahim also knew what ISA meant since his detention in the 1970s when, for 20 months, he was a victim of this “law of emergency” – the rule of ultimate sovereignty of the state. Anwar Ibrahim attempted to represent the moral-religious force of Islam and lost. In all the years of his career, he stood in varying degrees under the intellectual sponsorship of the internationally reputed brothers Syed Hussein Alatas, the sociologist, and Syed Naquib M. al-Attas, the philologist and specialist in Malay literature and Islamic philosopher, and of the journalist Munawar Anees, who turned from a militant to a moderate Islamic intellectual and pragmatic futurist of the “Asian Renaissance” (Ibrahim 1996). In contrast to his radical youth he was now considered a protector of Islamic tolerance and multiculturalism. He pleaded for a liberal and democratic policy and for the world-openness of Malaysia. Even in America Anwar Ibrahim was considered a representative of new Asian liberal leadership. This is a most unique case of the success of a former Islamic radical in the international establishment, reflecting the importance of the moral issue of politics in Asia. More important is that he now became a victim of the very same “Asian Despotism” that, paradoxically enough. he had wanted to abolish with his Islam. He represents a case for the weak, but nevertheless important movement for human rights, civil society and liberal youth activists. He is now part of a new “Asian public” of which he, as a leading representative of the state in Malaysia, was often enough very critical: “Mr. Anwar said the current turmoil in Malaysia was precipitated by the downfall in

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia May of President Suharto of Indonesia. He said Mr. Mahatir’s decision to fire him had been driven by ‘paranoia about the terms nepotism and cronyism. Why do you need to be hypersensitive over the allegations?’ Long-time simmering tensions between Mr. Anwar and Mr. Mahatir came to a head in June when a supporter of Mr. Anwar raised the issue of nepotism and corruption at an assembly of the United Malays National Organization, the governing party” (IHT, September 5-6, 1998, p. 4)

Mahatir’s own readings of such accusations where already given in the quoted speech of June in Japan, where he defended his policies of retreat from international financial markets as a counter measure against neocolonial power concentrated in IMF and Wall Street speculation to buy off successful national industries. At the Nihon Keizei Shimbun International Conference in Tokyo in June 1998 he claimed his policy to be a necessary step toward resisting the “new imperialists”. Paradoxically enough, Anwar was considered in the West as the political hope for the future and for political continuity after Mahatir. For the West Mahatir “knows that time is limited for him. And the only person who could have taken over from him and got respect is Anwar” (IHT, September, 7, 1998, p. 4). “He is under investigation by the police over allegations of campaign financing, sedition and sexual indiscretion. But Mr. Mahatir has refused to offer reasons for the firing, saying that the decision was made by the governing political party – tantalizing Malaysians into thinking that perhaps there was a yet unspoken reason for the move. ‘We do not have to give any explanation over the matter’ Mr. Maahatir said. We find him not suitable – that is all” (ibid.). “The dismissal of Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, after the resignation of the central bank governor, is the latest in a series of actions that show the Southeast Asian world to be turning upside down. Mr. Anwar, an intellectual Muslim critic of the extremes of capitalism, has been ousted from opposing the decision of Prime Minister Mahatir bin Mohamad, hitherto a proponent of acquisitive capitalism, to impose exchange controls on a long-open economy” (Philip Bowering, IHT, September, 3, 1998, p. 8).

Mahatir represents a generation of secular strategists of development, who, with nationalist ideology, attempted to liberate their respective countries from colonialism and who really wanted independence and national liberation. This is of course one point of difference with respect to Anwar Ibrahim, who was a militant Islamist and whose outlook combined social with moral emancipation. Quite in contrast it seemed in the time of crisis 212

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam that both politicians had changed position. Mahatir, whose family was strongly involved in capital dealings and eventually losses regarded the international financial markets as enemies of Malay emancipation and criticized globalization and the monopolistic position of some actors on the currency and financial markets without any accountability. As the IMF believed that recovery could only be brought about by foreign companies taking over, partially or completely, the local companies distressed by the falls in the currency and shares, one of the conditions insisted upon by the Fund was the removal of the restrictions on ownership of local banks and companies by foreign investors. As a result of the country’s accepting this condition, foreign companies could acquire all the big and profitable companies or hold controlling interest in them. These foreign companies would be giants which operate globally. Their funds would be huge and they would dominate the world (Mahatir, speech at the Nihon Keizei Shimbun Conference in Tokyo, 1st Thursday in June, publ. in Sunday Times, Singapore, June 7, 1998: 35). Mahatir until today represents a “Third-Worldist” nationalism critical to the West and at the same time full of admiration for the technicoscientific and economic success of Western capitalism. Anwar, in contrast, was a radical Islamist student leader in the 1970s who, following the ideas of the Revolution in Iran, struggled for the emancipation of Muslims and the Islamic alternative. Not without political pragmatism, though, he remained a moralist, championing a new type of “Asian” Islam, which adhered to both Asian holism and Western Human Rightism at the same time. It is yet to be seen whether these two men also represent the options that will be offered in the political future of Malaysia.

Mahatirism and Islam At this stage it might be of interest to take a brief a glance at Mahatir’s own ambiguous relationship to Islam. Clearly, in recent years Malaysia has witnessed significant success as a project of economic transformation and capitalist development. What is more remarkable – but less often discussed – is Malaysia’s success in building a multi-ethnic society and the unique concomitant civilizing processes in achieving it. In fact, the conventional images of the clash between Western liberalism and Asian authoritarianism have contributed little to developing analytical tools which grasp the paradoxes of the Islamization model of this country. Malaysia is – no doubt 213

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia – a case of Islamic law and order politics, with some decisive features of authoritarianism. However, beyond postcolonial authoritarianism and relics of colonial feudalism and Sultanism, there is a constitutional democracy and a sense of “law” which is rarely seen in other parts of the region. In this respect Malaysia is quite similar to Singapore, with which it shared its history for such a long period, until 1965: In Malaysia, as in Singapore, the “rule of law” derives from British colonial rule. In terms of intellectualism and its relation to the state one might also trace some features and influences of the Confucianism campaign in Singapore in the 1980s on the sentiments of the 45 per cent Chinese population. As in Singapore, it is state institutions which control the intellectualization process of religion in Malaysia. For many Western critics this has led to a type of empty intellectualism, a pure symbolic representation of Islam within the government apparatus and from there extending to the society in pure ritual terms of repetitive campaigns. Like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur represents a type of a post-colonial labour camp transformed into a big shopping centre or a hotel with exotic extensions into the countryside. However, and again like Singapore – more than any Western society – Malaysia seriously incorporates a far-reaching liberal Western cultural quest: the idea of a multi-cultural civilization. Transcending from a colonial outpost of the international system with monotonous palm-oil- and rubber-tree plantations and in remote hill-sides enchanted jungles and on top of them British-Indian-run tea-plantations, Malaysia only gradually found a way of participating in the internationally dominated industrial and financial growth-system. Its main cities, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Malakka and Johor Bahru, are colonial creations, Kuala Lumpur being an agglomeration of Kampongs functional to the demands of the British system in exploiting the vast riches of zincmines. Kuala Lumpur, imitating Singapore, represents today a civilizational project of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural polity and a postmodern global city which combines civility, nostalgia, but at the same time lacks the economic and communicative and logistic functionality for which Singapore has become so famous. We might argue whether – despite some wellknown and decisive dark spots on the political landscape – the success of the Malaysian project relies fully on its combining Islam, multi-culturalism and capitalist economy in a process of state modulation and planning, or on the vigour of the economically active part of the population, the Chinese. Despite all that we can observe two concomitant processes, both well modulated and planned by the local elite. One is the functionally administered extension of the state into the meaning-sphere of the individual, totalizing it from within his own nostalgia in an exoticized urban space. The other is 214

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam the soteriological transcendence of the individual and intra-individual relations within and beyond the culturally recognized “communities” of Islam, more than any other. The paradox is that while Singapore has achieved Western dreams of peaceful urbanism, much of Kuala Lumpur seems until today rely on the types of mis-management brought about by nepotism. It is in this context that we have to place the contemporary importance of Islam. Islamization was not only the indicated response toward Iran and the emergence of Islamic discourse in the Middle East. Islamization meant the continuation of “class” and “race” politics. Within the growth of ethnic discourse, Islam became a Malay religion by both Malays and non-Malays (cf. Khoo Boh Teik 1996: 186). “During the 1970s, UMNO attempted to meet the challenge of the Islamic resurgence by implementing government-sponsored programmes as largely symbolic and token concessions meant to control and manipulate the Islamic resurgence” (Khoo Boh Teik 1996: 161).

As to how Islam as ad-din or “way of life” was to influence the society, there were many views: “more public face to Islam” was a slogan that meant government policies should be broadly based on Islamic concepts. However, a considerable part of the Muslim Malay community aspired more directly to an Islamic state constructed on the basis of the “syariah” (Islamic Law). What did Mahatir do within this spectrum? First, in a number of speeches Mahatir traced a sort of the Golden Age of Islamic civilization, using it as a guide-line for new civilizational inspirations in Southeast Asia and specifically Malaysia. In this he was largely inspired by the rise of what Middle Eastern intellectuals called “PetroIslam”: “With God’s endowment Muslim countries have become the richest in the world, and they control a resource which can force the entire world to bow to them without having to wage war or doing anything else” (Khoo Boh Teik 1996: 163).

Second, Mahatir attacked the Muslim “underdog”. He used the idea of “restoring” the Islamic legacy as a utopian ideal to regain the knowledge needed to command: “Where once Muslims led in the field of human knowledge now Muslims are the most backward people in all arts and sciences” (ibid.). Third, he seems to have adopted a type of technico-scientific positivism 215

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia which he relates to the “knowledge triumphant” of Islam. Here, he introduces a modulating Islamic response to the inconsistencies of the technological revolution and opts for a practical balance between religious and secular learning. Fourth, Islam should emerge as an idea of cultural change and adaptation; in this Mahatir argued: “Then they should integrate the new knowledge into the corpus of the Islamic legacy by eliminating, amending, reinterpreting and adapting its components according to the world view of Islam and its values. The exact relevance of Islam to the philosophy of the disciplines should be determined. A new way in which the reformed disciplines can serve the ideals of Islam should be adopted” (ibid.: 169).

Fifth, Mahatir could be named one of the first theoreticians of the concept of Islamic Capitalism in a much broader sense than a pure reflection on the compatibility of capitalist with religious “Law”. For him capitalist growth means making use of “God’s gift to us”, meaning that there is a religious drift to development. This move implies the search for an Islamic answer to “the mushrooming of non-Muslim banks in Islamic countries” and the flood of money of the Western financial system. And in a clear response to the often used fatalistic complaint about Western materialism, Mahatir invites the Muslims to take their share of wealth; however, at the same time he warns them that it is materialistic to want wealth but not to work for it (ibid.: 173). Finally, we may identify Mahatir’s way of reinstituting the Islamic legacy as a centralized, concerted and controlled process of Islamization “from above”: a clear “Yes” to more Islam in the conduct of public affairs, a clear “No” to the totalizing Islam approaches of PAS and the militants. The key to this is that Islam is constitutionally the official religion of Malaysia. This would not imply – although Mahatir was for a long period silent about this – that the Islamization programme heralded the end of the secular state. Despite reservations of Western investors who often wanted to read Islamization as “fundamentalism” Iranian style, Mahatir’s Islamization policies were to build a sort of cultural and economic stability. As he stated on the occasion of opening the Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad on 1st July 1983, this means “an effort to convince that the assimilation of Islamic teachings by the economy of this country would not bring about any disaster” (ibid.: 178). Mahatir’s answer to the challenge of the West was to create a belief in the power of learning, quality of thrift, dignity of work in the name of Islam. This belief would lead to the pursuit of Islamic values, 216

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam transforming them into a programme of social order and progress: clean, efficient, trustworthy – berish, cekap, dan amanah/ leadership by example: kepimpinaqn melalui teladan … thrift, better discipline, more self-reliance, striving for excellence and “Asian work ethics”, however, at the same time implementing a self understanding of Malaysia as a plural society: with greater tolerance, moderation, and greater understanding of the sensitivities of various ethnic groups (ibid.: 175-181).

Traditional Islam and Religious Spirituality: Syed Naquib Muhammad al-Attas Islam and Science “The wisdom (hikma) of the Rum is in their brain, that of Indians in their imagination, of Greeks in the soul, of Arabs in the tongue – such is the saying of the Arabs concerning the psychology of peoples” we hear Goldziher (1967, I: 157) quoting an old Arabic source. It is indeed interesting to observe that modern definitions of Islamic intellectualism attempt to revalue their own cultural inclinations in building on some close relation to Greek cosmology.20 In this perspective, Islam aspires to purvey true spiritual knowledge of nature and it is within Islam that, through a de-westernization of knowledge, the modern intellectual might recast the whole legacy of human knowledge beyond the negative effects of science and methodology. This is the programme of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, the leading spiritual figure of Malay Islam today. “The fundamental idea that the purpose of seeking knowledge and education in Islam is to produce a good man and not a good citizen” (Al-Attas 1985: xi). Concomitantly, Muslims share the view that the production of a “good man”21 who applies the known, but also accomplishes his knowledge of the hidden Law of God, would necessarily turn into the completion of a project of a just society. This freedom of the Muslim in his choice of knowledge of the Law of God, on the other hand, is designed to prevent him from falling into “learned ignorance”. Western science, however, is often reduced to outdated forms of positivism. The limited concept of science in terms of positivism becomes obvious in the writings of the late Isma’il al-Faruqi, which express an unreconciliable attitude to Western methodology. Al-Faruqi argues that Western science confuses human phenomena with “natural” elements and excludes the order of morality and spirit (Al-Faruqi 1983: 7). He criticizes the false sense of objectivity purported by Western science: 217

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia “The subject’s attitude toward the data studied determines the outcome of the study. This is why the humanistic studies of Western man and the social analysis of Western society by a Western scientist are necessarily ‘Western’ and cannot serve as models for the study of Muslims or of their society” (ibid.: 9).

We should perhaps note here that there is a growing awareness that positivism neglects the possible symbiosis of metaphysical and symbolic expressions and reality in science which also would make it possible to understand the underlying religious inclinations of modern science. Critical theory of the Frankfurt School rejected Nietzsche’s critique of science precisely because its proponents thought it to employ a misguided, unchangeable, positivist concept of science. Habermas, in particular, has raised this argument repeatedly against Nietzsche and French post-structuralism. But the French philosophers, following Nietzsche and Weber, do not stress so much the abstract and positivistic methodology aspect of science, but rather address the fateful connection of the methodologization of habitual behaviour and the body with truth and power. This inextricable interconnection is not in and of itself the problem, but rather its evergrowing submission to mass professionalization and the “mass body” is. Having traced this turn in the argumentation, it becomes clear that Habermas’ view of a broader concept of modern science is valid. The Islamic critics of science, in the last instance hold a similarly limited positivistic notion of science, just as Nietzsche and the cultural critics did. But Habermas rather neglects any understanding of the “physics” of modern knowledge construction; namely, the intellectualization of the body of the professional, a process so heavily related to Nietzsche’s notion of “resentment”.22 Although there are traditional Islamic forms of organized and systematic knowledge, for them what separates traditional science from modern science is the profane character of the latter. While for Habermas newly adapted forms of modern science which he relates predominantly to the rise of hermeneutics do allow for a symbiosis of ultimate values and method, he nevertheless insists on the functional separation between the realms of morality, science, and law as essential for modernity. We should note here, although it is not of our main concern, that for the traditional Islamizationists it is positivistic science, but even more decisively – although less explicitly – functional differentiation that they oppose. However and contrary to the line of my own inclinations here, for Habermas the impact of science on the “body” and the habitual “character” and the type of truth claims it allows for are beyond the present concerns. While for protagonists of the Islamization of knowledge, similarly to 218

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam Habermas’ affirmative modernity concept, the notion of “resentment” is absent from the process of modern intellectualization, they – in employing a different, and naturally critical notion of modernity to that of Habermas, see that modernity threatens Islam due to two mechanisms which it employs: the monopoly of secularized and methodologized knowledge and formal entitlement to citizenship on the basis of functional separation of religion and law. Against these threats of modernity they evoke the religious spirituality of Islamic knowledge and against the supposed nihilism of formal entitlement and citizenship he upholds the pursuit of the Law of God, the shari‘a islamiyya, as ways to solutions. It might seem rather obscure that in rejection of the “lower” inclinations of Western science suddenly, for a number of Muslim intellectuals, the image of the faqih emerges as a possible figure of consolidation. In refusing to follow his relentless Oriental critics23, I wish to recall here Goldziher’s critical appreciation of the ‘ulama as a scholarly class in early Islam. His critical attitude towards a specialized, highly over-developed formation of Islamic dogma is aware of the paradox it implies, namely that it developed the first “critical philology”24 in history, but also that this critical philology, in the process of its routinization, was used to give an authoritative backing to any opinion held by the scholarly and teaching professions.25 With these insights into the logic of bureaucratic routine of a professionally specialized early Islamic scholarship, Goldziher, however, nevertheless fails to explain the disastrous decline of Muslim scholarship into corruption, manipulation and intrigue to which some earlier modern Muslim intellectuals have criticized it so vigorously. Early Muslim bureaucratization and professionalization, there, points in quite another direction and anticipates Weber’s modern understanding of the fate of “science as vocation” in quite a different way: prebendalism implied the relative autonomy of Muslim scholars from the apparatus of direct rule, but it also caused corruption and the manipulation of ideas in terms of immediate interests.26 It seems to me, however, rather bizarre today that a broad stratum of Muslim intellectuals ranging from such diverse intellectual figures as, for example, Ali Shari‘ati and al-Faruqi to Hassan Hanafi and Sardar take the image of the faqih as an ideal for a modern Islamic intellectualism. Islamic Intellectualism We are confronted with statements of Muslim scholars with high ranks in the secular hierarchies of today’s higher education, who insist on an unchallenged continuity of traditional Islamic intellectualism. This excel219

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia lent modern position of the faqih derives from the need to reunite the realms of modern society with the religion of Islam. Sayyed Qutb was perhaps the most outspoken. With his concept of “social peace” he argued against what he believed to be the negativity of formal citizenship of the Western type. Social peace is established by the Islamic Law and the response of men. In itself it entails those overwhelmingly “modern” principles for which the West and Communism have so vigorously struggled over centuries. There is this understanding of a Muslim traditional approach to science which tells us that science in Islam was always embedded in a framework of piety and dominance of moral values. This religious inclination of science is then seen to make it a source of control and resistance against Western destructionism. How far can habitual scriptualism go in preserving such preoccupations? Our innocent critique of classical Islamic scholarship in terms of an early version of modern scientific routinization, perhaps becomes less astounding as we proceed in taking the remarks of Snouck Hurgronje, another classical orientalist specialist of fiqh, on the profession into account: “Muslim specialists on constitutional law have always held sound aristocratic principles. … What had distinguished the rulers of the first century, the interpreters of the law after Muhammad, from their fellow-Muslims? … It was their superiority in the knowledge of the relevation of Muhammad’s sunna, of the spirit of Islam. … [And] no modern science shows such a surprising unity in method as the Muslim fiqh” (Snouck Hurgronje 1957: 279).

Many Orientalists have pointed to the fact of the strong cleavage between intellectuals and the masses in Islamic culture. Thus it became clear to them that since around 1100 A.D. the scholar-jurists had become estranged from the masses and that for example al-Ghazzali strongly opposed the ordinary man’s being allowed to engage in or even to hear theological discussions”. In contrast, however, Muslim protagonists of the ideal of “tradional Islamic scholarship” would perhaps also support the view held by Jean-Paul Charnay that the social differentiation of Islam in its spread over various regions, cultures and languages caused trends of unity in Muslim thought that were directed towards coherence and “respect for the principle of identity” (Charnay 1971: 2). Gibb, however, points to a certain lack of moral integrity in the way modern Muslim intellectuals attempt to appropriate “Traditional Islam” for modern purposes: it separates the body of the one 220

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam who acts within a religious community from its idealized version. Perhaps it should not astonish us that the real modernist and nobleman in English Orientalism, Sir Hamilton A.R. Gibb, had some fine words to say in critique of such practices both among Western and Oriental modernizers: “You may make your own religion by choosing traits in dealing with the historic religious community: choosing is the sign of immaturity and of spiritual presumption” (Gibb 1947: 84).

One might call in Gibb’s terms the imagery developed in relation to the “traditional Muslim intellectual” presumptuous in the way it denies the specific goals of intellectualization of tradition, an attitude which stands in full opposition to the proclaimed aims of satisfying intellectual needs and maintaining a realm of spiritual transcendence. The voice of “traditional” Islam defines the threat of the West in terms of materialism, technology and science. The challenge of the modern West to Islam is defined in psychological terms as a threat to the domain of the mind. Framing a search for Islamization in terms of a recourse to what is felt to be the complete Islamic intellectual tradition, S.H. Nasr attempts to develop an in-depth critique of the modern world itself, based on traditional principles (see Nasr 1989: 309). For Nasr religious intellectualism is to state the truths of religion in terms of the highest intellectual concepts of the time. For Nasr these are the Islamic orthodoxy which defended the doctrine of transcendence and otherness of God, and the Sufism which developed a framework for the personal religious experience. However, Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s imagining the spirituality of traditional Islamic intellectualism as a cultural tool for preserving a view on the world of the spirit “through and beyond the physical world” and posing the problem of “objectivity” in terms of transcendence (ibid.: 8f.) entails an act of intellectualization which he himself is not aware of, by means of creating a form – choosing the traits of the image of Islamic thought in history – which in itself opposes spiritual transcendence because the image itself serves the purpose of cross cultural discourse. Nasr attempts to construct ‘ilm as an Islamic notion of “science”, i. e. as a higher form of knowledge. For him the struggle between rationalism and ‘ilm as intensive thought stands in the centre of the process building the images of intellectualism in Modernity and Islam. For him religious imagination begins to elaborate its conception of what an intellectual should be. Within such a discourse the reference to intellectual practices deriving from an upholding of the image of the “divinity of nature” as opposed to the 221

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Western practice of its utilitarian form of domination, is to design an intellectualized picture, i. e. the “divinity of nature” becomes part of a secularized discourse which no longer upholds itself the practice of celebrating divine nature. This becomes most obvious in al-Attas’ discussion of Western secularization: “The integral components in the dimensions of secularization are the disenchantment of nature, the desacralization of politics, and the deconsecration of values. By the ‘disenchantment’ of nature – a term and concept borrowed from the German sociologist Max Weber – they mean as he means, the freeing of nature from its religious overtones; and this involves the dispelling of animistic spirits and gods and magic from the natural world, separating it from God and distinguishing man from it, so that man may no longer regard nature as a divine entity, which thus allows him to act freely upon nature, to make use of it according to his needs and plans and hence to create historical change and development” (Al-Attas 1985: 16f.)

An Oriental Orientalist’s View on Islam and the West Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas develops his vision of Islamization as a cultural revolution, the advent of something fully new, but however at the same time linked with the reconstruction of high – conservative and aristocratic – Malay Sufi-culture: He was educated as a philologist and specialist in Malay literature in England and is a proponent of an anti-Western revaluation of Islamic values in relation to an abstracted reconstruction of Malay spirituality.27 I had at least four formal sittings (none of them less than 3 hours) with Prof. al-Attas, the Founding Director of the International Institute for Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) in Kuala Lumpur in April 1995. These encounters took place in the Director’s office at ISTAC. The building and setting of ISTAC is worth mentioning because it is a unique in Asia. Built on a hillside opposite the presidential Palace overlooking the new skyline of Kuala Lumpur, ISTAC has a distinctive architecture, with reference to Spanish Alhambra as much as to Renaissance Italian Monasteries and Oxbridge Halls, a Library with 400 Humanity and History of Science journals and rare special collections of leading German and French Orientalists, such as Spuler, Weisweiler and Brunschvig. Al-Attas, who can be regarded as the mental father of Islamization in Malaysia and the spiritual father of the Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, is a philosopher and philologist and as he has designed this building in all its details, an artist as well. He was certainly intellectually and philosophically of all personalities I 222

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam have so far met in Southeast Asia the most inspiring one. His dispute with Dutch Orientalists is well known and the scholarly world of Archipelagoists is still divided about the accuracy of his or the Dutch translations of Malay Sufi poetry of the 17th century. I recall three major interventions from my encounters with al-Attas. First, he has a decisive counter-perception of what he calls the Western stories of Islamization of Southeast Asia. Second, he developed a most elaborate philosophy of revaluation of Islam against the “Western crisis” based on the two concepts of iman and ‘ilm which I will treat separately here. Third, his social theory of “proper place”. Al-Attas’ history of Islamization is founded in his strong belief in the specificity of Malay Islam. “The History of the West is the History of Islam therein!” is one of his major proclamations. But he believes what the West did with Islamic History was to desert it. First, for him, Orientalists – falsely and overtly paradoxical – focused on Java in attempting to understand Islam in the Malay world. However, as he points out, Java is not the centre of the spread of Islam in the region. Second, he is convinced that Dutch and French orientalists who worked on Islamization in this region were badly trained and intellectually badly equipped to do so. With respect to language, they had no training in Arabic or Persian, i. e. they were not able to trace those very Middle Eastern sources on which Islamization in the Archipelago was built. On the other hand, Urbanists, who had no training with respect to the physical morphologies of the Malay World, claimed that there are no Islamic towns in the Malay world. With respect to Law, Al-Attas points to the ambiguous role of Snouck Hurgronje and his works, telling us that local customs – adat – oppose Islamic law. Al-Attas believes that Orientalists constructed such contradictions purely in order to keep control and to use them for colonial purposes: He states that with respect to language Orientalists say that Islam has contributed nothing and that all concepts that Islam brought to the Malay World only replaced pre-existing indigenous concepts, as these are points argued by van Leur. However, as al-Attas believes, conventional Malay language had no such indigenous concepts and he takes it a pure falsification of Malay history to claim that the word “tuhat” is a mere translation of “Allah”. Allah for the Malays was a new concept. Then al-Attas turns to the question, “why do Westerners eternally dig in our origins?” “Where are our origins? They ask, and then they permanently wish to prolong the question of origin to the creation of the world or some big bang.” He then reverses the question of “origin”:

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia “But when does ‘England’ start? With the Magna Carta, or with Henry VIII, or so, isn’t it. There is a limit to the question of origin! Do we have to go back endlessly? There are the limits. These limits do not lie in tomb stones. These limits lie there were Islam begins, where the reconstruction of the region begins. But then there is this idea of the Orientalists that Islam is not profound in this region. According to them, always, Islam has changed nothing. The Javanese are the masters of Syncretism, everything is just Waya. The application of Hinduism and Bhuddism is only theatrical. Yes, we can say that there was a great craft of story-telling, of epics, of art in the region, an inclination to aesthetics rather than to spiritual and intellectual moral commitment. We cannot say, as van Leur does, nothing changed after the advent of Islam. First of all within a relatively short period of time 200 million people converted to Islam. This was a real change that made Islam international, getting Islam out of the restrictions of regional cultural inclinations. How did Islamization, in the first instance, happen? The religion of the Arabs proved superior in that it established their language and their culture. Then there is this eternal search for monuments, tombs, towns etc. In attempting to prove that nothing changed. The inner intellectual and spiritual change that emerged with the adoption of Islam and specifically with the spiritual and intellectual concepts that it transported. This remained a wood-culture and was not a stone culture. But we should look at the ethical and conceptual aspects, not the decadence of stone, artefacts, etc. The nonprofoundness they then want to prove with the fact of traders, not intellectuals. But in Islam there is no such split. Muhammad himself was a trader. Many of the great religious figures in Islam have been traders. Then, they say the spread of Islam only relies on autochthonous cultural traditions, adat and sufism. The Islamization of the whole region has nothing to do with the spread of Islam in Java.”

He envisages a revivified knowledge arising from illumination. In so doing he assigns the rescuing role in the present quandary to what he calls “existentialist” mysticism rather than to the two hitherto dominant aspects of Islam, namely “essentialist” theology and philosophy (see van Niewenhuijze 1986). On the level of knowledge and science, of course, the reconstruction of “difference” emerges as one of fundamental inner religious concerns and the question of de-westernization; the author does not differentiate between Christianity and Western civilization. For Muslim intellectuals like al-Attas the West seems to be refuted by its own devices. Concerning the theme of secularization and the negation of the existence of this notion in the East, al-Attas uses various arguments already presented by Christian philosophers and Jesuits who were alarmed by the crisis of the decline of Christianity in the Western World (Al-Attas 1985: 1). He quotes Weber about the disenchantment of the world (ibid.: 16) 224

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam and Nietzsche’s Death of God. He nevertheless reverses the critiques developed in the West to assure us that secularization and to be secular is rejected in Islam. Secularization, which is synonymous to de-Islamization according to al-Attas, has to do with the “infusion of alien concepts into the minds of Muslims” (ibid.: 43). By debasing Western civilization as materialistic and this worldly oriented al-Attas wants to convince the reader about the specificity of Islam: “Religion in the sense we mean, as din, has never really taken root in Western civilization due to its excessive and misguided love of the world and secular life” (ibid.: 129).

Al-Attas, similarly to S.H. Nasr, nevertheless seems to remain silent on questions such as that of the everyday life spheres and popular culture in Muslim countries where the secular component is overwhelming. But also the fact that many of the Muslim countries in the Middle East for instance have witnessed a modernization and secularization in the judicial, parliamentary and educational system well, before many European countries. Moreover, this refusal to separate the sacred from the profane quite often leads to justifying tyranny, again an old orientalist vision of the theory of power in Islam. Moreover, al-Attas also remains silent with regard to the universality of the secular/ sacred spheres in all religions. Perhaps one might here add an idea expressed by W.C. Smith, whose article indeed appears with al-Faruqi’ s group, that “Faith is man’ s most decisive quality, according to various of the World’s cultural traditions” (Smith 1982: 1). Indeed, by insisting on the specificity of the spirituality and the faith of Islam versus the secularism and materialism of the West, the Islamizers seem to deprive Islam of the universal field of the sociology of religion. Al-Attas also provides a theory of Arabic language where, regrettably, “social change” and the “’infusion of alien concepts” led to the confusion of the Islamic mind. “It is a kind of regression towards non-Islamic worldviews; it is what I call the de-Islamization of language” (Al-Attas: 1991: 11). The “infusion of alien concepts” extends to Greek thought through the writings of the philosophy and through the intrusion of social sciences. It is possible to argue here again that al-Attas promotes similar arguments to many Middle Eastern Islamizers who advocate purification of history and language. Al-Attas seems to express a strong aversion towards sociology, perhaps as a self-identification aimed against his older brother, 225

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia S. Hussein Alatas, the founder of sociological investigation of Southeast Asia. Al-Attas’ aversion extends to the question of the renovation of Arabic language. He nevertheless remains silent on the subtle levels of the already well developed Arabic modern language, literature, the novel and poetry in the Middle East which have long since been secularized. Al-Attas, like many Islamizers, wants to undertake a project of Islamizing epistemology. This is done by: “… exposing the inadequacies of Western epistemologies and by outlining the guidelines along which Islamic epistemologies must direct the intellectual power of Muslim scholars” (Harun and Murad 1990: 29).

But epistemology, like social science, is a universal tool. The fact that ideological and political factors affect the nature of scientific research should not be confused with the argument that developing a specific indigenous methodology which is exclusive to Muslims and the Muslim “mind” is a problematic racist classification. One of the contributions the Islamizers are attempting to offer is the metaphysical programme, meaning that metaphysics become the core of Islamic science: “They could constitute general metaphysical claims or statements about the purpose of creation, the existence of order and nature as implying the existence of the Greatness of God” (ibid.).

For al-Attas, the alternative path he proposes is to be on a higher level of experience which is the intuition experienced by Sufis (Al-Attas: 1985: 219). “The metaphysical vision of the world and the ultimate reality envisaged in Islam is quite different from that projected by the statements and general conclusions of modern philosophy and science. We maintain that all knowledge of reality and of truth, and the projection of a true vision of the ultimate nature of things, is originally derived through the medium of intuiton” (Al-Attas 1990: 11).

One could find a similarity in the claims of S.H. Nasr, whose special understanding of sufism makes him focus upon astrology, alchemy and occult science. “Nevertheless, Nasr manages to convey the feel of an alternative science in action: a science that is just as ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ as Western science, but draws its

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam legitimacy and its philosophical and sociological framework from the all-encompassing epistemology of Islam” (Sardar 1988: 174).

Unfortunately it is exactly that line which al-Attas wants to draw between Islam, Islamic philosophy and the West that makes it so similar to European religious mystical movements. The claim to be searching alternative intuitive ways of thinking is, however, not particular to Islam or Sufism; indeed one could trace the same mood of thinking in the Western antiindustrialization movement in Europe, the various modern religious groups which have witnessed revivalism, be they Christian, Jewish or Buddhists, but also the German intellectual romantics, who up to the Second World War made similar claims concerning intuitive knowledge and alternative cognitive forms of knowledge.28 Second, S.N. al-Attas’s outcry against Western materialism is understandable as a form of cultural critique, and as a higher intellectual concern of ultimate moral norms. Here ISTAC reveals an inclination which is certainly competitive with the high premises of traditional western Orientalism. Nevertheless, in terms of the Malaysian context, Islamization as reconstruction of the political culture is instrumentalized as the case of Anwar Ibrahim and the PAS’s (the fundamentalists) manipulation of the religious symbols would reveal. The outcome is indeed an instrumentalization, which is being directed towards bureaucratization and the reconstruction of the nation-state political culture.

The Example of ISTAC in Kuala Lumpur It is a mistake to understand S.M.N. al-Attas and the institution he founded in Kuala Lumpur as a branch of Malaysian fundamentalism. If Bassam Tibi states that S.M.N. al-Attas is a fundamentalist (Tibi 1992: 35, 113), then he omits in his analysis that the discourse of Islamization in Malaysia is closely linked with the strategic engeneering of social change. ISTAC being just one among other institutions designed to take part in this process. Just to restate S.M.N. al-Attas’s slogan of “de-westernization of knowledge” as an expression of fundamentalism would be misleading with respect to al-Attas’ role as a great player in Malaysian Islam. Western observers have largely neglected his importance and greatly underestimate the local institutional as much as the general as it were “philosophical” importance of thinkers like S.M.N. al-Attas. The Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) was founded 227

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia in 1987 by S.M.N. al-Attas. He was the former Dean of the Arts Faculty at the University of Malaya. He was also one of the founding members of the Malaysian National University (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia). S.M.N. al-Attas started his career as an officer after studying at Eton Hall, Chester, Wales, then at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, England (19521955). He was active as an officer in fighting Communism in Malaysia. He later studied at the University of Malaya from where he went on with a fellowship to study at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Al-Attas then obtained a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. What is interesting is the fact that al-Attas’ teachers were eminent Orientalists such as Hamilton Gibb, Fazlur Rahman, Tashihiko Izutsu, A.J. Arberry, Sir Mortimer Wheeler of the British Academy and Sir Richard Winstedt. All these facts are well known, since ISTAC provides us with a sort of a living biography of Professor al-Attas (Wan Moh Nor Wan Daud, ISTAC). No doubt, al-Attas’s philological works owe a lot to traditional orientalism. Personally, he retains a great respect for traditional orientalists like B. Spuler, who he met in Europe.29 Certainly, the early philological works of al-Attas on Fansuri and Raniri became crucial landmarks for the study of Malay Sufism and Islam. His writings about Sufism as practised and understood among the Malays have gained importance in that al-Attas is an “indigenous” scholar who followed and added upon the work of C. Snouck Hurgronje on Islam and Sufism. Certainly also, al-Attas became an important figure during the post-colonial period; for he was among the first to challenge Dutch Orientalists’ biased visions on the theories of Islamization in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago (Al-Attas 1969). Al-Attas, revealed to what extent theories on Islamization faced ideological prejudices as opposed to the theories of Hinduism and Buddhism in the Archipelago, which have been magnified at the expense of Islam. He was additionally a strong advocate of replacing Malay language with English and he founded and directed the Institute of Malay Language, Literature and Culture at the national University of Malaya. For many, al-Attas became popular with the notion of “de-Westernization of knowledge”. For al-Attas, it seems that one of the problems causing “confusion” of the Muslim mind is the de-islamization of language (Al-Attas 1991: 11). One could interpret al-Attas’ notion of history as a form of modern “authentication” of the past and we may be well aware that such a project is of a broad significance to the cultural work of social reconstruction in the postcolonial world as much as it was and is in old and new struggles over the cultures of modernity at large.30 Al-Attas’ understanding of Islamization also entails an ideological dimension. He constructs his interpretation 228

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam of the history of the spread of Islam in Southeast Asia on essentially depaganization, de-secularizationand de-westernization lines. In Islam, Secularism and the Philosophy of the Future, al-Attas argued that: “The phenomenon of Islam and its impact in the history of world cultures and civilizations did bring about the proper disenchantment of nature, and the proper desacralization of politics, and the proper deconsecration of values, and hence without bringing about with it secularization. Not only is secularization as a whole the expression of an utterly unislamic world view, it is also set against Islam” (Al-Attas 1985: 38).

Through advocating the concept of “de-westernization of knowledge”,31 al-Attas maintains that knowledge “must be scrutinized so that there is nothing that contains the germs of secularization” (Al-Attas 1989: 10). Al-Attas – this certainly shows the ambigouity of his scholarly and political role – was a central figure in the emergence of the Islamic student movement of the seventies in Malaysia. Al-Attas created a circle of students who met at his house (Ibrahim 1987: 12f.). Anwar Ibrahim was his former student and later his friend. Anwar Ibrahim was one of the main brains in creating and financing ISTAC. ISTAC was originally established as a part of the International Islamic University. Nevertheless, once in Kuala Lumpur, the visitor is very quickly informed about the Director’s understanding of Islamic education and the way the Institute receives limited amounts of students; the exclusivity (only for the khasah, the few) and difficult access the to the library and the basically foreign teaching staff (Iranian, Sudanese, Turkish, American and a few Malays): all this makes it very clear that the two institutions (the International Islamic University, and ISTAC) do function separately, if they do not distance themselves from each other. Al-Attas insists that he has little to do with any of the IIIT activities or conferences in Kuala Lumpur. Furthermore, the visitor is also reminded that although al-Attas attended the Mecca Conference in 1977 with al-Faruqi, al-Attas expressed strong antipathies towards al-Faruqi’s writings and ideas and considers him his rival: “I refer here to the regrettable instances in which some Muslim scholars and intellectuals among the Muslims have appropriated some of these ideas in their writings without due acknowledgement after they had become acquainted with them in lectures, conferences, meetings and private discussions” (Al-Attas 1989: vii).

In respect to his “hierarchical” social philosophy it is important to note the 229

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia background of al-Attas as a “Sayyid”32 of Arab, Hadrami origin, whose ancestors were saints and scholars. This is a stratum of central importance in Hadrami society (Sergeant 1957); his writings on Sufism, together with his military training, are all interesting ingredients of “elitism”, “chivalry” and hierarchy, which he personally cultivates as a trait: “There is no doubt, however, that his military training – particularly the Islamic elements of respecting order, discipline and loyalty – continues to influence some of his views and ways as an Islamic scholar and administrator” (Wan Moh Nor Wan Daud, ISTAC).

It is essential here to highlight how al-Attas’s biography is related to his being awarded the al-Ghazali Chair. What is important for us is the aura created by the Sainthood of Sayyids and the Arab origin, which plays a important status role in Malay culture. The Arabs in Southeast Asia have long enjoyed the privilege of being the cultural carriers of imported Middle Eastern ideas and religious traits: “Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas bin Syed Ali al-Attas was born on Septmber 5th, 1931 in Bogor, Indonesia. His genealogical tree can be authentically traced over a thousand years to the Ba‘Alawi sayyids of Hadramaut and all the way back to the Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Holy Prophet (PBUH). His later illustrious ancestors include saints, scholars and savants, one of whom from his maternal side was Syed Muhammad al-‘Aydarus, the teacher and spiritual guide of Syed Abu Hafs ‘Umar Ba Syaiban of Hadramaut, who initiated one of the most prominent scholars in the Malay world, Nur al-Din al-Raniri, into the Rifa‘iyyah Order. Syed Muhammad Naquib’s mother, Sharifah Raquan al-‘Aydarus, from her maternal side, came from Bogor, Indonesia and was a descendant of the Sudanese royal family of Sukapura. His paternal grandfather, Syed Abdullah bin Muhsin al-Attas, was a saint (wali) from Java whose influence was not confined only to Indonesia but also to Arabia. His paternal grandmother Ruqayah Hanum, a Turkish lady of aristocratic lineage, was married to Ungku Abdul Majid, the younger brother of Sultan Abu Bakar of Johore (d. 1895) while her sister Khadijah was married to the Sultan himself, and became the queen of Johore. When Ungku Abdul Majid passed away, leaving two sons, Ruqayah married Syed Abdullah al-Attas and later gave birth to their only child, Syed Ali al-Attas, the father of Syed Muhammad Naquib” (Wan Moh Wan Daud, ibid.).

It seems that the idea that hierarchy and hierarchy of knowledge is a recurrent theme in al-Attas’ understanding of Islamic education, which finds parallelisms in Malay feudalism. 230

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam “The notion of right or proper places involves necessity for things to be in that condition, to be deployed in a certain order, arranged according to various ‘levels’ maratib and ‘degrees’ darajat. Ontologically, things are already so arranged, but man, out of ignorance of the just order pervading all creation, makes alterations and confuses the places of things such that injustice occurs” (Al-Attas 1991: 21).

That knowledge is transcendental, ordered and hierarchical seems to be the main concern of al-Attas: “What we are saying is that knowledge, as referring to meaning, consists of the recognition of the proper places of things in the order of creation, such that it leads to the recognition of the proper place of God in the order of being and existence” (Al-Attas 1989: 9).

And here again: “In contrast to modern philosophy and science with regard to the sources and methods of knowledge, we maintain that knowledge comes from God and is acquired through the channels of the sound senses, true report based on authority, sound reason, and intuition” (ibid.).

ISTAC was designed personally by al-Attas, in a Mauresque type of architecture with mashrabiyyahs and Islamic architecture. It includes imported Italian pottery, expensive carpets and decorations, plenty of rooms and a huge conference room that reminds foreigners of an Italian monastery. It also includes a large Andalusian court. However, there are many designs which also point to a sort of symbolic competition with “Oxbridge” colleges. The construction of a new madrasah is planned. The library acquired a large collection of journals, precious Islamic and general works, besides the Fazlur Rahman Urdu collection, the Bertold Spuler and the Brunschvig collections. ISTAC publishes works on Islamic sciences and manuscripts. The German orientalist Annemarie Schimmel visited and spoke at the opening of ISTAC. ISTAC is representing an “orientalist” self perception and futuristic vision, with intentions to promote economic prosperity and simultaneously to cultivate an Islam with money, status and means to acquire rich oriental collections of books and manuscripts from Europe and the various parts of the Western world. An Islam of power and wealth and lavish institutions. It is no coincidence that ISTAC is located near the Seri Perdana, the Prime Minister’s official residence, The Ministry of Education and other Minis231

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia tries at Pusat Bandar Damansara. ISTAC enjoys the view of a hill where the new rich financial class and the foreign embassies are located and where the condominiums and villas are blooming. The Beacon on the Crest of a Hill, which is title of one of the publications of ISTAC, designates none other than S. al-Attas.

Glimpses of the Islamic Civil Society As we have argued above, Malaysian “Islamization” was based on a strong wave of cultural policies “from above” integrating and coopting most of what was once an active militant Islamic movement into a state institutionalized process of cultural policies of social self- assertiveness and economic growth. We have also stressed that this integration process of the Islamic opposition, although it contributed to an effective process of social modulation, tentatively even social engineering, “Singapore style”, it also led to a decline of intellectualism at large. This situation might have changed slightly in the “crisis” of 1998. However, it could be discerned that the proponents of a new wave of oppositional Islamic intellectualism were decisive players on the scene of Islamic etatism in the period between 1981 to 1998. Some of these figures should be mentioned here. First of all, there is Anwar Ibrahim, the key figure of the past period, now in prison and, because of that, a potentially symbolic figure in the Islamic opposition in the years to come. He was born in Penang in 1947. In the 1980s he was Minister of education, from 1986 on. From 1971 he was president of ABIM and of course, the most significant event in Anwar’s early career took place on August 6 1971 when he, together with some friends, established the Muslim Youth Movement. Today it is better known by its Malay name, the Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM). ABIM was different from and represented an alternative to the Dakwah groups, in that it relied on the utopia of ideas much more strongly rather than demanding the complete submission to a specifically selected Islamic life-style. He certainly was a charismatic leader with great political credibility. His arrest in 1974 followed demonstrations by University of Malaya students protesting about rural poverty. His detention for two years under the supervision of the ISA resulted in no formal charges being brought against him and he was released in 1976 without having confessed to any crime. It was in recognition of this, and his work in ABIM, since he became the organisation’s president in 1974, that he was awarded the Ullama Egbal Centenary medal by President Zia Ul Haq in July 1979. In 1980 ABIM held a big rally 232

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam at the Kampung Baru mosque to protest against the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. 1982 he was co-opted as deputy or junior Minister in the Prime Minister’s office and eventually under the protection of Mhatir became president of the UMNO Youth Movement of Malaysia. In 1983 he was Minister of Sport, Youth and Culture. From 1984-86 he was Minister of Agriculture. He was, before ousted from office, Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister. He was deputy president of UMNO, the dominant party in the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition. He was also was President of he International Islamic University.33 The occasions on which he spoke about a new civil responsibility of state institutions and on the relationship between justice and the law, could be well placed as points in his defence, especially now, where he himself has become a most obvious victim of certain relics of Asian authoritarianism and the non-accountability of state institutions and the judicial apparatus. Not too long before his own indictment, he spoke as follows: “The growing concern of the public regarding the increasing incidences of judicial indiscretions is a matter to be neither taken lightly nor viewed negatively” (Ibrahim 1996: 64). “Thus, judges must be seen to be absolutely impartial in the adjunction of all cases, be they commercial, civil, criminal or constitutional.” “In the case of Asia, this is essential to bolster the region’s image as a place where justice can be readily sought and obtained” (ibid.: 65).

Here speaks an enlightened statesman who once was an Islamic fundamentalist and whose inclinations were now with the “Renaissance” and the modern challenge of Islam as a potential power for growing capitalism in Malaysia. Much of this enlightenment, certainly, related to the strong involvement with the debate about science and Islam which in various contexts took him back to the old relationship with his teacher al-Attas. Still in 1990, after many years of official politics and ministerial career, Anwar Ibrahim felt inclined to the old ideas of Islamic science and the future of the Muslim community related to it. He quotes Kuhn and Feyerabend on the subjectivity of science, and mentions that Muslims have still not produced their own Joseph Needham, bringing the example of Fuat Sezgin and S.H. Nasr (Ibrahim 1990: 5). He also calls for a distinction between science and non-science with the ethical concerns of the world view of Islam; in this endeavour, he says, we have two guides: the Qur’an and the history of science in Islam. He argues against finding the proof of every 233

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia scientific fact and discovery in the Qur’an (ibid.: 4). His aim is to develop a contemporary philosophy of science, universalistic science. Islamic philosophy of science should be able to show how these values could be integrated or moulded into it, within the framework of the world view of Islam (ibid.: 6). Another important figure on the Kuala Lumpur Islamic intellectual scene of the 1980s and early 1990s is Munawar Anees. He once was considered the scribe of Anwar Ibrahim, and he is now like Anwar Ibrahim himself in detention and was used as one of the “crown witnesses” against Anwar. If we can believe press reports, he is described as the “trembling ruin of a human being who said in court that he was ready to end everything that could end his further destruction”. He was without any medical treatment, although known to be ill. He had to stay naked in his cell, without sleep, had his hair cut off, etc. (FAZ 8.12.1998, no. 285: 6). He was editor-in-chief at Berita Publishers in Kuala Lumpur. One of his main books, openly and clearly participating in the “Islamization of Knowledge” debate, is his Islam and Biological Futures (1989). He maintained a close relationship to the international scene, most notably to his friend Ziauddin Sardar, who also published Anees’ article on “Islamic values and Western sciences, A Case Study of Reproductive Biology”, which was included in the Touch of Midas, edited by Sardar. Among those who played a major role in the “Islamization of Knowledge” reshaping of the academic and educational institutions was Osman Baker. He was educated as a mathematician who first studied mathematics in London. He then wrote a Ph.D. thesis on the philosophy of Science under Seyyed Hossein Nasr at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1995 he was Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Malaya. Earlier he acted as secretary of ABIM and in 1977 became founder and president of the Islamic Academy of Science. During his time studying at Temple University, he also had close ties to Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi. It may well be understandable that a theoretician of Malay sufism like al-Attas had very little in common with all thesenew, internationally well-connected nomenclatura of “Islamic science”. This is well reflected in al-Attas’ critique of the orientations followed at the International Islamic University and IIIT, although many of those who joined academic positions there form the core group of the audience at al-Attas’ Saturday night lecture sessions. On 7 March 1982 Mahatir announced the intention to establish an Islamic University in Malaysia. The following year after a ten day visit to the Gulf states and just before the general elections the University opened 234

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam its doors, symbolizing UMNO’s Islamic stand against PAS. For Mahatir the aim was to build credentials as an emerging statesman of the Islamic world. The University, in the words of Mhatir’s opening address, was aiming at students who would “retain a balance of values, accepting what was good from the West but continuing to hold firmly to Islamic values” (Khoo Boh Teik 1996: 176). Mahatir also stressed the international framework of the university as a challenge to be universal in concept and character in accordance with the universality of Islam and Islamic learning. The OIC, Organization of Islamic Conferences, later agreed to co-sponsor the University. It might be doubted – and certainly from the standpoint of al-Attas’ critique – whether the university was kept free from sectarian tendencies in Islam and from political influence or factionalist sentiment. And although English and Arabic were the languages of instruction – putting the Bahasa into the background – a lot of ideological sectarianism among the group of young Muslim scholars that joined the university from abroad could be felt when even in the 1990s the setting of curricula were discussed. Mahatir’s slogan – at the time fully in line with the Islamization project and the path symbolized by the cooption of Anwar Ibrahim – seemed to have left a large scope for interpretation and action within the fringes of the university: 14 months after the initial declaration, on 11 May 1983, the IIU was opened and given the task of using “revelation and reason as sources of knowledge” (ibid.: 177).

Notes 1

With respect to Singapore see my article on Snock Hurgronje and the British in Singapore (cf. Stauth 1992a). 2 Quite symtomatic for this unaccountable type of tensions and antagonisms are the remarks of Professor Jomo K. S. of the University of Malaya with respect to Anwar’s options. Stating that astonishingly all major leading political players have refrained from ethnopolitical statements during the crisis, he nevertheless anticipates that Anwar possibly would from the backstage of political discourse threaten the legitimacy of UNMO and bring in a combination of “Islam” and “pribumi” similar to Adi Sasono or Habibie (see Jomo 1998: 38f.). 3 Kenneth Cragg’s comment here is quite interesting to add: “It is not that Fazlur Rahman, in this stance, is pressing for a ‘liberation theology’ like that of Ali Shari‘ati or José Miranda. It is simply that he is 235

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia

4 5

6 7

8 9 10

11

12

13 14

characterizing Islamic God-consciousness as the exclusive correlate of ethical socio-political action in the world” (Cragg 1985: 100). We should be aware that the fundamentalist discourse of Islamization has turned these principles into militant programmes of change. See also for exemple the following statement and many of such ways of understanding Rahman have made their way up to Malaysia: “This conception of God naturally flows from Dr. Rahman’s belief that Islam is essentially a social reform movement whose center of interest lies in the welfare and well-being of man – provided this term is understood to include moral welfare as well and is not just limited to the provision of basic necessities” (Siddiqi 1970: 158). See e. g. Ismail Raji al-Faruqi’s “The View of Society and History”, in his Islam and Culture (Al-Faruqi 1980: 32-37). See here Muhammad’Bennabi‘s, “Sociology” and “Social Values of the Qur’an”, in his The Qur’anic Phenomenon. An Attempt of a Theory of Understanding of the Holy Qur’an, (Bennabi 1991: 111; 181-183. Ali Shari‘ati, On the Sociology of Islam, transl. from Persian by H. Algar, Berkeley: Mizan Press. On this point compare Shari‘ati’s, “Mysticism, Equality, and Freedom”, in his Marxism (1980: 97-122). “In carrying out this task of reformulation one more fundamental need will have to be satisfied if Islamic theology and law are not only to meet requirements of modern man and society from the nihilistic demoralizing effects of crass secularism. It is that in the new reconstruction, the specifically moral and religious emotions must be given due place and incorporated as an integral element” (Rahman 1966b: 254). See also K. Cragg (The Pen and the Faith, op. cit., p. 93n6). This is the description which was given to him to some members of the School of Divinity at Chicago, according to Muhammad Shafiq, (cf. Shafiq 1994: 9). Certainly, al-Faruqi was a political strategist and perhaps back from the common experience in Pakistan in the early 1960s some of the political inclinations of al-Faruqi were shared by Fazlur Rahman. This is according to Ilyas Ba-Yunus. Muhammad Shafiq says that al-Faruqi was born in 1921. Al-Faruqi’s stressed da‘wah with the idea of the Islamic state “Islam also holds missionary zeal to be a duty incumbent upon every Muslim. This missionary spirit, or da‘wah (literaly ‘calling’ people to Islam), is not contradictory to the Islamic state. Indeed mission is its ultimate objective.” Islam, Amana publications, p. 64.

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5. Malaysia: Democracy and State-Islam 15

16

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18 19

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I have elsewhere discussed the extension to which the Egyptian Muslim Brothers borrowed in their organizational framework and ideology from other contemporary (fascist) movements. See Abaza and Stauth 1988: 343-364. Similarly native Southeast Asian scholars elaborated on this issue and criticized Western orientalists on Southeast Asia for the celebration of Hindu and Buddhist cultures at the expense of Islam. For that point see Syed Muhammad al-Naquib al-Attas (1969). However, it is important al-Attas’s critique is certainly more sophisticated than al-Faruqi’s Atlas which is a typical example of an inversed argument where the impact of Islam is simplistically boasted at the expense of the preIslamic period. The Malaysian sociologist S.H. Alatas has pointed earlier to the perpetuation of Bomoh culture among the upper echelons of the royalty in Malaysia. He explained it in terms of forms of “… historical continuities identified as psychological feudalism.” Syed Hussein Alatas, Modernization and Social Change, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1972. p. 111. Communication at his office in May 1996. I have earlier stressed this point of Ibn Chaldun’s rationalizing the necessity of secular rule of the state, seperating it from the outworldly necessities of religious principles, see Abaza/Stauth 1988. Similar to the old Greeks, Islam is seen to give human intelligence the prime role “to interpret the spiritual significance of nature”, a role that – as is claimend – Christian theology later on suppressed (Al-Attas 1985: 31). We may be able to link this problem of “good” man to the philosophical discourse of “good life” as versus the issue of moral purity emerging in the late Greek and then Roman Christian discourse of self-constitution in front of God. Interestingly enough Michel Foucault traces there the break in Western developments with oriental widom, not with Christianity as he soppuses Nietzsche did (cf. Foucault 1984: 361ff.). I have worked thi out at various occasions most notably in my together with Bryan S. Turner “Nietzsche’s Dance” see Stauth and Turner (1988). Cf. my “Ignaz Goldziher und Max Weber” (Stauth 1990: 40). “das aelteste Beispiel fuer solche kritische Taetigkeit in der ganzen Weltliteratur”, (the oldest example for such a critical occupation in all world literature) (Goldziher 1967, IV: 450). 237

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia 25 Goldziher, with specific reference to the early forms of systematization of Islamic dogma and law, holds “jede Lehr- und Schulmeinung hat sich eine Autoritaet geschmiedet, die bis in die Zeit des Propheten zurueckreicht” (ibid.: 451). He characterizes Islamic law as a “code Napoleon” (ibid.: 455) with little consequenses for practical life. These statements of Goldziher date back to his lecture at St. Louis Congress of Arts and Science of 1904 in which Troeltsch and Weber participated, cf. my note on Goldziher and Max Weber (Stauth 1990). 26 A descrete discription of such uncaring characteristics of the faqih is given to us by Shakib Arsalan (1952). For this and further examples see Alatas (1975). 27 It is scandalous and scholarly and intellectually untenable that Tibi (1995) attempts – with a poor reading of “Islam, Secularism and the Philosophy of the Future” (Al-Attas 1985) – to remirror al-attas as a “fundamentalist”. 28 Concerning this point see my, “Critical Theory and Pre-Fascist Social Thought” (Stauth 1995). 29 Al-Attas most known books are, Some Aspects of Sufism as Understood and practised Among the Malays, ed Shirle Gordon, Malaysian Sociological Research Institute LTD, Singapore 1963. The Oldest known Malay Manuscript: A 16 Th Century Translation of the ‘Aqai’d of al-Nasafi, Department of Publications University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 1988. Hamzah al Fansuri, a Sufi Mystic, Kuala Lumpur, University of Malaya Press, 1970, A commentary on Hujjat al-Siddiq of Nur al-Din al-Raniri, University of Malaya Press, 1986. 30 Certainly, it is a phenomenon which applies to all Muslim reconstructions in the face of the West. See my forthcoming “Authentizität” (Stauth 1999). 31 Concerning the critique of the promoters of “Islamization of Knowledge” see Mona Abaza’s “Some Reflections On the Question of Islam and Social Sciences in The Contemporary Muslim World” (1993). 32 The sharif (plur. ashraf ), sayyid (sadah) are titles to call the Hasani branch of the Prophet’s offsprings. 33 As for an early biographical appraisal of Anwar Ibrahim see Morais (1984).

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6. The Singapore Civilization

6. The Singapore Civilization

Free Trade and the Rule of Law – A Singapore Model of Material Civilization? If the various paths and debates of Islamization in Indonesia and in Malaysia have been and, perhaps, still are part and parcel of a civilizational project to position Southeast Asia within a framework of globalization and one-world-society, then Singapore as such has to be considered. Although Islam, there, is in a minority position and is only in a minor sense involved with Islamization, devoting itself, as Abaza (1995) has shown, to a much broader secular approach – for both Malaysia and Indonesia Singapore per se signifies something of a hidden matrix mapping out the way to go. It is, therefore, important to see how this model of Singapore could work in the long range perspective of cultural and social development in Southeast Asia. Is it the Singapore model that imposed the decline of religious ideas and their influence on practised change in 1998, the Year of Asian Crisis? We have attempted to make clear so far that Islamization as a concept embodies some quite specific aspects of the Singapore model of authentication. However, the future of Singapore’s Muslim neighbours in the Malay Archipelago depends largely on studying and learning of the model as a whole. This is why we wish to focus on certain very decisive overall civilizational features of the Singapore model at the end of this book. Certainly, with respect to the ways in which the cohabitation of cultures and ethnic groups is socially engineered, Singapore is of the broadest civilizational significance not only to its immediate neighbours in Southeast Asia but also to the wider world where “culture” has turned into the global condition as such. “Anything can happen in Singapore, and it usually does – according to story writers. Certainly all the human elements of drama are on the streets for anyone to guess at – with Arabs, Portuguese, Chinese, Dutch, Tamils, Afghans, and a lot of people who look as though they spoke Esperanto, living together. And while you are shuddering and waiting for the scream, some well-informed Public Servant tells you that there is less major crime in proportion to the population than there is in New York City” (Mona Gardner, The Singapore Military Base, in: idem, Menacing Sun, The Travel Book Club, London 1940: 171-176, repr. in: Bastin 1994: 249-254/250).

Orientals, mixed masses, native peoples, the Malays, Javanese, Indians, 239

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Chinese, Bengalis, Bugis, Jawi Peranakans, Boyanes, Burmese, Persians, Arabs, Dyaks, Manilamen and Philippinos who lived and live together with the Europeans, Americans and Eurasians in Singapore, have always been under close scrutiny by colonial and post-colonial governments.1 The fears about uncontrollable forces of the multi-ethnic mob in the dense space of the city always seemed the source of continuous speculations about government monitoring and management of inter-ethnic conflict and street rioting. It is, therefore, quite understandable that all prospects for achieving independence after the Japanese occupation of Malaya from 1941-1945 were intrinsically linked with the question of how to organize a cultural hodgepodge into a truly pan-ethnic society and a viable polity (Cheah 1983: 294-301). The solutions that were offered in Singapore are considered incompatible with the dogmatisms of liberalism and liberal-socialism. The “miles upon miles of semi-native houses and shops”, the “crowded streets” and “variegated bazaars, with all the merchandise of the East spread out endlessly before you” and the Kampongs with “each race having its own quarters”, have been removed by a state administered mixed interaction of “races” in HDB-housing blocks, office high rise buildings and shopping malls. What is left of the colonial past has been given over to tourism and ethnic nostalgia. However, the socio-political solutions today seem to be similar to those of the late 19th century: the idea is that diverse mixed humanity seems to exist in sanitation, order and security only, when law and order is under the visible protection “of that piece of bunting from Government House”. The self-perception of the British mode of colonial governance was this: “Its three supports are free trade, fair taxation, and evenhanded justice among white, black, brown and yellow, and these exist in the Far East under the British flag alone. At least, I have been almost everywhere else without finding them” (Norman 1895: 42).2

That free trade, absence of corruption and equal taxation of private incomes and non-racist equal justice depend on “Governance” – not on “Citizenship” based on dialogical regulation and communitarian discourse – is a belief that contemporary Singaporeans seem to share with the British and their convictions of the colonial era. The paradox is, however, that while the British believed that their rigid “governance by law” would guarantee the existence of a European society in an exotic City of Orientals, the Singaporeans believe that Singapore today is a model for a new civilization which has been named “Asian Renaissance”.3 240

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6. The Singapore Civilization What follows in this chapter are reflections about variances, in image and perception, of the social construction of this paradox.

Capitalism and the Postmodern Condition Postmodernists want to undo the nation-state and to replace it with some type of global sociation. The postmodern reinvention of Walter Benjamin’s “Paris”, depicting the mediation between the archaic and the natural, on the one hand, and modern restlessness on the other, often only masks the search for a new cultural holism or abstract inquiry about the homeboundness of locals by a new universal class. Looking at Singapore, one might be tempted to ask whether there is an alternative to the “monstrous home” of the “transcendental homelessness” into which Derrida (1996) and Jay (1996) inquire. The nation-state has been questioned as an invention of colonialism (Chatterjee 1993). Colonialism, indeed, could be considered as the first instalment of the modern global condition, disrupting and translocating ethnic and religious communities, and with this creating the lower class and immigrant communities of capitalist labour all over the world. In fact, “class” – that magic concept of social distinction of the late 19th and early 20th century – is unthinkable without dislocated immigrant communities and the new global condition of colonialism. Related to the concept of class and the abstract imagination of the ruptures of class antagonism which are characteristic for the understanding of the structure of modern capitalism and industrialism, are the fears that the Singapore model is overloaded with insoluble class contradictions and their communitarian basis (Lingle 1996; Rodan 1996). Certainly the vague idea that modern institutions could only function with the support of some type of communalism is only complementary to the image of the monstrosity of modernity.4 The “Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft”, community-society, dichotomy of classical sociology, even in its more recent incarnation in which Ernest Gellner speaks of cleavages between “logical” and “social coherence”, is, therefore, the focus of considerable attention and a good deal of discussion among Singapore sociologists (e. g. Kwok 1994: 26). In response to the fundamental ruptures of capitalism, the postmodern condition promises some type of accommodation. Like the colonial wanderers through the tropical world of the Malay Archipelago, of whom Alfred Russell Wallace (1986/1896) and H. von Rosenberg (1878) may be considered as the most significant, the aesthetics of the natural history are decisive influences upon moral and functional issues. Within the sphere of local 241

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia knowledge which they discovered, there are no compulsions of technology and bureaucracy; however, the restricted use of instruments and the limited means of meeting the needs of everyday life among locals also inspired powerful discoveries and a fully new functionality in viewing nature and the peoples. Furthermore, there were the restraints of self-experience in an enchanted world. The symbolic and imaginative descriptions of these “flâneurs” of the Southeast Asian jungle world incorporated some rare scientific achievements and “collections”. Wallace’s explorations of the rain forest are based on a very specific and unmistakable “Anschauung”. Do these characters offer any key to the type of mental calmness witnessed in Singapore? I doubt it! Similarly, it would be wrong to accept a generalized version of Bateson’s Bali (1949), a type of Asian “schismogenesis” as a psychological explanation. Postmodernists today are on the lookout for some type of local “Ursprung”, origin, which could offer guidance for new organizations of the self. Building on the emotivism of the life world and aesthetic visions of institutional reconstruction, they believe it is possible to identify new forms of local knowledge and self-organization from below, constituting varying patterns of a post-enlightened civil society. This project at the same time reflects the most advanced types of communication as an underlying structure of global social interaction of individuals. However, the state as a constituting factor of diverse civilizational processes is often forgotten in cultural studies and by postmodernists. We may identify the “Global City” (Sassen-Koob 1991) as serving as a vague micro-model of the ideal type that postmodernists have in mind with respect to the broader forms of sociation based on the new, the “global condition”. The real world of the “global city” generally involves three dimensions of antagonism to the idea of civility and citizenship in relative cultural terms. First, the uprootedness of the lower urban class and the voyeurism of consumer culture and mass society appears to be eo ipso the enemy of self-restraint based on “Anschauung”5 in urban life. The city loses its basis of civility. Second, ethnic and religious communal violence and conflict seem to be characteristic of global cities. Cross-cultural conflict seems to embrace class conflict. This would mean the involvement of new particularistic power strategies “from below”. Third, the emergence of some type of transnational identities which also relate to new forms of the ghettoization of wealth and poverty often linked to trans-local religious cultures. These are factors operating strongly against postmodern accommodation. The paradox of the Singapore model is that it focuses on social and 242

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6. The Singapore Civilization cultural conflict engineering and institutional control “from above”, while its functioning in fact involves high standards of civility and multiethnic life style and a controlled order of vision.

Global City and the Tropes Singapore is a global city; however, it is incompatible with the idea and with the reality of the “Global City” concept as discussed by postmodernists. The story of Singapore is its foundation in colonial history. Singapore was a creation of the British and designed to counteract the presence and artefacts of Portuguese and Dutch colonial cultures in the Straits. In fact, it was conceived by Sir Stamford Raffles (a former Military Intelligence Officer who was established in 1811 at Malacca as Agent for the Governor General of India (Lord Minto) with the Malay States) as a strategic outpost in the course of British attempts to conquer Sumatra and Java in 1819. A quick overview of the literature of British colonial discovery and partial appropriation of the Malay Archipelago links it up to the vision of an East-Indian Mediterranean space (see Bouchon 1994; Lombard 1994). In broad relation to this, the colonial image seems to comprise three versions of an eternally recurrent theme, namely the subtle tension between, if not the combination of, the idea of tropical savageness and the experience of exotic oriental abundance. First, there is the wildness and danger of the natural history of the rain-forests and the unexplored luxury, both in tastes and in imagery, of the tropics (cf. King 1995; Wallace 1986/1896).6 Second, the savageness of parts the local populations, such as headhunters, pirates, women (see e. g. Hill 1956; see also King and Talib 1995)7 combined with the opulence of a European life style built on Oriental riches (see Cameron 1865: 287-303). Third, the theme of the extreme harshness of colonial military rule8, rigid disciplinary penalties and the savageness of the local oriental urban Kampong mob, not only when rioting in the streets (Warren 1990). The “Raffles”-culture – in contrast to Portuguese and Dutch attempts at adaptation, assimilation and, at the same time missionary impingement of local peoples or civilizational transformation of them into real Christians or Dutch nationals – was international from the outset. British colonial culture was from the start based on a mixture of Oriental and Western morphologies, and, at the same time, through style and habitus distinguished itself from the “local condition”. Oriental “spirituality” there ap243

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia peared to be more the result of the pleasurable “Anschauung” of the wandering Western naturalist, while the Eastern “mob” seemed to have been engaged in a dramatic dynamism of struggle for subsistence which only extended the natural economy of the “locals” into urban space. The success of the British system was, however, not based on the disregard for, but rather on setting the laws for social and cultural uplifting within a decisive framework of that broad and floating mixture of Eastern and Western ideals and morphologies. Within this framework it mobilized the very powerful potentials for the translocation and consumption of the riches of the “local condition”, thus laying the foundations for the material sources of its success.9 The Singapore story relates to the creation and administration of rural plantation and urban labour camps. It also relates to the culture of wandering and travelling inward and outward to the region of the East Indies, the modern “flâneuring” and the mobilization of local “mass” under climatic and geographical conditions which have been largely considered as unsuitable for European styles. Nevertheless, it created the conditions for realizing a European society in a framework of Oriental natural and cultural constraints.10

Consumerism and Civilizing Processes There is the conventional wisdom that the modern metropolis, consumer culture and locations of multi-ethnic interaction are locations of hedonistic, unrestrained and violent interaction. Furthermore, the city in its modern and global character has been described as being in substance destructive to traditional cultural values and to human relations as such (see Spengler 1969). Singapore challenges this orthodoxy in as it seems to have reversed the slave camp discipline of English colonial rule into a civilizational project, integrating industrialism, the conscious propagation of consumerism, a state-imposed civility and ethnic authentication in everyday life. There were certainly intrinsic intentions to reconstruct an image of a “Singapore Civilization” that is equivalent to the picture of the West, reversing Colonial Rule into a supposedly non-Western mode of governance, which has led to one of the most successful projects of human development in the last 30 years. This may seem to many a statement by someone who has had only casual contact with Singapore, a statement that applies to the surface rather than going into any depth and examining roots and causes. In someone who trusts in certain principal achievements of Enlightenment, to praise 244

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6. The Singapore Civilization Singapore seems a statement of betrayal. However, before proceeding to the contradictions on the deeper level that such an approach to Singapore would necessarily imply, we wish to put the surface right. The appearance that counts and that is an essential part of the Singapore approach itself, is striking enough anyhow. While public space in all Western metropolises is tormented by crime, violence, sexist and racist discrimination, traffic jams and pollution, Singaporeans, through a well-developed system of public campaigns and regulations, have virtually wiped out crime and interpersonal harassment in public. One can feel “at home” in public space and a well integrated and aesthetically attractive system of rapid public transport, shopping malls; and a state regulated habitat seems to impose a real alternative to the tiresome individualism of what is generally believed to be the authentic path to personal freedom and self-construction, but which in fact necessarily relates to the destructive character of the Western metropolis. As one observer describes it: Singapore is a city with no litter, no graffiti, no gangs and almost no crime. ‘Women confidently stroll the streets late at night’, writes the Los Angeles Times correspondent in Singapore. ‘The subway is clean and muggings are rare’. Los Angeles, roughly equal to Singapore in population, had 1,063 murders in 1993. Singapore had 58. L.A. had 38,167 robberies. Singapore had 1,008. And this with a police force less than half that of Los Angeles (International Herald Tribune, 9-10 April 1994: 4).

It is generally held that strict laws and harsh punishments or the collective endorsement of what is vaguely called Asian Values are the main components of this modulation of Singapore society (see e. g. International Herald Tribune, 6 April 1994: 7). The claim that is maintained in many Western views on Singapore is that it is an exotic “Asian Society” with conditions of autochthonous types of self-restraint and collective control which have no likeness whatsoever to Western cultural traditions. In opposition to this view, we would argue, however, that to understand Singapore right from the surface is to reject the myth that the Singapore solutions are Asian solutions to Asian societal problems, not modern solutions to modern ones. Quite in contrast, it seems to us that the Singapore model is not about just the specificity of a metropolis in the jungle world of the Southeast Asian Archipelago, but rather about Europe and the West at large. This statement then, is not about Singapore, nor is it about Norbert Elias’ “Process of Civilization”. In Singapore, civilization is about Europe and Europeanization somewhere else. Perhaps nowhere else in the world can one listen 24 hours a day to the 245

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia finest presentations of classical European music, at least not in England and in Germany. One can in Singapore. Nowhere can one dine out or shop out with so little harassment and effort; not, at any rate, in my experience. Admittedly it was in some more obscure corners of Singapore society, like foreign cultural centres and the Film Society, but in Singapore I saw a collection of outstanding Russian and Indian films which I had not had the chance to see elsewhere. An American journalist once remarked, “A sociologist looking at rules and regulations would call Singapore unique in the world” (Sesser 1992: 37). This statement is untrue. Singapore is the severe application of European rules and regulations, and at the same time of European techniques of cultural reconstruction, in a non-European world. We might call this unique, but Singapore, more than any other place in the world, signifies precisely this problem of globalized European rules, regulations and cultural technologies, “Asian values” in fact being the exact means by which to keep a rational, bureaucratic and maximizing apparatus free from all limits and constraints that could emerge through tormented human emotions and determined popular concerns. “Asian Values” stand for the cultural machine of an apparatus of collective maximization that obtains its legitimacy, as ultimately all Western governments do, from some type of collective maximization. In Singapore as part of its overwhelming rationality the claim of collective maximization has to be real, i. e. it has to be proved by growth rate, income and exchange rate increases, by a real collective situation of cash improvement. Singaporeans seem – on the surface again – to have solved problems of regulation which remain unresolved in Western societies, the most crucial one is obviously that of appeasement of a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society. For Western cultural understanding the modern metropolis seems necessarily to produce the non-peaceful cohabitation of various socio economic, cultural and racial strata. For many of us industrialism was intrinsically linked to the same repetitive type of class struggle and street rioting. As sociology tells us, the “Global City” is supposed to be structurally, culturally and racially heterogeneous; it is therefore, inevitably structurally violent in tendency. It has been more and more openly observed that Singapore case has proved to be different. However, sociology has not yet explored this case. Three questions are crucial for any adequate understanding of the overall significance of the Singapore model. They relate first to the problem of a supposed essential relationship between civilizing processes and Western cultural values, i. e. between self-organized civil liberties and state 246

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6. The Singapore Civilization monopoly over generalized control and public power; second, the relationship between mass consumer culture and social organization, namely, the question of the possible new dimension of consumer culture to bridge the gap between state and individual, public and private interests, constituting a coherent potential for social incorporation of the individual and order; and third, the relationship between identity politics and social conflict, and specifically the question of how identity politics can be transformed from a conflict-generating mechanism into an instrument of governance and modulation. We would have to raise the question in which way these issues of re-modulation of the self, patterns of collective consumption and the unfolding of identity politics in the micro-worlds of social interaction would entail the elements of an alternative project of social differentiation and rationalization.

The Multicultural Machine and Self-Appeasement Although Norbert Elias was convinced that the human endeavour as such and humanity as a whole will lead to ever greater self-restraint and modulation of emotions and affects, he actually never looked into the civilizational worlds beyond the borderlines of Europe.11 Some critics, therefore, held that Elias’ theory of civilizing processes is a mere reflection of civilized norms as they were developed in Western Europe, depriving other cultures of any authentic path to civility (see e. g. Wilterdink 1982). However, although his process of civilization remains a European conceptualization, Elias himself strongly believed that his configurational approach to social differentiation, unlike conventional sociology and unilinear evolutionism, was open to both non-relativistic and at the same time non-absolutist analysis of non-industrial societies. He claimed that the “… differentness of people in other societies is treated by the study of figurations neither – relativistically – as something peculiar and quaint, nor is it reduced – absolutistically – to an ‘eternal human essence’. As was shown, the tracing of interdependence makes it possible to preserve the uniqueness and differentness of people in other societies, while recognizing them as people whose situation and experience we can share, with whom we are bound by an ultimate identification as human beings” (Elias 1969: 212).

Were he today to travel to or live in Singapore, Elias would certainly witness the emergence of a type of self-restraint as the constituting element of a 247

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia society which he might have not been able to imagine at the time when he was writing on the process of civilization. However, in Singapore all the forces and conditions that Elias considered as imperative and prerogative to the process of civilization – the sociogenesis tied to the process of transposition of aristocratic power to the monopoly of a centralized “Ständestaat”, and psychogenesis conditioned to the stylization of interactions in the public place of the court society – seem to be built into a totally new configuration, differing strongly from the historical settings described by Elias for France and Germany. We should explore some of the main features of this differentness. In the more than 30 years of its independent existence, in Singapore the “sociogenetic configuration” has depended largely on the transformation process of colonial rule and its inbound mechanisms of multi-ethnic governance. As in many other Afro-Asian countries this transformation in the period of independence lead to the centralized rule of a “national” party, in Singapore the PAP. However, in many newly independent countries the nationalist or socialist single-party regimes continued to treat local and ethnic communities in the main in similar ways to those practised under colonial rule; namely, ensuring their own economic interests were paramount and combining populist lip-services with some type of ceremonial representation of the communities under the premises of politics and administration, thus providing extensive scope for corruption and continuation of the routine of the Ancien Regime. In contrast, one could claim that the Singapore process of transformation was strictly shaped by conflict between voluntary associations, often community based, and the political apparatus of the PAP and the state, with its provocative and campaigning interventions on all levels of everyday existence. It is generally acknowledged that colonial rule did too little to enforce civil laws on local cultural and social groups or to rationalize inner group moral or legal attitudes.12 This relative tolerance towards traditional self-administration of local communities, however, one could argue, quite on the contrary, may well have provided the basis for an increasing process of self-reflection of such groups upon their traditional legal and organizational ties versus the civil laws of the rulers. As Chua Beng Huat puts it, the British regime was “generally negligent of the collective needs of an immigrant population” (Chua Beng Huat 1993: 9) such as that of the Chinese, which led “to strong community initiatives to provide for their own collective needs” (ibid.). However a more in-depth reading of the effects of colonial rule might suggest that community-based self-regulation also led to the conscious development of culturally and ethnically specific legal and administrative 248

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6. The Singapore Civilization mechanisms such as the Muslim Law and Confucian traditions.13 European observers have often claimed that Singapore’s identity politics was a unique invention of a totalitarian regime. In fact, however, what Geoffrey Benjamin called the “cultural involution”, the constant reiteration of ethnic categories and the static bonds with culture, could well be traced in its origins in colonial culture and its ways of enforcing ethnic and cultural bonds by means of ethnic segregation (Benjamin 1976). It is within this relative strength of ethnic and cultural associations and their respective regulating functions – which was not without contradictions and conflicts – in the time of colonial rule, that we could understand a certain continuity of the post-colonial state in enforcing the symbolic ethnic and cultural separateness of the ethnic groups while enforcing a civilized public interaction. This leads to a range of contradictions which where successively integrated into a fused system of interrelated national and ethnic corporations. This system operated on the basis of introducing a set of ideas and values which were at the same time labelled as being both of national and ethnic group interest. This entails, as we should mention here, a process of conflict management which is similarly applied in neighbouring Southeast Asian countries such as, for example, Indonesia (Naim 1987). While the state promoted policies which, it hoped, would develop an effective industrial capitalism, opening its economic policies to the West, it did so wilst imposing, culturally, a collectivism which was presented in terms of the specific cultural traditions of the ethnic groups, primarily in terms of “Asian traditions”: within this framework the state developed “an alternative ideology to Western liberalism as the basis of a macro organisation of Singapore society. The ideological confrontation is drawn between the supposedly corrupting, individualistic, Western liberal values and the wholesome, communitarian, Eastern traditions. Against the individualism of the West is placed the communitarianism of Asia” (Chua Beng Huat 1994: 13).

While Beng Huat derives from this type of communitarianism an interesting sociological argument for the necessary transition to more liberal participation rights in an emerging civil society, the crucial point for a EuroAsian debate on “Elias in Singapore” would be that the modulation of the society as a whole was never based on psychogenetical processes of personal, self-centred forms of restraint and – to use a term of Foucault’s – technologies of the self, but rather that public campaigns and collective action, aiming to appease conflictual inter-ethnic relations and everyday conflicts, were the focus of the underlying civilizing processes. In other words, the 249

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia psychogenesis was made possible only on the basis of a strong intervention by the state, based on promoting programmes of cultural and ethnic identity formation and at the same time national regulations of interethnic relations in everyday as well as in public life: Social engineering created its own moral communities and engaged them in a continuous process of comparative interaction. The strategies of collective appeasement then necessarily lead to other modulating forms than self-commitment, self-recognition and self-consciousness. The point is that, as contradictory as it might be, there must be something like a collective focus of psychogenetic processes: in their effect similar to what Elias has described for Europe, but in their approach and techniques differing from it in the very onset. One aspect of Elias which is generally neglected is not that of civilization and rationalization of power as such, but rather the idea that the extension of interaction via trade routes, new technologies and control of such settings in the world of alien cultures has contributed extensively to inner modulations of social relations in the emerging European “court society”, often ideally relating images of the exotic to the world of women and its control (Theweleit 1977). Whatever the fantasies and images of the Singaporeans might have been, Singapore was a colonial outpost in the East Indian jungle world. It had, however, no peasant hinterland – leaving aside the plantations of Kukup and Johor Bahru to which the “pilgrimage industry” of the Muslims of the East-Indian Archipelago was strongly related (Roff 1967: 39). There was no concrete “hinterland” and no nation’s “peasant” towards which this type of a marginal “court society” could have functionally developed. Beyond Malaysia and Indonesia, Singapore envisioned and still does envision – as Goon Kok Loon, the deputy chief of the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) puts it in a recent interview with a German newspaper14 – its “hinterland” as being on the East coast of Africa, in Australia, in America. Being so intensively dependent on external colonial relations and foreign trade made Singapore an extremely exceptional case in the region; its functional rationalization and powers of control and modulation of social relations seemed more than naturally to be turned to the inner, rather than to the outside world. This self-reflexitivity of the colonial past, transcending the local and regional imagery, therefore, seems to be an extensive resource of the Singapore civilization.

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6. The Singapore Civilization State and Public Religion The ideological foundations and strategies of founding a nation are important for the strategic background of the construction of Singapore (e. g. Chan and Evers 1973). Similarly the discourse about state and civil society has become part and parcel of the future of the model (e. g. Chua 1993). The specificities of cultural values, and modes of modernization as they relate to the unique structure of Asian or Chinese capitalism (e. g. Clammer 1981; for Hong Kong see Redding 1990, 1996) are at the same time issues of importance to the development of the Singapore case. However, the civilizational and civilizing aspects of the case have rarely been analysed. Multiculturalism and cultural recognition of the Other in a global world seem to redefine religion and its role in public and private spheres. “Deprivatization of religion” and religion as the guardian of civil society seem to be issues of new communitarian concerns (Casanova 1992). In Singapore the social machine of publicizing ones own religion is engineered by the state. State monopoly of coercive power extends in Singapore to become a state monopoly over knowledge and the use of mind in the public place as well. Communitarian ideology, namely, the imputation that capitalism and modernity could only be handled by privileging the moral emotivism of religious communities, has been made a strategy of social engineering itself (see Clammer 1985a, 1985b; Ling 1987; Wee 1989) The main issue was how to smooth the developmental restraints of the “cultural ballast” of the communities rather than how to balance the moral mischief of capitalism and modernity (see Hill and Lian 1995: 190-240). Quite in contrast to recent claims of the unique rationality of Chinese entrepreneurship with such lamentable celebrations of the marriage between magic traditions and entrepreneurial flexibility (Redding 1990, 1996)15 – a backview celebration aimed at the cultural elevation of Chinese entrepreneurs and professional classes in acclimatizing their story of success – the Singapore story is planned conditioning of communities and “cultural ballast” for the sake of capitalist development. There are two different concepts of social engineering at work: while European and Western governments believe that state functions and social institutions need to re-balance the deleterious effects of capitalism, in contrast, the Singapore state functions to re-balance communal restraints on capitalism. That this is a success is a fact which has far reaching implications: communitarianism emerges here as a rationalist stratagem of the state and of institutional formation itself. Planning the consumer culture and the cultural and ethnic mix at home and in the market place supersedes the social organization of identities and 251

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia the struggle for cultural recognition from below. Here, we deliberately omit laments about the Asiatic despotism and anti-Liberalism of the regime in favour of some crucial questions on the problematic of cultural engineering and its paradoxes. The case of Singapore demonstrates very clearly the inherent relationship between the cultural knowledge monopoly of the state, the institutional embeddedness of mass society in that monopoly and the civilizing rationality of the individual and her or his life world.

Material Culture and Self-Organization The Singapore model also relates to some crucial material conditions which contest conventional wisdom, namely, the friendly, if not causative selective co-existence of consumerism, the endless pursuit of wants, and selfrestraint, given its modern roots in Puritanism and the spirit of capitalism.16 If anything, consumerism was hitherto considered as counter-productive to social commitment, institutional structure and order. The new Asian consumer societies, Singapore more than any other, seem to have developed the social basis for a convergence of consumerism and civilizing processes. One of the main factors of this is the new complementary figuration between household and public urban space which at first was a planned reaction to the underdevelopment of mass urban habitat in Singapore: namely, the controlled and regulated housing of uprooted urban multiethnic masses in high rise building blocks. While one would have expected that the relative discomfort of what are – in general – small, hot flats would lead to violent attitudes in public space, the opposite was the case. The question is, what are the factors that made this affinity of the individual to public space possible and at the same time a venture of a new society with unique types of social interaction? The development of new housing structures and their decisive effect on social relations is an undeniable material factor of Singapore ego-construction. As early as the late 1960s the government, taking efficiency and growth as an element of its populist legitimation strategies, implemented the policy of public housing to counter the acute shortage of accommodation. The situation was, in fact, one far beyond the propagandistic effect, when one considers that in 1959, when it became a nation-state in its own right, Singapore was a real Third World city with a population growth of “2.4 per cent per annum, while the unemployment rate was about 13.5 per cent of the GNP! Three decades later, housing standards in Singapore have become the envy of

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6. The Singapore Civilization city governments worldwide. In 1989, 88 per cent of the population of 2.7 million resided in public housing, 79 per cent of the population being H(ousing and) D(evelpment) B(oard) owner-occupiers” (Tan and Sock-Yong 1991: 1).

At the same time the HDP-programme was designed to play a major role in the process of nation building. “Housing a Nation” was a project designed to break down the ethnic ghettos and segregated settlements of the local and immigrant groups in the traditional popular quarters and the “Kampongs”, and at the same time to reconstruct the membership of an identity group as an ideal communitarian component of Singapore citizenship. Today the government-controlled Housing Development Board (HDB) provides housing for almost 90 per cent of the population in modern building blocks which also frequently include market halls, shopping centres, food stalls, playgrounds etc., practically each block providing a ground floor area for collective or community entertainment. This provision of public space is certainly designed to encourage the residents’ social interaction, but an even more rigid measure to impose ethnic integration was the distribution of tenants by ethnic quotas according to the national average. While there is undeniably a considerable “physical” density and pressure for interaction among all residents, the multiethnic scheme of the HDB relies strongly on boundary maintenance and intra-ethnic, rather than inter-ethnic interaction. Conventional analysts speak of HDB corridors as being turned into “cultural displays” (Lai) where tenants set up respective ethnic and religious markers depicting their affiliations. However, reminiscently of Elias’ descriptions of processes of modulation of affects through ritualized and ordered appearance in the public sphere of the court society, public housing imposed the necessity of public recognition of the Other and at the same time restructured behaviour and interaction in the private place in relation to public appearance. The “Court Society” of this organized multiculturalism had a decisive civilizing and modulating effect: the relative poverty at home turned into a need for journey and discovering the riches of public urban space. The luxury of “Air-Con”, first of all, was – and for many still is – exclusively tied to public space. For most students thus the National University Library work place has become a second home: the library in a way is a students’ living place, as for others it is “Air-Con” places like shopping malls, Mcdonald’s or other fast food outlets where students sit for long periods of time, thus constituting another kind of public space. It is the density of the “private” sphere that creates a dense but courteous public urban space of ordered mixing of the different ethnic groups, leading to a greater tolerance of differing cultural practices. They 253

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia share the same corridor, the same lifts, garbage cans, just as they share the same gardens, playgrounds, shopping malls, food outlets and local markets. What is more significant, they share the same feasts and symbolic religious appearances in public. This tolerance is largely based on the fact that it does not imply greater understanding of the meaning of symbolic representations. The fact that the focus remains government regulation of ethnic exclusiveness also abolishes a certain curiosity about the culture of the “Other” in everyday life. Perhaps one is right to call this a lack of empathy and cultural creativity. However, one might be allowed to ask the question whether and to which extent the various attempts at organized “communities” of cross-cultural understanding and mutuality have really contributed to cultural creativity.17 Singapore flies in the face, therefore, of all our conventional conceptualizations of the psychogenesis of civility and civilizing processes. Whereas the government can organize a largely peaceful and tolerant, or permissive neighbouring of cultures and ethnic groups, it can only or only wishes to achieve a very limited transgression of ethnic boundaries. This would point to the necessity of overwhelming government presence and control. A very sensitive issue of the Singapore approach, as we have seen above, is indeed that strict marking and administering of ethnic borders. In fact, it is conceptualized as the only possible mode of governing and ensuring a peaceful coexistence of different “races”. It is pointless to speculate on the range of potential inter-ethnic conflict if government control werewithdrawn. Pointless, because this is certainly also true for Western societies. This mode of governance, constantly reiterating ethnic categories, however, has a reflexive turn. We may call this an empathy of the second instance; however, the instant scientific elaboration of the social machine of Singapore multiculturalism by the social science departments of the National University and Government research institutes is certainly culturally productive. This reflectiveness goes beyond “Guided Democracy” and “Asian” authoritarianism, and has the effect of sophistication and correction of policy decisions. Perhaps the model itself can only be appropriately valued if one understands this intellectualization of local politics and the level of integration of the intelligentsia into the economy and polity of Singapore.18

Government and Self-Empowerment Religious traditions are the most obvious and at the same time most essential points of reference for conflict and the stating of differentness. There is 254

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6. The Singapore Civilization the interesting point of Benedict Anderson’s that nationalism has the ambiguous characteristic of historically superseding religion on the one hand and, in fact, being aligned “not with self-consciously held political ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that preceded it, out of which – as well as against which – it came into being” (Anderson 1983).

This ambiguous, or indeed, parasitic relationship of nationalism to the great religions and their impressive capability for extended community maintenance, certainly requires a most sensitive presence in a nationally governed multi-cultural society, where religious/ethnic traditions are constantly transposed into national virtues, being reflected as techniques of constituting differentness and as suiting the competitive strategies of exclusion of others holding different traditions. The sometimes quite absurd way in which the transposition of such traditions into the social machine is manifested in Singapore in the various campaigns19 which do indeed have a theatrical character and at the same time appeal to a variety of nostalgic conceptions of personal and public authority. However, and beyond all necessary critique, they have contributed to the construction of a civilized multi-cultural society. In the centre of this creation stands a rigidly collectivized “individual”. This is where the “home” transcends into the public space: the learning process of the regulated individual also transcends the language of consumerism and mass campaigns. The individual starts to individualize through the holism of the community and the collectivism of the society. Self-identification in Singapore is – as anywhere else in the world – a collectivist undertaking, only, the Singaporean builds his “own” knowledge on the conscious recognition of the monopoly of the public. Singapore is about applied modernization theory and civilized interaction. It is this well implanted focus through which the individual can look beyond the government sponsored “community” webs radiating around his everyday life. His knowledge creates “roots” behind the “grassroots”, public life depends on a deep personal transcendence. Individualism is related to a type of social knowledge which is complementary to the state’s monopoly of cultural knowledge. This is where the “Orientals” transform into “real”, i. e. soteriologically projected, Europeans: liberated through collective obedience and internalization of rules and regulations. At the same time Singaporeans are highly equipped with rational strategies. In Singapore there is, indeed, something like a mode of individual authentication without abolishing the “Alien” and a holism of the social 255

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia public without social exclusiveness. Singaporeans develop their interests within a totalized sphere of everyday life; however, there is no lack of individual autonomy. This is the reality of the multi-cultural “iron cage”. The Information Highway extends to the HDB flats, together with a sophisticated system of “vertical gardening”, while the Singaporean is armed by his government with a new telos: “The ‘IT 2000’ strategy aims to make Singapore an intelligent city by the year 2000” (Siddique 1995: 14). This is another Government Programme to be accepted willingly by the Singapore man/woman.

Notes 1

Norman (1895: 38), for example, speaks of “six thousand Europeans and Americans (including the garrison), its four thousand Eurasians, its four thousand Javanese, its sixteen thousand Indians, chiefly Klings …, its thirty thousand Malays, its hundred and twenty thousand Chinese …”. Roff (1967: 33), relying on Winstedt (1932: 81f.) and census material of the Straits Settlemnt of 1901, tells us the following story: “When the Temenggog of Johore, in his own name and that of Sultan Husain, signed the Singapore Agreement in 1819 with Sir Stamford Raffles, the Island was inhabited by only a handful of the Temenggog followers and Malay and Chinese fisherman. Eightytwo years later in 1901, it was the temporary or permanent home of the 23,060 peninsular Malays, 12,335 “other natives of the Archipelago”, almost a thousand Arabs, and about 600 Jawi Peranakan. The total population of all races was 228,555, of whom 72 per cent were Chinese.” Lau tells us for 1990 the following figures from the population census: 77.7 per cent Chinese, 14.1 per cent Malays, 7.1 per cent Indians, total population 2,705,100 residents (Lau 1992: 5). 2 As for the attempt to demystify British democratism and legal justice by a Dutch colonial officer of the special type of that period, namely, the famous Orientalist C. Snouck Hurgronje, see my “Slave Trade, Multiculturalism and Islam in Colonial Singapore: A Sociological Note on Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje’s 1891 Article on Slave Trade in Singapore” (Stauth 1992a). 3 The issue of “Asian Renaissance” and “Mediterranée Asiatique” is not without a certain cross-civilizational subtlety: Clifford Geertz writing after the Indonesian massacre of 1965 which was equally the year of Singapore independence, describes the emergemce of an American 256

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6. The Singapore Civilization style middle class in the region in terms of “’enlightened’ gentry” (Geertz 1972: 329). He then quotes J. Burckhardt’s “The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy” saying “It may be possible to indicate many contrasts and shades of difference among different nations, but to strike the balance of the whole is not given to human insight. The ultimate truth with respect to the character, the conscience, and the guilt of a people remains for ever a secret; if only for the reason that its defects have another side, where they reappear as pecularities or even as virtues. We must leave those who find pleasure in passing sweeping censures on whole nations, to do so as they like. The people of Europe can maltreat, but happily not judge one another. A great nation, interwoven by its civilization, its achievements, and its fortunes with the whole life of the modern world, can afford to ignore both its advocates and its accusers. It lives on with or without the approval of theorists” (Burckhardt 1954/1860: 318, quoted by Geertz 1972: 335). As for the derivade of Asian into “Islamic Renaissance” cf. Gneupel (1991). 4 A deep and far reaching expression of this belief is perhaps best documented in the quest of sociology for “how is society possible?” or “how is ‘Weltgesellschaft’ possible?” as underlying theoretical themes in sociology (cf. Robertson 1980; Robertson and Chirico 1985). Beyond the contemporary debate about communitarianism, the classical concept of society was always related to an ambigiuous contention about the untranscendentability of “Community”. This is perhaps best represented in the Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft dichotomy which has gained a rare rebirth in English social theory (e.g Gellner 1983; for Singapore see Benjamin 1988: 25f.). 5 The “visionary” dissolution of “class” in the encounter of “Der Flaneur und die Masse” in the “Wunder der Civilisation” of European cities like Paris or London (Benjamin 1982: 538) is only an early representation of this civilizing coincidence of wandering and “Anschauung”. As for Walter Benjamin’s focus of “vision” and its derivades cf. (Fuld 1990: 138ff.). 6 “My first night in the jungle. …. Remembering certain words of Rolain on the lure of mystery, I said to myself as I fell asleep: One might almost suppose that he has come to live here to enjoy the sensation of fear” (Fauconnier 1990). In contrast to this sentiment of terror by a settling farmer, the wandering naturalist seems to have spent quite “delightful hours” in the jungle, e. g. “A Naturalist’s Pleasures” in: Wallace 1986/1896: 240-242. 7 Hill quotes a Portugese writer from the 17th century “… and if this 257

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia

8

9

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16 17

account is to speak honestly of Javanese matrons, it is not a lie that they are so preposterous that they sometimes kill themselves with a kris if anything displeases them, and they sometimes kill their husbands; and it is a custom in Java for a woman to be searched before she goes to her husband, for they carry secret krises. This is the custom among the nobles’” (Hill 1956: 7). Among so many examples of colonial war histories, here the one which as a prelude to its foundation was directly related to the birth of Singapore, namely the Massacre at Palembang on September 14th, 1811; cf. Wurtzburg 1949. One might read today A.F. Wallace’s “The Malay Archipelago”, for example, as a clear cut expression of that “Raffles”-culture: the collection and description of local natural histories, translocating “local knowledge” and putting it into the disposition of an emerging international system; cf. Wallace 1986/1896. This framework was hitherto largely described in terms of Western and Eastern centre-prephery dichotomies. It is indeed important to understand, how effectively Singapore has within this framework also served as a stronghold of South-South cultural integration, cf. Roff 1967: 32-55; Abaza 1995. I am well aware of the fact that Elias spent some few years in WestAfrica and is known as a collector of African art, however, to my knowledge analytically the African world was not within the scope of his studies. The idea in fact was not “synthesis” but rather agglomeration of separate communities and cultural traditions; cf. Thio (1969). On Prostitution, cf. Warren (1990), on legal self-administration of Muslims, cf. Ibrahim (1965); Siddique (1986). FAZ, 2. January 1997: 11. It is, indeed, interesting to reed the sourse of such an innovative idea: Asian middle class has always been described as being situated in such a lamentable position. As for Indonesia Clifford Geertz developed this powerful view on the new professional class being the “’Enlightened’ gentry” which only “attempted to marry ‘spiritual’ East and ‘dynamic’ West by fusing a sort of cultic aestheticism with an evolutionary. noblesse oblige program of mass uplift” (Geertz 1972: 329). This reads as a process of self-constitution of American middle class or middle class anywhere else. For a summary of arguments see Campbell 1987. Given my very modest knowledge with respect to Germany it is cer-

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6. The Singapore Civilization tainly provocative to say, that the ten and twenty years of “Ausländervereine” and communal “Ausländerbeiräte” in most German cities have contributed little or nothing to cultural creativity, neither to the culture of the Germans, nor to the one of the “Ausländer”, certainly, nothing to the development of a civilized pan-culturality of the German society. 18 The “enlightened” monitoring of cultural and religious conflict takes various forms. Further to endless M.A. and Ph.D. theses in the Social Sciences on the organization and condition of Singapore communities, the Parliament Reports speak a very sophisticated language, reflecting the level of political awareness of cultural issues, e. g. in the high periods of religious revivalism see “Maintenance of Religious Harmony”, Cmd. 21 of 1989, Parliament Report, 26 December 1989. “Final Report on Religion and Religious Revivalism in Singapore”, Ministry of Community Development, Oct. 1988. 19 From the “Evolution of the Bilingual Education”-project, to the “Speak Mandarin Campaign” to the “Confucian Ethics Project” to the “Shared Values” to the “Asian Values” religious, state monopolized knowledge constituted the public discourse over the condition of the human existence in Singapore (cf. Kwok 1994; Hill and Lian 1995).

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7. Asian Crisis and the End of Islamization?

7. Asian Crisis and the End of Islamization?

Much of the research for this book was done before 1998 and the Asian crisis. In fact, in 1992, when a first schedule for this research was developed, Southeast Asia seemed in the verge of increasing the efforts towards a cultural and more specifically an Islamic foundation of its future. However, since 1998 things seem to have changed and headed in a different direction. In Indonesia the leaders of the two biggest Islamic organizations, Abdurrahman Wahid and Amien Rais, with their newly founded parties, are reported to have fallen well behind secular democratic and nationalist leaders and parties in the elections of June 7th 1999. In Malaysia Anwar Ibrahim, the former Vice-Prime Minister of Malaysia, who at the height of power together with Prime Minister Mahatir in the early 1980s proclaimed “We are the fundamentalists!”, is now facing his second trial, leaving behind a politically and socially weak Islamic movement. Is this the end of Islamization and Political Islam in Southeast Asia? After more than 20 years of struggling for ideas of Islamization and Islamic politics, Islam has become a recognized and institutionalized power in Southeast Asia. Is it still a religious idea, providing the social momentum for “order” and “future”?

Asian and Islamic Renaissance There is perhaps nothing more revealing in attempting to answer these questions then the diverse contextualization of the concept of Asian Renaissance that Datuk Seri Dr. Mahatir Mohamad gave in 1996, the year when Anwar Ibrahim’s book “Asian Renaissance” (1996) appeared with its strong connotations to Islamization and Islamic Renaissance. Perhaps the concept itself is a creation of the “think-tank-culture” in Kuala Lumpur and more specifically of the group of Mahatir’s direct collaborators in the “Institut Kajian Dasar” (Institute of Policy Research), most of them graduates of American management schools. In these terms “Renaissance” is economic in the first instance, not primarily cultural. It refers to the new economic strength of East and Southeast Asian countries and to the types of integration and growth patterns these countries have developed under the leadership of Japan: the new “tigers” were first Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, then Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and more recently China with growth rates until 1996 of around 8 per cent. When Mahatir 261

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia spoke to the “New Asia Forum”, a conference of the “Institute of Strategic and International Studies” and “Transforma Conferences” he stressed the specific stand of Malaysia within the general Asian development: “Today, one generation later, Malaysia has a standard of living higher than any country in the American hemisphere – with the exception only of the US and Canada. Today this struggling nation of 20 million hard-working people is the 13th largest trading nation in the world. Tradewise, Malaysia is substantially larger than Russia or Australia. … To be sure, we are half the size of Germany. But in Asia we are only behind Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Not bad for a primary candidate for the dustbin of history. Not bad for a country which so many ‘knew’ had no future” (Mahatir 1996: 12).

In this year before the “Crisis” we heard how Mahatir expected to stand up to the West, turning growth into the substance of competition and cultural strength. Certainly these were sensitive issues: “This Asian Renaissance must be a psychological and cultural rebirth, freeing us from the bonds of mental servitude and enriching our arts and our cultures” (ibid.: 13). Mahatir – not yet having heard of the lessons and bodings of slow healing from the “Crisis” – speaks with enlightened rationality, minimising the strategic value of “Asian Wonders”, and reverses the discourse, accusing the West of destabilization of growth through weapon sales in the Third World and of monopolizing the ideas of Human Rights and Democracy: “Asians believe in human rights, in press freedom, in democracy in the rule of law. We do believe in the goodness of being good and in the badness of being bad. But we also care for the results. Recently, when the confrontation between the US Government and the Republicans resulted in a shutdown of the Government, the first comment of an American media personality is that it reflects democracy. The hardships of thousands of Government employees are irrelevant as long as democracy is upheld. Imagine an Asian country having such a Government shutdown. Would it be described as democratic? More likely it will be labelled as anarchic, as Asian incompetence, Asian politics, Asian selfishness and uncaring attitude” (ibid.).

His statements are simple and direct, claiming that the “real” and the “Asian” implementation of values will lead to the liberation of Asia from the West, which uses such values mainly as a means of tyranny and of suppressing the wealth of all nations, particularly those of the non-Western world: 262

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7. Asian Crisis and the End of Islamization? “Many in Asia believe that we do have values and ways of doing things which are, for want of a better word, ‘Asian’. This is heresy to those who believe only in their own values and ways of doing things as being universal. Cannot Asian values too form a basis for universal values? Is it that non-Asians have a monopoly to determine what is right and what is wrong and Asians don’t? When something is universal, then it must be found everywhere in this world if not the universe. If it is not found in such as large chunk of the world as Asia constitutes, can it then be said to be universal” (ibid.).

Political scientists have argued that the modern nation state is a cultural formation which is alien to the non-Western and specifically the Islamic world. They often then go on to explain Islamic revivalism and fundamentalism as a response to Western cultural domination. They argue that Islamic revivalism for example is a one dimensional revolt against the West, implementing the external and instrumental character of modernism, but rejecting its values and principles: “They want to implement modernity as a tool while emphatically refusing its logic: the principle of subjectivity, as based on human reason and the recognition of the capabilities of man” (Tibi 1995: 11).

Mahatir perhaps is right in claiming that holism, communalism or the stressing of “collective will” is perhaps as universal a social phenomenon as individualism.1 The real universalism of the ongoing struggle in cultural orientation lies in the fact that these different orientations serve as tools of the struggle itself. “Islamization” could be understood as a “just” means of embedding economic growth and bureaucratic institutions in an alien environment, but it could also mean an abstract means of cultural authentication coping with the antinomies of modernity. It could also appear as a political strategy for the cultural legitimization of authoritarianism. The real “crisis” was a falling back to numbers, facts and needs beyond cultural embeddedness. This falling back will certainly contribute to re-establishing the realm of positivism, if not in its own right, then by way of Western hegemony. This will lower the stand of “Academies” which were attempting to “Islamize knowledge”. Certainly, in the landscape of “crisis”, cultural criticism and its rhetoric appear to belong to the kind of luxurious commodities which just cannot be afforded in times of economic adjustment. However, it should be noted that the debate itself, more than any economic competition “before” and “after crisis” has contributed and will contribute

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia to the implementation and awareness of that principle which Habermas once called the principle of subjectivity.

Islamization and the Globalization of Cultural Discourse The movements against the cultural hegemony of the West and Western materialism and individualism have led local intellectuals – with quite varying intensities and effects in different countries and regions – into the global mainstream of the reflexive inquiry about “own”, “authentic” culture and history; they were thus also implementing the very roots and conditions of construction of a modern secular culture. We may well have seen the signs in the times of “crisis” that religious and cultural traditions so relentlessly appraised as “own origins” are now being transformed and interpreted according to quite different if not controversial patterns of social and political contexts. It is not just the case, here, as Tibi wants us to believe, that in the process of Islamization religion and tradition were not subjected to critical reflection based on principles of reason (Tibi 1995: 18) – this is Western rhetoric again and sociologically very short sighted. The decisive point is that the renewed presence of the religious component, indeed, establishes in itself the comparative reflection on values and practice and at the same time a reflexive tension between ideas and the way they are incorporated into the process of institution building. In this sense Islamization is a beginning, opening a potential for change; it is not necessarily linked to a revival of religiously disguised authoritarianism. It would now depend on how this reflexivity will evolve in the political and institutional context of the nation state and the market economy. Islamization is not as one would have thought in the early 1980s a reinforcement of the gap between pre-modern religion and modern state and economy, nor is it pure cultural adjustment. The conventional perspective in which it is viewed as a retarded process of the antagonism between the secular culture of modernity and religious cultures is short-sighted. Islamization is on the contrary the expression of a globalized discourse elaborating on the diversities of cultural principles and visions which are now interacting on a potentially comparative basis in one global field. The modern intellectual history of “Islamization” and of its function for “Asian Renaissance” starts with the anti-Communist campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s when Islam was first perceived to have the dual potential of an anti-Communist ideology which at the same time could contribute to social reconstruction and development in the line of tradition and a new 264

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7. Asian Crisis and the End of Islamization? religiously inspired vigour. The Islamic resurgence in Southeast Asian countries with predominantly Muslim populations is in a much more decisive and even practical social and political sense then in other parts of the Muslim world the undertaking of laic Islamic intellectuals, not of those who trained in reading, ritual and law. They attempted to understand Islam as a holistic vision of society and to transform it into a programme of nation state formation. We may identify as the major actors in this field only a few outstanding intellectual figures. Certainly, Muhammad Natzir, the founding leader of the Masjumi movement in Indonesia, former Prime Minister and Information Minister in Sukarno’s Indonesia belongs to this group. Then there are the brothers al-Attas und Alatas – both moving back and forth between Indonesia and Malaysia in their early youths, both descendants of a Hadrami family of Sayyids who were resident for generations in the world of the Malay Archipelago, both now living in Malaysia. Both were later on very influential on students who were campaigning for new Islamic ideas in the 1970s and 1980s, and continued to compete with leaders of Political Islam in Malaysia, most obviously Chandra Muzaffar and Anwar Ibrahim. These were all actors in a tension-loaded field between Western sponsored counter-insurgency and movements of national and social emancipation. In Indonesia it was the sons of different incarnations of the pondok teacher culture, Abdurrahman Wahid, Amien Rais, Nurchulish Madjid, who made their way to the Chicago school of comparative religion or to the Middle East and inspired the conventional Islamic organizations with ideas of the new age. Perhaps this melange in education between traditional Islamic madrasahs, pondoks and pesantren and Western training is most characteristic of the new type of Islamic awareness they created. Most original, and dating back to the early 1950s, Natzir’s and Alatas’ idea of “Progressive Islam”. They formulated the key concepts which later became so important: Islamic nationalism as both anti-colonial and anti-Communist ideas, the social emancipation of Muslims and the reconciliation between modern science and Islam, the foundation of the modern state on Islamic principles. In 1952 and 1953, Hussein Alatas, who at that time was a student of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, edited the Journal “Progressive Islam”, sponsored by the then Indonesian Prime Minister Muhammad Natzir. The Journal published articles by Natzir, Alatas, Mawdudi and other modernist Muslim thinkers.2 As we have seen these ideas went on to play a role in the foundation of competing philosophies of modern state legitimation in Indonesia and Malaysia. Between 1952 and today there lies nearly half a century and both Malaysia and Indonesia have, despite “crisis” and relics of local “involution” made 265

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia their way as important economic players in the global field. Syed Hussein Alatas today, after a brilliant career as Head of the Department of Malay Studies at the National University of Singapore and later as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, is an elder statesman of progressive Islamic ideas and of the sociology of Islamic reconstruction in Southeast Asia.3 However, if one speaks today of Islamic resurgence and of “Asian Renaissance” in Southeast Asia, it is not Alatas’ ideas which are at work. However, the same is true of the ideas of his brother – the antiprogress, anti-orientalist Syed Muhammad Naguib al-Attas. His cultural criticism of the West and his philosophical interpretations of Malay Islam are intellectually challenging. However, they have lost their socio-political grip in Malaysia “post-crisis”. A different, a calmer, more ritualistic Islam is now at work; Sultanism and Datukism are back on the front page. We may recall in relation to the major issues of “Asian Renaissance” and Islam that the process is also related to the unfolding of different types of formation and socio-structural embeddedness of intellectual elites, so that the question of the future depends deeply on the type of “disembedding” of the ideas of cohesion and insertion of Islamic culture and its intellectual richness and the necessary transformations of state and economy.

The Challenge of the Southeast Asian Experience for the Islamic World Most of the literature in the 1980s dealing with the Islamic presence or with strategic problems of culture and development focused on the problems of cultural embeddedness of state and economies.4 Certainly, the way in which religious ideas can influence change and development depends on a reverse focus, namely, on the structural “modes of insertion” (Beckford 1985) and certainly, the discussions on Islam and civil society too openly revealed their instrumental grasp of emerging trends as a sort of elective affinity between “market” and Islam as opposed to the all too evil dominance of the state (e. g. Goldberg 1991). “Asian Renaissance” was an attempt to idealize a “coherent” and “cohesive” field of interaction between market, state and religion. The recent falling off of religion, however, is obvious. Of course, the diverse models of “Islamization” are – although weakened – still at play and it is important to note that they do not necessarily exclude one another. However, whether Islamization is regarded as social movement “from below”, or as a dominant state ideology, or as an ideology of market expansion, all these ideas have revealed their potential 266

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7. Asian Crisis and the End of Islamization? for being instrumentalized to meet the needs of secured institutions, engineered multiethnic and multicultural societies and unhampered economic rationalities and in this sense one might be faced today with the need to reflect on Islam as a religious culture in its own right. It is certain today that if one speaks of Islamic peripheries, the “periphery” in Southeast Asia has developed into a new stage of self-assertiveness. (see von der Mehden 1993; Mutalib and Hashmi 1994). What the interviews and discussions with some leading intellectuals in Southeast Asia show is how independent and original these Islamic thinkers are with respect to both classical Islam and contemporary Islamic discourse in what are still held to be the centres of Islam. While the conventional view is that the spiritual movements in the Islamic centres like Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi-Arabia or Iran will more or less mechanically apply to the peripheries in all the Islamic world (e. g. Esposito 1983; 1987; Binder 1988), we would have to recognize the fact that there is an intrinsic intellectual creativity in relation to the formation of historical consciousness and the reflective elaboration of paths of Islamization Southeast Asia. This becomes even clearer if we look at patterns of exchange with respect to conventional knowledge (see Roff 1970, Ende 1973; Boland 1971; Noer 1973, 1978; Schulze 1990; Abaza 1991, 1991a; Zaki 1978). “Middle Eastern Islamic Discourse” remains in a very practical sense absent in the new constructions of Islamic thought in Southeast Asia. This indicates the end of a lopsided, one-way distribution of ideas from the centre to the peripheries. Southeast Asian intellectuals, much more clearly than in the centres, have addressed the idea of Islamization beyond the somewhat tiresome struggles over the interpretation of pristine visions of classical Islam. The concept of Islamization transforms quite flexibly into a variety of local histories of Islamic expansion and adaptation. These histories today are significant in the way they determine the global outlook of Southeast Asian societies. Here, the construction of the local Islamic discourse is, with the religious convictions being strongly related to self-reflectiveness, thus, instrumental to secular orientations of development and change (Abdullah and Siddique 1986; Siddique 1991). As has became clear from the interviews on Islamization presented earlier, the reformulation of the status of history in local terms employs intrinsic conceptual foundations of modernity. There are however strong differences in the way in which pristine Islamic visions are expressed within these concepts of modernity. 267

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Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia Thus, for example, Naim’s concept of “Islamization” as a rationalist integration and thus dynamization of the Minangkabau local culture attempts to formulate a new Minangkabau tradition in terms of the convergence of pre-existing types of “Protestantism” and socio-religious movements with Islamic Puritanism. This differs strongly from the conservative intellectual outlook and intent of al-Attas’. His concept of “Islamization of Knowledge” is a sort of cosmological and sufist reinvention of the Malay path of Islamization. Al-Attas’ anti-Orientalist Orientalism relates to the high, aristocratic extraworldliness of the Malay adaptation of Islam. However, like Naim, al-Attas stresses the unique value specificity of Islam – a new system of intervention against local traditions. This is where al-Attas rejects any concepts of Islamic syncretism. For him Islamization within the specific local experience is a potential intellectual solution to the Western crisis of morals and knowledge, one engaging in a sophisticated philosophical discourse of critique of modernity. In contrast, we could observe how Abdurrahman Wahid applies the story of different waves of Islamization to a culturally productive concept of Javanese syncretism. Wahid stands for a model of traditional ‘ulama, transforming orthodox methods of affirmation and tolerance into modern rational methods of traditionalism and of what one might call a pledge for “civil society”. Basically, beyond oral history as a means of authentication, all the above local foundations of Islamic intellectualism in terms of paths of Islamization engage to various degrees in a cross-civilizational discourse with Christianity and the West. In this respect al-Attas’ anti-Western outlook and intellectual potential seems most challenging as a strategic philosophical option, positing Islam as the only pattern of continuity and only basis for a cultural position. It is this paradox which is most striking: that al-Attas’ Islamic “Kulturkritik” stands, more effectively than Naim’s rationalism or Wahid’s syncreticism, for the development of Western philosophy and thought from within an Islamic perspective.

Notes 1

It is interesting to note that this “holism” has itself a lonh history in sociological analysis of Southeast Asian countries. For a reflexion of this see for example Evers 1980. 2 For a detailed evaluation of “Progrssive Islam”, see Abaza 1998. 268

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7. Asian Crisis and the End of Islamization? 3

I should like to list Alatas’ main international publications here, although they will also apear in the bibliography: “The Weber Thesis and Southeast Asia”, Archives de Sociologie des Religions 15, 1963: “Feudalism in Malaysian Society”, Civilization 18 (4), 1968; “Some Comments on Islam and Social Change in Malaysia”, International Yearbook for the Sociology of Religion 5, 1969; “religion and Modernization in Southeast Asia”, Archives Européennes de Sociologie 11, 1970; “The Intellectuals and Nationbuilding”, Cultures 1 (4), 1974. His main books are: “The Sociology of Corruption, Singapore”, Donald Moore 1968, 2. Aufl. 1975. Modernization and Social Change in Southeast Asia, Sidney, Angus and Robertson, 1972. The Intellectuals in Developing Societies, London, Frank Cass 1977. The Myth of the Lazy Native, London, Frank Cass 1977. 4 See for Malaysia for example Roff 1967; Kessler 1978; Nagata 1980, 1984. For Indonesia: Evers und Schiel 1988; Evers 1980, 1885, 1987; Budiman 1990; Dahm 1966; Dahm und Link 1988; Boland 1971.

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Bibliography

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