The Centrality of Transregional Connections
The papers in this collection address the legacies and new dynamics of transregional connections of ‘the religious’ in Indonesia and Malaysia. In doing so, the authors point towards crucial current developments in religious belonging, feelings of affiliation and moments of rupture in the long-established power asymmetries that have evolved in the relationship of these two countries with the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere. They also invite us to rethink the position and agency of these ‘peripheral’ nations in transregional constellations. It has long been en vogue to characterise Indonesia's and Malaysia's Islamic life-worlds in terms of their alleged deficiencies in orthodoxy. Concerning culture and Islam, Western scholars were inclined to present these two countries as least Arabicised, and, especially in Indonesian studies, much emphasis has been given to portraying nominal Muslims, the so-called abangan; I will comment on the ‘myth of the abangan’ later. Moreover, scholarship has tended to revolve around the tracing of religious and cultural influences that entered and shaped Indonesia and Malaysia from the outside, especially from the Arab world.
These academic presentations and institutionalised clichés of Indonesia and Malaysia as absorbing countries were based on the finding that the Islamisation process was introduced to Southeast Asia from the outside, mostly by peaceful merchants. From this historical perspective, external transregional influences have indeed played an important role in the Malay-Indonesian world. As I have argued elsewhere (Azra Reference Azra2004), the development of Islamic orthodoxy in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago can be traced back to the intense transregional religio-intellectual contacts and connections of the sixteenth century, primarily between Malay-Indonesian students and their co-religionists and ulama in the Middle East, particularly in the Haramayn (Mecca and Medina). Returning students and scholars implanted a more shari'a-oriented Islam in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, which forced the so-called pantheistic (or wujudiyyah mulhid) Sufism to cede ground. This was the beginning of the rise of a more scriptural Islam, or in Anthony Reid's (Reference Reid1988) term “scriptural orthodoxy”, in Southeast Asia.
The intense contacts of Malay-Indonesian Islam with that of the Middle East continued throughout the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, new transregional waves of Muslim discourse had reached the shores of the archipelago. These waves were carried not only by returning students but also by hajj pilgrims who, from the 1870s onwards, travelled in ever-increasing numbers to the Islamic holy land. The most important discourse in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago arising from this wave was pan-Islamism. Subsequent waves came in the early twentieth century. In this case, they originated from Cairo and became categorised by many observers (e.g. Azra Reference Azra and Meuleman2002; Laffan Reference Laffan2003) as “Islamic modernism”. The spread of this new discourse led to the formation of such modernist Indonesian Muslim organisations as Muhammadiyah (1912), al-Irsyad (1913) and Persis (early 1920s).
In more recent times, the transregional waves that influence Muslim discourse in the Malay-Indonesian world no longer stem only from the Haramayn or Cairo. In fact, the respectable position of the Haramayn has been in decline for the last few decades. Nowadays, other places in the Middle East, or elsewhere in the Muslim world, have come to assert their influence and, in turn, have left their impact on Muslim discourse in the Malay-Indonesian region. Thus, since the 1980s, the discourse developed by such scholars as Abu al-A'la al-Mawdudi, Sayyid Qutb, Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani and Middle Eastern movements like al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (and its splinter groups), Hizb al-Tahrir and the like have begun to find their way into Southeast Asia. The Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979 further inspired the Islamists in the region to assert their existence but failed to significantly impact Islam and politics in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago. At the same time, however, Muslim thinkers living in the Western Hemisphere such as Ismail al-Faruqi, Fazlur Rahman, Seyyed Hossein Nasr and others provided another stream of Islamic thought that began to circulate in the Malay-Indonesian world. Through their books, which have been translated into the Indonesian and Malay languages, they managed to exert their influence among the region's Muslims (Derichs Reference Derichs2017).
It is true that the process of Islamisation in Indonesia was gradual and generally peaceful, but one should not be misled by ‘the myth of the abangan’ since, as Harry J. Benda maintained in the 1950s, the Islamic history of Indonesia (as elsewhere in Southeast Asia) is essentially a history of santri (orthodox) cultural expansion and its impact on Indonesian religious life and politics (Benda Reference Benda1958: 14). This santrinisasi, confirmed by scholars such as Federspiel (Reference Federspiel1970), Woodward (Reference Woodward1989), Pranowo (Reference Pranowo1994), and Ricklefs (Reference Ricklefs1998, Reference Ricklefs2006, Reference Ricklefs2007, Reference Ricklefs2012), has resulted in the blurring of the distinction between santri and abangan. Interestingly, the process of santrinisasi involves strong forms of pribumisasi (indigenisation) or kontekstualisasi (contextualisation). The expansion of more orthodox-inspired frames of religious reference is thus in many cases geared towards Islam's pragmatic applicability to domestic realities and everyday relevance. The papers in this collection remind us of these forms of indigenisation and contextualisation—or localisation—of religion and culture.
The Papers in Perspective
Islam in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago has undergone tremendous changes in the last thirty years, despite much continuity. Many of these changes are the result of internal factors, but, as mentioned above, interplay with external factors cannot be ignored. Improved education among the younger generations of Muslims has led to increased economic and social mobility, furthering the emergence of a strong Muslim middle class that constitutes an important factor in the spread of new Islamic lifestyles (and thus, Islamic institutions). While there is no specific term used to denote this new social-economic force in Indonesia, the rising Muslim middle class in Malaysia is called “the new Malay” (Alatas Reference Alatas1996). In both Indonesia and Malaysia, this social stratum has shown itself to be instrumental in the rise of a new piety and new religious aesthetics, for instance, the widespread use of the jilbab (headscarf) for women or the baju koko (shirt) for men. Furthermore, it is in the context of this new Islamic attachment—if not Islamic rejuvenation—that both countries aspire to become global centres of the Muslim fashion industry. Viola Thimm illustrates this point with her paper “Muslim Fashion: Challenging Transregional Connectivities between Malaysia and the Arabian Peninsula”, in which she reveals fascinating dynamics of creativity in an emerging fashion market that is tied to Malaysia's booming halal industry. Malaysia is indeed at the global forefront of the commodification of Islam and consequently, as Thimm argues, positions itself against established hierarchies of sacred landscaping.
Economics and the new middle class also play a central role in the unfolding of new dynamics of Islamic life in Indonesia. For instance, well-to-do Muslims have become highly engaged in Islamic philanthropy. Religious alms and donations (zakat, infaq, sadaqah, cash wakaf/ZISWaf) are collected through new and phenomenally successful institutions like Dompet Dhuafa Republika, which are mushrooming all over the country. This kind of organised Islamic philanthropy is not only active in relief programs in Indonesia but reaches beyond the nation-state to support, for example, Rohingya and Palestinians. Furthermore, increased economic abilities have enabled more and more Indonesian Muslims to travel for pilgrimage. Waiting lists require the pious to wait eight to fifteen years before they can embark on the journey to the holy Islamic land. Currently, and to the disenchantment of many, the hajj pilgrimage has been cancelled for two seasons (2020 and 2021) due to the COVID-19 pandemic—with the effect that waiting lists are getting longer.
The frustration of many in view of these circumstances underlines how important it is for Indonesian believers to travel to classic (former) religious centres; these not only include Mecca and Medina, but increasingly encompass places such as Jerusalem (or Palestine in general), Cairo, Istanbul, Granada, Sevilla, and Cordova, or even Samarkand. However, travel is not only driven by religious interest, but also by a longing for leisure, and sometimes both elements are interconnected. Today, a rising number of Indonesian Muslim middle class members travel to Japan, where they can enjoy special treatment under the so-called “shari'a tourism” introduced by the Japanese government, a type of sojourn that guarantees a halal (Islamically permissible) way of travelling the country. Mirjam Lücking's contribution “Breaching Boundaries in Muslim and Christian Tourism from Indonesia to Israel and Palestine” discusses similar journeys. Interestingly, she analyses not only Muslim ziyarah (religious visitation) to Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest mosque in Islam, but also Indonesian Christian pilgrims’ travel to religious places in Jerusalem, the Occupied West Bank and Israel. Like those in Japan, the Palestinian and Israeli tourism industries have adapted to the Indonesian visitors by catering to their special needs, making them feel comfortable and, for instance, providing tour guides who fluently speak Bahasa Indonesia. These examples illustrate how Indonesians and Indonesian culture have started to shape foreign places and economic markets.
The rise of a new Muslim middle class in Indonesia and Malaysia is indubitably mirrored in new dynamics in the educational ecosphere of these two countries. In Indonesia particularly, Islamic educational institutions have been drivers of development and modernisation. According to Indonesian law from 1989 and 2003, madrasah (Islamic schools) are equivalent to secular state schools and teach a large portion of the non-religious national curriculum. The more traditional pesantren (conventionally translated as ‘Islamic boarding schools’) have also been subject to processes of modernisation. They are nowadays found in urban areas and have spread from Java to other Indonesian islands. Pesantren have always played a number of key social roles; they are not only places of Islamic education but must also be understood as centres of social development and empowerment. These schools conduct programs and activities related to economic development and social welfare, appropriate technology for rural areas, and much more. Significantly, pesantren play a role in civil society as they mediate between the grassroots and the government. Moreover, since the late 1980s, new Islamic schools, the sekolah Islam unggulan (Islamic quality schools), such as the Sekolah Islam al-Azhar, SMU Madania or SMU al-Izhar, have emerged to target the children of Muslim elite families. As I have argued elsewhere (Azra Reference Azra1999), these schools play an important role in the re-Islamisation or santrinisasi of Muslim parents.
Furthermore, the Indonesian state Islamic higher education system, where Islamic as well as non-religious study programs are offered, has undoubtedly contributed to the modernisation of Muslim society. Owing largely to rational, non-denominational and interdisciplinary approaches to Islam, graduates of these Islamic universities, institutes and colleges have been recognised in Indonesia itself, as well as beyond, as representatives of a progressive, inclusive and tolerant understanding of Islam. By founding NGOs, majlis ta'lim (religious discussion groups in offices and society at large), and Islamic schools and pesantren, their graduates have been instrumental in the further dissemination of these approaches towards Islam (Jabali and Jamhari Reference Jabali and Jamhari2002). The contribution by Delphine Allès and Amanda tho Seeth, “From Consumption to Production: The Extroversion of Indonesian Islamic Education”, connects to this social and political function of Islamic education. However, in this context, the authors emphasise the rising importance of the international perspective as they look at a newly-founded governmental and civic project to “export” the Indonesian brand of Islam to the Muslim world through educational institutes. The authors show how this phenomenon constitutes a crucial switch from a formerly inward-looking Indonesian Islamic educational ecosphere to a new, more outward-looking orientation and how this switch is embedded in wider governmental and civic aspirations of promoting Indonesia and its different moderate versions of Islam (Islam Nusantara, Islam Berkemajuan, Islam Wasathiyah) abroad. One could argue that these movements are new kinds of santrinisasi, pribumisasi and kontekstualisasi with specific transregional aims, foregrounding a rich new area of academic discussion on possible outcomes.
