Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia.

• Author: Van Doorn-Harder, Nelly
• Position: Book review

Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia. By R. MICHAEL FEENER. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 2007. Pp. xx + 270. $99.

Starling off this intellectual history of modern Indonesian Islam, in chapter one Feener offers an in-depth description of the religious and cultural reformations and transformations within Islamic thinking up to the beginning of the twentieth century and explains the various changes that occurred in education, publishing, and Muslim self-image. The second chapter describes the intense debates that took place about the practices of ijtihad promoted by reformers versus that of taqlid. At the core of these debates were questions concerning the "right" version of Islam for Indonesia. Among oilier things, these discussions led to suggestions to create an "Indonesian madhhab" (chapter three), and after Indonesia's independence from Dutch colonial rule (chapter four) evolved into fierce debates about the role of Shari'a law. Chapters live and six introduce the most prominent thinkers who have influenced Indonesian Islam and continue to shape the manifold debates on the role of Islam, in the archipelago. The last chapter provides insights into some of the newest intellectual developments that cover the wide spectrum from Islamist activists to liberal "post-Traditonalist" thinking.

During the past decade the Indonesian public arena has been crowded with discourses on religion and law, with one of the most debated issues being the nationwide application of Islamic law or Shari'a. While Islamist groups vigorously defend formalist interpretations of Islam, which include adopting the Shari'a, other voices emphasize the compatibility between Islam and the notions of universal human rights, democracy, women's rights, and religious pluralism.

Many of these debates took shape at the beginning of the twentieth century when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony, gaining ground over time in reaction to political and social conditions and demands. Forces influencing these debates included puritanical Wahhabism, innovative thinkers from Indonesia and other areas in the Muslim world, and western ideas channeled by NGOs and academia. On this stage Islamic puritanical ideas vied with those of Gramsci, Foucault, Catholic liberation theologians, and actors such as the Islamist-minded Ahmad Hassan (d. 1958), the Singaporean printer and tire vuleanizer of Tamil descent, and Muhammad Natsir (d. 1993), prime minister from 1950-1951, who defended a more rigid Islamic polity, alongside Nurcholish Madjid (d. 2005) and Abdurrahman Wahid (d. 2009), who espoused a pluralist and more liberal Islam.

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