Contemporary Developments in Indonesian Islam: Explaining the Conservative Turn

by Martin van Bruinessen (Editor)

"Once celebrated in the Western media as a shining example of a 'liberal' and 'tolerant' Islam, Indonesia since the end of the Soeharto regime (May 1998) has witnessed a variety of developments that bespeak a conservative turn in the country's Muslim politics. In this timely collection of original essays, Martin van Bruinessen, our most distinguished senior Western scholar of Indonesian Islam, and four leading Indonesian Muslim scholars explore and explain these developments. Each chapter examines recent trends from a strategic institutional the Council of Indonesian Muslim scholars, the reformist Muhammadiyah, South Sulawesi's Committee for the Implementation of Islamic Shari'a, and radical Islamism in Solo. With van Bruinessen's brilliantly synthetic introduction and conclusion, these essays shed a bright light on what Indonesian Muslim politics was and where it seems to be going. The analysis is complex and by no means uniformly dire. For readers interested in Indonesian Muslim politics, and for analysts interested in the dialectical interplay of progressive and conservative Islam, this book is fascinating and essential reading." -Robert Hefner, Director Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University

Genres: Islam

276 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2013

About the author

Martin van Bruinessen is a Dutch anthropologist and author, who has published a number of publications on Kurdish, Indonesian, Turkish, Persian, Zazas subjects, and also on aspects of Islam as a whole.

He taught the sociology of religion at the State Institute of Islamic Studies of Yogyakarta, Indonesia and has been teaching Kurdish and Turkish studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands since 1994.

He also wrote and researched some issues of the early stages of Islam in Java.