Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

Muslim Thought and Practice in Contemporary Indonesia 1 8 9mon and natural responses to the colonial circumstances experienced acrossthe Muslim world and also because of the salience of shared frameworks of Islamicideas for Muslims.In each epoch of the history of Islam, according to John Voll, there are peoplewhom Muslims recognize as renewing ( t a j d i d ) Islamic ideals in their communityor reforming ( i s l a h ) their society in accord with these ideals (Vo l l1983). Many of the renowned “renewers” in Islamic history have greatly affectedthe development of Islam in Indonesia in particular. For example, onesuch renewer was Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali (d. 1111), whose work combined keyideas from philosophy, theology, law, ethics, and esoteric thought in a way thathas appealed to Muslims for almost a millennium. In the eighteenth century,many Southeast Asians took a renewed interest in this medieval scholar, findingin his scholarship helpful ideas for revitalizing Islamic thought and practiceto suit conditions in a rapidly changing world. Likewise, in the twentiethc e n t u ry, a growing number of Indonesians turned to the work of Ibn Ta y m i y y a(d. 1328) for inspiration for activities of renewal and reform. Ibn Taymiyya hadbeen a member of a Sufi order, but more important, he was a legal scholarwho strove in particular to counteract certain practices (like the veneration of“saints” at their tombs) that he was certain confused Muslims and distorted Islamicideals.Both al-Ghazzali and Ibn Taymiyya influenced many Indonesian renewersand reformers, as did more modern thinkers from the Middle East and elsewherewho also strove to reinvigorate Islam as a moral and political responseto the challenges of new global conditions. The fact that some of the key modelsused by modern Indonesian movements are actually figures from the distantpast of Islamic intellectual history should not be understood as implyingthat Muslims in modern Indonesia are several centuries behind the times inrelation to the rest of the Muslim world. In fact, nothing could be further fromthe truth. Southeast Asia has in the past half century been on one of the leadingedges of innovative Islamic thought. For the renewed attention to the workof certain medieval scholars in recent centuries in Indonesia and elsewherehas been part of broader trends in Islamic revival across the Muslim world.This attention is part of an ongoing process in which authoritative ideas gainnew meanings in the continuing development of Islamic thought and practicein the contemporary world.During the eighteenth century, the ongoing and deepening Islamization ofthe archipelago underwent developments that matched broader trends acrossthe Muslim world as a whole. A surge of Islamic reform movements sweptacross the regions of the Muslim Middle East, Africa, and Asia. One example isthe movement in Arabia led by Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1787), which ultimately becamethe authoritative orientation of Islam in Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabi phenomenon,however, is only one manifestation, and a somewhat atypical one at