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

Muslim Thought and Practice in Contemporary Indonesia 2 0 3tional innovations into systems of schooling over the course of the twentiethc e n t u ry. Accompanying the programs of several Indonesian Muslim reformistmovements in the twentieth century was a strong emphasis on reforming theinstitutions of Muslim education in order to better serve the needs of theirmembers in a rapidly developing society. The impetus for educational reform,which began at the primary level, had by the middle part of the twentieth centu ry extended to include innovations in higher education. This culminated inthe establishment of a national system of university campuses known as StateInstitutes for Islamic Studies (IAIN) located throughout the archipelago.One fundamental factor in all these modern educational developments wasthe rapidly expanding Muslim print culture of Indonesia and the wider Muslimworld. In the early twentieth century, printed publications began to havean increasingly pronounced effect on the urban populations of the archipelago.Although there was some limited printing activity by Muslims in SoutheastAsia prior to the turn of the twentieth century, large-scale printing enterprises,especially those producing periodicals and other materials, came severaldecades later. Before this time, the majority of Arabic-script books available inthe region—other than rare and expensive manuscript copies—were importedfrom locations in the Middle East such as Mecca, Istanbul, and especiallyCairo.Over the twentieth century, the texts that continued to be produced overseasfor the Southeast Asian market were increasingly supplemented by localpublications. These included specialized religious tracts meant for Muslimscholars and also more popular forms of literature, such as novels and collectionsof short stories that conveyed ideas of Islamic reform. This genre appealedto a number of Malay-language authors who were associated with Islamicreform in the twentieth century, such as Sayyid Shaykh Abdul Hadi andHaji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah, popularly known as Hamka. Hamka wasone of the most prominent public figures in Indonesian Islam until his deathin 1981. Under the influence of Hamka and others like him, a public discourseon Islam that extended well beyond the circles of classically trainedscholars became an important dimension of modern Indonesian society.Working in the milieu of newly reformed institutions of education, especiallythose sponsored by various new voluntary institutions, Southeast AsianMuslim writers evolved a distinctive orientation and new format for theirworks. In doing so, they established new approaches to authority in IndonesianIslam. One prominent example of such a writer was A. Hassan, a prolificand polemical author associated with an organization called Persatuan Islam(PERSIS). PERSIS was founded in 1923 in Bandung, a city in the western partof Java, as an organization to promote Islamic study and other activities. UnderH a s s a n ’s influence in the 1930s, the flexible and ideologically mixed characterfor which the organization had previously been known was streamlined into