Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia

Abstract

Although it is themost populous country in theMuslim world, Indonesia has long been overlooked in scholarly discussions of modern Muslim legal thought. This neglect has been compounded by the fact that western scholarship on this Southeast Asian country has been dominated by historians, anthropologists, and political scientists rather than scholars conversant with the Islamic sciences. Since the mid-1990s this situation has begun to change, however, as a new generation of scholars trained in classical and modern Islamic scholarship have come on the scene. These young researchers have made Islamic thought in Indonesia available to a global English-language readership for the first time. Fluent inArabic aswell as Indonesian, R.Michael Feener has established himself as among the most important members of this new generation of students of Indonesian Islam. The present book, a significant revision, updating, and expansion of his 1999 dissertation, seeks to provide a “road map” of “major trends in IndonesianMuslim thought on issues of law and society” (p. xvii) by focusing on the intellectual currents from the 1920s to the early 2000s. The author argues, correctly I believe, that this effort is significant not just because Muslim thought in Indonesia has yet to receive the attention it deserves, but because “Indonesia has become arguably the world’s most vibrant center for contemporary Islamic thought” (p. 225) ...