Islam and Society in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Knowing One Another: Shaping an Islamic Anthropology Merryl Wyn Davies, London and New York: Mansell Publishing Limited, 1988, 189 pp. Books by Muslim scholars which raise theoretical issues in society and politics also raise hopes of a welcome trend because they are so rare. In the books under review we hear authentic Muslim voices. The authors make an interesting counter-poise, Muslims in the West and Muslims in Southeast Asia. A self-conscious, anti-West, combative posture is struck; although in the case of Davies, a British Muslim, this may simply mean the zeal of a convert. Both books suggest the breaking of new ground, indeed Davies promises to “shape” the discipline of anthropology. Islam and Society in Southeast Asia attempts to fill an important gap in the study of Islam in an area which contains the world‘s most populous country-Indonesia. The 13 chapters have been contributed by distinguished professors, mostly indigenous; and some are very distinguished, indeed, like Professor Kamal Hassan of Malaysia and Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia. The subjects, too, are topical and compelling: the modernization of women and the problems of the Nahdhatul Ulama in Indonesia. We are told why the Muslim masses reject Westernization: “Thus, the life-styles of Muslim elites, socialism, capitalism and Western civilization are all interrelated. Of the three factors, it is perhaps the lik-styles of the elites that has had the greatest impact upon the Muslim mind. It provides “tangible proof“ to the masses of the “evil” of Western civilization and foreign ideologies ... It is expressed at the level of the houses the elites own, the cars they drive, the clothes they wear, the food they eat, the parties they attend. Whether it is true or not, tales about these elites are almost always inter-woven with lurid lore about their decadent habits with the emphasis upon their sexual misdemeanors. That is why, if Islamic groups opposed to existing regimes ever succeed in mobilizing the people on behalf of their puritanical concept of Islam it would have been partly because of their condemnation of the alleged moral decadence, the materialistic life-style of the elites-since it is an issue that has so much potential mass appeal” (“Islamic Resurgence: Global View” by Chandra Muzaffar, p. 15). The elements of Islamic revivalism as seen from Southeast Asia are summarized thus: “Islamic resurgence has been inspired by the following factors: (a) disillusionment with Western civilization as a whole among a new Muslim generation (b) the failings of social systems based on capitalism or socialism (c) the life-style of secular elites in Muslim states (d) the desire for power among a segment of an expanding middle class that cannot be accommodated politically (e) the search for psychological security among new urban migrants (f) the city environment (g) the economic strength of certain Muslim states as a result of their new oil wealth; and (h) a sense of confidence about the future in the wake of the 1973 Egyptian victory, the 1979 Iranian revolution and the dawn of the fifteenth century in the Muslim calendar” (ibid, p. 21-22). The role of the &ma is highlighted in Islamic revivalism and the checking of Westernization in the concluding chapter: “The continuity of religious traditions and their fortification against Western onslaught was largely the work of ‘ulama and other orthodox functionaries who ran Muslim educational institutions- maktabs and mudmsahs (Muslim educational institute ...