A History of Islam in Indonesia Unity in Diversity

CAROOL KERSTEN
A HISTORY OF ISLAM
IN INDONESIA
Unity in Diversity
THE NEW EDINBURGH ISLAMIC SURVEYS SERIES EDITOR: CAROLE HILLENBRAND

A History of Islam in Indonesia
The New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys
Series Editor: Carole Hillenbrand
Contemporary Issues in Islam Asma Asfaruddin

Astronomy and Astrology in the Islamic World Stephen P. Blake
The New Islamic Dynasties Clifford Edmund Bosworth
An Introduction to the Hadith John Burton
A History of Islamic Law Noel Coulson
Medieval Islamic Political Thought Patricia Crone
A Short History of the Ismailis Farhad Daftary
Islam: An Historical Introduction (2nd Edition) Gerhard Endress
The Arabic Aristotle Gerhard Endress
A History of Christian–Muslim Relations Hugh Goddard
Shi‘ism (2nd Edition) Heinz Halm
Islamic Science and Engineering Donald Hill
Muslim Spain Reconsidered Richard Hitchcock
Islamic Law: From Historical Foundations to Contemporary Practice Mawil Izzi Dien
Sufism: The Formative Period Ahmet T. Karamustafa
A History of Islam in Indonesia Carool Kersten
Islamic Aesthetics Oliver Leaman
Persian Historiography Julie Scott Meisami
The Muslims of Medieval Italy Alex Metcalfe
The Archaeology of the Islamic World Marcus Milwright
Twelver Shi‘ism Andrew Newman
Muslims in Western Europe (4th Edition) Jorgen S. Nielsen and Jonas Otterbeck
Medieval Islamic Medicine Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith
Islamic Names Annemarie Schimmel
The Genesis of Literature in Islam Gregor Schoeler
Modern Arabic Literature Paul Starkey
Islamic Medicine Manfred Ullman
A History of Islamic Spain W. Montgomery Watt and Pierre Cachia
Introduction to the Qur’an W. Montgomery Watt
Islamic Creeds W. Montgomery Watt
Islamic Philosophy and Theology W. Montgomery Watt
Islamic Political Thought W. Montgomery Watt
The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe W. Montgomery Watt
www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/isur
A History of Islam in
Indonesia
Unity in diversity
Carool Kersten
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
A note on translation and transliteration vii
Glossary viii
Introduction 1
1 The arrival of Islam 7
2 Network Islam 25
3 Islam as resistance 55
4 Islam and nation-building 92
5 An Indonesian Islam? 131
Conclusion 170
Notes 172
Bibliography 180
Index 192
Acknowledgements
The first word of appreciation has to go to Professor Carole Hillenbrand, the

long-serving editor of The New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys at Edinburgh University
Press. A few years ago, she invited me to contribute an overview of the history
of Islam in Indonesia to this prestigious series. This book is a condensation of
more than fifteen years of study and research into the history of Southeast Asia
and in particular the role played by Islam. The people who have helped me in
furthering my knowledge on these subjects are too numerous to mention indi-
vidually. However, in terms of facilitating the completion of this project, I need
to single out my Head of Department, Professor Paul Joyce, and the Dean of
the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King’s College London, Professor Russell
Goulbourne. Without their generous agreement to grant me research leave
during the academic year 2015–16, I would have never made the deadline.
Finally, I want to express my gratitude to the editors at Edinburgh University
Press for their assistance, efficiency and patience in bringing this book to press.
Carool Kersten
London, February 2016
A note on translation and
transliteration
This book adheres to the spelling conventions for the Indonesian language intro-
duced in 1972. Many Indonesians have continued to write their personal names
in the old spelling. However, in some instances, I have opted for the current
variant, changing Hasjim Asjʿari to Hasyim Asyʿari, and writing Sukarno and
Suharto, rather than Soekarno and Soeharto. The spelling of names is further
complicated by the parallel use of Indonesian and Javanese. For example,
Hamengkubuwono in Javanese is Hamengkubuwana in Indonesian. In the lit-
erature, some scholars have adhered to the Indonesian, others to the Javanese
versions. For Javanese names, I have opted for retaining the original spelling.
Another challenge is that Indonesian has its own system of transliterating Arabic
terms, which deviates from authoritative alternatives used in academic sources
written in European languages. When relying on sources related to Indonesia,
I have respected the Indonesian conventions, in other instances I have used a
simplified version of the transcription used in the International Journal of Middle
East Studies (IJMES); dispensing with diacritics for long vowels and consonants
with no (near) equivalents in European languages. Those with relevant lin-
guistic qualifications will be able to establish the original Arabic anyway, while
other readers need not be burdened with a possibly distracting idiosyncratic
typography.
Glossary
Abangan literally ‘red ones’. Refers to nominal Muslims

(Javanese)
Adat customary law
Adipati Javanese title for a ruler
Agama religion
Ahl al-Sunna wa’l-Jamaʿah ‘People of the Tradition and the Community’
Alam world
Aliran/Aliranisasi ideological pillar/pillarisation in Indonesian society
Asas tunggal sole foundation
Babad Javanese chronicle
Bangsa nation; people
Batiniyya esotericism (see also kebatinan)
Bendahara Minangkabau dignitary
Benteng fortress
Bhinneka Tunggal Ika ‘Unity in Diversity’. Motto of the Republic of
Indonesia
Bidʿa(h) unlawful religious renewal
Bomoh shaman, spirit doctor (see also dukun, pawang)
Bupati Javanese title for a regent or governor
Candi Hindu temple
Chedi Buddhist temple; pagoda
Churafat (khurafat) religious practices that are considered heretical;
superstitions
Dar al-Islam ‘abode of Islam’. Islamic legal science uses it to
refer to the lands under Islamic governance where
Islamic law is administered. Historiographers have
used it to refer to the lands under the control of the
great caliphates
Daʿwa(h) (dakwah) religious propagation
Dukun shaman, spirit doctor (see also bomoh, pawang)
Dwifungsi dual function; the dual role of Indonesia’s military
in society
Dwitunggal (duatunggal) power-sharing arrangement between first president
and vice-president of independent Indonesia
x A history of Islam in Indonesia
Eid al-Adha ‘Feast of the Sacrifice’, held after the end of pil-
grimage to Mecca (hajj)
Eid al-Fitr feast at the end of the month of fasting (Ramadan)
Fatwa authoritative religious opinion, issued by a mufti
Fiqh Islamic science of jurisprudence
Garebeg Mulud Javanese ceremony commemorating Prophet’s
birthday
Garwa ampeyan unofficial wife; concubine (Javanese)
Ghazwul fikri intellectual invasion
Guru teacher
Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca
Halaqa(h) teaching circle; group of students studying with a
particular scholar
Hijra(h) migration (of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca
to Medina in 622 ce)
Hikayat Malay chronicle
Hulubalang warrior, war chief (Aceh, Minangkabau)
Ibadat acts of worship
Ijaza authorisation to teach certain texts or subjects of
Islamic learning
Ijma‘ consensus of the scholars
Ijtihad independent reasoning
Ilm knowledge, science
Ilmu (ngelmu) mystical knowledge
Iman faith
Insan kamil ‘perfect man’; Sufi notion of human perfection
Jaksa kepala highest native government official (Minangkabau
area)
Jawi Malay written in Arabised script. Also used to refer
to the Malay-Muslim culture of Southeast Asia and
as a collective term for the Muslims from that region
Jihad ‘holy war’
Jimat amulet
Kafir/kapir (pl. kuffar) unbeliever. In conflict situations often applied as a
blanket category to non-Muslims
Kalam Islamic (discursive) theology
Kaum muda ‘new people/generation’. Islamic reformists
Kaum tua ‘old people/generation’. Traditionalist Muslims
Kebatinan spiritual practice. In the context of Indonesian
religious categorisation it is subsumed under Islam,
and yet not part of the officially recognised religious
traditions
Glossary
xi
Kemajuan progress
Kepala negeri/laras district head
Kepercayaan ‘belief’, but not acknowledged like one of the offi-
cially recognised religious traditions
Khalifa literally ‘successor’; caliph. Title for the successors
of Muhammad as ruler of the Muslim community
Khatib mosque official who delivers the Friday sermon
(khutba)
Kraton palace
Kris dagger
Kyai Javanese honorific for a teacher at a pesantren or
Islamic school
Lingam phallic symbol
Luban jawi benzoin or benjamin. A frankincense-like resin
secreted by a tree (Styrax benzoin)
Madrasa(h) Islamic school. In the Indonesian context usually
referring to a reformist-modernist Islamic school
Madhhab (mazhab) Islamic school of law or thought
Malim religious functionary in the Minangkabau area
Maʿrifat (ma’ripat) gnosis
Martabat tujuh ‘seven stages’ (of being), identified in the doctrine of
the ‘Unity of Being’ (see also wahdat al-wujud)
Masjid mosque
Mawlid (Mulud) al-Nabi Prophet Muhammad’s birthday
Menara minaret
Muʿamalat term used in Islamic to designate secular interac-
tions, to be differentiated from ibadat
Mufti jurisconsult, Islamic religious functionary who can
issue fatwas or religious opinions
Muhaqqiq ‘man of realisation’; a Sufi who has mastered high
levels of insight
Mujaddid religious renewer
Nasir al-dunya wa’l-din ‘Helper of the World and the Faith’. Honorific for
Muslim ruler
Negeri (negara) state; country
Nisba adjective indicating a person’s place of origin, tribal
affiliation or ancestry
Noesa Hindia (Nusa Hindia) nineteenth-century designation for Indonesia
Nusantara maritime Southeast Asia; nowadays the term is
confined to Indonesia
Organisasi massa mass organisation
Pangeran Javanese title, equivalent to prince or sultan
xii A history of Islam in Indonesia
Pawang shaman, spirit doctor (see also bomoh, dukun)

Pengajian curriculum of an Islamic school
Penghulu (panghulu) title for traditional chieftain
P(e)rang sabil religious warfare, ‘holy war’
Perang sabil jihad, often interpreted as ‘holy war’
Perang suci ‘purifying’ or holy war’
Pesantren Islamic school (Javanese term; see also pondok, surau)
Pondok Islamic (boarding school), technically only referring
to the accommodation part, but also used as the
Malay equivalent of pesantren
Pradikan (perdikan) residents of pious villages in specially designated
tax-exempted areas
Primbon divination almanac; treatise (Javanese literary
genre)
Priyayi Javanese aristocracy
Pusaka heirloom endowed with supernatural powers
Putihan (orang putih) ‘white ones’; term used to refer to observant and
pious Muslims (see also santri)
Qadi (kadi) judge
Qiyas reasoning by analogy
Raja Malay ruler
Rantau Minangkabau practice whereby adolescent or
young adult males leave their villages to travel and
seek economic fortune, or learning
Ratu adil mythic figure of the ‘Just King’
Rumi Latin script
Salaf salih ‘pious ancestors’; first three generations of the
Muslim community
Santri observant and pious Muslim (see also putihan)
Satria lelono wandering knight
Sayyid Islamic honorific for descendants of the Prophet
Muhammad through his daughter Fatima and son-
in-law Ali
Sejarah history or chronicle
Sekolah school
Shah Persian word for ruler or emperor
Shahadah Islamic creed
Shaʿir (Syair) poem; poetry
Shariʿa(h) Islamic law
Silsila(h) line of transmission; intellectual genealogy
Sultan ‘He who wields power’. A Muslim ruler or
potentate
Glossary
xiii
Suluk particular Javanese religious practice, incorporating

elements of various traditions; also the name of a
literary genre describing these practices
Surambi religious court (Javanese)
Surau Islamic (boarding) school, specifically used on
Sumatra (see also pesantren, pondok)
Tafsir Qur’an commentary
Tajdid religious renewal
Takhayyul religious practices that are considered heretical
Tanah air earth; land; territory
Taqlid (buta) (blind) imitation
Tarīqā (pl. turuq) (tarekat) Sufi order or brotherhood
Tasawwuf (tasauf ) Sufism
Tawassul intercession
Tawhid (tauhid) unity and oneness of God
Tuak alcoholic beverage
Ulama (ʿulamā’) Islamic religious scholars. In Indonesian, this plural
(of ʿalim) is also used as singular
Uleebelang Acehnese spelling of hulubalang
Ulil amri religious leaders who have to provide the commu-
nity with guidance
Umma(h) community of believers (the Muslims)
Undang legal code; law
Wahdat al-shuhud ‘unity of witnessing’; alternative Sufi doctrine, off-
setting the (heretical) ‘Unity of Being’
Wahdat al-wujud ‘Unity of Being’, a (controversial) philosophical Sufi
doctrine
Wali Songo ‘Nine Saints’; (half-)legendary figures credited with
introducing Islam to Java
Watan homeland; fatherland
Wayang (shadow) puppet theatre
Zawiya lodge of itinerant Muslim students or scholars
Zill Allah fi’l-ard ‘God’s Shadow on Earth’, a honorific for the
caliph, sometimes extended to other Muslim rulers
In loving memory of
my father
Lee Kersten
(1938–2016)
Introduction
Indonesia is the largest and most populous Muslim nation state in the world; a
fact that is often forgotten because it was never part of the great caliphates that
are historically associated with the Dar al-islam or ‘abode of Islam’. Also because
of its great distance from the so-called Islamic heartlands, it is still often assumed
that Islam in Indonesia is just a thin veneer over earlier religious deposits from
elsewhere in Asia. Consequently, both scholars of Islam and Southeast Asianists
overlook or underestimate the importance of this religion for the formation of
Southeast Asian cultures.
Writing a history of Islam in Indonesia presents researchers with the addi-
tional challenge that before the late 1800s, it could even be argued until 1945,
Indonesia did not even exist. At first glance that seems a preposterous statement.
It is obviously nonsense to deny that in terms of topography there is such a thing
that can be referred to as ‘Indonesia’; it can be easily identified on any map of
the world, where it dominates the equatorial zone between the Indian Ocean
and South China Sea. Use of the word ‘Indonesia’ can be traced to James Logan
(1819–69), a British lawyer based in the Malay trading port of Penang, while the
earliest indigenous use goes back to Indonesian Communist activists and expa-
triate Indonesian nationalists living in the Netherlands in the 1920s. A related
term with greater currency in the early 1900s was Noesa Hindia. Noesa/nusa is an
Old Javanese word, which is persistently – but mistakenly – associated with the
Greek word for island: nèsos. The word also forms part of an alternative designa-
tion for Indonesia, Nusantara, which has been translated as Malay-Indonesian
archipelago or – more accurately – maritime or insular Southeast Asia. This
topographical entity encompasses not just present-day Indonesia and the neigh-
bouring Federation of Malaysia, but also the Sultanate of Brunei, as well as the
southern provinces of Thailand and the Philippines. Strategically positioned on
the sea routes connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans, throughout its history,
this waterworld has been home to numerous indigenous states and even a few
empires, while being simultaneously exposed to the cultural, economic and
political influences of other Asian civilisations. Later on it was also subjected
to invasions and occupation by European colonisers. Compared against these
lengthy historical processes, border demarcation of what are presently interna-
tionally recognised states is a very recent phenomenon that did not get properly
under way until the 1870s and – in some instances – has remained unresolved
2 A history of Islam in Indonesia
until very recently. All this underscores the importance of not losing sight of the
fact that Indonesia is best regarded as a political construct based on historical
contingencies. To my mind, awareness of such ambiguities also offers the right
perspective for appreciating the place of Islam in this part of the world.
For most of its history, the area now covered by the Republic of Indonesia
fitted uncomfortably within the concept of the nation-state based on the Treaty
of Westphalia, which has governed statehood and international relations in
Europe since 1648. That same political order was subsequently introduced –
or imposed rather – everywhere else in the world. In that sense Indonesia is a
figment of the colonial mind. As a geo-political entity the Republic can be con-
sidered as the administrative successor of the Netherlands East Indies, because
the country’s postcolonial leaders could not or would not think beyond this
conceptualisation of statehood. People inhabiting the peripheries of this vast
expanse, such as the Acehnese, Moluccans, Timorese and the Papuas of Irian
Jaya, often feel like they do not quite belong, or even consider themselves as
being subjected to continuing colonisation by Java. In fact, many of the coun-
try’s political issues – including the question of the public function of religion
– also relate to the contested territorial integrity of Indonesia.
All the above considerations illustrate the caveats and disclaimers needed
when talking about ‘Islam in Indonesia’ – let alone when contemplating whether
it is possible to speak of an ‘Indonesian Islam’. The challenge of finding such a
common denominator is actually reflected in the country’s national motto:
Bhinneka Tunggal Ika – a Javanese expression that can be translated as ‘Unity in
Diversity’. The slogan was adopted in recognition of the daunting task ahead for
the young independent republic: forging a feeling of belonging and instilling a
sense of solidarity among tens of millions of people spread across 18,000 islands,
consisting of a wide variety of ethnicities, speaking a multitude of languages and
representing all major religions in the world, as well as an array of indigenous
beliefs. ‘Unity in Diversity’ is also applicable to Islam itself. On the one hand,
Indonesia’s Muslims are part of the umma; the community of believers world-
wide. However, in terms of ethno-linguistic affiliation, cultural and historical
experience, they are also different from their co-religionists elsewhere.
Also I must point out an imbalance in this book: in terms of the volume and
level of detail, the coverage of Indonesia’s centuries-long Islamisation process
is skewed in favour of developments that have taken place during the last 200
years. Unfortunate as this may be for a work that seeks to offer an overall survey
of the presence and evolution of Islam in Indonesia, this historiographical injus-
tice is the result of a dearth of written materials and data concerning earlier
periods. Sources for writing a history of Islam in Indonesia become more abun-
dant and detailed as we get closer to the present day. Consequently, also in this
book, the chapters on the recent past are the most voluminous.
The earliest modern academic scholarship on Indonesia, including its reli-
Introduction
3
gions, is in Dutch. Coinciding with the expansion of the Netherlands’ territorial

control in Southeast Asia, most of this literature is written from the perspec-
tive of the ‘deck of the ship, the ramparts of the fortress, and the high gallery
of the trading house’ – as the historian van Leur famously noted in one of the
earliest critiques of the Eurocentric focus of colonial history-writing (1967: 261).
Many of the early Dutch writings dealing with the place of Islam in Indonesia
were produced by the Orientalist and government adviser Christiaan Snouck
Hurgronje (1857–1936), and by his disciples at the University of Leiden and in
Batavia (Jakarta). Often this research was initiated in response to local resist-
ance to Dutch colonisation by Indonesians rallying – in one way or another
– under the banner of Islam. In that sense, this early scholarship forms a Dutch
equivalent to the littérature de surveillance written by the French about Islam in
their North African colonies (Bruinessen 1998a: 192). It also demonstrates that
the current securitisation of the study of Islam and the Muslim world is not
without its historical precedents. A further – and sometimes older – source of
information about religious developments in the Indies is the writings of Dutch
missionaries; obviously, their interpretations were often refracted through the
lens of their Christian theologies.
One dimension of the Indonesian Islamisation process that has been mark-
edly improved thanks to the work of a rare breed of scholars who feel equally
at home in Southeast Asian, Arabic and Islamic studies is the mapping of
the connections between Muslim Southeast Asia and West Asia (a designa-
tion that seems more appropriate than ‘Middle East’, when looking westward
from the eastern periphery of the Indian Ocean). Too often the unquestioned
identification of the Arab world as the heartland of the Muslim world is left
unproblematised. While the historical origins of the Islamic tradition lie indeed
in the Arabian Peninsula, its further development is a product of intensive
intercultural exchange, while in terms of demography, the vast majority of the
world’s Muslims live east of Hormuz. An important place in this networking
was occupied by traders and scholars from a region in South Arabia known as
the Hadhramaut. Research on the Hadhrami diaspora of the Indian Ocean
basin has greatly contributed to our understanding of the role of such ‘cultural
brokers’ in the Islamisation of Indonesia.
A positive development in the study of Islam in Indonesia is the growing
involvement of Indonesian scholars from Muslim backgrounds; especially in (re)
writing the history of the country’s continuing Islamisation from late colonial
times onward. Aside from rightfully claiming ownership of their own past, con-
tributions by Indonesians can also offer instructive counter-narratives and cor-
rectives of the particular focus in past Dutch scholarship on Islam in Indonesia,
because – one way or another – even the most erudite and empathetic studies
were connected to the colonial project. The resulting differences in interpreta-
tion, or in the significance and importance attached to specific phenomena,
trends and even particular events, as well as the accentuation of certain aspects
rather than others, are valuable contributions to our knowledge. All of this is
leading to a more nuanced understanding of Islamisation in Indonesia, and a
greater appreciation for the complexity of this process as exhibited in its varie-
gated and multifaceted aspects.
Another challenge for the earlier periods of Indonesia’s Islamisation is the
absence of data on the religious experiences of the common people. At least
until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sources focussed primar-
ily on rulers and scholars. Consequently, a fair amount is known about political
and intellectual developments but very little about the lives of ordinary Muslims.
Glimpses of this are provided by more recent ethnographic research, allowing
tentative and carefully formulated projections into the past, although much
of such extrapolation remains speculative. Very valuable in this regard is the
work done by social scientists, scholars of religion and linguists who combine
fieldwork with the study of texts. Although this was again pioneered by Snouck
Hurgronje during his time among the Indonesian Muslim communities in the
Hijaz (1884–5) and later in Aceh (1891–2, 1898–1901), I am thinking in par-
ticular about the work of a generation of anthropologists who commenced their
research a century later.
Aside from the question of demarcation or the paucity of sources for certain
periods and aspects of the Islamisation of Indonesia, writing a history of Islam in
a country that only came into being so relatively recent also requires decisions
on how to organise a story that has to cover not only a time period extending
over eight centuries but also a vast geographical space. I have opted for a chron-
ological account, while arranging the narrative around certain aspects of the
Islamisation process that seemed to me characteristic of different periods. This
comes with the immediate caveat that the dominant features of successive epi-
sodes do not constitute a neat sequential order, with distinct temporal markers
of clear beginnings and endings. The Islamisation of Indonesia is a multilayered
process of overlapping developments. Fitting a history of more than 700 years
and encompassing a geographical expanse the size of Indonesia into a brief
single volume can only be impressionist at best. I have attempted to find a com-
promise between the anecdotal and the identification of broader patterns and
long-term trends. For this survey I am indebted to the research and writings of
historians, linguists and literary experts, scholars of religion, social scientists and
other area specialists who have made seminal contributions to the study of Islam
in Indonesia during specific periods in time or in specific parts of the country.
When explaining the arrival of Islam in maritime Southeast Asia and the
introduction of the youngest of the world religions to its indigenous popula-
tion, the questions to deal with concern determining when this took place; from
where it came; who was involved in bringing Islam to Indonesia; and why it
was accepted at that point in time. Together with a brief sketch of the setting
Introduction
5
and ambience, these questions are addressed in the opening chapter. This is
followed in the second chapter with an overview of the dynamics informing
the further Islamisation process, discussing such issues as Islamic state forma-
tion, the emergence of a Southeast Asian Islamicate civilisation, as well as other
cultural and intellectual developments. When putting these factors together,
the image of a ‘network Islam’ emerges. After attaining a foothold and becom-
ing firmly embedded in its regional settings, Islam in Indonesia was also used
as a rallying point in resisting the onslaught of new, more invasive and violent,
external influences in the form of European imperialism. Chapter 3 presents
the Padri Wars in the Minangkabau region of central Sumatra, the Java War
involving the remnants of the Mataram Empire, and the protracted armed
conflict in Aceh as nineteenth-century instances of Islam as resistance to Dutch
colonialism, and a prelude to the confrontation with modernity. This encounter
is further elaborated in Chapter 4, featuring the decisive impact of technologi-
cal advances. These include the introduction of the steamship and opening of
the Suez Canal on the growing role of the pilgrimage to Mecca in putting
Indonesian Muslims in touch with developments elsewhere; the importance
of the printing press in the dissemination of Islamic learning and news from
across the Muslim world; and new forms of institutionalising Islam, like the
formation of Islamic mass organisations and political parties and their role in
emancipating Indonesia’s Muslim population and working towards independ-
ence during the early decades of the twentieth century. This takes the story to
the proclamation of the Republik Indonesia and the final chapter’s discussion of the
role of Islam in what is now the largest majority Muslim country in the world.
Your text here
PERSIA CHINA
● Medina
HIJAZ BENGAL
● Mecca GUJARAT
BURMA
INDIA
HADHRAMAUT
● Zabid SIAM
CHAMPA SOUTH
MALABAR COROMANDEL
CHINA
COAST
SEA PHILIPPINES
SRI LANKA
MALAYA
BORNEO
SUMATRA
INDIAN OCEAN SPICE ISLANDS
SULAWESI
JAVA
Map 1 The Indian Ocean Zone

CHAPTER 1
The arrival of Islam
Encounter with a world

Before engaging with events surrounding the arrival of Islam, it is advisable
to heed a call issuing from the French school of historiography known as the
Annales School to contextualise historical phenomena into their geographical
setting and situate the relevant chronology on a timeline that includes what its
historians call ‘the longue durée’. This Annales School approach privileges struc-
tural influences, long-range temporal trends, such as – in this instance – the
process of Islamisation, and what they call ‘mentalities’, over singular historical
incidents (Burke 1991).
As noted in the Introduction, the politico-geographical area that is now
known as Indonesia forms part of a wider region, locally known as Nusantara,
which outsiders have called by different names including ‘Lands below the
Winds’, ‘Further India’ and ‘The East Indies’.1 It covers an island world that
stretches for thousands of miles across an area along both sides of the equator
between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In terms of its geology, this is a tectoni-
cally turbulent area; a link in the ‘ring of fire’ that surrounds the entire Pacific.
This maritime world also forms part of another, relatively novel, topographical
unit referred to as Southeast Asia.2 This consists of a mainland portion, encom-
passing present-day Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam; and the Malay-
Indonesian archipelago that is of more immediate relevance to the present
study. It extends into the southern provinces of Thailand and the Philippines,
because these areas cannot be divorced from an account of the introduction of
Islam in Southeast Asia and the early religious and cultural developments affect-
ing Indonesia’s Muslims.
As for the region’s ecological setting, the key words are water and forest. In
an area where large portions of the land are covered by impenetrable jungles,
waterways – both maritime and riparian – become the main routes of com-
munication and shipping the prime mode of transport. However, aside from
these shared features, there is also a difference between continental and mari-
time Southeast Asia. Unlike the mainland, much of the archipelago – with the
exception of Java – is not suited to intensive rice cultivation. Lacking the kind
of economic surplus the latter generates, this explains the absence of empires,
such as those of Pagan, Ayutthaya and the Khmer, based in the plains and
river deltas of lower Burma, Thailand and Cambodia respectively. The only
approximation was the trading empire of Srivijaya centred on an entrepôt near
present-day Palembang in southern Sumatra (Wolters 1967). Because it is trade
and seafaring on which the inhabitants of maritime Southeast Asia have histori-
cally depended for their livelihoods, reliable seasonal winds and associated nau-
tical skills also enabled them to wander beyond their regional confines. In fact,
research has demonstrated that people descending from the ethno-linguistic
group known as Austronesians are found as far east as the South Pacific and
as far west as Madagascar.3 This westbound expansion points at the enduring
importance of maritime Southeast Asia’s global positioning on the eastern edge
of the Indian Ocean, which has functioned as a contact zone of crucial commer-
cial, cultural and political importance for the inhabitants of its shores.
This basic sketch makes discernible the contours of the structural significance
that the Annales School historians attach to the impact of the natural environ-
ment on humans in terms of the emergence of culture and their development as
historicised beings. This also applies to politics and religion, which are of course
central in the present account. Chronologically situated between the earlier
mentioned Austronesian cultural diffusion and the introduction of Indonesians
to Islam, is the historical phenomenon of the Indianisation of Southeast Asia.4
The mechanics and outcome of this acculturation process hold some instruc-
tive lessons and important clues for understanding and appreciating the later
Islamisation of Indonesia. Following the path-breaking work of nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century archaeologists and philologists, historian Oliver Wolters
has developed new insights and alternative interpretations that significantly
revise the earlier standard accounts. Central to his narrative are an apprecia-
tion for the agency of the peoples of Southeast Asia; the conceptualisation of
the Indian Ocean as a ‘neutral zone’; and his elaboration of the ‘mandala’ as a
model for indigenous Southeast Asian statehood (Wolters 1982).5
There are a number of factors that support an interactive acculturation of
Indian influences in Southeast Asia, rather than the assumption that this is a
one-directional process: from the ‘higher’ or more ‘advanced’ civilisation of
India to the ‘primitive’ peoples inhabiting Southeast Asia. First of all, there
are the earlier mentioned nautical inclinations of the Austronesian islanders.
Secondly, in India’s rigid caste system there is little opportunity for merchants
plying the Indian Ocean trade routes to become involved in the diffusion of reli-
gion and related cultural expressions. For the same reasons, and notwithstanding
the subsequent presence of Brahmins at royal courts throughout Southeast Asia,
tradition also prevented – or at least discouraged – members of this priestly caste
to leave the subcontinent. Buddhism is not affected by such inhibitions and was
also in its country of origin more readily associated with urban commerce than
the isolated life at the court. Perhaps it is no coincidence therefore that a trading
empire such as Srivijaya distinguished itself as a patron of Buddhism rather than
9
hosting the elaborate synthesis at royal metropoles elsewhere in Southeast Asia

involving Hindu elements. This support was not confined to Srivijaya’s own
geographical sphere of influence, but extended as far as the monastic university
of Nalanda in Bihar (Laffan 2009: 22). All things considered, this makes an
acculturation process in which Southeast Asians were involved as active partici-
pants rather than passive recipients all the more credible.
Wolters defines the Indian Ocean as a ‘neutral water’, rather than a termi-
nus like the Mediterranean. What he means by that is that the vast expanse
of the Indian Ocean basin is too large to be controlled by a single political
entity, and that the power centres along the surrounding shores must display
a degree of tolerance and hospitality to outsiders, because for traders there is
always somewhere else to go. Also the above-mentioned ecological environment
of Southeast Asia imposed a degree of flexibility on political systems. Forests
interspersed with waterways made expansion through the sustained occupation
of territory very difficult, thus forcing those in power to adopt the alternative
strategy of bringing groups of people under their control instead. Indigenous
‘states’ were therefore organised in accordance with the model of a ‘mandala’
– whereby direct and effective power is only exercised in the immediate vicin-
ity of the capital, from where it radiates with diminishing efficacy towards the
peripheries. Suzerainty rather than sovereignty is maintained through a system
of tributary vassals, which becomes less coercive the further one travels from
the centre. In contrast to the cultural-religious influence exercised by India, in
the context of Southeast Asian politics it was usually the Chinese emperor who
stood at the apex of this hierarchy.
Southeast Asia and the Muslim world

Already before Islam began making inroads among the indigenous populations
of Southeast Asia, there were contacts with the heartlands of the historical Dar
al-Islam, with Persian navigators en route to China playing a pioneering role
(Laffan 2009: 53). In fact, it may be safely assumed that relations predate the
emergence of Islam. In his research on Southeast Asian toponyms, Michael
Laffan traces the different names used in early Muslim sources for localities
and regions in that part of the world (Laffan 2009). His findings are not only
useful evidence for early contacts, they are also instructive for the uncertainties
surrounding the exact topographical identification of early Southeast Asian enti-
ties, such as Srivijaya. With that, his work also points at the continuing challenge
involved in determining the arrival of Islam in Southeast Asia.
While scholars agree that Srivijaya’s centre of gravity lay in the area of present-
day Palembang in southern Sumatra, less clear is the exact nature of its relation
with Java and the Buddhist Sailendra dynasty, who are credited with building
the Borobudur. The existence of such a connection is indicated by the use of the
name ‘Yava’ for what is assumed to be Srivijaya. By examining the toponyms
used by Muslim scholars in subsequent historical and geographical compendia,

Laffan has tried to build a conjectural but not implausible case that changes in
the Arabic nomenclature related to Srivijaya at present-day Palembang (Zabaj)
reflect the shift of its centre of gravity first to Jambi/Melayu (Qamar) in the elev-
enth century, and its eventual substitution as the main emporium in maritime
Southeast Asia by Malacca, around 1300, when large parts of Sumatra were
conquered by the Java-based dynasties of Singasari (1222–92) and Majapahit
(1292–1527). This coincides with the use of Jāwa, an Arabised cognate of ‘Yava’.
It is indicative of an awareness among the geographers in the Arabic-speaking
parts of the Muslim world of Java’s ascendancy in the regional balance of powers
– an island that until then had not featured in Arab and Persian itineraries on
their way to the terminus of China. It appears then that, aside from the Malacca
Straits between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, West Asian Muslims now
also began using the Sunda Straits between Sumatra and Java to get to the South
China Sea. Since then, Jāwa, and its adjective Jawi, have functioned as collective
or generic terms in the Arabic vocabulary for things Southeast Asian. This also
includes Muslims associated with that part of the world.
The Indian Ocean as an ‘Arabic-speaking Mediterranean’?

This evocative designation can be a bit misleading and therefore needs some
qualification. First of all, unlike the Mediterranean, located between Southern
Europe, North Africa and the Levant, the Indian Ocean is not a terminus. As
argued by Wolters and subsequently demonstrated in the research by French
historians influenced by the Annales School, that role is reserved for the South
China Sea.6 Also, the Indian Ocean is characterised by linguistic diversity. Aside
from Persian and Swahili, various Indian languages had great currency too,
while within Southeast Asia Malay functioned as the lingua franca. However,
when exploring the provenance and interlocutors, the purpose and qualified
validity of this somewhat provocative characterisation will become clear.
The beginnings of the Islamisation process

When discussing the introduction of Islam in Indonesia, four questions need to
be addressed: they relate to the time frame (when); provenance (from where);
agency (by whom); and motivation for Islam’s arrival and acceptance at the time
it did (why). Assessing the answers to these questions is a challenge. First of all
because they are closely interrelated, so that changes in the findings in regards
to one question will also influence the answers to the others. Secondly, because
of the paucity of early sources, researchers have been forced into formulating
rather conjectural theses, which are then explored using different scholarly
methodologies, ranging from historical-philological studies to the ambitious
holism of the Annales School and speculative theorising informed by a sociologi-
11
cal focus. Geographically, two islands are of particular interest when it comes
to the early Islamisation of maritime Southeast Asia: first of all, Sumatra – and
more specifically the area known as Aceh; an independent-minded entity that
became staunchly Islamic, and which still forms a region with special autono-
mous administrative status within the Republic of Indonesia. The other one
is Java, where a section of its northern coast referred to as the Pasisir, and the
adjacent part of east Java are especially important. In both instances this is no
coincidence, because these areas are located on the busy trade routes connect-
ing the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea.
When?
The interrelation between the various questions regarding the Islamisation of
Indonesia is evinced when trying to determine the time frame during which the
inhabitants of the Southeast Asian island world began embracing Islam, because
the answer has immediate repercussions for the ‘why?’ question. The previous
section showed that Arabs and Persians were already in touch with the rest of
Asia before they had become Muslims themselves. However, tangible indica-
tions of a presence of indigenous Muslims in Southeast Asia do not predate
the late thirteenth century. If this was indeed the moment Islam began to be
accepted, this raises the question: why then? And what would explain the ‘gap’
between that point in time and the emergence of Islam in the seventh century,
not to mention the indications that there was a very early and widespread pres-
ence of Muslims in China? The evidence for a presence of indigenous Muslims
in Southeast Asia is both textual and material, consisting of travel accounts by
outsiders and tombstones, complemented by local records in the form of royal
chronicles – although the latter have not survived in versions that are contem-
poraneous with the events they describe.
In his travelogue, the Venetian trader Marco Polo (1254–1324) notes that
at the time of his visit in 1292, the inhabitants of the northern Sumatran port
city of Perlak (in today’s Peureulak Regency in Aceh) had recently converted
to Islam. Also important is that, sailing with a mixed Sino-Muslim crew, Polo
refers to the island as Java Minora; indicative of Sumatra political subservience
to Java proper. Half a century later, in his account of Asian riches, such as luban
jawi or benzoin, Ibn Battuta of Tangiers (1303–68/9) reports of the piety and
strict adherence to the Shafiʿi school of law on the part of Sultan al-Malik al-
Zahir, the ruler of the Sultanate of Samudra-Pasai (identified with present-day
Lhokseumawe), located in the northeastern tip of Sumatra (Laffan 2009: 35–8).7
Of a slightly later date are the descriptions in the Suma Oriental written by the
Portuguese Apothecary Tomé Pires (1465?–1524/40).8 His records of Muslims
in the Malay Peninsula and on Java coincide with d’Albuquerque’s conquest of
Malacca in 1511 and the growing importance of Muslim-controlled entrepôts
along Java’s north coast (Ricklefs 2006: 17–20).
The plausibility of these accounts can be tentatively corroborated by the

presence of tombstones on Sumatra, Java and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. A
tombstone bearing the name of Sultan al-Malik al-Salih who died in 1297 ce
was found in Pasai.9 As shown by the research of Elizabeth Lambourn into the
material Muslim cultures around the India Ocean, such discoveries form part
of a developing tradition, in which the tombstones of the first Muslim rulers
were later replaced by more ornate ones, while by the fifteenth century also
rich commoners from Pasai to Gresik in east Java could afford to import such
precious headstones from Gujarat (Lambourn 2003, 2004). These artefacts also
evince the use of Arabic names, styles and titles for royalty – as rajas become
sultans – and with that the first hints of the Arabisation of the Malay language,
in terms of both vocabulary and script – a variant that since then is referred to
as jawi.10 The Javanese picture is slightly more confusing. There, the earliest
gravestones found in Trawulan (Trowulan) and Troloyo (Tralaya) date back
to 1368/9 and 1376/7 respectively – with the graves at the first location also
displaying the Shiva lingam (Hindu phallic symbol). According to Ricklefs, this
demonstrates that Javanese courtiers of the period saw no contradiction in
being Javanese and Muslim at the same time. However, the Deśawarnana (also
known as Nagarakrtagama), a Javanese epic poem attributed to the Buddhist
author Prapañca (d. 1365), makes no mention of Muslims at all. Ricklefs inter-
prets this absence as an indication that being Muslim was still regarded as a
contested identity (Ricklefs 2006: 12–15). A similar perception lies at the basis
of Azyumardi Azra and Anthony Johns’s suggestion that the early phase of the
Southeast Asian Islamisation process is best conceived in terms of a sliding scale
moving from adhesion to conversion (Azra 1992: 21ff.; Johns 1995: 170). In
this they follow Nehemia Levtzion rather than earlier scholar of religion Arthur
Nock, who saw these two religious phenomena as separate and mutually exclu-
sive categories.11 Instead, the introduction of Islam was a lengthy process of
gradual adoption and adaptation to local circumstances, featuring the integra-
tion of existing indigenous religious features, such as the accommodation of a
central functionary known as pawang. Also known as bomoh or dukun, the pawang
is a kind of ‘spirit doctor’, whose equivalent is also found elsewhere in Southeast
Asia where other religious traditions prevail.12
Then there are the chronicles of the Southeast Asian ‘states’ affected by this
new process of religious adhesion and conversion, although with the caveat that
they survive only in copied manuscripts of later dates. While these chronicles
are called babad in Javanese, the Malays often use the evidently Arabic-derived
term hikayat.13 Thus the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai of 1350 seems to confirm Ibn
Battuta’s reports, whereas Malacca’s Sejarah Melayu (c. 1500) puts the conversion
of its alleged founder, a refugee prince from Srivijaya called Parameswara, in
the year 1414, after which he continued to rule as Muhammad Iskandar Shah.
Further north on the Peninsula, in what is now the southern Thai province of
13
Patani, the ruler embraced Islam in 1457. In the beginning of the sixteenth
century, the port cities of the Pasisir had managed to wrest themselves free from
Majapahit suzerainty and the first local ruler to become a Muslim was Pangaran
Tranggana of Demak, who then assumed the name Ahmad Abd al-Arifin. By
this time, Southeast Asia’s most powerful emporium, Malacca, had fallen to
the Portuguese and its place as the region’s leading Muslim trading post cum
‘state’ was now shared by Patani, on the eastern side of the Malay Peninsula
and looking out over the Gulf of Siam, and in the west by Aceh – the northern
Sumatran region protruding far into the Indian Ocean.
Another Islamisation narrative that is of interest here is that of west and
central Sumatra, home to an ethnic group known as the Minangkabau. This
area stretches from Sumatra’s west coast opposite the islands of Nias and
Siberut, across the highlands in the interior which are cut off from the coast by
a mountain range called the Bukit Barisan, extending into the alluvial plains
of what is now the Riau province. This part of central Sumatra is connected
to the Straits of Malacca via the Siak, Kampar and Indragiri rivers. Although
of a later date than Aceh or the Malay Peninsula, the story of the introduction
of the Minangkabau to Islam is not only illustrative of the varying modalities of
the Islamisation process in Southeast Asia, especially where it concerns peoples
living in the interior and on higher elevations.14 Singling out this relatively
minor group in the totality of Indonesia’s demography for special attention
also bears relevance to the later development of Islam as a tool of resistance
and to the role played by Minangkabau Muslims in late colonial and inde-
pendent Indonesia – occupying a place of political, intellectual and religious
prominence that is disproportionate to their percentage of the country’s total
population, which will be discussed in other chapters (Hadler 2009: ix, 2–3,
180).15
The Minangkabau world (Darat or Alam Minangkabau) is complex and inter-
nally diverse. Its most characteristic exponents – matrilineal kinship and its
derivative social structures and cultural expressions – only apply in their full
extent to the valley plains of the interior, where a semi-hereditary class of leader
figures, known as penghulus, stood at the apex of this lineage hierarchy. These
features are less discernible among the populations living on higher elevations,
in the narrow western coastal strip and in the alluvial plains to the east. These
different environments also impact on the economic bases of these respective
Minangkabau societies. Intensive wet rice cultivation is limited to valley floors,
with areas on higher altitudes focussing on alternative ways of growing rice and
the collection and export of jungle produce, including camphor, benzoin (a tree
resin not dissimilar to frankincense), cassia (a kind of cinnamon, though of a
lesser quality than the variant found on Sri Lanka) and gambir (a wood used as
a dye, for chewing betel and for medicinal purposes). Matrilineal kinship, mean-
while, stimulated another feature of Minangkabau society: the practice of rantau
(also found in Aceh) whereby adolescent or young adult men leave their village
to seek (economic) fortune elsewhere.
Aside from agricultural surplus, it was the mining of iron and gold that was
important to the Minangkabau economy and the resultant social structur-
ing. Historically, the export of this precious commodity also connected the
Minangkabau’s interior to the outside world, exposing it to outside influences.
This gold trade shaped the emergence of a Minangkabau upper class, consist-
ing of a royal lineage and two other dignitaries known as bendahara who are
regarded as the originators of two competing systems of Minangkabau cus-
tomary law, known as Bodi Caniago and Kota Piliang respectively. Both the
royal family and bendaharas profited from the gold trade which was exported
via an eastern trade route, establishing a close relation between Minangkabau
royalty and the Sultanate of Malacca. This was also one of the ways through
which Islam entered into the Minangkabau world. Indications of a gradual
Islamisation via this lowland connection are the Arabised names of a sixteenth-
century triumvirate of Minangkabau kings, known as the Raja Ibadat (King of
Religion), Raja Adat (King of Tradition) and Raja Alam (King of the World)
respectively, as well as Dutch references to one of the bendaharas as the Raja
Alam’s ‘absolute wakil’ (representative) almost a century later (Dobbin 1983:
64–5).
Parallel to this connection to the Malay world of the Straits, Islam also
entered via the west coast, through the entrepôts run by middlemen ‘nominally
linked to the Minangkabau royal court’ (Dobbin 1983: 71). Cut off from the
interior by the Bukit Barisan, this narrow coastal strip lacked a proper economic
hinterland. Consequently, even leading ports like Ulakan, which would become
‘famous in Minangkabau history as one of the entry points of Islam into the
Minangkabau world, presented “a wretched appearance [. . .]”’ (Dobbin 1983:
42). Aside from marketing gold, for centuries these ports had been staple places
for jungle produce, such as camphor, benzoin and gambir, supplying them to
Indian, Chinese and other foreign traders. Another highly profitable commod-
ity, which was added as a commercially grown crop on the coastal plains from
the sixteenth century onward, was pepper. This pulled the Minangkabau’s west
coast and its ports into the orbit of an expanding Aceh, as it took over from
Malacca as the region’s most powerful political entity of the Malay world. It was
this development that opened the way for the introduction of Islam by Muslim
missionaries operating under Aceh’s patronage, which will be discussed in more
detail in the next chapter.
Putting together indigenous texts with the travel accounts of outsiders and
the material culture examined by archaeologists, the only certainty we have
is that at the very end of the thirteenth century there were Muslims resident
in Southeast Asia, while in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
there are increasingly convincing indications of the adoption of Islam by indig-
15
enous populations as well. However, it is not until the sixteenth century that
more abundant evidence becomes available.
From where?
As for the provenance of Southeast Asian Islam, the picture is equally diffuse.
The Dutch scholar of Islam G. W. J. Drewes has provided a handy inventory of
the various origins that have been proposed over time (Drewes 1968). In 1872,
fellow Dutchman Pijnappel had suggested that Arabs settled in India in Gujarat
and on the Malabar Coast were responsible for introducing Islam to maritime
Southeast Asia. Snouck Hurgronje, however, was of the opinion that its point
of origin could be found in the south of the subcontinent, although he did not
specify which part. Based on Tomé Pires’s Suma Oriental, the Pakistani scholar
S. Q. Fatimi argued that Islam was imported from Bengal, but he also added
a second line of conversion coming to Indonesia from China via Champa,
located in present-day southern Vietnam and Cambodia. This may be less
far-fetched than it seems, because both Javanese and Cham Muslim traditions
make mention of such contacts.16
Apart from information derived from early travel accounts, the acceptance
of India as the point of origin was also informed by Moquette’s discovery and
description of the Muslim tombstones found in northern Sumatra. According
to Moquette, these tombstones were of Gujarati design. However, the dating of
these stones to the late thirteenth century is difficult to reconcile with the fact
that at that time Islam had only just begun to make inroads in that part of India
itself. For that reason, and also based on stylistic considerations, Fatimi main-
tains that the tombstones must have been brought from Bengal instead. Drewes
himself is inclined to accept the plausibility of the Bengali connection, because
of its geographical proximity and the known existence of close trade relations
with Southeast Asia, but he has also suggested that more research should be
done into the possible influence of Tamil Muslims (Drewes 1968: 479).17 More
recently, the Indonesian historian Azyumardi Azra noted that – in 1913 – the
British scholar T. W. Arnold (1864–1930) had added the Malabar Coast and
Arabia as places from which Islam may have been brought to Southeast Asia
(Azra 1992: 31).
In 1861, the Dutch scholars Niemann and de Hollander pointed to Arabia
as the place from which conversion was initiated, based on the self-evident fact
that Arabia is where Islam itself originated. Following a comparable line of
reasoning, Keyzer suggested Egypt, because that is where the Shafiʿi school of
law, prevailing throughout Muslim South and Southeast Asia, was first estab-
lished. Drawing on the writings of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, historical-
philological studies by Azyumardi Azra himself and by others have put these
Arabian provenances back on the table. However, these research projects were
not so much focussed on determining points of origin as geared towards the
question of agency; investigating the interlocutors – that is, foreign and domestic
participants – involved in the Islamisation of Southeast Asia.
Who and why? Agency and motives for Islamising Indonesia

The earlier discussion of Indian cultural-religious influences in Southeast Asia
showed that the question of who was involved in the Islamisation of Southeast
Asia must not be reduced to simply determining who first carried the message of
Islam to that part of the world. Even in the context of searching for the begin-
nings of the Islamisation process, such a one-dimensional approach is simply
reductionist. It is much more productive to break down the question into an
investigation of ‘senders’ and ‘addressees’. Catering to an interactive process
also offers a more sophisticated insight into motivational forces that are at work
in religious conversion processes and will thus contribute to resolving the ‘why?’
question – which is inseparably connected with that of agency.
Proponents of both West Asia and South Asia as the points of origin of
Southeast Asia’s Islamisation based their case on the long-standing trade rela-
tions between these regions. In his Indonesian Trade and Society (1967), the economic
historian van Leur also bought into this argument, amplifying the importance
of commerce in maritime Southeast Asia’s contacts with the outside world. But
there are a few problems with that in regards to the modalities of the conversion
process. While scholarship has shown that these relations date back to the earli-
est times of Islam, and were probably even established in the pre-Islamic period,
what would then explain the vacuum of nearly half a millennium between the
travels of West Asian Muslim merchants from the seventh century onward and
the earliest indications of any local Southeast Asian acceptance of Islam on a
substantial scale between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries? In addition,
if business was a consideration, why then did Chinese religions fail to make
inroads among the indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia? The Chinese have
been present in Southeast Asia for much longer and in much larger numbers
than Muslim traders from the Indian Ocean basin.
Equally unconvincing is Schrieke’s contention that the arrival of Christian
Portuguese drove the Malays to Islam, because the Islamisation process had
already commenced before any Portuguese had set foot on Asian shores
(Schrieke 1957: 232–7).18 As part of these considerations, Alatas and Azra have
sided with Anthony Johns, who was the first to elaborate the thesis that Sufism
played an important part in the acceptance of Islam in insular Southeast Asia
(Alatas 1985: 170; Azra 1992: 40).
The ‘Sufi thesis’

Leaving aside the question of the exact timing and origin of Islam’s initial intro-
duction to Southeast Asia, Johns’s work was focussed on finding explanations
for the apparent acceleration in the spread of Islam between the thirteenth and
17
fifteenth centuries. In a number of publications written in the course of more

than forty years of pioneering philological and historical scholarship, he has
come to an increasingly subtle reading of the Islamisation process in Southeast
Asia under the rubric of a ‘Sufi thesis’, in which intellectual and other cultural-
historical considerations feature prominently. While accepting the significance
of the trade route networks criss-crossing the Indian Ocean since time immemo-
rial for the spread of religious traditions, Johns rejected the idea of traders as the
chief candidates for the agency of conversion. Instead he looked for other actors
travelling along the same trajectories:
To say simply that Islam came with trade is to beg the question. It is not usual
to think of sailors and merchants as bearers of religion. If, however, we think of
certain traders belonging to Sufi trade guilds, accompanied by their Shaikhs,
there seems a more plausible basis for the spread of Islam. (Johns 1963: 40)
In his studies of the Islamic expansion in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago,
Johns has continued to explore, adjust and revise the assumption with which he
started in the early 1960s:
The hypothesis I wish to elaborate then is as follows: the primary impulse behind
the development of Islam among the Indonesian peoples is the preaching of the
Sufis, and that the Sufis, by virtue of the organization of their orders, and their
craft and guild organization were able to gain control of administrative units of
the port cities of North-East Java. (Johns 1961: 146–7)
What makes this a plausible hypothesis in Johns’s view, is that the increase of
the conversion rate in Southeast Asia coincides with the emergence of Sufi
orders (tarīqā (s.); turuq (pl.) in Arabic, tarekat in Indonesian) in West and South
Asia as the main institutions holding together the fabric of Muslim societies
after the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate, following the sacking of Baghdad by
the Mongols in 1258. Apart from this macro-historical development affecting
the Muslim world at large and his ‘profiling’ of likely candidates for Muslim mis-
sionaries responsible for the introduction of Islam in Southeast Asia, Johns also
emphasised the urban setting of this emerging Islamic culture in Southeast Asia,
but adding the caveat that ‘the urban history of our region is freakish, disparate
and abrupt’ (Johns 1975: 37–8).
Martin van Bruinessen has challenged this thesis. While he agrees that the
first indications of the Islamisation of indigenous populations in Southeast Asia
coincide with the lifetimes of the eponymous founders of the great transnational
Sufi orders, he argues that there is simply no tangible evidence of any presence of
initiates in these brotherhoods before the late sixteenth century (van Bruinessen
1994b: 3–4).19 Also he questions whether it is appropriate to conceive of Sufi
orders as ‘guilds’, even if proselytising Sufi teachers travelled along these trade
routes. Responding to this criticism in his latest writings on the subject, Johns
revised the original hypothesis, augmenting his early focus on Islamic mysticism
– motivated by his self-admitted personal enthusiasm for the spiritual dimen-

sions of Islam – with a greater appreciation of Islam’s communal aspects.
The realisation of the significance of these communal aspects provides an
opportunity to reassess the economic and political factors that have been brought
forward as a motivation for the acceptance of Islam by Southeast Asians. For the
rajas, or rulers, of trade-based Malay chiefdoms and petty principalities located
on the river mouths and estuaries of insular Southeast Asia, Islam offered a way
of unifying in the face of the challenges posed by the more powerful wet rice
cultivating empires of continental Southeast Asia. The new religion offered the
Malay chieftains – often reduced to vassal status within these more powerful
political realms – an opportunity to tap into an alternative political alliance:
one encompassing the entire Indian Ocean as an ecumenical Islamic zone. This
would explain the pattern of rulers accepting the new religion before most of
their subjects did. A similar process may have transpired in the Pasisir – the port
cities along the northern coast of central Java.
This aspect of Islam as a communal religion is also evident in the central-
ity of rituals such as prayer, almsgiving and fasting. This significance of the
social dimension of Islam also stimulated a greater awareness of the importance
of wider religious learning – including Islamic law – throughout the subse-
quent Islamisation process in Southeast Asia. In addition to mystical, legal and
other religious literature, Johns points also to a different kind of texts, ‘more
Indonesian than specifically Islamic which refer to the coming of Islam’ (Johns
1961: 147). These are the Javanese, Malay and Sundanese chronicles men-
tioned earlier such as the Babad Tanah Jawi, Hikayat Raja Pasai, Sejarah Banten and
Sejarah Melayu. At this stage, Johns is still relying mainly on Fatimi’s advocacy
of Bengal and China as the places from which Islam reached Southeast Asia.
However, in his later rethinking of his hypothesis, together with Farid Alatas
and Azyumardi Azra, Johns begins to give more weight to the Arab connection.
The Pasai chronicle credits the ruler of Mecca with dispatching missionaries
to the court at Samudra in northern Sumatra. Also in the Sejarah Melayu, ‘six
principal references to things Islamic’ can be identified, including the Qur’anic
Alexander story; the conversion of the ruler of Malacca by a holy man from
Jeddah; and the arrival of a Meccan scholar with a book of Islamic teachings
(Johns 1975: 40–1).
Sufis, Arabs and the rise of a Malay-Muslim writing culture: two

recent discoveries
Van Bruinessen’s scepticism regarding Johns’s Sufi thesis can be dispelled to a
degree by two discoveries that will – to some extent – close the gap between the
first rise of the Sufi orders from the thirteenth century onward and evidence for
their presence in Indonesia, which until recently was assumed to be not older
than the late sixteenth century. They involve the discovery of a Yemeni text
19
mentioning the presence in Southern Arabia of a thirteenth-century scholar

by the name of Masʿud al-Jawi, and archaeological evidence that possibly puts
almost a century further back in time the death of one of the founding fathers
of a Malay-Muslim literary culture and an indigenous theosophical tradition
inspired by Ibn al-ʿArabi (1165–1240). Both discoveries invite a corrective and,
after further future research, possibly a complete revision of what has been
postulated so far in regards to the emergence of the first important Muslim
intellectuals of Southeast Asian origin and their involvement in the Islamisation
process.
In 1997, Michael Feener came across the name of one Abu Abdullah Masʿud
al-Jawi in a biographical dictionary compiled by Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-
Sharji (1410–c. 1487/8). He is mentioned as an established Sufi teacher in the
small Red Sea town of Uwaja and colleague of the prominent jurist Ismaʿil
al-Hadhrami. Al-Sharji himself was a scholar living and working in Zabid, a
centre of Islamic learning in Yemen and of central importance in the debates on
the legacy of Ibn al-ʿArabi’s thought in Yemen from the late thirteenth century
onward, which have also affected the Islamisation process in Indonesia, and
especially in seventeenth-century Aceh.
In a jointly written article, entitled ‘Sufi Scents Across the Indian Ocean’,
Michael Feener and Michael Laffan are able to connect the duo mentioned by
al-Sharji to the writings of one of their disciples: ʿAbdallah ibn Asʿad al-Yafiʿi
(1298–1367) (Feener and Laffan 2005). In terms of biographical facts, al-Yafiʿi
chronicles that al-Hadhrami’s death coincided with that of the Mamluk Sultan
Baybars al-Bunduqari in 1277. This makes also the Muslim scholar al-Jawi a
contemporary of the victor over the Crusade of Louis IX in 1250; the sultan
then went on to vanquish the Mongols at Ayn Jalut in 1260. This period also
coincides roughly with the formative period of the first Sufi orders, as well as
the reign of the first identifiable Muslim ruler of Sumatra, the Sultan al-Malik
al-Salih of Samudra-Pasai mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Much of
al-Yafiʿi’s account involving al-Jawi is cloaked in well-known tropes from the
Sufi literature; including dream visitations by past leading mystics, such as Abd
al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166), effecting virtual initiation into Sufi orders, as well
as allusions to the association of mystical knowledge of the divine with sweet
breezes of air, which can ultimately be attributed to a saying of the Prophet
Muhammad that ‘the breath of the Merciful comes to me from Yemen’ –
believed to describe his special relationship with the Yemeni mystic Uways al-
Qarani (d. 657), although the two never met in person (Feener and Laffan 2005:
196).20 This latter trope is further enforced through the association of Sufi scents
with the role of Southeast Asia, Jawa, in the supply of aromatics.
Al-Yafiʿi’s writings point at an intricate interplay of factors that also feature
in the Islamic networks criss-crossing the Indian Ocean and that are relevant
to the accounts of the early phase of the Islamisation process in Southeast Asia.
This includes the role played by the Qadiriyya order and by the Arabs from
the Hadhramaut region in southern Arabia – except that the episode in ques-
tion not only predates by several centuries the sources that have been known
so far, but also attributes a much earlier active role to Jawi Muslims than has
been recognised until now. Feener and Laffan note that stories such as Masʿud
al-Jawi’s find support in the rich textual depositories of Cairo’s Geniza docu-
ments first unlocked by Shelomo Goitein (1900–85).21 They further surmise
that it can form the beginning of a counter-narrative to the overemphasis on
the Hadhrami origins of the so-called Wali Songo, or ‘Nine Saints’, credited
with introducing Islam to northern Java – on the part of contemporary intel-
lectuals of Yemeni Alawi extraction (Feener and Laffan 2005: 207–8).22 This
latter tendency forms part of a broader thesis proposed by these intellectuals
concerning a ‘Hadhramaut connection’, which argues that ‘the Islamisation
of various regions of the Indian Ocean cannot be divorced from the presence
of the Hadhrami trade diaspora’ (Alatas 1997: 29). They present their thesis
as a corrective of other studies into the relations between Indonesia and the
Hadhramaut, which underscore that large-scale migrations from there did not
commence until the eighteenth century (Mandal 1994: 2; Mobini-Kesheh 1999:
21).
Although he does not mention it explicitly, it could be argued that Johns has
tacitly recognised the significance of the Hadhrami trade diaspora. As noted
above, Johns’s thesis also stresses the significance of maritime trade routes
across the Indian Ocean zone for the spread of Islam. This also feeds into
the resemblances he sees between the situations in the Indian Ocean and the
Mediterranean, and which lead him to speak of the Indian Ocean zone as an
‘Arabic-speaking Mediterranean’ – a concept, he insists, that ‘should be taken
seriously’ because it created the conditions for the development of a Southeast
Asian Muslim writing culture and its corollary: ‘the variety of ethnic cultures
participating in the system’ that shaped the Islamisation process in the Malay-
Indonesian archipelago (Johns 1975: 38–9).
A Sufi writer named Hamzah Fansuri is generally regarded as the seminal
figure for the emergence of a Malay-Muslim writing culture and for introducing
the ideas of Ibn al-ʿArabi into the concomitant indigenous Islamic discourse.23
In his own writings on the role of Sufi orders in the spread of Islam in Indonesia,
van Bruinessen notes that Fansuri was an initiate of the Qadiriyya order, but
otherwise frustratingly little is known with any degree of certainty regarding his
life, including the most basic details as to when he lived or where he was born
(Bruinessen 2000: 362–4). The discovery of an intriguing epitaph in 1999 forms
the latest episode in the debates that have been going on about this individual’s
life story since the 1960s. At that time the Malaysian-Indonesian scholar Syed
Naguib al-Attas (1967) and the Dutch Indonesianist Lode van Brakel (1969)
disputed Fansuri’s birthplace. The biographical data contained in Fansuri’s
21
own literary oeuvre are deceptively concrete and therefore occasion for some
intriguing questions. A reference to Hamzah as ‘Jawi’ and the name ‘Fansuri’
establish a connection with northern Sumatra. The latter word comes either
from the Malay pancur or the Batak pantsur, meaning ‘source’ or ‘fountain’. It
gained wide currency, including in Chinese as pin su, as the place from where to
obtain camphor, a secretion taken from a certain species of pine tree indigenous
to northern Sumatra and the main reason for Chinese and other foreign traders
to visit (Guillot and Kalus 2000: 4; Attas 1967: 43). Even more concrete is the
mention of Barus, a locality on Sumatra’s west coast opposite the Nias archi-
pelago. But it is the following stanza from one of Hamzah’s poems that triggered
tantalising questions regarding his actual place of birth:
Hamzah Shahr Nawi terlalu hapus,
Seperti kayu sekalian hangus
Asalnya Laut tiada berharus
Menjadi kapur didalam Barus
Hamzah of Shahr-i Naw is truly effaced.
Like wood, all burnt to cinders;
His origin is the Ocean without currents
He became camphor in Barus (Attas 1967: 44)
This juxtaposition of Barus with Shahr-i Naw – Persian for ‘New Town’ and
also used for the then capital of Siam, Ayutthaya – led al-Attas to posit that,
while originating from Barus, Hamzah Fansuri was actually born in Thailand.24
Van Brakel calls this into question on two grounds. First of all, Shahr-i Naw
was a very common Persian appellative and could therefore refer to a variety
of localities around the Indian Ocean, including an as yet unidentified place in
Aceh. Secondly, reading this stanza together with other passages in which these
place names are mentioned, van Brakel wonders why al-Attas decides to inter-
pret these descriptions in such a concrete sense, as they feature in a body of Sufi
poetry and are embedded in an idiom consisting of tropes of mystical attain-
ment. This leads van Brakel to the proposition that Hamzah Fansuri is a native
of Barus, went into seclusion in the Acehnese jungle near a remote place called
Shahr-i Naw, where he achieved a unio mystica or mystical realisation – by being
burned to cinders and turned into camphor (Brakel 1969: 206–12).
In spite of all their differences of opinion regarding the details as to the place
of Hamzah Fansuri’s birth or when exactly he died, up until 1999, scholarship
was in agreement that his life had overlapped at least partially with the reign of
the Acehnese Sultan Alauddin Ri’ayat Shah (1589–1604), possibly even extend-
ing into that of his successors Ali Ri’ayat III (1604–7) and Iskandar Muda
(1607–36). This assumption was based on alleged allusions to these rulers found
in another body of writing that is attributed to Hamzah Fansuri.25 However,
as evinced by the efforts of Vladimir Braginsky, a former professor of Malay
literature at SOAS, such readings often involved a fair amount of hineinterpre-

tieren (Braginsky 1999). All this has been called into question by the discov-
ery by French academics Claude Guillot and Ludvik Kalus – as part of their
involvement in a joint French–Indonesian archaeological project in Barus – of
a transcription of a funerary stele from the Bab al-Muʿala cemetery in Mecca,
recording the death on 11 April 1527 of one Shaykh Hamzah bin ʿAbdullah al-
Fansuri (Guillot and Kalus 2000). Provided the text has been recorded correctly
and can be connected to an authentic find, then – as a bare minimum – it pro-
vides evidence of the presence of a Sufi scholar from Sumatra’s Barus in Mecca
at that time. It also proves the existence of connections between that Sumatran
locality and the Middle East, and – very important in the context of what I
argue in this chapter – the active participation of the inhabitants of Southeast
Asia in these exchanges.
More challenging is the identification of this deceased Shaykh with the
Hamzah Fansuri who is regarded as the initiator of a Malay-Muslim writing
culture. Using ‘circumstantial evidence’, Guillot and Kalus make this tentatively
plausible by examining Fansuri’s work for toponyms and cited authors, and by
investigating the silsilas – Sufi genealogies of initiation – of his disciples. The
most important conclusion of an examination of place names is the absence of
any reference to Aceh. This is at least strange if Fansuri had been such a promi-
nent religious and cultural figure in the sultanate, but makes sense if the date of
1527 is correct; at that time Aceh did not yet exist as a leading Southeast Asian
Muslim state. Also the latest source reference found in Fansuri’s oeuvre – to the
Persian scholar Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman Jami, who died in 1492 – is consist-
ent with a death date of 1527. According to Guillot and Kalus, it is also possible
to create a greater temporal distance between Fansuri and the individual who
is regarded as his most important disciple – Shams al-Din of Pasai, of whom it
is known that he died in 1630 – by interposing one or two generations of other
students of Fansuri, who are then connected to Shams al-Din as teachers. At
the same time, if Hamzah Fansuri did indeed pass away in 1527, that makes
him a contemporary or near contemporary of several of the Wali Songo, the
semi-legendary ‘Nine Saints’ involved in the Islamisation of Java, who will be
discussed in more detailed in the next chapter.
What Guillot and Kalus’s findings leave unchallenged is the likelihood of
Fansuri’s own mixed ethnicity. The fact that he is called a Jawi from Fansur
despite the probability of having an Arab father can be explained by the pre-
vailing matrilocality in that part of Sumatra (Braginsky 1999: 167).26 A similar
explanation could apply to the earlier mentioned individual identified by Feener
and Laffan, Masʿud al-Jawi of Uwaja. Finally, the findings of the French–
Indonesian archaeological project demonstrate that Barus was a cosmopolitan
place with Persian and Arab, Indian and Javanese expatriates in residence,
while locally found tombs evince indigenous Islamic roots that go back to the
23
fourteenth century. All this makes Barus a suitable place for a scholar and Sufi
of Hamzah Fansuri’s standing without the need for an association with late
sixteenth-century Aceh.27
Concluding remarks
The two key findings regarding the beginnings of Islamisation in Southeast Asia
are that, in comparison with other parts of the Dar al-Islam or historical Muslim
world, it commenced relatively late and that the religion was initially introduced
peacefully – another contrast with the Arab-Islamic conquests of North Africa
and the Mediterranean, and West, South and Central Asia.
The discussions in the last few sections of this chapter make clear that there
are no grounds for dismissing the ‘Sufi thesis’ out of hand; the increasing finely
tuned elaborations and investigations by Johns conceive of it as part of a much
more complex process that also involved other intellectual, social and political
factors. Together with other new findings and investigations, such as those of
Guillot and his team or Feener and Laffan, they contribute to a more multilay-
ered rereading of the ‘Arab connection’ as it has been propounded so far.
The most important consequence of this expansion in our knowledge of the
Islamisation of Southeast Asia is the realisation that it was not a uniform process.
The contact of a region as large and culturally diverse as the Malay-Indonesian
archipelago with other parts of the Muslim world was extensive. Therefore, it
is not possible to formulate what Johns calls a ‘single big-bang theory’ (Johns
1980: 164, 1984: 116). He adds that it is ‘virtually impossible to over-emphasize
the discrete, idiosyncratic and diverse character of the port cities of the region
which were the foci of Islamic settlement’, and that ‘each centre has its own
story to tell’. In the absence of a single answer to the questions when and from
where Islam was brought to Southeast Asia and by whom, we must look for
a ‘variety of starting points’ and ‘numerous modalities for its diffusion’ (Johns
1980: 164–5, 1984: 117). The acceptance of Islam by Southeast Asians was
therefore not the result of a single act of conversion, but of a long process that
is still continuing. In view of this longue durée dimension, I have already alluded
to the suggestion that the early phases of the Islamisation process in Southeast
Asia should not be described by using Nock’s terms of adhesion or conversion
in a mutually exclusive sense, but rather by seeing that process as a combination
of the two.
SIAM
Ayutthaya
●
● Patani
Pasai
●
ACEH
Singkil ● Barus
●
Malacca
●
caca
MINANG
Ulakan KABAU
● Ternate
● ●
Padang
● Banjarmasin
Palembang ●
Makassar●
Jakarta/Batavia
● Cirebon Kudus
BANTEN ● ●●
Gresik/Surabaya
●
MATARAM Demak
Map 2 Southeast Asia

CHAPTER 2
Network Islam
From the sixteenth century onward, maritime Southeast Asia’s integration

into the wider Muslim world becomes more discernible. This is mainly thanks
to the increased availability of both external and indigenous sources provid-
ing evidence that the level of interaction between Indonesia and other areas
around the Indian Ocean is growing in intensity, frequency and scale or volume.
The effects of these exchanges manifest themselves in the emergence of new,
Islamic, concepts of kingship and statehood; the concomitant royal patron-
age of religious scholarship and learning; and travel by Indonesian Muslims to
centres of Islamic learning, further complemented by a more evident presence
of Sufi orders in the archipelago. Taking together this set of factors, it seems
appropriate to characterise this next stage in Indonesia’s Islamisation process as
‘Network Islam’. In view of the influence of Azyumardi Azra’s mapping of sev-
enteenth- and eighteenth-century networks involving Indonesian and Middle
Eastern scholars, it is important to point out that my understanding of ‘network’
is wider, more intricate and fine-mazed: it extends from relations between
Southeast Asian Muslim rulers and the Muslim superpowers of the day down to
the micro-level of the agrarian Muslim milieus in rural Indonesia.
Also in this phase, northern Sumatra, and central and east Java remain
important. However, other areas deserving attention include the Banten region
of west Java and – across the Sunda straits – the Islamised Malay states in
southern Sumatra. While Islam also penetrated further east, all the way to the
Spice Islands of the Moluccas, but especially into coastal southern Borneo and
Celebes (Sulawesi), local intellectual involvement there seems more inciden-
tal than structural – at least in comparison with developments on Java and
Sumatra. Since Islam often got its first foothold among indigenous rulers, or was
spread by Muslim ‘middle classes’ of foreign extraction seizing power in coastal
trade centres, the relation between religion and statehood seems a good starting
point for examining this next phase of the Islamisation process.
Islamic state-building
When examining the impact of the Islamisation process on political thinking
and statehood in Southeast Asia, definitions of Islamic state formation in terms
of the implementation of Islamic law will often fall short of expectations. While
some of the early Islamised Malay states seemed to have had judges (qadi) and
jurisconsults (mufti), legal administration often remained in the hands of the old
elites, consisting of courtiers and other noblemen. And whereas in some areas,
such as Aceh on Sumatra and Banten in west Java, there is anecdotal evidence
of the implementation of concrete aspects of Islamic legislation, such as the pro-
hibition of usury and the enforcement of acts of piety and worship (ibadat), indig-
enous legal codes or digests, known as undang, or adherence to local customary
law (adat) seem to have been of greater importance. However, as Milner has
pointed out, what Marshall Hodgson characterised as ‘shari’a-minded’ political
thinking ‘constituted only one aspect of the Muslim political culture’ (Milner
1983: 23).
As Southeast Asian political entities transition from pre-Islamic notions of
governance and legitimacy to embryonic Muslim state formation, elements
from these indigenous conceptualisations are adapted or translated into this
new context. Loyalty is not due to a legal system, a religious community (umma),
or ethnic group (Malay, Javanese or otherwise), but continues to be conceived
in terms of allegiance to the person of ruler. The figure of the leader remains
the central political referent in this early phase of Islamising the archipelago’s
political systems. Royal insignia and rituals continue to play a crucial part in the
legitimisation of the monarchical authority, now directed towards the ruler’s
Islamic credentials. Although the rulers often continue to be called raja in Malay
or pangeran or adipati in Javanese, this does not preclude a simultaneous preoc-
cupation with things Islamic on the part of these monarchs, but in these early
stages the focus remains on their personal qualities.
Islamic rule in the Malay-speaking parts of Indonesia

Interest in Muslim manifestations or expressions of leadership – in both real-
istic and idealist terms – can be discerned earlier in the Malay-speaking parts
of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago than on Java. This becomes first and
immediately evident from the adoption of Arabic – and occasionally Persian –
titles and styles; including sultan (he who wields power), shah (emperor), khalifa
(caliph, successor), zill Allah fi’l-alam (God’s Shadow on Earth) or nasir al-dunya
wa’l-din (Helper of the World and the Faith). However, evidence of these terms
comes from chronicles that only survive in versions that postdate the events they
describe by centuries.
On a conceptual level, the Islamic influences that have percolated through
consist in Persian notions of kingship that had already helped shape the Abbasid
Caliphate (750–1258). These were also encapsulated in Islamic versions of a
literary genre known as ‘mirrors of princes’, found in the writings by the Seljuq
vizier Nizam al-Mulk (1018–92) or as represented by the Nasihat al-Muluk, or
‘Advice to Kings’, of his intellectual protégé, the Islamic polymath Abu Hamid
al-Ghazali (c. 1058–1111). A second important influence is the idea of insan kamil
Network Islam
27
or ‘perfect man’, which found its most articulate expression in a work of Abd
al-Karim ibn Ibrahim al-Jili (1366–1428): Al-insan al-kamil: Maʿrifa al-awakhir
wa’l-awa’il. It forms part and parcel of a form of theosophy known as wahdat al-
wujud, or ‘Unity of Being’ – a very controversial doctrine that is traceable to the
Andalusian scholar and Sufi Muhyi al-Din ibn al-ʿArabi (1165–1240).
Evidence of the latter’s influence is detectable at the courts of Malacca and
Pasai, but especially in Aceh, possibly since the days of Alauddin Ri’ayat Shah
(1589–1604), who was also known as Sayyidi al-Mukammil.1 The notion of
the ‘perfect man’, as well as the wider theological implications of the ‘Unity
of Being’ doctrine, became central to religious debates among scholars hosted
at the courts of two later sultans of Aceh, Iskandar Muda (r. 1607–36) and
Iskandar al-Thani (r. 1636–41), which will be addressed in more detail below.
This duo also continued the practice of maintaining a functioning Islamic court
that had been initiated by their predecessors, with royally appointed judges who
dealt with upholding the observance of ibadat and the punishment of transgres-
sions, as well as administering Islamic regulations regarding personal and com-
mercial law. Aceh’s prestige as a centre of Islamic learning in Southeast Asia was
further aided by the sultanate’s strategic geographical position; not just vis-à-vis
the Malacca Straits, but also by its location at the very top of Indonesia’s most
western island, Sumatra. Jutting out into the Indian Ocean, Aceh was the ideal
point of departure for the crossing of the Indian Ocean by ships carrying hajj
pilgrims – earning it the nickname Serambi Mekkah – ‘Mecca’s Veranda’.
Within the Indonesian sphere, the two Iskandars were contemporaries of
two other emblematic Muslim rulers in Indonesia, Sultan Agung of Mataram (r.
1613–46) and Sultan Abdul Kadir of Banten (r. 1596–1651). From a wider Asian
perspective, their reigns also coincided with the establishment of the Tokugawa
Shogunate (1603–1868) in Japan and the collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty
(1368–1644), as well as the rule of Mughal Emperors Jahangir (r. 1605–27) and
Shah Jahan (r. 1627–58). However, despite Iskandar Muda’s personal fascina-
tion with yet another Mughal Emperor, Akbar (r. 1556–1605), the most impor-
tant political Muslim player for Aceh was that other ‘gunpowder empire’: the
Ottoman Empire (Lombard 1967: 157–8).2 Piecing together data derived from
local oral traditions and the Hikayat Aceh, Denys Lombard and Anthony Reid’s
research into the Sultanate of Aceh’s early history has shown how the Raja
Rum, the Muslim ruler at Constantinople/Istanbul, spoke to the imagination
of Acehnese rulers and their historiographers. However, a further examination
of sources, including Ottoman and European records, also demonstrates sus-
tained real-term military and diplomatic relations between the ‘Grand Turk’ or
Sublime Porte and Aceh since the sixteenth century.
These connections began with the dispatch of a contingent of soldiers to
Aceh in 1537 by Sulayman the Magnificent (1520–66), as part of the Ottoman
expansion into the Indian Ocean basin.3 They coincided with Aceh’s d ecisive
ascendency as the most powerful Malay state along the Malacca Straits.
Relations continued with the 1562 Acehnese embassy to Istanbul and the sub-
sequent provision of Ottoman ammunition, engineers and artillery personnel in
1567.4 These exchanges assisted Aceh in expanding and sustaining its position
as the region’s main emporium for the trade in pepper and other commodities.
In the absence of any precedent in terms of practical and structural political
cooperation, the Ottoman–Acehnese relationship continued to be maintained
throughout the 1570s and 1580s under the aegis of a rather vague notion of
‘Islamic solidarity’ (Reid 1969: 407–8).5 Although the height of these contacts
had passed by the time Iskandar Muda came to power, the new sultan’s palace
guard did resemble the Ottoman Janissary corps, while Aceh’s absorption into
the Ottoman sphere of influence in the Indian Ocean may have set the stage for
the subsequent influx of religious scholars from Egypt, the Hijaz, Yemen and
Gujarat to teach in Aceh.
Globally speaking, the time of Iskandar Muda and Iskandar II was also the
period of the fastest and largest Dutch expansion overseas, as its East India
Company (Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie, VOC) muscled out the Portuguese
from many of its Asian positions. However, constant warfare with Portuguese
Malacca and Johore for control over the straits and the principalities on the
Malay Peninsula eventually sapped Aceh’s energies. For the sixty years follow-
ing the death of Iskandar II, Aceh was ruled by a succession of four queens, fol-
lowed by a number of very brief reigns of sultans who found themselves caught
in the midst of growing British–Dutch rivalry in Malacca Straits.
Politico-religious symbiosis along Java’s northern coast

The early history of Muslim kingship on Java is diffuse, but appears to betray a
more complex and multilayered process of Islamisation than that of the Malay
world, where a more ‘exclusivist’ embrace of Islam seems to have taken root.
A partial explanation for this is the lingering influence of the Hindu–Buddhist
empire of Majapahit in east Java, until its demise in 1527. Thanks to the pres-
ence of intensive rice cultivation that allows for the economic surplus required
for empire-building, this Javanese political entity was quite similar to the power-
ful Burmese, Thai and Khmer realms found in the plains of mainland Southeast
Asia, where Islam never managed to make any significant inroads.
One reason for the sketchy impressions of early Islamic state formation on
Java is the absence of reliable contemporaneous indigenous sources and the
particular focus of foreign accounts by Portuguese and Dutch navigators, which
concentrate on the political and economic aspects of their ambitions rather
than religion. As a result, researchers have only been able to piece together
a fragmentary picture. Finally, there is the additional challenge posed by the
emergence of multiple centres, which requires a narrative covering a wide geo-
graphical spread while simultaneously maintaining some sense of a chronologi-
Network Islam
29
cal order. Finding such a balance is further complicated by the interrelations

between events in one area and their impact elsewhere.
The situation in the Islamic states of the Pasisir, centred on a string of settle-
ments along the northern coast of central Java, and east Java’s adjacent Gresik–
Surabaya area, seems to have been an exception to the lasting religious plurality
on Java, which was accommodative of a wide range of beliefs and practices. An
explanation for the fact that the Islamisation process along the coasts bears a
greater resemblance to developments in the Malay parts of insular Southeast
Asia might be that the chieftains of the coastal fiefdoms found themselves in
a position very similar to that of their counterparts to the northwest: ruling
entrepôts directly connected to the mercantile networks of the Indian Ocean
and the South China Sea. Facing the additional threat of political domination
from the intensive rice culture-based powers in the interior, the Pasisir’s outward
and seafaring outlook drove the coastal settlements and fiefdoms towards a
more decisive conversion to Islam so as to be accepted into the wider Muslim
ecumene. This impression is also conveyed in the research conducted by de
Graaf and Pigeaud, whose survey of the principalities and kingdoms is still the
seminal work on sixteenth-century Islamic statehood on Java.
Temporally wedged between pre-Islamic Majapahit and Mataram, the new
inland power which began expanding its influence from the 1580s onward, the
sixteenth century was the heyday of the Pasisir sultanates and their uncompro-
mising fidelity to the Islamic faith – at least in comparison with the contested
Muslim identities of the subsequent Mataram era.
Aside from the late fourteenth-century tombstones found in the Trowulan–
Troloyo area, the earliest manifestations of proselytising Muslims on Java are
associated with the so-called Wali Songo, the semi-legendary ‘Nine Saints’ cred-
ited with facilitating the early spread of Islam on Indonesia’s most populous
island. Different sources give different lists of names, while the saints’ life stories
are also more myth than history – dates are almost impossible to verify, whereas
‘facts’ often fall short in terms of certainty or even veracity. The information
about these figures that has reached us is recorded in sources of much later date,
which were very likely compiled and composed with the purpose of creating
a particular impression of how the Islamisation of Java came about. So while
before the end of the sixteenth century there is little or no incontestable evidence
of what exactly transpired, the relevance and significance of the transmitted
Wali Songo stories rests on what they can tell us about the outlook of Java’s
Muslims on their own past.
According to this body of legend, the first preachers to bring Islam to Java
were two brothers of mixed Arab–Cham parentage: Raja Pandita and Raden
Rahmat. In terms of time frame, their arrival from Champa is thought to have
been between the 1440s and 1470. While Raja Pandita settled in Gresik, Raden
Rahmat moved to Surabaya. Posthumously referred to as Sunan Ngampel
Denta, or Sunan Ampel, the latter is generally regarded as the oldest of the Wali
Songo (de Graaf and Pigeaud 1974: 19–21, 138). In some versions Raden Rahmat
is also called Maulana Malik Ibrahim al-Samarqandi, but others report that this
was the name of his father, who is remembered as Sunan Gresik in those texts
– making him – rather than his son – the oldest of the Wali Songo. It seems that
after this initial episode, for a while the Gresik–Surabaya area receded into the
background, only to regain prominence in the early seventeenth century, when
it became a centre of resistance against the expansionist ambitions of the new
inland power of Mataram, which was trying to establish itself as an empire of the
same standing as pre-Islamic Majapahit.
The initial centre of gravity for the further spread of Islam on Java was
located on its north coast – more specifically in Demak. While it is unclear
when exactly the ‘state’ of Demak was established, the event is attributed to
one Raden Patah (Fatah), who is sometimes given as the son of Bra Wijaya
of Majapahit, and in other instances as a former resident of Gresik, or even a
Chinese immigrant. As a trading post, Demak had a very mixed population,
including a sizeable contingent of expatriate Muslims composed of different
ethnicities. Demak’s reputation as an increasingly important centre of Islamic
learning was connected with its central mosque and the alleged involvement of
a number of Wali Songo in its early activities.
This mosque was probably established around 1507 with Demak’s ruler at
the time, Tranggana (d. 1546), present at its inauguration. On this occasion he
also received investiture as Ahmad Abd al-Arifin at the hands of another one of
the Wali Songo, Sunan Gunung Jati (1450?–1569?). Sunan Ampel makes a brief
reappearance in these reports of the event as well, featuring as the father of the
mosque’s first imam, Sunan Bonang, who is also included in the Wali Songo fra-
ternity, and whose sister is said to be the ancestor of the subsequent four imams.
Also featuring in the congregation of Wali Songo at Demak is Raden Sahid, a
nobleman from east Java credited with carrying Islam into the eastern parts
of the Indonesia archipelago and who became known as Sunan Kalijaga. It is
reported that when Raden Sahid visited the mosque, he magically received a
garment worn by the prophet and endowed with supernatural powers. Known
as Anta Kusuma, the garment was passed on to the fourth imam of the Demak
mosque, Rahmatullah of Undung. Notwithstanding Anta Kusuma’s protective
qualities, the imam was nevertheless martyred in a battle against Majapahit
(de Graaf and Pigeaud 1974: 94).6 At the instigation of Sunan Gunung Jati,
Rahmatullah was succeeded by his son Japar Sidik or Jaʿfar al-Sadiq (a name
with a Shiʿi ring to it), who went on to become one of the Wali Songo as well,
under the posthumous name of Sunan Kudus.7
The young imam was credited with inflicting final defeat on Majapahit, an
achievement which heralded the extension of Demak’s influence in both western
and eastern directions, at the expense of other centres of Islamic piety, such as
Network Islam
31
Cirebon, Banten and Gresik–Surabaya. From Demak, Islam was also carried
overseas into southern Borneo. Demak’s expansion of political power was coer-
cive and violent. So while Islam may have made its first inroads into Southeast
Asia in a peaceful manner, the further Islamisation process also involved bel-
ligerent rulers and militias of committed Muslims led by religious leaders, such
as Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, referred to as panghulu in the Javanese sources. De Graaf and
Pigeaud have suggested that these forces may have been modelled after earlier
armed groups of pious militants recruited from the expatriate Muslim merchant
communities, who had taken control of the Pasisir ports in the course of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is also illustrative of the two trajectories
towards Islamic state-building on Java: the usurpation of political control by
a Muslim ‘middle class’ and the conversion of ‘pagan’ rulers (de Graaf and
Pigeaud 1974: 27).
After the death of Tranggana/Ahmad Abd al-Arifin, the Demak realm
began to fragment again, allowing semi-autonomous Cirebon, Banten, Gresik
and Surabaya to become effectively independent principalities. However, in the
course of a bloody succession war, Demak’s fourth ruler, Susuhunan Prawata,
who had studied with both Raden Sahid (Sunan Kalijaga) and Sunan Kudus,
presented himself as a protector of Islam. A Portuguese traveller described
him as having the ambition of becoming a ‘segundo Turco’ – a reference to
Sulayman the Magnificent (1520–66) and his successes against the Habsburg
dynasty in Europe (de Graaf and Pigeaud 1974: 76). However, Prawata was
soon assassinated, allegedly at the instigation of his own teacher Sunan Kudus,
who is said to have acted out of envy of the ruler’s simultaneous mentoring by
Sunan Kalijaga.
Generally speaking, the authority of imams of the Demak mosque was more
religious than worldly, although there was a clear symbiosis with the rulers
through teaching and patronage. In terms of their standing and legitimacy as
Muslim rulers, the Demak sultans benefitted from their close associations with
multiple Wali Songo. While the latter also acquired immediate political signifi-
cance through their involvement in the founding of other Islamised states, such
as Cirebon, Banten and Gresik–Giri, the exploits of panghulus such as Sunan
Kudus added a martial dimension to their religious reputation. As evinced
by his questionable behaviour towards Sunan Prawata, this violent streak was
not confined to outward expansion alone. Although Sunan Kudus eventually
left Demak, withdrawing from politics and reinforcing his standing as a pious
Muslim by founding a new mosque at Kota Tajug, he turned against other reli-
gious scholars, or ulama, whose viewpoints he considered heretical. Among other
things, this resulted in the execution of Seh8 Lemah Abang and Seh Maolana
of Krasak-Malang, as well as the death of a disciple of Seh Jangkung, whose
own life was saved by the intervention of Sunan Kalijaga (de Graaf and Pigeaud
1974: 99). The figure of Sunan Kudus foreshadowed a recurring feature in
subsequent centuries: a combination of piety and militancy that would often

translate into religiously motivated violence.
The mosque established by Sunan Kudus at Kota Tajug was named after
him and is still known as Masjid Menara Kudus. Alternatively, it is also referred
to as Al-Masjid al-Aqsa. The names refer to Jerusalem – al-Quds in Arabic –
and its Al-Aqsa mosque. According to one legend, this is a reference to Sunan
Kudus’s acquisition of a stone from Jerusalem while making pilgrimage to
Mecca. Together with the Demak mosque, Menara Kudus is considered a
sacred site with an influence that radiates across the archipelago. It also forms
the basis for a separate dynasty of ‘saintly lords’, styled after the founder’s Wali
Songo title: Sunan Kudus. The word menara is also Arabic in origin and refers to
the mosque’s colossal minaret. Its structure and that of the mosque complex in
general are reminiscent of the Hindu candis and Buddhist chedis found all over
Java. It constitutes an example of the cultural fusion that was tolerated by some
of the Wali Songo; mixing Islamic and pre-Islamic building styles in Javanese
mosque or palace (kraton) architecture, as well as the employment of an artistic
medium like wayang (puppet theatre) for the sake of propagating Islam.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Demak’s political power may have
been on the wane, but there are indications that the speed of its demise may
have been exaggerated by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Javanese histo-
riographers wanting to enhance the fame of inland principalities such as Pajang,
but especially their own patrons: the Mataram dynasty. In search of an ally in
its fight against Portuguese Malacca, Aceh still made overtures to Demak in
1584. However, a few years later Demak’s sultan had to flee; first seeking refuge
in Malacca, before moving to Banten and the protection of its ruling house
to which he was related.9 However, the religious prestige of Demak’s central
mosque and that of the descendants of the royal house continued to matter well
into the nineteenth century.
Aside from Demak and Kudus, there are some other localities along Java’s
northern coast with Wali Songo associations. These include Japara to the north,
Cirebon and Banten to the west, and Tuban, Gresik–Giri and Surabaya to the
east. Demak’s relationship with Japara was symbiotic in nature. While the latter
had superior port facilities, it had less easy access to the interior than Demak.
During part of the sixteenth century, Japara had a female ruler in the person of
Ratu Kali Nyamat, who succeeded her deceased Chinese husband. Childless,
she was related to the royal houses of Demak and Banten, becoming a kind of
matriarch to both dynasties during her lengthy reign. As the powers of Cirebon
and Banten grew, the political influence of Japara declined, and – like Demak
and Kudus – it fell victim to the onslaught of the new power that was on the rise
in Java’s interior: Mataram.
The story of Cirebon and Banten’s subsequent Islamisation is tied up with
the saint who became known as Sunan Gunung Jati. Different legends give
Network Islam
33
his personal name as Nurullah, Ibn Molana, Maulana Shaykh Madhkur and
Saʿid Kamil, but nowadays there is consensus that his proper name was Syarif
Hidayatullah. It is said that he originated from Pasai in Aceh (others put him
in Egypt), but that after returning from hajj in 1524 he did not go back to his
homeland, which was then under threat from the Portuguese, deciding to settle
on Java instead. The Sejarah Banten reports that, during his studies in Arabia,
Sunan Gunung Jati was inducted into the Sufi order of the Kubrawiyya at the
hands of Najmuddin al-Kubra (d. 1221) himself (Bruinessen 1994a: 305). The
evident temporal discrepancy between the two can perhaps again be explained
in the same way as in the case of Masʿud al-Jawi. De Graaf and Pigeaud
surmise that Sunan Gunung Jati’s first-hand experience of the incorporation
of the Haramayn – the holy cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina, both located in
West Arabia’s Hijaz region – into the Ottoman Empire by Selim I (r. 1512–20)
inspired his earlier mentioned investiture of Tranggana as ruler of Demak and
his injunction to reign over Demak as a pious Muslim monarch. Not long after
that, Sunan Gunung Jati travelled further west to bring Cirebon and Banten
into the fold of Islam and to install his sons Pangeran Ratu and Hasanuddin as
respective rulers. According to the Sejarah Banten, Sunan Gunung Jati remained
in Banten until 1552, before finally settling in Cirebon, where he died in 1570
and was buried on ‘Teak Mountain’ or Gunung Jati, from which the saint’s post-
humous name is derived.
The Banten region covers an area in west Java that also encompassed Sunda
Kelapa, at that time the main port serving the inland Sundanese kingdom of
Pajajaran. The establishment by Sunan Gunung Jati of an alternative Muslim
stronghold for religion and maritime trade in Banten came at Pajajaran’s
expense and involved a fair degree of coercion and use of force, for which the
saint received military support from Demak. To reflect the importance of this
event for the Islamic cause, Sunda Kelapa was renamed Jayakarta (Jakarta)
– jaya meaning ‘conquest’. In 1529, Sultan Tranggana of Demak donated a
large cannon to Banten, which had been forged by a Portuguese renegade and
convert called Zain al-Abidin. Known as Ki Jimat, it remained on display in
Banten until the early 1900s (de Graaf and Pigeaud 1974: 119). Legend has
it that the first Sultan of Banten, Sunan Gunung Jati’s son Hasanuddin, then
married daughters of both Tranggana of Demak and Sunan Kalijaga, thus
giving Banten’s royal family a double connection with the Wali Songo. While
no further incursions were made into the Pajajaran territories of the interior
under Hasanuddin, he did expand his influence across the Sunda Straits into
Lampung in southern Sumatra, not only for religious but also for economic
reasons – namely, to tap into the lucrative pepper trade. However, in 1579,
Hasanuddin’s son Yusup (Yusuf) went on to conquer the capital of Pajajaran,
Pakuwan, located near present-day Bogor (called Buitenzorg during Dutch
colonial times), with the assistance of an Arab Muslim scholar named Molana
Joedah. Sixteen years later, his successor Molana Ibrahim perished in an expe-
dition initiated to extend Banten’s influence into the Palembang area to the
north of Lampung. The comparatively violent way in which Muslim Banten
spread its influence has given this sultanate a rather martial reputation and
resulted in a more politicised role for its panghulus. Family relations aside, this
may have contributed to the decision of the last ruler of Demak, Pangeran Mas,
to seek refuge in Banten, after an initial exile in Malacca following the conquest
of Demak by Mataram. Also in the case of Banten, it is appropriate to note that
the title ‘sultan’ was awarded posthumously to its rulers in chronicles such as the
Sejarah Banten. The first ruler of Banten to actually receive formal investiture as
sultan was Abdul Kadir (Abd al-Qadir) (r. 1596–1651), and this only occurred in
1638, after obtaining the necessary permission from the Grand Sharif of Mecca
(Azra 1992: 365; Bruinessen 1995: 167; Ricklefs 2006: 50). By that time this did
not mean very much any more in real political terms: Dutch designs to turn
Jakarta, now renamed Batavia, into the base of VOC operations, meant that
already by 1619 Banten had lost much of its political independence – although
it benefitted from Dutch protection against Mataram and threats issuing from
Palembang (de Graaf and Pigeaud 1974: 124–5).
Little is known of neighbouring Cirebon’s pre-Islamic history, other than
that its Sundanese literary culture disappeared as a result of Javanese con-
quests, not making a comeback until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
It makes the Cirebon region a transitional zone of Javanese and Sundanese
cultural influences. According to the Portuguese Tomé Pires, Cirebon’s original
Muslim founders belong to the same Chinese family from which the rulers of
Demak also descended. In contrast to Banten, Cirebon’s political significance
was limited and at the end of the sixteenth century its dynasty was forced
to accept the suzerainty of the new political power rising in Java’s interior:
Mataram. However, the religious prestige attached to its lineage and the pres-
ence of Sunan Gunung Jati’s shrine made it into an important Islamic centre.
By the time Sunan Gunung Jati’s direct successor died in 1650(!), a new political
actor had appeared on the scene: the Dutch VOC. When the Mataram Sultan
of Surakarta (Solo) ceded Cirebon to the Dutch in 1705, the VOC retained
Sunan Gunung Jati’s descendants as paid regents until the middle of the twen-
tieth century.
Located to the east of Demak, the locality of Tuban features prominently in
the Wali Songo legends. Sunan Ampel’s wife, and the mother of his son Sunan
Bonang (the first imam of the Demak mosque), is said to have been a daughter of
Tuban’s ruler, Adipati Wilatikta. Sunan Bonang was also buried in Tuban and
his shrine remains a centre of Islamic worship and pilgrimage.
Further away, facing the island of Madura, are Gresik and Surabaya, two
centres of commerce dominated by overseas Chinese since the fourteenth
century. As discussed earlier, these places are also the location where the oldest
Network Islam
35
tombstones on Java have been found, as well as of the landfall of the first Muslim
preachers. However, it is not possible to establish their exact connection to
the later ‘sunans of Giri’, the title by which the Muslim rulers of Gresik and
Surabaya became known during the sixteenth century (de Graaf and Pigeaud
1974: 138). It is again the Portuguese travel writer Tomé Pires who provides
the earliest available information about two competing ‘patis’ in Gresik around
1500: Cucuf, a scion of the Malacca royal family, who controlled the port, and
Zeinall, who was confined to the interior and said to have had good relations
with Demak. Javanese sources reporting the appearance of the Muslim preacher
Raden Paku, who became known as the eponymous Sunan Giri, all date to
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His birth story resonates with that of
the biblical (and Qur’anic) Moses: a foundling born to a princess from Java’s
eastern-most kingdom, Blambangan, and either an Arab scholar or Malaccan
prince (depending on which legend one follows). Raden Paku was adopted by a
noblewoman from Gresik and then sent to Surabaya to be educated by Sunan
Ampel, alongside the latter’s son, Sunan Bonang. Upon his return to Gresik, he
settled on a mount (Giri), taking the name Prabu Satmata. His decision to build
such a retreat ties in with the many holy mountains featuring in pre-Islamic
religious lore on Java.
The stories of the second sunan of Giri, Sunan Dalem, also consist mostly of
legends, including the transformation of the sunan’s pen into a powerful dagger
or kris, Kalam Munyeng, which was used to fend off a violent attack by Gajah
Mada, the chief minister of Majapahit; and a report of his brief interim reign
after the fall of Majapahit in 1527. Following the rise of Demak, it seems that
Gresik’s independence under the sunans of Giri was respected and that it was
allowed to flourish until the early seventeenth century. Refraining from interfer-
ence in central Javanese politics, Gresik’s rulers held both political and religious
influence throughout the eastern parts of the island. During the lengthy reign
of Sunan Prapen, Gresik was involved in both trade and spreading Islam to
Lombok, Sumbawa, Bima and what the Dutch called the ‘Grote Oost’ – the
islands scattered between Sulawesi and New Guinea.10 There are also stories
that the sunans of Giri provided religious instruction to Sultan Zain al-Abidin
of Ternate (r. 1486–1500) and to a Minangkabau named Dato ri Bandang, who
then took the message of Islam to eastern Borneo and to Makassar in southern
Sulawesi (de Graaf and Pigeaud 1974: 152–3). Compared with other principali-
ties founded by the Wali Songo, such as Cirebon and Kudus, Gresik–Giri’s politi-
cal and economic significance in the eastern parts of Indonesia seems to have
been more or less on par with that of Demak in central Java.
Power shift to the interior: the Mataram Empire and Islam

With the demise of Demak, the preponderance of political power shifted back
to Java’s interior: first to the minor state of Pajang, but in the final decade of the
sixteenth century to the new contender Mataram, which would establish itself in
the course of the seventeenth century as the most powerful state in central Java.
Mataram’s dynastic history is messy, but as increasingly experienced political
operators capable of forging ever-changing alliances, its rulers and descendant
cadet branches in Yogyakarta and Surakarta have managed to survive centuries
of Dutch colonial intervention, a lengthy independence struggle, and postcolo-
nial republicanism – retaining prestige, state support and even recognition of
special autonomous status until today.
The groundwork for the rise of Mataram was laid by Panembahan Senapati
(also spelled Senopati), who is said to have converted to Islam in 1576 (Ricklefs
2006: 33). Eight years later, he was awarded the title Senapati Ingalaga by the
King of Pajang, but in the Javanese traditions he is simply known as Ki Gede
Mataram. Supposedly at the instigation of Sunan Kalijaga, one of Ingalaga’s
first actions was to build a brick defence wall around his palace (de Graaf and
Pigeaud 1974: 225). During the next fifteen years, he challenged his former
patron and then Pajang’s former vassal states, including Cirebon, Demak and
Japara, before turning his attention to east Java. Legends attribute the Senapati’s
successes to the possession of the Anta Kusuma heirloom which was bestowed
on the new ruler by descendants of Sunan Kalijaga, who were known as the
religious lords of Ngadi Langu.
The real empire builder of Mataram, however, was its third ruler,
Hanyakrakusuma, who went into history as Sultan Agung (r. 1613–46) – the
‘Great Sultan’. As had been the case with his counterpart in Banten, he was only
recognised as Sultan Abdul Muhammad Maulana Matarani toward the end of
his reign in 1641, after sending a mission to Mecca and receiving formal author-
isation from the sharif (Ricklefs 2006: 51). Between 1625 and 1634, Sultan
Agung brought the Pasisir states and the Houses of Sunan Giri and Sunan
Ampel in Gresik and Surabaya to heel, usually reconciling with them through
intermarriage. As to the ruler’s religious inclinations, Javanese chronicles report
a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Sunan Bayat at Tembayat in 1633 and the
creation of a unique Anno Javanico – adopting the Islamic lunar months but
retaining the numerals of the Javanese Saka year calendar (Ricklefs 2006: 39).11
These indigenous sources also retain ‘prominent features of pre-Islamic origins’,
including the sultan’s mystical marriage with Ratu Kidul, the Goddess of the
Southern Sea. Ricklefs characterises Sultan Agung as a ‘reconciler’ between
early Javanese religious beliefs and Islam, but the evidence for the latter depends
largely on a body of eighteenth-century texts composed on the occasion of the
centennial of his Tembayat pilgrimage, and which will be discussed in more
detail below (Ricklefs 2006: 43). In fact, it is contemporaneous Dutch sources
that describe him as a pious Muslim who attended the mosque.
In the decades after Sultan Agung’s death in 1646, the situation in Mataram
became increasingly chaotic. More often than not proponents of Islam, or –
Network Islam
37
perhaps more accurately – rulers and noblemen intent on upholding their own
credentials as pious Muslims, were in outright opposition to the Mataram royals.
Until 1680, Agung’s successors Amangkurat I (1646–77) and Amangkurat II
(1677–1703) were confronted by a formidable alliance consisting of Trunajaya,
the ruler of West Madura; Raden Kajoran, the keeper of the Sunan Bayat
Shrine; and the sunans from the Gresik–Surabaya area. Having killed most
of his opponents, Amangkurat II took possession of the Kris Pusaka Kalam
Munyeng and declared an end to the rebellion, which ‘the babads described as
holy war (sabilolah, aprang sabil)’ (Ricklefs 2006: 65). From the 1660s until 1682,
Banten too was causing trouble, up to the point when the Dutch VOC inter-
vened by sending its ruler Sultan Ageng (Tirtayasa) and his religious mentor
Shaykh Yusuf of Makassar into exile on Sri Lanka. This brings Ricklefs to the
conclusion: ‘That so much of the anti-Mataram rebellion rested upon Islamic
appeals is testimony to the progress of Islam as a definer of identity in the
Javanese heartland’ (Ricklefs 2006: 67).
However, also during the next half a century, as a result of continuous
dynastic infighting and the compromising impact of the dependency of rulers
and claimants to the throne on VOC support, the Mataram rulers’ actual rela-
tionship with Islam remained ambiguous. During the course of five consecutive
reigns, Islam was mobilised for political purposes during two Javanese succes-
sion wars, occurring in 1703–8 and 1719–23 respectively. In both instances,
foreign Muslim preachers of allegedly Arab extraction were considered as key
instigators. Encik Abdullah, who claimed to be a Meccan shaykh and who
sided with the perpetrator of a massacre of VOC officers at the kraton in 1686,
was krissed to death by Commander Govert Cnoll in 1708.12 A wandering
Hadhrami sayyid, named Maqallawi, was killed in a stand-off with the VOC in
the Mataram capital of Kartasura during the 1719 celebrations of the Prophet
Muhammad’s birthday – Mawlid al-Nabi in Arabic, Garebeg Mulud in Javanese.
During these decades of chaos and confusion, the Mataram pusakas or sacred
heirlooms went missing. Upon his surrender, Amangkurat III had handed over
fakes to the VOC, and the originals were only returned to Java in 1737 by his
descendants after the ruler’s death during his exile in Sri Lanka.
The formation of an Islamic intellectual tradition in Indonesia

In the previous chapter we saw how a revised date for the death of Hamzah
Fansuri, whose work is considered the oldest surviving example of a develop-
ing Malay-Muslim writing culture, pushes the emergence of a Southeast Asian
Islamic cultural and intellectual tradition further back in time. What is known
about Fansuri’s life from his writings also makes clear that this literature is not
a local product in the sense that it is not the outcome of experiences that are
culturally or geographically confined to Southeast Asia, but rather the result of
extensive travel and wide-ranging cultural interactions. Combined with occa-

sional anecdotal evidence of the even earlier existence of figures such as Masʿud
al-Jawi, this would mean that Southeast Asian participation in Islamic intel-
lectual networking is much older than what can be learned from the advances
made since the 1990s in mapping these connections and analysing the resulting
body of texts, because these data only go back to the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Fansuri’s death in 1527 would also make him a contemporary of some
of Java’s Wali Songo – provided the dates relevant to their life stories can be relied
upon in the first place. However, apart from a few sixteenth-century texts, in
the case of Java, the parallel development of a Javanese Islamic literature has
only survived in eighteenth-century texts that are presented as recompositions
of earlier versions from a century or more before. Here too, notwithstanding the
abundance of Javanese cultural tropes, the substance of the narratives is derived
from the traditions of the wider Muslim world, thus creating a new genre of
Javanese religious writing.
These emerging Indonesian Muslim writing cultures are not only of literary
interest, they are also media for the introduction of Islamic learning – doctrinal,
philosophical, legal, spiritual and otherwise – to Indonesia, and its subsequent
further adaptation and development through the transmission of indigenous
interpretations and engagement with the resulting tradition. Aside from a lin-
guistic-literary medium, this also required an institutional infrastructure, con-
sisting of an education system, Sufi orders and other means for facilitating this
intellectual networking both across space and over time.
Emergent Muslim writing cultures in Indonesia

Students of Malay-Muslim literature, such as Anthony Johns, underscore the
distinction between the ‘crude’ Malay chronicles of Sumatra and the much
richer Javanese accounts (Johns 1963: 46). Such differences are an indication
of the varying modalities at work in the Indo-Malay Archipelago. The richness
of the Javanese chronicle traditions, as well as their dimension of what Alatas
calls the ‘fantastic’, are ‘of great significance both in themselves and as evidence
of acculturation’ (Alatas 1997: 32; Johns 1963: 46). Johns also adds the observa-
tion that this significance must be seen more in terms of what it tells us of the
Javanese worldview, its ‘cosmic classifications’, and the consequences for the
integration of Islam in Javanese society, rather than as an evaluation of concrete
historiography (Johns 1961: 150)
Syed Naguib al-Attas’s research into the earliest period of Malay-Muslim –
or Jawi – writing forms part of his theoretical work on Southeast’s Islamisation
and his argument that its origins lie in West Asia. It also constitutes a counter-
narrative to the – in his view – disproportionate amount of attention paid to
Java by especially earlier Dutch Indonesianists, which appears to have been
a constant irritant to him. Based on his literary-historical investigations, al-
Network Islam
39
Attas argues that the affinities between the literary traditions of the Arabs and
Persians and the emergent Malay-Muslim literature provide convincing evi-
dence for an Islamisation process that directly connects insular Southeast Asia
with Muslim West Asia, making him the strongest advocate of the ‘Arab theory’
of Islamisation (Azra 1992: 33). This theory is grounded in a ‘history of ideas
as seen through the changing concepts of key terms in Malay language in the
10th/16th and 11th/17th centuries’, using primary materials in Malay ‘of a
literary nature in the fields of religious law and jurisprudence (shariʿah and fiqh),
philosophy or rational theology and metaphysics (ʿilm al-kalām and tasawwwuf )’
(Attas 1969: 1).
Based on these studies, al-Attas contends that the influence of Islamic con-
cepts on Malay culture has been greater than that of the earlier Indic traditions,
claiming that in translations from the Hindu and Buddhist religious literatures,
‘the philosophical expositions, so important in the original, suffered great neglect’
(Attas 1969: 3). In the case of Islam, the coming of the Qur’an to Southeast Asia
had a tremendous impact on Malay culture. The effects of this influence were
threefold; instilling an awareness of the importance of language; stimulating a
tendency towards a greater clarity of language; and effecting a transition from
oral to written literary traditions. This attention to the linguistic, literary and
philosophical implications of the coming of Islam serves also as a correction of
what he considers the manifestly erroneous tendencies of historians and other
scholars to reduce the revolutionary changes brought about by Islam to external
phenomena, namely commercial, political or artistic motivations.
Using the work of Hamzah Fansuri as a case study, the important contribu-
tions by al-Attas emphasise both the formal and substantive aspects of Arab and
Persian Muslim influences on the development of a Malay literary and Islamic
intellectual tradition. His discussions of Arabic and Persian prosody feed into
an argument for Hamzah Fansuri as the originator of the Malay shaʿir (from
shiʿr, the Arabic for ‘poetry’) as a distinct poetic form, thus ‘establishing a new
name for a new genre’ (Attas 1968: 37).13 Braginsky and Riddell emphasise the
appropriation of Arabic-Persian prosody into Malay poetry as part of a transla-
tion process, whereby literal translations from the Arabic original into Malay,
through active interventions by representatives of the recipient culture, pro-
gressed towards a remarkable transformation and intermixing of religious and
literary traditions.
The repeated emphasis placed by al-Attas on what he calls the ‘rationalis-
tic’ aspects of the substance of Islamic thought stand in strange contrast to the
overwhelming mystical and theosophist contents of Hamzah Fansuri’s oeuvre,
which are best articulated and systematised in his prose works: Asrar al-ʿarifin
(‘The Secrets of the Gnostics’), Sharab al-ʿashiqin (‘The Drink of Lovers’) and
Al-Muntahi (‘The Adept’) (Attas 1969: 21, 30, 809). To my mind, the allegedly
‘tremendous influence of the Shayku’l-Akbar – the Doctor Maximus among the Sūfīs
– Muhyi’l-Dīn ibnu’l-ʿArabī of Spain (638/1240)’, as well as ‘the marked influ-

ence of the thoughts and ideas of ʿAbdu’l-Karīm al-Jīlī (832/1428)’, highlighted
by al-Attas, are at odds with rationalist strands of Islamic thinking drawing on
the Aristotelian tradition, as represented by a figure such as Ibn Rushd, who had
little regard for either the theological approaches of al-Ghazali or what he con-
sidered the obscurantism of ancient philosophers (Attas 1968: 54–5).14 Be that
as it may, the impact of the theosophies of Ibn al-ʿArabi and al-Jili’s thinking
– especially the earlier mentioned notion of the ‘Unity of Being’ or wahdat al-
wujud, which is central to what is also referred to as Akbari thought – continued
to be reflected in later Malay-Muslim writing. It would become the subject of
fierce intellectual debates in seventeenth-century Aceh. Before turning to these
debates, it is opportune to first briefly survey parallel literary developments
taking place on Java.
Early evidence of a Muslim writing culture on Java is limited to three texts
that date from the sixteenth century. The date of the next surviving body of texts
can only be traced to the third decade of the eighteenth century, although the
authors are adamant that their writings are based on preceding texts dating back
almost 100 years. Two of the sixteenth-century Javanese texts were brought
back to Europe by the first Dutch expedition to Indonesia in 1597. While this is
certain proof of their existence at the end of the sixteenth century, a key author-
ity on Javanese Islamic literature, Merle Ricklefs, notes that ‘their age at that
point and their provenance is uncertain’ (Ricklefs 2006: 21).
The Islamic discourse of the first text, called a primbon or divination almanac,
evinces the influx of Arabic words, technical terms and expressions into the
Javanese vocabulary (Drewes 1954). Their occurrence side by side with Javanese
jargon suggests an ‘accommodation between older and newer religious concepts
in Java’ (Ricklefs 2006: 23). The second treatise has become known under the
title of The Admonitions of Seh Bari (Drewes 1969). While its linguistic and cultural
context is Javanese, the ‘intellectual frame of reference is [. . .] wholly Islamic’,
because it consists of the denunciation of false doctrines that are all Islamic in
origin, including esotericism (batiniyya), Qarmatian doctrines and writings by
Ibn al-ʿArabi (Ricklefs 2006: 23). The origins and age of the third text are much
less certain, as the existing document is a copy from 1860. It has been presented
under the title An Early Javanese Code of Muslim Ethics by the same editor as the
other two (Drewes 1978).
Widening and deepening Islamic learning

The levels of sophistication in these early surviving instances of an emergent
Islamic discourse show that, by that time, maritime Southeast Asia was already
well integrated into the intellectual networks of the wider Muslim world. As
the forward post in the Indian Ocean zone, by the early seventeenth century
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Aceh in particular had established a reputation as a centre of Islamic learning,

to which scholars flocked; not only from other places further east in the archi-
pelago, but also from the west.
Debating theosophy in Aceh: wahdat al-wujud vs wahdat al-shuhud

The reigns of Aceh’s roi soleil, Iskandar Muda, and his successor were not only
the heyday of the sultanate’s political fortunes, but during that time the court was
also the scene of vibrant religious and intellectual activities, including debates
concerning the controversial doctrine of wahdat al-wujud or ‘Unity of Being’,
which came to a climax in the 1630s.15
Wahdat al-wujud is at one and the same time an emanation theory of reali-
ties with echoes of the Neoplatonist Plotinus, as well as an inverse path of
spiritual attainment for Sufis, culminating in a mystical experience of ultimate
truth. There are two strands to the theosophical theory: one distinguishing five
grades of Being, traceable to Ibn al-ʿArabi and al-Jili; and a later one structured
around seven stages, attributed to the Indian scholar Muhammad Fadl Allah
al-Burhanpuri (d. 1620). While Hamzah Fansuri’s writings contain references
to the five stages associated with Ibn al-ʿArabi, those of his alleged disciple,
Shams al-Din al-Sumatrani or Shamsuddin of Pasai (1575–1630), subscribe to
al-Burhanpuri’s seven stages – the doctrine that became known as martabat tujuh
(seven stages or grades). Not much is known of Shams al-Din’s life other than
that he held a very senior position at the Aceh court, including that of Shaykh
al-Islam during the reign of Iskandar Muda, whom he reportedly initiated into
the order of Naqshbandiyya Sufism. He is best remembered for his major work,
Miʿrat al-Muʿminin, which contains the most detailed discussion of the seven-
graded Unity of Being (Riddell 2001: 110–11). It is surmised that the substitu-
tion of Fansuri’s version, based on Ibn al-ʿArabi and al-Jili’s five stages, was a
result of the influence of a text written around 1590 by al-Burhanpuri, entitled,
Al-Tuhfa al-mursala ila ruh al-nabi or The Gift Addressed to the Spirit of the Prophet.16
Containing a detailed explanation of al-Jili’s theory of the ‘Unity of Being’, with
an alternative breakdown into seven stages, this text began exercising great
influence on South and Southeast Asian Muslim scholarly circles around the
turn of the sixteenth to seventeenth century. Also it has been suggested that the
difference between Fansuri’s five- and Shams al-Din’s seven-stage theosophies
could be explained by the revised date of Fansuri’s death in 1527, which creates
the temporal distance during which al-Jili’s theory was adapted by al-Burhan-
puri and then left its mark on Shams al-Din’s writings of the early seventeenth
century.17
Highlighting the relation between the wahdat al-wujud and insan kamil, in both
his original works and commentaries on the poetry of Hamzah Fansuri, Shams
al-Din al-Sumatrani’s writings suited Iskandar Muda’s desire to enhance the
perceptions of his kingship. Operating under his patronage, the influence of
Fansuri and al-Sumatrani’s ideas thus received official sanction on the part of
the ruler. However, this was not to continue after the sultan’s death, with the
arrival of Nur al-Din al-Raniri (d. 1658) at the court of his successor Iskandar
al-Thani.
While Nur al-Din’s nisba of al-Raniri refers to the town of Ranir in Gujarat,
this scholar was actually of Hadhrami descent and a member of the Hamid
clan – whose familial ties criss-crossed the Indian Ocean, connecting Yemen
to the Hijaz, Gujarat, the Maldives and Aceh (Laffan 2011: 17). However, al-
Raniri had a double connection with South Arabia’s Hadhramaut through his
initiation into Sufism at the hands of another Hadhrami scholar, Sayyid Umar
al-Aydarusi (Riddell 2001: 116; Azra 2004: 54). Although he spent only seven
years (1637–44) at the Aceh court, he left an indelible mark – not least because
of his challenge of Shams al-Din al-Sumatrani’s understanding of wahdat al-
wujud as heretical. Al-Raniri’s objections are laid down in a treatise entitled
Hujjat al-siddiq li-dafʿ al-zindiq as well as other texts. All these have been very
influential, even leading to the burning of Shams al-Din’s writings. Although the
details need not detain us, the focal point of al-Raniri’s critique revolves around
the distinction that must be made between two groups of wujudiyya adepts: one
group, which includes Ibn al-ʿArabi, regards the Being of God as that upon
which all other beings depend for their existence.18 According to this group,
this represents a true – and therefore, orthodox – Unity of Being. The other
group conflates the existence of these other beings with God’s Being, claiming
that nothing exists but God. This constitutes a heresy, to which – according to
al-Raniri – both Fansuri and Shams al-Din had succumbed.19
Al-Raniri’s critique foreshadows the influences of Islamic reformist ideas
about tolerable and unacceptable forms of learned Sufism (tasawwuf ) expressed
in the dichotomy between wahdat al-wujud and wahdat al-shuhud – ‘unity in wit-
nessing’. Advocating a tempered form of Islamic mysticism, the latter is often
referred to as ‘Neo-Sufism’.20 A possible early connection with Egypt and the
mosque-university of al-Azhar, signalled by Michael Laffan, also offers further
insight into how the wujudiyya debate is embedded in intellectual developments
involving the wider Muslim world. As mentioned earlier, trade connections
between Southeast Asia and the Arabic-speaking parts of the Muslim world had
also resulted in the adoption of Ayyubid and Mamluk regal styles. There is also
evidence of the hosting of Egyptian scholars by the Aceh court in the sixteenth
century. In 1643, al-Raniri was ousted from his position at the Aceh court fol-
lowing the arrival of an ethnic Minangkabau named Sayf al-Rijal (d. 1653), who
was a student of one of the victims of al-Raniri’s inquisition – a local scholar
named Kamal al-Din. Sayf al-Rijal also called himself Sayf al-Din al-Azhari.
Such events suggest an initial opening up of Aceh to scholarly debates that
had been emerging in Cairo from the sixteenth century onward around the
Sufi interpretations by Ibn al-ʿArabi’s followers, who were referred to as the
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43
muhaqqiqun or ‘men of realisation’. These debates were the result of the double
influence of Persian ideas carried by Kurdish and Azeri scholars fleeing the
expanding Shiʿi Safavid state and of the work of early logicians from the Arab
West introduced by Moroccan scholars, like Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Sanusi
(d. 1495). Confronted with the dangers of ‘ignorant pseudo-Sufis’ engaging
with theosophical ideas they could not comprehend, Cairo’s scholarly scene
responded by advocating the ‘orthodox’ rigour vested in Egyptian juridical
authority that underpinned institutionalised tarīqā Sufism, which ‘had become
a crucial part of the social fabric under Ottoman rule’ (Laffan 2011: 15). These
ideas now also travelled to Southeast Asia through al-Sanusi’s Sufi primer, Umm
al-barahin (‘Mother of Signs’) and responses to queries from Acehnese Muslims
by, for example, Muhammad al-Manufi (d. 1663). There they would continue
to circulate in the jawi world through sustained scholarly networking in the cen-
turies to come.
The Acehnese wujudiyya polemic was not the only instance of Indonesian
debates featuring accusations of heresy. One of the most well-known stories
circulating on Java involves the inquisition of Seh Siti Jenar by the full assembly
of the Wali Songo and his subsequent execution at the hands of Sunan Kalijaga
personally.21 Also set on Java is a report in an eighteenth-century text about
another Islamic teacher facing charges of heterodoxy, which will be discussed in
more detail below.22
Aside from his involvement in the wujudiyya debate, other writings by al-
Raniri, including Sirat al-Mustaqim and Bustan al-Salatin, evince broad religious
learning in other disciplines than tasawwuf, encompassing law and theology,
as well as politics and history. His Sirat al-Mustaqim is still used in Indonesian
Islamic schools as a reference work on Islamic ritual, while Bustan al-Salatin is not
only valuable for the history of Aceh, but also functions as a ‘mirror of princes’
(Riddell 2001: 117–19). The catholicity of al-Raniri’s learning, including a
familiarity with religious renewal (tajdid), prefigures the contributions of the next
important scholar from northern Sumatra, Abd al-Raʿuf al-Singkili (1615–93).
Wandering students and itinerant scholars

Al-Singkili’s significance lies not just in his prominent position in Aceh, but
perhaps even more in his reputation as a scholarly networker acquiring religious
knowledge that was both wide and profound, through decades of travel and
study at centres of Islamic learning across the Muslim world.
Syed Naguib al-Attas’s philological studies and Anthony Johns’s work on the
role of Sufis in the spread of Islam, as well his introduction of the concept of the
Indian Ocean as an Arabic-speaking Mediterranean, have been very important
for raising scholarly awareness of the significance of networking in the dissemi-
nation of Islamic learning in Indonesia, while the more recent discoveries by
the duos Guillot–Kalus and Feener–Laffan provide tantalising indications that
these connections may actually be centuries older. Maintaining such a shared

Islamic tradition depends not only on individual and communal scholarly effort,
but also on established mechanisms of authorisation and transmission. Insight
into these matters has greatly benefitted from the mapping of these ulama net-
works in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Azyumardi Azra and Peter
Riddell. Their findings not only provide the architecture of the lines of transmis-
sion, they also evince that mystical traditions of trans-regional Sufi orders were
complemented by other disciplines of Islamic learning, thus forging a cohesive
and integral Muslim society in Southeast Asia. Azra’s painstakingly detailed col-
lection of data on the biographies and scholarly production of the participants
in these networks has also advanced the knowledge about how Islamic renewal,
reformism and – eventually – modernism reached insular Southeast Asia.
Following the establishment of Ottoman control over Egypt and the Hijaz,
the security situation in the Western Indian Ocean and Red Sea also improved,
allowing hajj traffic to intensify. Numerically, the Muslims from Southeast Asia
soon formed the most important contingent in the increasing numbers of hajj
pilgrims and expatriate students in the Haramayn. While Hamzah Fansuri,
Shams al-Din al-Sumatrani and Nur al-Din a-Raniri all spent time in Mecca
and Medina, with Abd al-Raʿuf al-Singkili, more sustained and verifiable docu-
mentary evidence of the presence of jawi scholars become available in terms of
both their studies and their own innovative contributions.
Probably of mixed Arab–Malay origin and a native of Singkil near Barus,
Abd al-Raʿuf ibn Ali al-Fansuri al-Singkili left Sumatra around 1642, not to
return for almost twenty years.23 On his way to the Hijaz, he studied briefly in
Qatar, followed by several years in Bayt al-Faqih and Zabid in Yemen, before
arriving in Mecca and finally settling in Medina.24 In Medina two scholars were
of particular significance, not just for al-Singkili’s career, but for the expansion
of Islamic learning among the jawi Muslims in general. Ahmad al-Qushashi
(d. 1660) and his student and disciple Ibrahim al-Kurani (1614–90) gave real
momentum to the scholarly nexus between West and Southeast Asia. While
al-Qushashi’s fame rested on his reputation as a Maliki jurist, shaykh of the
Shattariyya order and initiate in several other tarekat, al-Kurani was regarded as
an all-round genius, considered by many of his peers as the mujaddid or renewer
of the eleventh century of the Islamic era (Azra 2004: 18).25 Al-Kurani’s influ-
ence was not limited to completing al-Singkili’s training in Sufism following the
latter’s initiation by al-Qushashi into the Shattariyya and Qadiriyya orders.
In order to resolve the confusion affecting Muslims in Aceh in the wake of al-
Raniri’s attacks on Hamzah Fansuri and Shams al-Din, al-Kurani also wrote an
influential commentary on Burhanpuri’s Gift Addressed to the Spirit of the Prophet,
possibly at the personal behest of al-Singkili.26
Both al-Qushashi and al-Kurani are considered as exponents of the earlier
mentioned Neo-Sufism. This ‘rapprochement between the sharīʿah-oriented
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45
ʿulamā’ (more specifically, the fuqahā’) and the Sūfīs’ forms in Azra’s opinion
a ‘salient feature’ in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scholarly networking
(Azra 2004: 33). Al-Singkili also subscribed to this more sober form of Sufism
advocated by his teachers. In his own writings on the subject he too rejected the
strand of wujudiyya condemned by al-Raniri as heretical, while a commentary
he wrote on Ibn al-ʿArabi evinces the influence that al-Kurani exercised on his
thinking. The reconciliation between the study of Islamic law (fiqh) and mysti-
cism (tasawwuf ) is also reflected in al-Singkili’s preoccupation with wider Islamic
learning. He was the first Muslim scholar from Indonesia to produce a work
on fiqh muʿamalat – Islamic law dealing with the domain of Muslim daily life as
opposed to acts of worship. In addition, he is the author of Tarjuman al-mustafid,
the first Malay commentary (tafsir) on the complete Qur’an, mainly drawing
on the Jalalayn of al-Mahalli (d. 1459) and al-Suyuti (d. 1505). In terms of build-
ing his own following in Indonesia, among al-Singkili’s most important disciples
are the ‘Tuanku of Ulakan’ – a Minangkabau known as Burhanuddin (1646–92)
– and the west Javanese Shaykh Abd al-Muhyi.27 Ending his days as a leading
scholar in Aceh, al-Singkili is remembered as the ‘Shaykh of Kuala’ – a reference
to his shrine near the Kuala Aceh or ‘Aceh River’ (Azra 2004: 85–6).
While al-Singkili was a kind of Homo universalis or Renaissance Man, his con-
temporary Yusuf al-Maqassari (1626/7–99) was mainly interested in Sufism,
although he is primarily remembered as a political intrigant due to his earlier
mentioned involvement in the Banten rebellion of the early 1660s. As a mili-
tant Sufi he prefigures individuals such as Usman dan Fodio (1754–1817) of
the West African Sokoto Caliphate, the Dagestani Imam Shamil (1797–1871)
and Sudan’s Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi (1845–85). Probably a native of
Makassar, Shaykh Yusuf brought Sulawesi into the orbit of Islamising Indonesia.
After initial studies on Borneo, he married into the royal family of Gowa in South
Sulawesi, only to leave again for Aceh, with the intention of studying with al-
Raniri. Because the latter had already left Aceh, Yusuf al-Maqassari continued
his journey to Gujarat in order to catch up with Aceh’s former Shaykh al-Islam.
It is claimed he became the first Indonesian to be initiated in the Qadariyya
order – allegedly by al-Raniri himself. From Gujarat, he probably continued on
Singkili’s trail to Zabid in Yemen, Mecca and then Medina, where he too joined
the circle of al-Qushashi and al-Kurani. Along the way he added inductions
into the Naqshabandiyya, Ba al-ʿAlawiyya and Shattariyya to his repertoire of
tarekat initiations (Feener 1998/9: 118–19). Laffan suggests that this spiritual-
intellectual trajectory connects al-Maqassari to the earlier mentioned muhaqqiqun
(Laffan 2011: 20). Unlike al-Singkili, Yusuf al-Maqassari did not immediately
return to Indonesia, but travelled first to Damascus to study with Khalwatiyya
shaykhs. In due course, this resulted in the emergence of a Khalwatiyya-Yusuf
Sufi branch in al-Maqassari’s native Sulawesi (Bruinessen 1991: 251).
Probably returning to Indonesia sometime between 1664 and 1672,
a l-Maqassari did not return to his home country of Gowa, because he was
sceptical of the sultan’s support for the Islamic cause, opting instead to settle in
Banten, where he had been before. Joining the circle of Sultan Ageng Tirtasaya
by marrying one of his daughters, he was not only involved in introducing Sufi
teachings, but also became caught up in the earlier sketched rebellion against
the VOC.28 Arrested in 1683, he was initially sent into exile in Sri Lanka, but
when the Dutch noticed that this did not stop al-Maqassari from continuing his
machinations by passing on writings via visiting pilgrims, he was moved to their
Cape colony in 1693, where attempts to isolate him failed again. In fact, Yusuf
al-Maqassari is still celebrated by South African Muslims for bringing Islam to
the Cape (Feener 1998/9). Initially buried at Faure in 1699, his body was trans-
ferred to Gowa in 1705 – making al-Maqassari a Sufi saint with shrines in both
Sulawesi and South Africa.
With Sulawesi now firmly embedded into the Dar al-Islam through Yusuf al-
Maqassari’s multiple tarekat connections, in the course of the eighteenth century
the religion also gained a more solid foothold in east Sumatra and southeast
Borneo (Laffan 2011: 31). The key figures during this stage in Indonesia’s
Islamisation process are Abdussamad of Palembang or Abd al-Samad al-Pal-
imbani (c. 1704/19–88/9) 29 and Muhammad Arshad al-Banjari (1710–1812?).
Both spent an extraordinarily long time in the Haramayn – in the case of al-
Banjari almost thirty-five years, while al-Palimbani stayed even longer, never to
return home.
Like Abd al-Raʿuf al-Singkili, Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani was said to be of
Arab ancestry and received a thorough and well-rounded Islamic education.
His mystical disposition and studies with Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-
Samman (d. 1775), a guardian of the shrine of the Prophet and one of Medina’s
most influential eighteenth-century scholars, led to al-Palimbani’s induction into
the new Sufi order founded by al-Samman. Fusing elements of the Qadiriyya,
Naqshbandiyya and the North African Shadhiliyya orders with those of the
Khalwatiyya, the Sammaniyya is actually considered a sub-branch of the latter,
because it is the only lineage, or silsila, acknowledged by al-Samman himself – in
spite of also having ijaza or authorisation to pass on the teachings of other orders
into which he had been initiated. This then resulted in the introduction of the
Sammaniyya in the Palembang area by Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani’s returning
students and later in the financing by the Sultan of Palembang of a Sammaniyya
lodge (zawiya) in Jeddah. Its popularity was not least due to al-Samman’s repu-
tation as miracle worker, of which the reports (manaqib) were translated into
Malay and circulated widely throughout Indonesia (Bruinessen 1994b: 8–9).30
Aside from his role as a Sufi khalifa with authority to induct other adepts into
various tarekat, al-Palimbani’s intellectual significance lies in his contributions to
Sufi scholarship; in particular, his reconciliation between the theosophy of Ibn
al-ʿArabi and the tempered Sufism of al-Ghazali. For this purpose, he wrote
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47
tracts in both Malay and Arabic. While the former were used as a didactics for
wider audiences, the latter dealt with more controversial topics – including Ibn
al-ʿArabi’s Fusus al-hikam (‘Bezels of Wisdom’), al-Jili’s Al-insan al-kamil, and the
writings of al-Burhanpuri and al-Kurani. By writing them in Arabic, al-Palim-
bani sought to avoid confusing less well-educated Muslims or exposing them to
the temptations of heresy (Azra 2004: 131–2).
Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani’s contemporary from Borneo, Muhammad
Arshad al-Banjari, shared the intellectual-religious outlook of his Sumatran
counterpart. Under the patronage of his future father-in-law, Sultan Tahlil
Allah (1700–45) of Banjarmasin, al-Banjari went to study in Mecca and Cairo.
Upon his return, he wrote – on royal instruction – an expansion of al-Raniri’s
Sirat al-Mustaqim under the title Sabil al-muhtadin (‘The Path of the Guided’). In
contrast to al-Palimbani, al-Banjari never mentions Muhammad Fadl Allah al-
Burhanpuri, Shams al-Din al-Sumatrani or Ibrahim al-Kurani, instead relying
on ‘sober Egyptian scholars such as al-Suyuti and al-Shaʿrani’ (1493–1565). Yet
at the same time, like Yusuf al-Maqassari a century before, both al-Palimbani
and al-Banjari situated themselves in the ‘lineage of the muhaqqiqun’ (Laffan
2011: 30). This is less contradictory than it may seem because – although criti-
cal of the Medinese tradition and opposed to the influx of Persian-Turkish Sufi
influences in Egypt – figures like al-Suyuti and al-Shaʿrani were not averse to
Sufism and were in fact themselves initiates in several orders.
By far the most prominent scholar from the Palembang Muslim community,
Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani’s standing as a prominent scholar in the Muslim
world at large is also reflected by his inclusion in Arabic biographical dictionar-
ies.31 During his lifetime (although he was himself physically absent most of the
time), Palembang overtook Aceh as the centre of Islamic learning on Sumatra,
while Patani reached a similar position on the Malay Peninsula. Under Sultan
Mahmud Badr al-Din (r. 1724–57), Palembang prospered economically thanks
to pepper and tin exports, while his successor Ahmad Taj al-Din (r. 1757–74)
became an important patron of Islamic learning, sponsoring the translation of
Wali Raslan al-Dimashqi’s (d. 1145) Fath al-rahman (‘Triumph of the Merciful’)
– a text offering an ‘accurate expression of the latest form of orthodoxy encoun-
tered in Mecca or Cairo’ (Laffan 2011: 28).
Finally, it must be noted that, although never actively involved in politics,
Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani shared Yusuf al-Maqassari’s militant outlook. This
becomes clear from his writings on jihad. Texts such as Fada’il al-Jihad reflect
not simply a more radical reformist stance, but also demonstrate al-Palimbani’s
opposition to Dutch interventions in Indonesia, advocating a decidedly activ-
ist stance against colonialism. Azra notes that the leading nineteenth-century
scholar of Islam, Christiaan Snouck-Hurgronje, insisted that Fada’il al-Jihad
has inspired many jihadi epistles and pamphlets during the Netherlands’ pro-
tracted war in Aceh at the end of the nineteenth century (Azra 2004: 140).
Al-Palimbani’s anti-colonial interventions were not limited to scholarly writings;

as will be seen below, he also wrote letters to rulers with injunctions to fight the
European infidels in the name of Islam.
Texts and power at the Mataram court

A century after Aceh’s wujuddiya debate, the Mataram court on Java was the scene
of a comparable but inverse exchange concerning the ‘relationship between
devout Sufism and Java’s rich pre-Islamic cultural heritage’ (Ricklefs 2006: 116).
It is found in a text called Serat Cabolek, of which the oldest existing version only
dates to the nineteenth century, but which records a doctrinal debate that took
place in Kartasura in 1731. It involved two Islamic scholars, Ketib Anom of
Kudus and Kyai Haji Ahmad Mutamakin, in which the latter stands accused
of revealing secret knowledge to the uninitiated and is also mocked for his reli-
ance on Arabic texts rather than indigenous and indigenised learning. Although
Mutamakin’s position was condemned, he was not executed for heresy – as
had been the case with Kamal al-Din in Aceh. At the same time, Serat Cabolek
reflects an implicit acceptance that the wisdom contained in Javanese and origi-
nally Indian texts, such as Bima Suci, Arjunawiwaha and the Ramayana, could also
be considered ngelmu (ʿilm in Arabic), or Islamic mystical knowledge; no less
authoritative than scholarship in Arabic. Even though – in the end – Islam was
considered the prevailing religious category, there was no question of having to
make exclusive choices between cultural and religious loyalties; instead, both
influences were absorbed into Javanese Islamic civilisation.
This is also true for four other texts produced around 1730 – although they
too are presented as recompositions of earlier versions that allegedly already
existed in the time of Sultan Agung. They offer a record of a religious and intel-
lectual condensation which Ricklefs refers to as ‘mystic synthesis’ (Ricklefs 2006).
Written at the direction of Ratu Pakubuwono, the queen dowager dominating
the Mataram court after the death of her husband Pakubuwono I in 1719, they
were intended to enhance the religious credentials of the latter’s successor and
grandson, Pakubuwono II.32
Although recast in a Javanese cultural setting, the Carita Sultan Iskandar and
Carita Yusuf retell the Qur’anic episodes about Alexander the Great and the bib-
lical figure of Joseph. Used as ‘vehicles for uplifting tales of adventure, heroism,
beauty, and piety, the two tales [are] peppered with moral and mystical apho-
risms’ (Ricklefs 2006: 108). After their completion, at the end of 1729, a start
was made on the composition of what is the most ‘Javanese’ work of the quartet.
Entitled Kitab Usulbiyah, it deals with issues that are without an obvious founda-
tion in the Qur’an and probably also without Malay predecessors, which had
provided the basic material for the Iskandar and Yusuf texts. Merle Ricklefs has
characterised Kitab Usulbiyah as a ‘thaumaturgical work [. . .] a powerful magical
tool in the campaign to Islamize the kraton more fully and thus to perfect it’
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(Ricklefs 2006: 115). As Javanese cultural synthesis features more prominently,

Islamic orthodoxy recedes into the background. The fourth and final text, Suluk
Garwa Kancana, is a straightforward work of religious didactics and pedagogy.
Also set during the reign of Sultan Agung, its ‘reconciliation of Javanese martial
traditions of kingship with Islamic traditions of mystic piety’ is further evidence
of the domestication of Islam at the Mataram court (Ricklefs 2006: 49).
Ratu Pakubuwono had ordered the writing of these texts as a means to assist
in moulding her grandson Pakubuwono II (1726–46) into a pious Sufi king.
With this objective of perfecting the reign of a Javanese king, the books became
pusakas – heirlooms with supernatural powers – that were to be closely guarded
and could only be handled by qualified individuals, such as Ratu Pakubuwono.
Reflecting the simultaneous catholicity and eclecticism of Javanese Sufism, the
purport of the texts is captured by a metaphor that likens Arabic and Javanese
literature to ‘a person’s right and left eyes’ (Ricklefs 2006: 127).
Javanese religious practice and culture

Aside from stimulating the development of a new indigenous religious literary
tradition, the Islamisation of Java also had wider societal effects. As was the
case with Muslim state formation, in the interior this process followed its own
trajectory, but Java’s Muslim population too was increasingly drawn into the
networks that connected it to Muslims elsewhere.
One of the most conspicuous elements of the Islamisation of the court was
the introduction of select aspects of Islamic law and more ostentatious displays
of religious practice. These included the prohibition of gambling for money
and the use of opium, while cockfighting continued to be condoned and even
the consumption of alcohol was tolerated (the latter featured prominently in
maintaining relations with the VOC). However, the enforcement of the Islamic
penal code, including the imposition of hudud, or death penalties, was reserved
for the religious court at the capital only. In 1732, Pakubuwono II also began
attending the Friday prayers in the mosque. Prior to that, the ruler’s participa-
tion in such congregational prayers had been limited to his attendance at court
celebrations – once every eight years in the Javanese calendrical cycle – on the
occasion of the Prophet’s birthday – a festivity known as Garebeg Mulud Dal.33 At
the same time, Pakubuwono II was also known to engage in ascetic practices
on Gunung Lawu, one of Java’s ancient sacred mountains; practices that were
maintained under successive, more Islamised, Javanese monarchs of the late
eighteenth century.
Little is known to what extent this type of Islamic identity formation and
display of piety moved beyond the court into wider Javanese society. However,
Ricklefs notes that ‘there are hints that the European presence fed Islamically
defined xenophobia’ (Ricklefs 2016: 123). During the reign of Pakubuwono
II, Raden Adipati Natakusuma became the new Islamic strongman at the
court. Under his direction, figures such as Kyai Hajji Mataram and Sayyid
Alwi – a name suggesting a connection with the Hadhramaut – were admitted
to the court as part of the prince’s entourage. Although their exact credentials
remain obscure, they did obtain influential religious positions and created
a fair amount of suspicion among VOC officials. Between 1741 and 1743
it seemed as if the Muslim camp would emerge victorious from the power
struggle at an increasingly disintegrated Mataram court. After ejecting Sayyid
Alwi and Hajji Mataram from his court and making amends with the VOC,
which exiled many of the Islamic agitators to Sri Lanka and South Africa, the
embattled Pakubuwono II’s final years coincided with the beginning of a third
and protracted Javanese succession war (1746–57). Its eventual outcome was
a split of Mataram into the Sultanates of Yogyakarta and Surakarta, agreed
by the 1755 treaty of Giyanti between the VOC, Prince Mangkubumi and
Raden Mas Suryadi – who would go on to reign as Sultan Hamengkubuwono
I (r. 1749–92) and Susuhunan Pakubuwono III (r. 1749–88) respectively –
though hostilities dragged on for another two years. An accompanying feature
of this partition of Mataram was a parallel split of power within Surakarta
between the susuhunans and a junior lineage of princes known as the House
of Mangkunegoro.
It was the ruler of newly established Yogyakarta, Hamengkubuwono I,
who emerged from this power struggle as the most important Javanese ruler
of the late eighteenth century. The first monarch since Sultan Agung to again
use the title ‘sultan’, his reign also constituted a new stage in Java’s ongoing
Islamisation process. However, at the same time it is important to remain
aware of the enduring relevance of the ‘variety in Javanese religious sensibili-
ties’ (Ricklefs 2006: 156). For example, in the courtly writing tradition that had
developed under the direction of Ratu Pakubuwono, during the second part
of Hamengkubuwono’s reign, his son and later successor oversaw the writing
of the Raja Surya – according to Merle Ricklefs, ‘the most spiritually potent
book of Mangkubumi’s reign’ (Ricklefs 2006: 160). Also it is said that one of
his daughters possessed a Javanese version of al-Burhanpuri’s Gift Addressed
to the Spirit of the Prophet (Ricklefs 2006: 164). In Surakarta, the title holder of
the junior lineage, Prince Mangkunegoro I (r. 1757–95), rose to grow into
the most ‘publicly pious figure among the late-eighteenth-century elite’ and
a staunchly Islamic competitor of the susuhunan (Ricklefs 2006: 165). This is
partly attributed to the influence exercised by one of his wives, who descended
from the caretakers of the Muslim shrine at Tembayat. At the same time, the
links with pre-Islamic religious sites and associated practices were also retained
in Surakarta, even though Java became increasingly integrated into the Islamic
networks that connected Muslim Indonesia with other parts of the Muslim
world.
Amidst these variegating styles of Islamising Java, it seems that self-
Network Islam
51
identification as ‘Muslim’ grew increasingly firm, developing into a religious

identity without any ‘serious alternative’ (Ricklefs 2006: 155). Earlier mentioned
Malay-speaking figures of great standing and leading initiates in multiple Sufi
orders, such as Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani and Muhammad Arshad al-Banjari,
also played a role in bringing the Javanese-speaking heartlands of central and
east Java under the sway of more sober forms of Sufism and within the ambit
of wider Islamic religious learning. In addition, scholars such as al-Palimbani
directed their calls to defend the Islamic faith against the infidel colonisers to the
three Muslim rulers in Yogyakarta and Surakarta.34
In the wake of such admonitions, another prince from Surakarta’s
Mangkunegoro dynasty, Wiryakusuma, began profiling himself as a distinctly
Islamic ruler after his return from exile in South Africa. In the subsequent
chronicles of his reign, he is referred to as a waliyolah – or ‘friend of God’ – that
is to say a saint – who acquired the ngelmu (religious knowledge) of kingship from
various religious teachers (Ricklefs 2006: 182). A spiritual seeker all his life, after
ascending the throne of Surakarta as Pakubuwono IV (1788–1820), he began
replacing the old court officials ‘with his new favourites, collectively known as
santris – “students of religion”’ (Ricklefs 2006: 175).35 Within this segment of the
Muslim populace, a certain hierarchy can be discerned. At the top stood the
teacher-scholars, known as kyai or guru. Next came those who had performed
the pilgrimage to Mecca and were now referred to as hajji.36 Then there were
the lower-ranking religious officials in villages who were called kaum. The lowest
rung on this ladder was occupied by the pradikan or perdikan– residents of pious
villages in specially designated tax-exempt areas (Carey 2014: 19).
While it has been suggested that this signalled a very early influence of the
Arabian reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–92) in Java, this
seems very doubtful, not least because the santris continued to engage in shrine
visits and laying claims to supernatural powers – practices that are roundly
rejected in Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s puritan interpretation of Islam that came to
be referred to as Wahhabism. Corroborative evidence can also be gleaned from
a Javanese text called Wicara Cras, in which Pakubuwono IV’s santri entourage
is depicted as a deviant group associated with the Shattariyya order. The kraton
elite in Surakarta also engaged in the same practice as Ratu Pakubuwono of
composing religious texts as magically empowered heirlooms. Thus, in 1791,
court scribes began producing new versions of the Carita Iskandar and Carita
Yusuf. Creating a third instance in which Islamic texts were mobilised for their
supernatural powers, the stage was set for the next phase in the Islamisation of
Indonesia – characterised by concerted efforts to use Islam as a means of resist-
ance against existing indigenous power structures and to counter increasingly
intrusive European colonial interventions, leading to the formation of a political
entity, and an alternative oppositional model, that begin to resemble what is
presently known as Indonesia.
Islamic education and learning: institution and curriculum

Aside from tempering Sufism, while at the same time calling on Muslim rulers
to resist infidel schemes for political dominance in Southeast Asia’s Muslim ter-
ritories, Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani and Muhammad Arshad al-Banjari were
also instrumental to the development of an indigenous Islamic education system
in Indonesia – in terms of both institutions and curriculum formation. The
vehicle through which this curriculum was transmitted is what the Javanese
call pesantren and the Malays refer to as pondok.37 This ‘Islamic boarding school’
is a typical Southeast Asian institution, which – along with the Sufi tarekat – has
been the key medium for carrying Islamic learning into rural peasant milieus.
VOC monopolisation of especially external trade combined with the surveil-
lance of travelling Muslims presented a combination of economic and religious
restrictions that drove Islam from cities into the countryside. With rural pesantren
becoming the new centres of religious learning, the Islamisation of Indonesia’s
agrarian societies was able to gain pace, because it largely took place beyond the
gaze of the colonisers. As the power base of the ulama, who consider themselves
the ‘Heirs of the Prophet’, the pesantren milieu became Indonesia’s custodian of a
tradition of Islamic learning preserved by the so-called Ahl al-Sunna wa’l-Jamaʿa
(‘People of the Tradition and Community’, in Indonesian also often rendered as
Ahlussunnahwaljamaah). Since then, the pesantren have functioned as incubators for
generations of Muslim leaders and intellectuals, including the first democrati-
cally elected president.
This ‘pesantren world’ continues to exist today and remains an important com-
ponent of now partly urbanised ‘networks of agrarian Islam’ (Lombard 1990:
II, 110). Although there is anecdotal evidence from European sources for the
existence of Islamic schools in the seventeenth and possibly even the sixteenth
centuries as far east as Makassar and Ternate, the first mention of pesantren on
Java date only to the first half of the eighteenth century. However, even then a
specialist like Merle Ricklefs remains suspicious of the claim ‘that Pakubuwana
II later established the great pesantren of Tegalsari, near Pomogoro, in quest of
renewed spiritual power after his defeat in 1740’ – during the war of the VOC
against expatriate Chinese, which also included a substantial Muslim contingent
(Laffan 2011: 26). Oral histories from Banjarmasin relate the establishment of
an ‘Islamic educational institution’ by Muhammad Arshad al-Banjari and his
Bugi colleague Abd al-Wahhab al-Bugisi (Azra 2004: 119). This has led Michael
Laffan to surmise that the establishment of this educational complex may have
been inspired by the founders’ acquaintance with the madrasa of Cairo during
their studies in Egypt (Laffan 2011: 30).
Although most present-day pesantren were founded relatively recently, they
still betray a set of features from the past, which also point up some similarities
with pre-Islamic religious learning and practice in Indonesia, often of Indian
origin. There is fragmentary evidence from the Majapahit time of the existence
Network Islam
53
of ashram-like retreats for indigenous asceticism (called tapa in Javanese or peta-

paan in Malay). Like the pesantren, these were located away from populated areas
and structured around a paternal relation between the teacher (guru or kyai) and
the student (murid). Finally, the pesantren world also emulated another India-
inspired phenomenon: the figure of what in German is called the Wanderstudent,
who seeks knowledge in a number of places and at the feet of different teachers.
In the wake of the scholarship and sober Sufism brought to Palembang,
Banjarmasin and Banten through translations into Malay of the tempered writ-
ings of al-Ghazali by Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani, Muhammad Arshad a l-Banjari
and other eighteenth-century scholars associated with the Sammaniyya order,
Laffan notes also that: ‘the scholarly diet of Javanese Muslims was becoming
ever more stable and bound to standards set in Mecca and perhaps at Cairo’s
al-Azhar mosque, led between 1794 and 1812 by Abdallah al-Sharqawi’ (Laffan
2011: 27).
The programme of study in the pesantren or pondok began with the memorisa-
tion of the Qur’an – probably in reverse order, starting with the thirtieth juz’
or section, consisting of the shorter Suras at the end of the Qur’an. Dedicated
students could complete this by age twelve and then move on to the more chal-
lenging study of Islam’s dogmatic and doctrinal foundations: law texts would be
drawn from the Shafiʿi madhhab, one of the four surviving authoritative schools
of Sunni Islamic law and the prevailing one in Egypt, coastal South Asia and in
Southeast Asia. Questions related to kalam or theology would be taught through
Umm al-barahin, the earlier mentioned primer compiled by al-Sanusi, which
reached its widest circulation by the end of the nineteenth century. Beginnings of
the substantive study of the Qur’an would be made through al-Singkili’s Malay
translation of the Jalalayn. Thus prepared, the more advanced students could
then engage with the inner (batin) meanings that complement the outer (zahir in
Arabic, lahir in Indonesian) meanings of the text. All this required close guid-
ance, whereby the intense teacher–pupil relationship was often, but certainly
not always, replicated in the intimate connection between Sufi master and disci-
ple. It is equally important to note also that the sobering influence of Sammani
reformism did not make itself felt everywhere, and that the Shattariyya and
its associated texts, including al-Singkili’s Tarjuman and al-Burhanpuri’s Tuhfat,
remained influential on Java and in Sumatra’s interior.
In terms of pedagogy and didactics, Zamakhsyari Dhofier points out that a
distinction needs to be made between the pesantren proper and what he calls pen-
gajian. The distinction between the two is in the level of Islamic education pro-
vided and the teaching methods that are used. The pengajian cater to novices and
beginners, offering basic training called sorogan – intensive one-on-one tutor-
ing requiring ‘devotion, industry, discipline, and most importantly, patience’
(Dhofier 1999: 11). Only after sufficient exposure to this type of training are
students considered ready for the more advanced didactical methods used in the
pesantren. There, intermediate and advanced students progress through a learn-

ing system called bandongan or weton, where students attend lectures by the guru or
kyai in groups (called a halaqa, which can range from five to 500), independently
taking notes on the text that is being discussed.
Concluding remarks
Research conducted in the last few decades has rendered available increas-
ingly detailed knowledge of the varying dynamics that have been at work in
Indonesia’s continuing Islamisation process since the religion’s initial introduc-
tion. Islamicists, Indonesianists, and a rare breed of historians and linguists with
backgrounds in both Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian studies have provided
important new insights into contacts among religious scholars (ulama), who par-
ticipated in the networks that criss-crossed the Indian Ocean. In the course
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these activities led to scholarly
interaction of increased intensity and frequency, stimulating the exchange of
Islamic learning; the development of new Muslim writing cultures in Southeast
Asia that employed regional and local languages; new modes of legitimising
political rule and of royal patronage for religious learning; and the emergence
of an indigenous Islamic education system, but also the contestation of religious
identities. All these elements continue to inform the further Islamisation process
in Indonesia, while, simultaneously, its peoples have to come to terms with the
increasingly intrusive colonisation by Europeans and the concomitant introduc-
tion of what the latter call ‘modernity’.
CHAPTER 3
Islam as resistance
The exposure of Indonesian Muslims to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century

Islamic reformism and contestations of Muslim identity formation also consti-
tute ingredients in what I will call ‘Islam as resistance’ – which may be directed
against both domestic and external challenges affecting Muslims in Indonesia.
As was the case with the emergence of Islamic networks across the Indian
Ocean, the mobilisation of religion as a political tool in the course of the nine-
teenth century must be seen in the context of developments in the wider Muslim
world, but increasingly also as a reaction against ever more invasive intrusions
by non-Muslims as European colonialism enters the age of high imperialism.
Around the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, two disasters
befalling the Ottoman Empire also foreshadowed dramatic changes in Muslim
Southeast Asia. First of all, the Sublime Porte was confronted with Napoleon’s
invasion of Egypt in 1798. Not even a decade later, Istanbul temporarily lost
control of the Hijaz and the Haramayn with the occupation of Mecca and
Medina by Arab forces united in an alliance consisting of a dynasty of chieftains
from the Central Arabian region of Najd and descendants of the reactionary
reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab – namesake of the puritan form of
Islamic revivalism that became known as Wahhabism. These two events not
only heralded the decline of Ottoman power, but they were also the beginnings
of a new phase in European expansion across the world, as well as of the parallel
development of more vigorous efforts towards Islamic reform – two trends that
would be increasingly at loggerheads with each other as the nineteenth century
progressed.
Napoleon’s influence was also felt more directly in Indonesia. In the course
of his European conquests, the Netherlands were first occupied and then com-
pletely annexed into the French Empire. Initially cutting off the metropole from
its overseas colonies, the Southeast Asian possessions were first administered by
Marshall Herman Daendels (1808–11), a military officer loyal to the French,
and then placed under an English lieutenant-general (1811–15) after French for-
tunes took a turn for the worse and Britain invaded Java. Following Napoleon’s
defeat in 1813, the former Dutch Republic emerged from this period as a
kingdom under Willem I (r. 1813–40) and, in 1815, the Netherlands’ overseas
possessions were restored to Dutch sovereignty in accordance with the Anglo-
British Treaty of 1814. Nicknamed Coning Koopman (‘King Merchant’), the newly
crowned monarch exploited the effective bankruptcy of the VOC in 1796 and
the impact of the Industrial Revolution to lead a complete overhaul of Dutch
colonial policy, turning what now became the Netherlands East Indies into the
mainstay of the metropole’s economic prosperity.
The first two sections of this chapter, dealing with early nineteenth-century
warfare in the Minangkabau region of Sumatra and in central Java, serve to
illustrate the transition from the Islamic order shaped by centuries of network-
ing to a new phase in Indonesia’s Islamisation process, when Muslims were
confronted with the onslaught of modernity in the guise of European high
imperialism. The final sections of this chapter discuss how this challenge was
met by transforming the existent Muslim ecumene of the Indian Ocean into a
sense of Islamic nationhood and by emergent strands of proto-nationalism in
Minangkabau, Java, Aceh and elsewhere; forging new multilayered identities in
which Islam featured as one of the constituent elements.
The early Padri movement in west Sumatra’s Minangkabau

region (1803–25)
Scholarship has given much attention to the allegedly Wahhabi inspirations
for the so-called Padri Wars, creating the impression that the conflict was an
early exponent of the spread of eighteenth-century Arabian Islamic revivalism.1
Since the early 2000s, the association of the Padris with Wahhabism has been
reinforced through the identification of its leaders as progenitors of Salafism in
Indonesia by some Muslim activists operating on that side of the Islamic spec-
trum. The involvement of three returning hajjis with first-hand experience of the
Saudi-Wahhabi occupation of Mecca and Medina (1803–13) in the politico-
religious turmoil erupting in the Minangkabau during the first decade of the
nineteenth century, makes it tempting to project such a light on these events.
But as one authoritative voice on Minangkabau history and culture observes:
‘Coincidence is not proof [. . .] and in no Padri War-era Minangkabau text do
we find mention of Wahhabism’ (Hadler 2008: 979).
Therefore, the conflicts affecting the Minangkabau region should not be
narrowed down to an unprovoked, spontaneous eruption of religious zeal, nor
should the influence of other Islamic tendencies than Wahhabism be ignored.
Instead, the wars during the first decades of the nineteenth century are better
understood when placed within the wider context of drastic economic and social
changes affecting eighteenth-century Minangkabau, which then led to confron-
tations between different political forces employing competing politico-religious
discourses.
For more than thirty years, the mountainous Minangkabau region would
be the scene of continuous violence. Initially, the conflict was confined to a
confrontation between the old elite, consisting of Minangkabau nobility and
Islam as resistance
57
traditional chiefs, on the one hand, and ambitious religious enthusiasts, on the
other. But subsequently, as the theatre of operations expanded and other parties
became involved, things became more complicated. Therefore, it is important
to appreciate regional variations in the unfolding of the conflicts within the
Minangkabau itself, and to recognise the distinction between the early and later
phases of the war, which also differ in terms of the extent and intensity of Dutch
intervention.
Prelude: the Minangkabau at the eve of the nineteenth century

As noted earlier in this book, the complexity and diversity of the Minangkabau
world (Darat or Alam Minangkabau) also extends to its religious landscape. In spite
of formal allegiance to Islam, Christine Dobbin has rightly noted that: ‘Over
the centuries the Minangkabau exhibited towards foreign religions an attitude
typical of many mountain-dwellers towards the religions of the civilized world:
they remained largely impervious to them, whether they came by way of the
eastern or western lowlands’ (Dobbin 1983: 7). This observation resonates with
the work of James C. Scott on upland populations and other agrarian societies
in Southeast Asia. His analysis and theorising of an anarchist streak among these
subaltern peoples and of resistance under the aspect of ‘hidden transcripts’ in
books such as The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast
Asia and Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, also bear relevance
to the narrative of this chapter.
Consequently, indigenous religious and cultural features persisted well into
the nineteenth century – including a continuing role for the ‘spirit doctor’
(pawang) and the survival of the respective Minangkabau customary law (adat)
traditions of Bodi Caniago and Kota Piliang. However, transformations in the
socio-political structure under the influence of drastic shifts in the economic for-
tunes of key social actors in the Minangkabau world eventually led to ‘a period
of religious enthusiasm and frenzy’ during which a ‘particular regional variant
of Islam [. . .] briefly suffused and transformed an entire society’ (Dobbin 1983:
7). What had happened?
Until the 1500s, Minangkabau international commerce had been part of
the Indian Ocean and archipelagic mercantile networks involving Malays,
Acehnese, Chinese, Indians, Arabs and Minangkabau middlemen for many
centuries. That all changed with the arrival of the Europeans and their increas-
ingly interventionist ways of colonising Asia. Regional actors were under
increasing pressure when, by the mid-seventeenth century, the political and
economic power of both Malacca and Aceh had receded and the Dutch began
monopolising trade on Sumatra’s west coast. The Dutch turned the southern
port of Padang into their main emporium, taking control of the supply of textiles
in exchange for gold and pepper, while trying to stamp out the local production
of cotton, which was regarded as unwelcome competition. The VOC’s intrusive
trade policies forced indigenous middlemen into becoming Dutch agents or

had them replaced by Chinese.2 More changes were under way when, in the
course of the eighteenth century, the English East India Company and free
traders operating in its orbit also became increasingly involved in Sumatra’s
west coast commerce with Bengal, the Coromandel and Malabar Coasts. With
the establishment of a British colony in Penang in 1786, the English also began
syphoning off trade in cassia and gambir via the Malacca Straits. A growing
global demand for coffee from the 1790s onward saw American traders make
an appearance in the archipelago as well.
Thanks to this new interest, domestic coffee producers in the Minangkabau
hill villages began to prosper too. Unlike the rice fields of the valleys, which were
held as communal property of matriarchal lineages, economic activity on higher
elevations added to the personal wealth, or harta pencarian, of the male producers
(Dobbin 1983: 128; Hadler 2009: 7). Meanwhile, the decline in gold exports as
a result of the depletion of the Minangkabau mines in the 1820s and 1830s had
a negative impact on the economic fortunes of both miners and the traditional
lineage elites, who had historically dominated the trade in this precious metal.
This forms the background to the inroads made by Islamic reformist ideas
into the Minangkabau world at the end of the eighteenth century. All these
changes and the accompanying shifts in power created a combustible mix with
political repercussions, in which religion became an operative tool for the actors
involved. Apart from remaining alert to the wider socio-economic context,
a further word of caution is in place here. Most of what we know about the
Padri Movement comes from Dutch sources. While they provide quite detailed
information on what was a primary colonial concern, economics, data on the
role of Islam are generally presented as part of an emergent colonial surveil-
lance literature. And while the objective of that type of inquiry is to peer at the
goings-on behind what James Scott calls the ‘hidden transcripts’ of resistance,
the challenge of investigating such discourses is exactly that: they are hidden and
therefore seldom documented in the colonial archives. Consequently, what we
can learn from this literature is not only incomplete, but also refracted through
a particular lens of observation. However, there are also two indigenous sources
that chronicle the unfolding of the Padri Wars. The first one is the Hikayat Jalal
al-Din by Jalal al-Din Ahmad of Samiang, nicknamed faqih saghir (‘the little
jurist’), and a disciple of one of the main protagonists in the early stages of the
conflict.3 Composed in the 1820s, it not only offers insights into late eighteenth-
century Islamic reformism and the history of the Padri Wars, but also introduces
a new genre into the Malay-Muslim writing culture: the autobiography (Hadler
2009: 18). The other one is the Naskah Tuanku Imam Bondjol, the memoir of
another protagonist of the Padri Movement, named Peto Syarif (1772–1864),
who gained notoriety with the Dutch and fame among the Minangkabau as
Imam Bondjol.4
Islam as resistance
59
As a religion that is urban in origin, Islam’s infiltration of rural societies, with

their own agrarian cycles and accompanying cultural and religious practices,
has always proven cumbersome. Also in the Minangkabau, such indigenous
customs continued to flourish well into the nineteenth century. Consequently, it
was in Sumatra’s west coast ports, such as Ulakan and Pariaman, where Islam
found its first and also most lasting footholds, although – until the second half
of the eighteenth century – even there conversion remained largely restricted
to the broker or middlemen families. Islam penetrated the interior via both
the west and east coast rivers, where it primarily caught on with those involved
in the gold trade; in particular, the Minangkabau royal family with its close
relations to Malacca. Outside gold-producing villages, the prestige attached to
Islam was only modestly reflected in the incorporation of a religious functionary
known as malim (from the Arabic muʿallim, ‘teacher’) into the entourage of the
lineage chiefs or penghulus. But this was only for decorum and the malim had no
influence in the lineage council (Dobbin 1983: 118).
One institution that did provide an opportunity for Islam to enter into the
Minangkabau world proper was the surau. Originally this referred to ‘the house
where young men lived after puberty away from the lineage house’ (Dobbin
1983: 120). However, in the course of the Islamisation process this locale became
the Minangkabau equivalent of the pesantren or pondok and – with that – a key
link in the chain of transmission of Islamic learning. As in many other places
in the archipelago, in the Minangkabau the other important institution for this
Islamisation process was the Sufi brotherhood or tarekat. Both were instrumental
in facilitating the blending of Islam into the cultural settings of the Minangkabau,
while exposing the students to the universally shared core of Islamic doctrine. As
elsewhere, also in the Minangkabau, learning Arabic and studying fiqh, or Islamic
jurisprudence, formed the mainstay of the Minangkabau surau curriculum. At
the same time, the simultaneous presence of the Naqshbandiyya, Qadiriyya
and Shattariya orders resulted in the spread of varying strands of tasawwuf or
Sufi learning and practice. The Shattariyya tradition had been introduced at
Ulakan by Burhanuddin, a follower of the Aceh-based Abd al-Raʿuf al-Singkili.
From there it travelled inland into the Agam Valley, where the Kota Tua area
especially was turned into a major centre of Islamic learning, becoming known
as the base of the so-called Empat Angkat, or ‘four exalted ones’ – a reference to
four locally influential Shattariya Shaikhs (Dobbin 1983: 125). As discussed in
the previous chapter, what set the curriculum of the Shattariyya surau apart from
those associated with other Sufi brotherhoods was its focus on the martabat tujuh
– the doctrine of ‘seven stages’ outlined in al-Burhanpuri’s Tuhfat.
In spite of tensions between the different tarekat – for example, due to the
opposition especially of the Naqshbandiyya to the ‘seven stages’ doctrine – until
the end of the eighteenth century, the presence of surau and tarekat did not pose a
challenge to the wider society of the Minangkabau. However, with the expansion
of cassia and coffee exports, and the resulting influx of new wealth, things
started to change. Growing prosperity enabled more Minangkabau Muslims
to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, but booming trade also led to an expansion
of local and regional markets and with that to a rise in the problems associated
with the dark side of such concentrations of people and money, ranging from
banditry to dangers to public morality in the form of gambling (cock fighting),
prostitution, and the consumption of tuak (an alcoholic brew made from palm
trees), tobacco and – most worryingly – opium. Whereas the penghulu councils
of the traditional matriarchal lineage system struggled to respond effectively to
disputes arising in this changing environment, as centres of expertise in Islamic
law, and thanks to the general commercial flair exhibited in the sunna or Islamic
tradition, the surau and its teachers were much better equipped for dealing with
such legal and moral issues.
It is therefore not surprising that, from the 1780s onward, the spirit of Islamic
reformism suffused the Shattariyya of Kota Tua and – even more so – the
Naqshbandiyya based in neighbouring Cangking, leading to an ever more vig-
orous call for a return to the shariʿa in the Agam Valley. Bearing this in mind,
even with the arrival of pilgrims returning from a Wahhabi-occupied Hijaz,
Michael Laffan is right to suggest that ‘rather than seeing a Wahhabi genesis in
West Sumatra’, it is more helpful to understand the Padri Movement as having
grown up around scholars of a reforming Shattari tradition in the interior, who
rejected the authority of the incumbent masters based in the lowland town of
Ulakan (Laffan 2011: 41).
Economic transformation, Islamic reformism and political change

How these various modalities of Islamic revivalism and reformism were at work
in early nineteenth-century Minangkabau is best illustrated by comparing three
emblematic figures who dominated the beginning of the Padri Wars.
The first one to confront the challenges posed by increased trade and the
accompanying influx of money and people was Tuanku Nan Tua (d. 1824),
the leading Shattari teacher, ‘who had attracted literally thousands of pupils
to Kota Tua’ (Dobbin 1983: 125). He transformed himself from a political
quietist preoccupied with spiritual attainment into a guardian of public moral-
ity and dispenser of law and order. Not opposed to commerce as such (surau
needing to be self-sufficient were very much engaged in economic activity),
he campaigned against banditry and sent out missions of students to convince
leaders of surrounding villages to conduct trade in accordance with Islamic law.
Thanks to the success of these efforts, Tuanku Nan Tua became known as the
‘patron of traders’, and his campaign was expanded outside the Empat Angkat by
his chief disciple, ‘the little jurist’ Jalal al-Din (Dobbin 1983: 127).5 Although
this expansion did not go unchallenged by the traditional elite, a more serious
threat to these domestic Shattari reform efforts was indeed posed by the return
Islam as resistance
61
of pilgrims from Wahhabi-occupied Mecca, who favoured a more militant form

of Islamisation seemingly inspired by witnessing the revivalism promoted by
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.
The key representative of this alternative and, in regards to Minangkabau
culture, uncompromising approach was Tuanku Nan Rinceh (d. 1832), who
took as his protégé the most prominent of the returning pilgrims, Haji Miskin.
Both the Tuan and the Haji were former pupils of Tuanku Nan Tua and had
also been involved with Jalal al-Din’s expansion efforts of the ‘back to the
shariʿa’ movement outside the Kota Tua area. Although initially they continued
to have their mentor’s support, when the campaign of enforcing their own strict
interpretation of Islam took the level of violence to a whole new degree, this
resulted in an irreparable split. Consequently, Tuanku Nan Rinceh has been
characterised as ‘the archetypical Padri’; the name under which these puritan
zealots became known – although they referred to themselves as orang putih or
‘white ones’ – meaning truly pious Muslims (Dobbin 1983: 131; Laffan 2011:
41). Tuan Nan Rinceh managed to build up his own support base, which not
only consisted of followers such as Haji Miskin, but also received the patronage
of the leading Shattari shaykh of the whole Agam Valley, Tuanku Mensiangan,
who had been won over from his initial quietism to the principle that forcible
conversion was permitted if everything else had failed.
The final show-down between the two camps occurred during a debate in
1815, where Tuangku Nan Tua condemned the large-scale violence in which
one village was set against another, while Tuangku Nan Rinceh expressed his
frustration over the futility of low-intensity skirmishes between armed crowds.
Losing the argument, Tuanku Nan Tua and Jalal al-Din were denounced as
Rahib Tua (‘old Christian monk’) and Raja Kafir (‘King of Infidels’) respectively,
whereas Tuanku Mensiangan was hailed as the Imam Besar or ‘Great Imam’.
Tuanku Nan Rinceh himself, together with his entourage of seven malim,
became known as the harimau yang delapan (harimau nan salapan in Minangkabau);
the ‘Eight Tigers’ (Dobbin 1983: 134; Hadler 2009: 26). The forceful imposition
of Islamic judges (qadi) on villages still administered through penghulu councils,
the introduction of Arabised dress codes, and the unleashing of unrestrained
deadly violence, revenge killings and capturing of booty from the defeated, do
indeed invite comparisons with the Saudi-Wahhabi campaigns in Arabia.
However, continued coffee consumption and veneration of Sufi saints
– practices eschewed by the followers of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab – make such
Wahhabi parallels tenuous at best. Moreover, as the ‘Eight Tigers’ mobilised
their followers against Tuanku Nan Tua’s camp, there are plausible indications
of tarekat competition. Not only was Tuanku Nan Rinceh joined by someone
called Tuanku di Samani (suggesting a Sammaniyya connection), his chief
spokesman, Tuanku Nan Salih, made a specific point of highlighting and con-
demning the opposition’s persistent adherence to the Shattari doctrine of ‘seven
stages’. This unleashed a wave of violence against those suspected of continued

allegiance to the Shattariyya tradition: their villages were attacked, mosques
burned and ulama killed, while women (married and unmarried alike) were kid-
napped and married off to the invading Padris. This has led to speculation that
what was really going on was a take-over of the Agam Valley by the ‘more glob-
ally salient Naqshbandiyya brotherhood’ with greater affinity to reformist Islam
(Laffan 2011: 42). Aside from ideological incentives, personal grievances and
cold political calculation should not be discounted either: not only was Tuanku
Nan Salih the son of one of Tuanku Nan Tua’s victims in earlier purification
campaigns, the ‘Eight Tigers’ also manipulated poor villages without ancient
lineages against the Minangkabau elites, and intentionally turned Padris previ-
ously adhering to the Bodi Caniago adat tradition against Kota Piliang villages.
Pragmatic considerations seem also to underlie the ‘introduction of Padri
principles into Tanah Datar’ – the valley southeast of Agam (Dobbin 1983:
136). Here one Tuanku Lintau features as the third emblematic figure of the
early Padri uprising. This rich coffee-trader-turned-warlord appears to have
entertained rather opportunistic motives. After pursuing Islamic studies in the
coastal port towns, upon his return in 1813, he managed to obtain the patron-
age of the Raja Alam of Minangkabau for the sake of the moral improvement
of Tanah Datar along the lines of Tuanku Nan Rinceh’s teachings in the Agam
Valley. Two years later, still facing resolute opposition from most of the penghulu
establishment and feeling dissatisfied with the Raja Alam’s lack of strength,
Tuanku Lintau ambushed and massacred most of the royal family. To vin-
dicate these actions and legitimise his now unassailable position, he married
the daughter of the last Raja Ibadat and eventually took over the offices of
Raja Ibadat and Raja Adat himself. Tuanku Lintau and his hulubalangs, or war
chiefs, were more renowned for their martial skills than their piety or religious
learning, and it seems that economic considerations ruled paramount in their
subsequent campaigns. To compensate for the land lost to coffee cultivation,
they expanded their power into rice-growing lowland areas, while labour short-
ages were resolved by enslaving the subjugated populations. It was these sorts of
practices that earned Padris the near universal hostility of the valley population.
As a result, and in contrast to the highlands, the plains remained by and large
unconverted to the Padri cause.
While it was not possible to bring all hill villages under a unified administra-
tion, even independently, villages involved in the Padri uprising shared certain
features, including impressive mosque compounds surrounded by moats or
ponds; heavy fortifications, often extending into joint defence works with other
villages; and a male population that was on an almost constant war-footing.
While battlefield encounters out in the open remained rare, Padri warriors were
notorious for their intimidatingly aggressive challenges during hostilities. In this
context, there is another aspect of Padri warfare that is certainly at odds with
Islam as resistance
63
puritan interpretations of Islam but a common feature among militant Sufis:

invulnerability cults, in which magical incantations and the astrological determi-
nation of auspicious days for battle by religious teachers allegedly rendered the
hulubalangs invulnerable to lethal injuries (bertuah).6
The varying dynamics of the Padri movement in Agam, Tanah Datar
and Limapuluh Kota Valleys found yet another manifestation north of these
Minangkabau heartlands, gravitating around the village of Bonjol in the Alahan
Panjang Valley and its eponymous leader, Imam Bondjol.7 He has not just
come to be regarded as the face of the Padri Movement and a ‘trope of resist-
ance’ against Dutch colonialism (Hadler 2008: 975);8 in 1973, he was included
in the official pantheon of national heroes of the Indonesian Republic, where
he features together with only two other nineteenth-century Muslim leaders: the
Javanese Prince Diponegoro and Teuku Umar of Aceh.
The future Imam Bondjol – then still known as Peto Syarif – had also been
a pupil of Tuanka Nan Tua, but was pulled into the orbit of the Padris after a
visit by Haji Miskin and one of the local rulers, Datuk Bendahara, yet another
former student of Tuanku Nan Tua, who himself had switched sides because
he found the teachings of Tuanku Nan Rinceh more attractive. In spite of such
support, the Padri teachings met with much local resistance, not only on reli-
gious grounds, but also because of the influence they gave to people of modest
origins, such as Peto Syarif. As a result, the movement set up its own commu-
nity apart from mainstream Minangkabau society. After the assassination of
Datuk Bendahara in 1806 and an encouraging personal visit by Tuanku Nan
Rinceh, Imam Bondjol developed into a successful Padri war leader, further
aided in building his position by the growing economic prosperity that resulted
from Bonjol’s much improved trade relations. Between 1812 and 1825, Imam
Bondjol rose to become the undisputed leader of what originally had been a
quartet, known as the tuanku yang berempat, ‘the four tuanku’. By the mid-1820s,
Bonjol’s influence extended to the west coast ports of Tiku and Air Bangis that
had previously belonged to Aceh. Another wing of the Padri forces took the
movement’s influence further into the interior, even conquering part of the
Batak lands of northern Sumatra.
The Dutch reoccupation of Padang in 1819, however, blocked a southward
expansion of the Padris along the coast, forcing Imam Bondjol to change tactics.
With the restoration of independence and the foundation of the Kingdom of the
Netherlands, a new factor was added to the complexity of the Padri Wars: an
increasingly intrusive Dutch economic policy, bringing with it drastic changes
to the Minangkabau’s administrative system. Having benefitted economically
during the relatively benign English interregnum, from the 1820s onward,
the Padris were confronted with the newly designed colonial policy of King
Willem I. Seeing a confluence of their own interests with those of the traditional
Minangkabau elite, the Dutch made common cause with the royal family by
establishing a military alliance, based on a treaty signed in 1821 with Sultan

Alam Bagagar Syah, the nephew of the last Raja Alam of Minangkabau. As will
be seen in the next section, in line with similar policies that had been imposed
in Java, the Dutch appointed Sultan Alam and Tuanku Nan Tua’s nephew,
Tuanku Samit, as regents of Tanah Datar and Agam respectively. At the same
time, however, the Dutch also tried dismantling the matrilineal penghulu system
and replacing it with Dutch-paid village and district heads (called kepala negeri
and kepala laras). Benteng or fortresses were established in Tanah Datar (Fort van
der Capellen) and Agam (Fort de Kock) to support the monitoring of Padri
activity and movements by the Dutch colonial army (Dobbin 1983: 151–2).9
The Dutch return to Sumatra in 1819 also inaugurated their first large-scale
armed intervention against the Padri Movement, in the course of which Haji
Miskin became one of the early casualties. Aside from Minangkabau royalty and
the penghulu class, Muslim leaders such as Tuanku Nan Tua also began to see the
advantages of Dutch support. Meanwhile, Padri leaders such as Tuanku Nan
Rinceh, Tuanku Lintau, Tuanku Nan Saleh and also Imam Bondjol, feeling
secure enough owing to the opening of an alternative trade channel via newly
established Singapore or Aceh, were willing to accepted status quo agreements
proposed by the Dutch, whereby Padri authority and their right to promote
their religious system in the areas under their control were tolerated in exchange
for accepting a Dutch presence in Padang and the areas occupied in the military
campaigns between 1821 and 1825. At that point in time, the Padris felt they
were negotiating from a point of strength, because Dutch attention was now
consumed by concerns over another uprising in Java that constituted a graver
challenge to their hold over their colonial possessions.
From mystic synthesis to Islamic millenarianism: Diponegoro

and the Java War
While reformist Islamic influences acquired a foothold in Sumatra in the first
decades of the nineteenth century, in the course of the same time frame, the
Javanese Islamic synthesis reached its apotheosis at the Yogyakarta court in the
person of Prince Diponegoro (1785–1855) and his leadership during the Java
War. What interests us here is how Islam coloured this indigenous Javanese
response to Dutch colonisation. But, in order to be able to assess this properly,
and also appreciate the wider importance of this confrontation between the
Javanese and their Dutch colonisers, which would define the colonial relation-
ship for its remaining century, it needs to be contextualised within a setting of
relevant aspects of imperial history. For this, three issues need to be addressed:
the circumstances leading to the outbreak of violent hostilities; the figure of
Diponegoro; and the composition of his support base and the reasons for the
eventual breakdown of his alliance of forces.
Islam as resistance
65
The political context: a new kind of colonialism

The Java War erupted on the back of the formation of the Concert of Europe
at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Both are part and parcel of an emergent
new world order, in which Napoleon’s empire made way for a new balance of
power in Europe and for industry-driven European imperialism on an unprec-
edented scale elsewhere in the world. Prefiguring the notion of ‘glocalisation’,
which was coined by Roland Robertson to characterise a much later worldwide
phenomenon, the effects of the new colonial drive behind nineteenth-century
empire-building manifested themselves globally as well as locally, because the
Concert of Europe and the Java War also reflect a redefinition of power rela-
tions between European countries, as well as within their overseas possessions in
Southeast Asia, with the Netherlands having to surrender primacy in the Indian
Ocean to Britain and Yogyakarta being forced to come to terms with the defini-
tive demise of the Majapahit–Mataram legacy. Glimpses of this increasingly
invasive and repressive Dutch presence have already been signalled in the previ-
ous section, but, before other parts of the Indonesian archipelago were affected
in the course of the nineteenth century, Java was first to bear the full brunt of
this development in a prelude lasting from 1808 until 1815.
The redefinition of the relationship between central Java’s courts and Batavia
began under Napoleon’s appointee as governor-general, Herman Daendels
(1762–1818). It was during his tenure (1808–11) that the foundations were
laid for the modern colonial state of the Netherlands East Indies. His strat-
egy consisted of breaking the connection between the courts and the Pasisir,
combined with securing access to the economic resources of the courts’ own
territories in central and east Java, including forest produce, cash crops, labour
and rice-producing districts, while also executing a more detailed border demar-
cation between the Yogyakarta and Surakarta sultanates. He also intended
to exercise tighter military and political control through the centralisation of
colonial administration, which included new edicts for ceremony and protocol
that greatly upset the etiquette-conscious Javanese court elites. According to a
key scholarly authority on the period, ‘[t]his was not just about changing a few
archaic practices, a little tinkering at the edges to bring the East Indies [sic]
Company into the modern world. This was root and branch change [. . .] it was
clear that Java had entered a new age’ (Carey 2014: 85–6).
Some members of the Yogyakarta royal family would not take this oppres-
sion lying down. Foreshadowing the more significant Java War orchestrated by
his distant but more senior relative Diponegoro (a grandson of the second and
son of the third sultan), Raden Ronggo Prawirodirjo III (1779–1810) led a brief
revolt against Daendels in 1809–10. In contrast to Diponegoro, who would cast
himself as a distinctly Islamic leader, Raden Ronggo can be considered as Java’s
‘Old Order’s last champion’ (Carey 2014: 91). Although Raden Ronggo too
may have regarded himself as a Ratu Adil or ‘Just King’, there was an important
difference with Diponegoro’s future undertaking: despite his extensive con-

nections with the east Javanese Islamic communities, there was nothing in
Ronggo’s rebellion which distinguished the ‘people of Islam’ from the European
kapir and Javanese ‘apostate’. Instead, the spirit of the Hindu-Javanese shadow
play (wayang) and the ghost of Sultan Mangkubumi hovered over his enterprise
(Carey 2014: 103).
The abortive revolt did little to derail Daendels’s policies. The reigning Sultan
Hamengkubuwono II (1750–1828) was unceremoniously shoved aside while his
son (Diponegoro’s father) and serving crown prince, Raden Mas Surojo (1769–
1814), was appointed as a figurehead regent. This Dutch-orchestrated palace
revolution opened the way for the annexation of Yogyakarta’s borderlands with
the north coast and the cancellation of the traditional payment of strandgeld or
‘rent’ by the Dutch to the court for the use of the Pasisir.10 Faced with an impos-
sible political situation, Yogyakarta teetered on the brink of civil war, but a
brief reprieve came when – in May 1811 – Daendels was replaced as governor-
general following the annexation of the Netherlands into Napoleon’s empire
almost a year earlier. However, within months Java was invaded and conquered
by a British army from India. During a temporary breakdown in law and order
after the bloody battle between Franco-Dutch and British forces at the strong-
hold of Meester Cornelis, a reckoning also took place at the Yogyakarta court.
While the prince regent was spared and again appointed as crown prince, the
reinstated Sultan Hamengkubuwono II ordered the assassination of the corrupt
chief minister who had treacherously taken advantage of Daendels’s fiscal poli-
cies. The incident is relevant in that when explaining the minister’s ‘dispatch’
to the British, the sultan included the defamation of Islam among the charges
(Carey 2014: 122).
Eventually, Britain took control of Java and placed its administration in the
hands of two key figures from nineteenth-century British imperial history in
Southeast Asia: Thomas Stamford Raffles (1771–1826) as Lieutenant-Governor
of Java and John Crawfurd (1783–1868) as British Resident in Yogyakarta.
Unfortunately, ‘the despoliation of Yogya treasure’ and ‘evisceration of the
south-central Javanese courts’ started under Daendels simply continued during
the British interregnum (1811–15), when the latter showed themselves as the
‘world’s champion colonial asset strippers’ (Carey 2014: 91, 114). Within half
a year of their arrival, relations between the British and the sultan broke down.
This resulted not only in the latter’s second removal from the throne and the
appointment of the crown prince as Hamengkubuwono III (r. 1812–14), but
also in the full-scale pillage and plunder of the kraton by British and Bengali
troops. Neither Yogyakarta nor Surakarta would ever again pose a threat to
European rule. For that reason, Peter Carey suggests that ‘1812, rather than
the end of the Java War, should perhaps be seen as the date when the new
colonial era dawned in Java’ (Carey 2014: 135). From then on support for
Islam as resistance
67
challenges of colonial hegemony would come from outside the court tradition.
Eventually more an inspirational than a political success, the five-year-long war
that ravaged Java between 1825 and 1830 depended on its leader’s ability to get
the Islamic religious communities and the Javanese peasantry behind his cause.
In this Diponegoro was unwittingly aided by both British and Dutch colonial
policies of the ensuing two decades. Although Raffles and Crawfurd’s esteem
for indigenous culture and learning contrasted with the policies of the philistine
Daendels and many post-revolutionary Dutch colonial administrators, their
relations with select members of the Javanese elite were no less exploitative and
manipulative. Aside from replacing Hamengkubuwono II with Crown Prince
Raden Mas Surojo, they curtailed the latter’s power by appointing his uncle
Notokusomo (1764–?) as an independent prince with his own army under the
title Pakualam I (1813–29) – thus replicating the same divide-and-rule scenario
that the VOC had directed in Surakarta through the Treaty of Gyanti of 1755.
The new treaties imposed on Yogyakarta in August 1812 were nothing short of
a political revolution, as the ruler’s armed forces were disbanded and more ter-
ritories were annexed, while the abolition of the office of provincial or district
bupati (roughly comparable to a governor) left many members of the royal family
destitute. The introduction of a cash tax scheme meanwhile delivered the peas-
antry into the hands of Chinese moneylenders, which caused increasing ethnic
tension throughout central Java. Finally, a new judicial system placed all for-
eigners and Javanese born outside the principalities under the jurisdiction of the
colonial government, thus curtailing the role of the religious courts or surambi.
All these measures contributed to the future rallying of the religious communi-
ties and peasantry behind Diponegoro. As his father’s chief political adviser,
the prince was further alienated when – after the third sultan’s unexpectedly
early death in 1814 – Raffles appointed the corrupt Pakualam I as regent of
Diponegoro’s half-brother, the child sultan Hamengkubuwono IV (1804–23,
r. 1814–22).11 Although he tried to actively involve himself in his younger sib-
ling’s education, Diponegoro could only watch the court’s further degradation
during the remainder of the British interregnum and the subsequent return of
the Dutch, whose new colonial policy was every bit as interventionist and sub-
verting to the standing of Yogyakarta. In Peter Carey’s assessment:
The roots of the sultanate’s descent in the moral abyss, pithily described by Van
Hogendorp in his reference to the Dutch transformation of the kraton into ‘a
brothel’, can be traced to this period. So too can Diponegoro’s implacable con-
viction that Yogyakarta should be destroyed, and the apostate Javanese rulers
stripped of their political power for a new moral order based on Islamic precepts
and traditional Javanese values to be established. (Carey 2014: 161)
Javanese elite resentment of the Dutch deepened when the sexual exploitation of
Javanese women by depraved Dutch officials was widened to family members of
the nobility, while Diponegoro’s personal anti-Dutch sentiments further intensi-

fied as a result of the persecution and exile of Kyai Murmo Wijoyo, a respected
Islamic religious leader with close ties to his father.
Although the first governor-general appointed by the newly founded
Kingdom of the Netherlands, Godert van der Cappellen (1778–1848, in office
1816–26), was of the opinion that Dutch colonialism could not continue without
protecting the local population from excessive exploitation, this was not the view
of Koning Koopman Willem I. He saw colonies as wingewesten (areas for making
profit) that could restore the economic fortune of the impoverished metropole.
This attitude was shared by the influx of veterans from the Napoleonic wars,
post-revolutionary colonial administrators, and plain fortune seekers; ‘newcom-
ers’ (baroe datang) despised by Batavia’s creole elite (Carey 2014: 169). Van der
Cappellen was a man decades ahead of his time, because only with the intro-
duction of the Ethische Politiek (Ethical Policy) in 1901, would safeguarding the
welfare of colonial subjects become recognised as a government responsibility.
In the meantime, Diponegoro’s resolve only hardened to return Java to
the political order existing before Daendels – when Dutch and Javanese had
respected each other’s sovereignty. The new Dutch administration not only
sought to acquire land for settlers, it also imposed yet again a new set of tax regu-
lations enabling unscrupulous Yogyakarta courtiers and Chinese merchants
to take advantage of the common people. The resulting social and economic
malaise led to a string of millenarian movements: in 1817 a villager named
Umar Mahdi – claiming to a be soldier of the Ottoman sultan and having the
support of one of the Wali Songo, Sunan Bonang – called on his followers to expel
Chinese and Europeans from Java. They were all quickly arrested. The same
year, 4,000 Javanese from the Madiun area congregated at a place associated
with the so-called Joyoboyo Prophecy as the locale where the ‘Just King’ would
manifest himself. In 1819, a similar event occurred in Malang, while in Blitar, a
holy man known as Iman Sampurno (‘Sage of the Perfect Faith’) predicted the
coming of a plague, which eventually materialised in 1821 in the form of a wide-
spread cholera epidemic. As part of his prophecy, he proclaimed that Muslims
could ward off the danger by returning to their true faith. All these incidents
resonate strongly with what eventually transpired in the Java War.
Diponegoro’s messianic mission

This then forms the setting in which Diponegoro would eventually unleash a
full-blown uprising against the Dutch. But aside from having an understanding
of the political context, to appreciate the nature of this rebellion, the personality
of its leader requires closer scrutiny too.
The prince’s birth name was Bendoro Raden Mas Mustahar. As per Javanese
royal tradition, when he turned twenty in 1805, he was given his adult name
Raden Ontowiryo. Seven year later, he finally received the princely title of
Islam as resistance
69
Bendoro Pangeran Arjo Diponegoro from his father on the occasion of the lat-
ter’s ascension to the throne as Hamengkubuwono III.12 Although he was the
first-born of a future sultan, who in turn was the oldest grandchild of the founder
of the Yogyakarta lineage, Mangkubumi, the fact that Diponegoro’s mother
was an unofficial wife (garwa ampeyan) formed a hindrance to his succession to
the throne. In spite of her modest status at the court, his mother Raden Ayu
Mangkorowati (1770?–1852) could claim descent from Kyai Ageng Prampelan,
a retainer of the founder of the Mataram dynasty, as well as from one of the Wali
Songo: Sunan Ampel of Gresik. This pedigree certainly fed into Diponegoro’s
sense of predestination.
In the Babad Diponegoro, the memoir he eventually wrote during his twenty-
five-year exile on Sulawesi, Diponegoro recorded that when he was presented
to the ageing Mangkubumi, the latter foretold that this child would cause the
Dutch even greater trouble than he had done himself, but that its outcome
would only be known to God. This resonates with another prediction ascribed
to the seventeenth-century Sultan Agung: that after the end of his reign in 1646,
the Dutch would rule Java for 300 years, during which time just one Mataram
descendant would rise up, only to be defeated. Diponegoro’s sense of destiny
was very much shaped by the recollection of these and other prophesies, con-
tained in the Aji Soko tales and the Serat Joyoboyo, in which early Javanese lore and
Islamic allusions are interwoven into a narrative of mystic synthesis (Ricklefs
1974: 242–4; Carey 2014: 60, 201–2). During meditation retreats at various
stages of his life, Diponegoro also had his own immediate spiritual experiences,
involving mystical encounters with both the Javanese spirit world and Islamic
saintly figures. These included an 1805 pilgrimage to the south coast, as part of a
Javanese aristocrat’s rite of passage into adulthood. For Diponegoro this lengthy
spiritual wandering turned into a seminal event of life-changing significance,
similar to that of his great-grandfather Mangkubumi and the latter’s brother-in-
arms Raden Mas Said, the later Mangkunegoro I.
By way of preparation for this episode as a satria lelono or wandering knight,
Diponegoro visited a number of mosques and religious schools in the Yogya area,
while also shaving his hair, dressing in a white robe, putting on a green turban,
and calling himself Seh Ngabdurahim (Shaykh Abd al-Rahim). Adopted for the
sake of anonymity, the Arabic name – together with his changed appearance
and mosque visits – evince a distinctly Islamic component in what is very much
a deeply Javanese practice. Eventually, retreating from the inhabited world
(tirakat), in the course of this period of solitude, Diponegoro had a visitation by
Sunan Kalijaga while meditating in the cave of Song Kamal. This instilled in
him a conviction that he was not only destined to be a temporal leader, but also
to become a wali in his own right– a ‘spiritual overseer of the Javanese sover-
eigns’ (Carey 2014: 52). Marking the symbiosis between the Islamic and ancient
Javanese traditions in this spiritual quest, he then continued to Imogiri, the royal
gravesite of the Mataram dynasty. There he visited the shrines of Sultan Agung,
Mangkubumi and Ratu Agung, before continuing to the coast for an encoun-
ter with Ratu Kidul – the Goddess of the Southern Sea. Although as a devout
Muslim, Diponegoro resolutely rejected the goddess’s offer of supernatural assis-
tance, he would retain a lifelong fascination with this pagan figure. The last visi-
tation of this early spiritual journey occurred at nearby Parangkusumo, where he
experienced a foretelling of the destruction of Yogyakarta and the ruin of Java.
He was also instructed to look after his father, the future Hamengkubuwono III,
not to accept the office of crown prince, but instead to remain on the lookout for
a sign in the form of an arrow named ‘Sarutomo’.
Finally, Diponegoro changed his name from Ngabdurahim to Ngabdulkamit.
A corruption of Abd al-Hamid, it has been suggested that this new Muslim
name was a reference to Sultan Abd al-Hamid I (r. 1773–87), the first Ottoman
ruler to explicitly claim the title ‘caliph’ and actively use it to legitimise his rule
(Ricklefs 1974: 241). It also conjures up associations with the Sultan of Ngrum
(Rum), which is not only mentioned in the Aji Soko legends and Joyoboyo
prophecy, but which – as discussed in earlier chapters – has been a persistent
motif in Southeast Asian Islamic lore, in particular in relation to establishing
the credentials of Muslim rulers. The sign of the arrow ‘Sarutomo’, meanwhile,
recalls an episode involving Arjuna, the hero of the Mahabharata-inspired
Javanese shadow play. The figuring of Sunan Kalijaga and Sultan Agung,
alongside Arjuna and the rejection of Ratu Kidul, provide a quartet of motifs
that gave Diponegoro ‘a clearer sense of his prophetic destiny and place in
Javanese history’, at a point in time when the old regime was crumbling under
the imposition of a new colonial order (Ricklefs 1974: 228).
These experiences also illustrate Ricklefs’s caution – later repeated by Carey
– of measuring Diponegoro against some kind of universal Islamic standard or
characterising him as a ‘purifier’ of Islam:
That is not to suggest that Dipanagara [Diponegoro] was not a Muslim. [. . .] If
one is to understand Dipanagara’s views, one’s first task must be to understand
what were the traditions and beliefs which he inherited, rather than what were
the beliefs of coreligionists living thousands of miles away. (Ricklefs 1974: 228;
quoted in Carey 2014: xxxviii)
Religion, and Islam in particular, is of central importance for understanding

Diponegoro and his significance for Indonesian history, because as Ricklefs
added: ‘It was where everything began’ (Ricklefs 1974: 229). This beginning
was at Tegalrejo, the country estate of his great-grandmother, Mangkubumi’s
widow Ratu Agung, where Diponegoro spent his childhood years – sheltered
from the court intrigues for which he developed a lifelong aversion.13 Compared
with the later visionary experiences, here Diponegoro also had a more conven-
tional exposure to Islamic learning. Female relatives played an important role in
Islam as resistance
71
Diponegoro’s early religious upbringing. Aside from Ratu Agung, these included
also his paternal grandmother Ratu Kedhaton, who came from Madura – an
island renowned for its Islamic intellectual tradition, in particular in the fields of
Arabic grammar and prosody. Eventually, Diponegoro inherited Tegalrejo and
it became his main residence and retreat, resulting in lengthy absences away
from the kraton that irritated both his grandfather and father. While Diponegoro
would attend the courtly Garebeg ceremonies on the occasion of the Prophet’s
birthday and the celebrations of the end of the fasting (Eid al-Fitr) and the pil-
grimage (Eid al-Adha), he found their particular format – which he considered
more Javanese than Islamic – sinful.
Tegalrejo’s rural setting not only enabled Diponegoro to become intimately
acquainted with the lifestyle of Java’s peasantry, it also offered an entry point into
the pesantren world of Java’s ‘students of religion’ or santri. In fact, Diponegoro’s
first wife and mother of his oldest son was the daughter of a kyai or religious
teacher. This future Prince Diponegoro II (d. before 1856) would eventually
change his name to Raden Mantri Muhamad Ngarip in 1830. In his own
memoir, Babad Dipanagara Surya Ngalam, he remembered his mother as ‘a devout
woman who took pleasure in accompanying her husband in his religious duties’
(Carey 2014: 25). Aside from these village contacts, Diponegoro’s religious ori-
entation also stimulated relations with members of the Yogyakarta court who
shared his Islamic interests, as well as with prominent non-Javanese Muslims in
the Tegalrejo area, such as Shaykh Abdullah al-Ansari – an Arab from Jeddah
who had married into the family of the first sultan’s son. According to reports
from another one of Diponegoro’s sons, Raden Mas Alip, the shaykh and his
son-in-law Ahmad were among Diponegoro’s leading advisers in the run-up to
the war in 1825.
The Tegalrejo estate was also in the vicinity of the so-called pathok negari or
‘pillars of the state’ – a reference to Yogyakarta’s ‘four main centres for scholars
of Islamic law’ (Carey 2014: 17). During the Java War, Diponegoro would marry
the daughter of a revered kyai from one of these centres, Kasongan, and employ
the services of the sons of another based in Melangi. This was Kyai Taptojani,
a scholar originating from Sumatra, who had a reputation as an able transla-
tor of particularly difficult Islamic texts. By then Kyai Taptojani had moved to
Surakarta and – in very old age – he played a role in the first round of peace
negotiations during the Java War. In Diponegoro’s younger years, Surakarta
was more important as a religious centre than Yogyakarta thanks to the gener-
ous patronage extended by Sunan Pakubuwono IV. Its Garebeg ceremonies drew
santri from all over Java, whereas those in Yogyakarta remained very much local
affairs. This was also a reason for his deeply religious son, Diponegoro II, to
decide to study with another Surakarta-based scholar, Kyai Mojo (d. 1859). The
tensions that would later develop between Diponegoro’s supporters from among
the Yogyakarta aristocracy and those drawn from Surakarta ulama circles can
partly be attributed to the appointment of Kyai Mojo as the prince’s most

prominent santri adviser.
In fact, at least four of Diponegoro’s sons would receive a pesantren educa-
tion and become ardent Muslims, undoubtedly stimulated by their father’s own
interest in Islamic learning. His own lack of a formal education would affect
not only Diponegoro’s writing style, which remained hesitant and ungrammati-
cal throughout his life, but also the informal way he spoke. However, records
show Diponegoro’s exposure to broad Islamic learning. He studied Burhanpuri’s
Tuhfa and other works on tasawwuf, as well as Javanese suluk, Qur’anic exegesis,
histories of the prophets (sirat al-anbiya), usul al-din and Islamic jurisprudence, and
works on Islamic political philosophy, including Sirat al-Salatin and Taj al-Salatin.
In addition, he read adaptions from Arabic and Persian tales about kingship and
statecraft, alongside Javanese versions of texts on Indian heroes such as Rama
and Arjuna, famous cycles of wayang, the Serat Menak – the epic of Amir Hamza
(the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle) – and texts on cosmogony and agricultural
myth. The resulting understanding of Islam, also corroborated by his autobiog-
raphy and surviving notebooks from his later exile, ‘show[s] that he was more a
typical Javanese mystic than an orthodox Muslim reformer’ (Carey 2014: 33).
Peter Carey, who is among the foremost expert scholars who has closely
studied Diponegoro’s writings, explains that the latter’s mystical view of tokid or
tawhid – the absolute unity and unicity of God, an understanding of which can
only be attained through a fourfold path traversing faith (iman), gnosis (ma’ripat)
and true islam – is ‘typical Javanese primbon (divination almanac) material’. Even
the mention of tarekat must not be understood as pointing to the Sufi orders,
but as a reference to the Shattariya as ‘a receptacle for many old-fashioned
mystical teachings’. Consequently, he concludes that ‘[t]here was nothing in
Diponegoro’s visions which involved the creation of an Islamic society along the
lines of the Padri reformers’ (Carey 2013: 35).
The Java War: a final Javanese–Dutch showdown

Diponegoro’s final realisation of his millenarian role and the critical develop-
ments leading up to its eventual fulfilment converged in a three-year run-up to
the outbreak of the actual war in 1825.
With the unexpectedly early end in 1822 of the morally corrupt reign of a
still young Hamengkubuwono IV, a very reluctant Diponegoro was appointed
as one of four guardians to the next child-sultan. Meanwhile the volcanic
eruption of Yogyakarta’s Mount Merapi at the end of the same year gave a
further sense of foreboding. Adding to Diponegoro’s personal frustration was
intense disappointment at being passed over again for succession, whereas in
neighbouring Surakarta the son of a concubine was allowed to ascend to the
throne as Susuhunan Pakubuwono VI (r. 1823–30). At the same time, the
Yogyakarta treasury was dealt its final blow, when Governor-General van der
Islam as resistance
73
Cappellen tried to sabotage Willem I’s new policy favouring direct coffee cul-
tivation by Dutch planters by decreeing that all European- and Chinese-held
lands should be returned to their original owners. However, the effects of this
measure were the kraton’s effective bankruptcy, because it could not meet the
indemnity payments to the affected lessees. In the concomitant breakdown in
law and order, villagers and estate workers resorted to settling scores with hated
foreign masters, while bandits and other criminals also took full advantage of the
ensuing chaos. In this state of near anarchy, the already very tense relationship
between Diponegoro and his stepmother (mother of the late Hamengkubuwono
IV) broke down completely over substituting the incumbents of critical courts
positions with pliable but unsuitable replacements and her insistence on throw-
ing in the royal family’s fortunes with the Dutch. Diponegoro’s subsequent mal-
treatment and insults at the hands of the equally incompetent Dutch Resident
in Yogyakarta and his deputy led to the complete severance of his relations with
the court in February 1824.
Against this background, Diponegoro sought refuge in spiritual contem-
plation, inaugurating a crucial fifteen-month period of visitations and dream
occurrences which he later carefully documented in his autobiography. The
two most crucial episodes concern the final premonitions of his role as ‘Just
King’ (Ratu Adil). Recorded in great detail in his Babad Dipanegara, the most
telling passages deserve to be cited in full. Both occurred at similarly auspicious
moments, namely during the so-called Layla al-Qadr – the night toward the end
of the month of Ramadan when Muhammad received the first revelations of the
Qur’an in 610 ce. In the first one, in May 1824, Diponegoro is summoned by a
man dressed like a hajji:
The prince had not the strength to know
or to look upon the countenance
of the Ratu Adil, whose brilliance
indeed eclipsed the sun.
Only his clothing was closely observed
by the prince in its entirety.
His Turban was green
[and] he wore a white jubah (tabard)
white trousers [and] a red shawl.
He faced the northwest [direction of the qibla, CK]
[. . .]
Ah, you Ngabdulkamid
the reason I have summoned you
is for you to set my army fighting.
Let Java be conquered immediately!
If anyone
should ask you
for your mandate, it is the Qur’an (Carey 2014: 215–16)
The second vision was preceded by three recurring dreams of the late
Hamengkubuwono IV’s mother, in which she received an instruction that her
son’s widow should marry a wali wudhar. Interpreting this as a reference to
Diponegoro, the prince was duly approached, but because of the soured rela-
tion with his stepmother, the attempt evidently failed. However, Diponegoro
consulted Kyai Rahmanudin, the former penghulu of Yogyakarta, as to the
meaning of these dreams. The latter explained that, although wali wudhar was
often taken to be a reference to the Wali Songo, it actually referred to six key
Qur’anic Prophets (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad),
Sunan Giri and Sultan Agung, suggesting that Diponegoro might be the ninth.
This very Javanese reading is heretical, in the sense that Islamic tradition con-
siders Muhammad as the ‘Seal of the Prophets’ (khatim al-anbiya’), meaning that
divine prophecy ended with him. Rahmanudin’s reading of the queen mother’s
dreams also holds the clue to Diponegoro’s ultimate pre-war vision during the
fasting of 1825:
You have been given the title
by the Almighty
of Sultan Ngabdulkamid
Erucokro Sayidin
Panatagama of Java
Kalifat Rasulullah (Carey 2014: 221)
Seeing these various Islamic and non-Islamic designations side by side makes
this a very powerful stanza. ‘Just King’ (Erucokro), ‘Lord of Faith’ (Sayidin),
‘Regulator of the Faith’ (Panatagama), and ‘Caliph of the Messenger of God’
(Kalifat Rasulullah) underscore the multilayered and multifaceted aspects of reli-
gious identity formation, as well as its dynamic character; identity is not fixed
but constantly evolving, as is the very process of Islamisation. This pile-up of
titles also strengthened Diponegoro’s resolve not only to drive out the Dutch,
but also to replace the defiled court and see to the fulfilment of his war-time call
to be recognised as the ‘Regulator of the Faith’ – the one demand he refused
to give up even when the war was lost and he was facing the certain prospect
of exile or worse. While his claims as ‘Just King’ and adjudicator of Javanese-
Islamic law served as the rallying call for the santri communities to side with
Diponegoro, his aristocratic mission of establishing a new kraton alienated them
and would eventually contribute to a split with Kyai Mojo and his followers.
Aside from this ‘class’ dimension and the regional rivalry between Yogyakarta
and Surakarta that has been alluded to earlier, the breakdown of trust between
Diponegoro and Kyai Mojo, in 1827, was also precipitated by the latter’s insist-
ence on a division of political authority:
Mojo, according to Diponegoro’s account, challenged the prince’s position as
Sultan Erucokro by asking him to divide his sovereignty into four parts, that of
Islam as resistance
75
ratu (king), wali (apostle of religion), pandita (one learned in the law) and mukmin
(the believers), suggesting that Diponegoro should choose one of these functions.
If he chose that of ratu, Mojo implied that he himself would take that of wali and
enjoy undisputed religious authority. (Carey 2014: 254)
Not surprisingly, Diponegoro refused. Given that Kyai Mojo was the ideological
driving force on account of his intellectual superiority, the breakdown of rela-
tions undermined Diponegoro’s standing with the santri, thereby fragmenting
the ‘unique social breadth and religious fervor’ of the prince’s alliance consist-
ing of aristocracy, peasantry and pious Muslim communities (Carey 2014: 256).
Meanwhile, the renaming of Diponegoro as Ngabdulkamid pointed not just at
the well-known trope of the ‘Sultan of Rum’ in Southeast Asian Muslim litera-
tures. On a more mundane level, it also served as an inspiration to organise his
army along the same lines as the Ottoman military: his most senior field com-
mander Sentot (1808–55), the teenage son of the late Raden Ronggo, received
the title Ali Basah (Ali Pasha or ‘High Commander’), while various units were
named after regiments from the Janissary Corps (Carey 2014: 60).
The actual unfolding of the Java War has been the subject of multi-volume
studies by Dutch military historians and need not detain us here.14 What is of
interest though is that – after the Dutch had besieged and destroyed the Tegalrejo
estate – Diponegoro proclaimed a ‘Holy War’ (perang sabil) with himself acting
as the ‘head (imam) of the Islamic religion in Java’, while issuing authorisations
(piagem) to princes and other members of the court elite (priyayi) to act as local
commanders. Noblemen elsewhere in Java were also eager to receive such man-
dates, regarding them as an opportunity to serve their own regional interests,
which would eventually compromise the war effort. Such tensions between the
differing objectives of the various actors involved in the rebellion would eventu-
ally also affect Diponegoro’s relationship with his santri support base. Aside from
Java’s aristocracy and their peasant levies, the Muslim communities had formed
the second support base of the rebellion in terms of both ideological motivation
and manpower. They consisted of pious Muslims from the Yogyakarta court,
pesantren and tax-free villages (pradikan or perdikan), but included also some Arabs
and mixed-blood Chinese converts, as well as the forces mobilised by the above-
mentioned Surakarta-based Kyai Mojo.
It was the religious character of the Java War – exemplified by Diponegoro’s
continued insistence on being recognised as ‘Protector and Regulator of the
Faith’ and its reliance on mobilising the santri constituency of the population –
that convinced his Dutch opponents of the threat this posed to ‘the foundations
of the Christian West’s authority in Java, distinguishing it from the dynastic
struggles of previous centuries’ (Carey 2014: 251). This meant that the solution
to such past conflicts – a nominally independent kingdom along the lines of those
given to Hamengkubuwono I, Mangkunegoro I or Pakualam I – was out of the
question. Consequently, after Diponegoro’s dramatic surrender to General de

Kock at Magelang in 1830, he was shipped off into exile on Sulawesi: the
first three years in Manado, the capital of the heavily Christianised northern
province of Minahasa, then for the remainder of his life as a virtual prisoner in
Makassar’s Fort Rotterdam. Here, while his physical environment contracted,
Diponegoro’s spiritual world expanded as he first wrote down his memoirs and
then prepared for the end by what in the Javanese Shattariya tradition is called
plawanganing pati (‘[opening] the gateway to death’) (Carey 2014: 321). Assessing
the significance of Diponegoro and the Java War, Peter Carey writes:
Diponegoro fought both for the restoration of an idealized Javanese past, and the
establishment of a new moral order in which the teachings of Islam, especially its
legal precepts, would be upheld. This was the essence of his popular appeal for
the religious communities and his importance for the future, his style of ‘mystic
synthesis’ forming one of the key strands of Islamic piety in post-1830 Javanese
society. (Carey 2014: 328)
From religious purification to ‘Minangkabau nationalism’

Post-1830 Sumatra was also confronted with reinvigorated Dutch colonisation.
When the Dutch became distracted by the start of the Java War in 1825, Padri
leaders in Lintau and Bonjol had felt sufficiently emboldened to increase their
raids. With the appointment of King Willem’s confidant, Johannes van den
Bosch, as the new governor-general of the Netherlands East Indies (1830–3)
and the introduction of a more invasive colonial economic policy, Padris and
the Dutch were set on a new collision course. Like Java, by the early 1830s,
Sumatra’s Minangkabau too had experienced more than a decade of Dutch
interference in their polity. The various causes of their dissatisfaction were
similar to those of the Javanese: new tax regimes; direct Dutch involvement in
coffee cultivation; the obligation to provide coolie services; the insult of quarter-
ing Dutch troops in mosques; and administrative changes that undermined the
penghulu lineage system in much the same way as comparable measures on Java
had done to the authority of the priyayi (Dobbin 1983: 196). The second phase of
conflict and confrontation in west and central Sumatra would even feature some
of same dramatis personae as the Java War.
In the course of the five-year lull in Padri–Dutch hostilities, the situation
in Minangkabau underwent another significant change. During this period, a
noticeable laxity had developed in the observance of Padri-imposed regula-
tions, such as the prescription of female dress codes and prohibition of the use
of tobacco and chewing betel. Given the earlier scepticism expressed over the
characterisation of the Padri Movement as a Wahhabi-inspired phenomenon,
interpreting this relaxation of rules as a manifestation of disenchantment on
receiving news from returning pilgrims about the Saudi-Wahhabi defeat in
Islam as resistance
77
1818 at the hands of an Ottoman-Egyptian expeditionary force is not con-

vincing. A more plausible explanation for this lessened puritan fervour in the
intervening years is that it had worn down due to the persistent rejection of the
Padri Islamisation efforts by the traditional Minangkabau elite and their follow-
ers, combined with the military pressure exercised by the Dutch since the early
1820s and enforced with new energy after the end of the Java War. Eventually
such opposition forced the remaining Padri not just to make compromises
regarding the enforcement of their religious edicts, but also to come to an under-
standing with the Dutch.
By 1831, the Dutch conquest of west Sumatra entered its second phase with
the sending of an expeditionary force that took control of the Minangkabau
heartlands. The deaths of Tuan Lintau and Tuan Nan Rinceh in 1833 also
robbed the Padri Movement of two of its most important leaders. It now fell to
Imam Bondjol’s 10,000-strong army to make the last defiant stand against the
Dutch. However, with military defeat unavoidable and imminent, the village of
Bonjol also gave in to the same spiritual malaise that had affected other parts of
the Padri world, as the Imam too began having second thoughts about uncom-
promising Islamic revivalism and puritan reform. In the case of Imam Bondjol,
some researchers have suggested a link with ‘stale news’ – as Laffan puts it – of the
collapse of the first Saudi-Wahhabi state in Arabia (Laffan 2011: 44). However,
as other Padri leaders went into oblivion, Imam Bondjol has managed to do
the same as Diponegoro by writing an autobiography: namely, to sustain the
image of an Islamic activist who remained defiant in the face of a more powerful
adversary, by turning defeat and disillusion into a heroic stance, enabling future
generations of Minangkabau – and later Indonesians in general too – to reinvent
Imam Bondjol as what Jeffrey Hadler calls a ‘trope of resistance’ against Dutch
colonialism (Hadler 2008: 975). Hadler’s close reading of Naskah Tuanku Imam
Bondjol situates the protagonist’s significance within the context of post-1830
colonial Sumatra. The text comprises three distinct parts: the autobiography
proper; a memoir of Imam Bondjol’s son Naali Sutan Caniago; and reports of
meetings held in the Minangkabau highlands between 1865 and 1875 – a not
uncommon format for Malay manuscripts. Nevertheless, the Naskah is a ‘single
polyvalent text’, providing material for an exercise in intertextuality that brings
to light the varying functions of this body of writings (Hadler 2008: 992). It is
the different political purposes for which it has been used since its inception that
‘gives the story of the Tuanku such potency’ (Hadler 2008: 989).
There is another incident from the second phase of the Padri Wars that
deserves consideration. By 1832, Dutch military action seemed very much like
a ‘mopping-up’ campaign, until an unexpected flare-up in the hostilities in
January 1833, when – barely four months after occupying the village – the
Dutch garrison in Bonjol was massacred. Retaining much of its ‘magical aura’,
because of its resilience and dogged resistance, Bonjol was considered ‘negeri
sakti, a village endowed with supernatural powers. It was also given the title
kompeni darat, the company of the Minangkabau interior, indicating that it had
proved itself a match for the Netherlands Indies government’ (Dobbin 1983:
205). While it would become the last Minangkabau Padri centre to hold out
until 1837, the 1833 rebellion represented a broader front of Minangkabau
resistance to Dutch colonisation. For Christine Dobbin, this is reason to posit
the term ‘Minangkabau nationalism’. For this she takes her cue from the histori-
ography of French West Africa and writings about emergent nationalism in col-
onies by scholars such as Eric Stokes, which challenge a neat categorisation into
primary resistance, post-pacification revolt and modern nationalism. Suggesting
instead ‘a permanent, underlying “ur-nationalism”, manifesting its hostility to
the European presence in a distinct series of historical forms’, Dobbin proposes
to also understand the 1833 rebellion in those terms, because it brings together
a variety of anti-colonial actors (Dobbin 1983: 194).
While it would be the last time that members of the Minangkabau royal
family featured at the head of an anti-colonial resistance, Islamic leadership
maintained its position, which by then had become a constant feature since the
first attempts of tarekat leaders to oust the VOC from Padang in the 1680s and
early 1700s. As will be seen below, the Shattariya order in particular – helped by
certain penghulu lineages – would demonstrate remarkable resilience in staying at
the forefront of a religiously inspired resistance against the Dutch until the 1908
Tax Revolt. Similarly, it is possible to discern a geographical continuity, with
the Agam and Tanah Datar Valleys remaining the epicentres of resistance well
into the twentieth century. Aside from Bonjol, Padri leaders were also involved
in uprisings in Rao and Kamang. However, in the latter district, another char-
ismatic figure rose up in 1834, who called himself daulat. When cursing the
kepala laras who had sided with the Dutch, he appealed to ‘the pre-Padri magical
tradition of the tarekat’ (Dobbin 1983: 204). Although he managed to mobilise
a significant following with the help of several penghulu lineage chiefs, a Dutch
expedition snuffed out their resistance in 1835.
More surprising was the appearance on the Minangkabau scene of a Javanese
warrior: Diponegoro’s former field commander Sentot, who had gained notori-
ety as Ali Basa Prawirodirjo. Having cut a deal with the Dutch in 1829, he was
given the rank of lieutenant-colonel, a salary and money to maintain his own
army. However, Governor-General van den Bosch thought Sentot might be
usefully employed against the Minangkabau. Thus, in 1831, he was shipped off
to Sumatra together with Dutch reinforcements commanded by Colonel Elout,
who had also earned his laurels in the Java War. Although Sentot was now also
provided with a rice-growing district with more than 5,000 peasants that gave
him a standing similar to that of Surakarta’s Mangkunegoro, he thought this was
below his dignity as a Yogyakarta royal. Contacts with the local Padris rekindled
his contempt of the Dutch and religious zeal as a practising Muslim. Considered
Islam as resistance
79
a useful figurehead by his new allies, Sentot’s own aspiration was to become the
overlord of the Minangkabau highlands. Rallying the support of the remaining
Padris in northern Agam and Lintau, he then called on the valley penghulus to
recognise him as their supreme commander. Taking the titles Raja Jawa and
Sultan Alam, he also changed his name to Muhammad Ali Basa Abdul Mustafi.
After Sentot had failed to unite his Minangkabau supporters into an efficient
fighting force, in the summer of 1833, the Dutch eventually got him to abandon
his highland base and he ended his days under virtual house arrest in Bengkulu.
Attempts by Minangkabau royalty, such as the Regent of Tanah Datar,
Sultan Alam Bagagar Syah, and Raja di Buo, who tried to emulate Sentot’s
attempts to put themselves at the head of the 1833 uprising, also ended in
failure. Bagagar Syah died in 1849 in Batavia, while Raja di Buo found himself
roaming the eastern Minangkabau periphery until his death in 1880. While they
had managed to secure some Padri support, their resistance was lacking in coor-
dination and was no match for the now well-established Dutch colonial regime.
In addition, some Padri leaders had reconciled themselves with the new situa-
tion under the Dutch, with one Tuanku Nan Cedok even accepting the position
of Regent of Limapuluh Kota. Once Bonjol had been subjugated in 1837, the
final Minangkabau revolts were no longer commanded by Padris. Instead, they
were uprisings led by what Dobbin has described as secular figures who had
originally benefitted from the first Dutch–Minangkabau treaty of 1821, but
who became increasingly dissatisfied with the economic and political effects of
the Dutch incursions. The latter continued their annexation with the capture of
Inderagiri (1838), Singkil, Barus and Siak (1839–40). The brief rebellion of the
Regent of Batipuh, Kali Raja, and his nephew the Pamuncak, in 1841 would be
the last Minangkabau uprising until 1908.
In the final analysis I side with Laffan and Dutch scholars from the past
such as Kielstra and Schrieke, who all conclude that the Padri Wars were not
quintessentially Wahhabi. As signalled by Dobbin, their later phase appears
to foreshadow an emergent Minangkabau nationalism that would eventually
merge into a sense of Indonesian nationhood with Islam featuring as one of its
constituent elements.
Islam in the Netherlands East Indies after 1830

Peter Carey may have suggested considering 1812 as the annus horribilis for
the fortunes of central Java’s monarchs, but Merle Ricklefs has a point when
proposing that – for the rest of Java, and indeed Indonesia at large – the wider
consequences of the introduction of the Cultuurstelsel (Cultivation System) by the
new Governor-General van den Bosch makes 1830 into a watershed year of
even greater importance. It is against the background of the unfolding of this
next phase in European imperialism, and its concomitant production of new
regimes of knowledge, that any strict and clear-cut dichotomy between colonial
overlords and their Muslim subjects must be critically examined and called into
question.
While I continue to discuss the Islamisation of Indonesia in the remain-
der of the nineteenth century under the rubric ‘resistance’, it is important to
underscore its symbiotic aspects instead of conceiving of resistance in purely
antagonistic terms, as this would suggest a binary of indigenous Muslims vs non-
Muslim colonisers that is inaccurate and incomplete. Muslims certainly contin-
ued to confront the Dutch, but the strategies and tactics they employed were
often also informed by borrowings derived from that very encounter. Earlier
indications of such complexities could already be discerned in the preceding
sections on the Padri and Java Wars. Moreover, in the course of the nineteenth
century, differences between Muslims themselves became more pronounced,
leading to polarising trends which, in turn, resulted in acts of resistance among
Muslims against those other Islamic strands and tendencies they happened to
disagree with. For these reasons it is more accurate to regard Muslim colonial
subjects as interlocutors, whose further understanding and continued mobilisa-
tion of their own religious tradition signals agency. This is manifested through
intellectual exchange in which Orientalism does not merely produce a certain
kind of knowledge of non-Western peoples on the part of European colonisers;
it also plays a mediatory role in intercultural exchange in general, and – more
germane to this book – in varying interpretations of Islam. Awareness of such
diversity should help in making sense of the different voices that compose this
discourse of resistance and which may – at times – even become cacophonous
without such an interpretative framework.
Islamic education
Aside from new factors causing unprecedented change, there were also ele-
ments of continuity that affected the Islamisation process in nineteenth-century
Indonesia. Shifting attention back from the political transformations during the
first four decades to what we ended with in the previous chapter, the 1830s and
1840s saw an expansion of the influence of the pesantren and pondok as religious
scholars moved away from the courts. Rendered economically and politically
impotent, the latter were no longer in a position to offer patronage to the arts
and learning on the scale they were used to. However, ‘rather than sending
Islamic institutions in decline, the wholesale annexation of Java may actually
have proved a blessing’, working to the benefit of those with stakes in that system
(Laffan 2011: 46). While the full-scale imposition of the Cultivation System by
the Dutch caused much hardship for peasants forced to grow cash crops, it also
allowed the emergence of a minority of indigenous landowners (other than the
priyayi), including Islamic religious teachers and their dependants, whose eco-
nomic prosperity grew; thus also enhancing their overall social standing.
Islam as resistance
81
Improved communications, introduced for the sake of the efficient trans-

portation of agricultural produce, added further to the prosperity of religious
schools with advantageous locations along these new economic arteries and
facilitated their transformation into ‘key nodes of intellectual exchange’ (Laffan
2011: 47). They also provided springboards for advanced study in cosmopolitan
places such as Surabaya and Singapore, or even further travel to the centres of
Islamic learning in the Middle East. This also solidified the position of Mecca-
based scholars originating from Java – the most important one being the mufti
of the Shafiʿi school, Ahmad bin Zaini Dahlan (1816–86) – but also ulama
from outer islands, who continued to direct the cross-Indian Ocean network-
ing that had evolved in the preceding centuries. Even without surviving records
of their individual contributions to scholarship and curriculum development
on par with those by eighteenth-century Malay-writing scholars such as al-
Palimbani or al-Banjari, there is some evidence of Javanese efforts to replicate
and emulate Acehnese and Meccan models for the reworking of Shafiʿi texts in
earlier centuries. A comparable dynamic seems to have been at work in ‘post-
Padri’ Sumatra, where ‘the surau continue to play an important role in educat-
ing Minangkabau youth throughout the nineteenth century’ on both the village
level and in the formation of distinctly important centres of learning. However,
aside from disseminating doctrinal orthodoxy, pesantren, pondok and surau also
remained important as sites of Sufi activity (Dobbin 1983: 241–2).
Sufi orders between popularisation and rivalry

The continued and even growing significance of established religious institu-
tions was – to a degree and for a while – also applicable to the tarekat or Sufi
orders. In his study of Islamisation in the Minangkabau between the end of the
Padri Wars in 1837 and the 1908 Tax Revolt, Werner Kraus has mapped the
role of the tarekat in the remainder of the nineteenth century. Aside from the
presence of transnational Sufi orders, such as the Naqshbandiyya, Qadariyya,
Samaniyya and Shattariya, he has also identified a number of local brother-
hoods, which distinguish themselves by a continuing emphasis on indigenous
animist beliefs and practices, the use of talismans and amulets (jimat), and a
variety of forms of magical knowledge (ilmu). In contrast to the widespread attrac-
tion of the Shattariya to various social layers of Southeast Asia’s Muslim popula-
tion, the Naqshbandiyya appealed more to educated Muslims who appreciated
the ‘rational’ undertones of the order’s reformed orthodoxy. Not only that,
historically the Naqshbandiyya itself had adopted a conscious strategy of reach-
ing out to those with political power – making ‘worldliness’ into one of its basic
tenets alongside inwardly directed piety. These aspects favourably disposed
Naqshbandiyya doctrine to becoming an ‘elite ideology’ (Kraus 1984: 92–3).
Consequently, the Naqshbandiyya was able to make inroads among the pious
members of the traditional Minangkabau leadership, as it had also managed
to do at the Bugi-Malay court of Johor and in the Sultanate of Pontianak in

Borneo.
As noted earlier, Michael Laffan has suggested that already during the Padri
Wars there are indications that the Naqshbandiyya was making its influence felt
among ‘Shariʿa-minded’ Muslims across the Padri–traditionalist divide. In the
1860s, for example, Ahmad ibn Jalal al-Din – one of the sons of the faqih saghir
– returned to Cangking as an initiate of the Naqshbandiyya order. He can be
considered an exponent of an emergent nouveau riche of committed Muslims, who
– until the early 1900s – saw the Naqshbandiyya as a vehicle for gaining more
influence in their villages and towns, before shifting allegiance to another group
of reformists who became known as the kaum muda, or ‘new generation’ – in con-
trast to the kaum tua or ‘old generation’ (Kraus 1984: 92; Laffan 2011: 42).15 In
regards to the Minangkabau, Kraus and Laffan then seem to confirm Dobbin’s
observation that, for the remainder of the nineteenth century:
Much of the energy of the tarekat leaders became reabsorbed in mutual squab-
bles. The period after 1847 right down to the 1890s was marked by a reflores-
cence of the Naksyabandiyah tarekat and by attacks made by its leaders on the
Syattariyah as heretical. (Dobbin 1983: 242)
Outside the Malay-speaking parts the archipelago, Sufi orders also remained
relevant, with especially the Naqshbandiyya actually gaining ground. In Java,
two branches of the Naqshbandiyya became active in the second half of the
nineteenth century. The first one, belonging to the Khalidiyya branch, was
introduced by followers of Shaykh Ismaʿil Minangkabawi, who was based in
Singapore and Riau (east Sumatra), after returning from Mecca in 1850. The
other one, combining Naqshbandi and Qadiri practices, was the creation of
Ahmad Khatib of Sambas in West Kalimantan, who died in Mecca around
1875.16 Both branches put more emphasis on adhering to the Five Pillars of
Islam (creed, prayer, fasting, almsgiving and pilgrimage) than the Shattariya.
In Java, as in the Minangkabau, globally operating Sufi orders functioned
alongside local and regional manifestations of mysticism. Kartawidjaja (1850–
1914), a priyayi from a respectable lineage of Muslim scholars whose hybrid
upbringing included exposure to pesantren training and Christian missionary
teachings, reports of a simultaneous presence on Java of Naqshbandiyya,
Shattariyya and ‘the “Tarek Moehamaddia” (which he thought had been an
invention of the Nine Saints)’ (Laffan 2011: 48). The latter, referring to them-
selves as ‘Akmaliyya’, continued to compete with both Shattari and Naqshbandi
shaykhs throughout the nineteenth century. As late as the 1880s, an Akmali
known as Mas Rahmat, who claimed to be the son of one of Diponegoro’s
associates, was still roaming the perdikan villages of Java and Madura (Bruinessen
2000: 370; Laffan 2011: 52). Both Karawidjaja’s own biography and the anecdo-
tal records he provides are illustrative of the changes transpiring in Indonesia’s
Islam as resistance
83
diversified religious landscape, encompassing mystical groups with evident

Islamic roots and antinomian sects, such as the Wong Birai. On the back of
the turn of the century in 1871, according to the Javanese calendar, messianic
movements abounded. Texts such as Akhir ing Jaman (‘End of Times’) which
began circulating in the 1860s, and the Palambang tanah Jawah (‘Prophesy of the
Land of Java’) from the 1880s, appealed again to the coming of the Ratu Adil
and salvation of those who adhered to the tenets of Islam. Islamic millenarian-
ism received a further boost from the start of the fourteenth Islamic century in
1882 (1300 ah), as well as from events elsewhere in the Muslim world, such as
rumours of an anti-Christian plot being hatched by the then Sharif of Mecca,
Abd al-Mutallib (d. 1886), and the Mahdi Uprising (1883–98) in the Sudan
(Ricklefs 2007: 79).
Remaining more or less invisible to the authorities until their involvement
in anti-colonial activities, next to nothing is known of the spread of the Sufi
orders or the exact numbers of their adherents until the late 1880s. The Dutch
only became alarmed after a minor incident in Madiun in 1886, involving
members of the Shattariya, and a more serious uprising two years later in
Banten, west Java. Here shaykhs of the Qadiriyya–Naqshbandiyya took the
lead in the Cilegon massacre of 1888, and the same was the case with a major
rebellion on the island of Lombok in 1891 by the Muslim Sasaks against their
Hindu Balinese rulers. Although Laffan suggests that ‘Cilegon is in fact more
realistically seen as a localized uprising than as a popular jihad’, given the
unmistakably politico-religious dimensions of these uprisings, it is small wonder
that the Dutch began regarding Sufi orders such as the Naqshbandiyya as a fifth
column (Laffan 2011: 144). In the colonial surveillance literature, parallels were
drawn with the Freemasons, while loyalist Muslims, such as Sayyid Uthman of
Batavia (1822–1914), were employed by the Netherlands Indies administration
to discredit the Naqshbandiyya teachings.17 Together with memories of the
persistent resistance by Imam Bondjol and of the unexpected uprising of Kali
Raja in 1841, Dutch concerns growing out of the perceived ‘unpredictability of
the natives’ led to measures like the exclusion of tarekat gurus in the Minangkabau
from public office and – after the Cilegon uprising – the 1889 introduction of
so-called goeroe-lijsten (guru records), meant to monitor the presence of Sufi order
members. Somewhat ironically, the freedom of the tarekat was further curtailed
under an in itself more liberal colonial policy of the early twentieth century by
the even more restrictive goeroeordonantie (guru ordinance) of 1905, which obliged
religious teachers to secure written permission to teach from the bupati; to keep
a register of their students; and to submit to the supervision of a local committee
chaired by a district officer (Kraus 1984: 111–12; Latif 2008: 77).
The importance of hajj and the impact of technology

Both the colonial surveillance literature and more recent scholarship have also
identified the pilgrimage to Mecca as an increasingly central factor in the further
Islamisation of Southeast Asia in the course of the nineteenth century. Already
between 1829 and 1852 this had been a reason for the colonial authorities to
impose a monitoring system, requiring prospective pilgrims to obtain a special
‘hajj passport’, which they needed to have stamped along the route and submit
again upon return as evidence of having indeed travelled to the Hijaz for the
intended purpose. In the wake of the Indian Mutiny, a new surveillance system
was put in place in 1859, according to which bupatis had to give permission to
Muslim residents of their region to depart for Arabia and again interrogate
them upon their return, before they would be recognised as hajjis and permitted
to don the attire associated with that status.
When technological advances such as the introduction of the steamship and
the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 led to an increase in volume, speed and
frequency of trans-Indian Ocean traffic, this also intensified the impact of the
circulation of ideas that accompanied the pilgrims travelling back and forth
between Southeast Asia and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, as well as
other centres of Islamic learning in the Middle East. By the 1890s, pilgrims from
Southeast Asia even outnumbered those from India, and have remained the
largest single contingent ever since. Aside from monitoring pilgrims through the
passport and examination system, increased numbers also resulted in curtailing
the movement of independent travellers as colonial authorities saw the advan-
tage of giving in to the pressures exercised first by Hadhrami operators and
later by European liner companies to grant them the exclusive rights of trans-
porting pilgrims en masse to Jeddah. In 1898, Dutch regulations decreed that
pilgrims had to travel by steam and could only board ships in Batavia, Padang,
and Sabang in Aceh. The enforcement of that rule was further facilitated by
more stringent colonial administration outside Java following a series of border
demarcation agreements between the Netherlands and Britain (Tagliacozzo
2005).
Laffan makes a point of stressing that performing hajj was ‘an “ambivalent”
experience for the jawa; in the sense that it fostered seemingly contradictory
ideas of both local and Islamic identities’ (Laffan 2003: 33). In Mecca, they
became aware of their belonging to that all-encompassing Muslim entity of the
umma, while on the other hand also realising their difference from pilgrims from
the Middle East, Central Asia or Africa. From the mapping of Islamic networks
across the Indian Ocean discussed in the previous chapter, we know of the
sustained presence of Southeast Asian ulama in Mecca and a wider community
in the Hijaz. Detailed information only became available in the late nineteenth
century on the basis of reports furnished by the Dutch consulate in Jeddah
(pilgrims from Indonesia were technically Dutch citizens), but especially thanks
Islam as resistance
85
to the efforts of the scholar and later adviser to the colonial government in the
Indies, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, who managed to do fieldwork in Mecca
in 1885.
Drawing on a careful analysis and interpretation of statistical material on the
hajj traffic from the 1850s onward, Merle Ricklefs has distilled what seems at
face value a counter-intuitive finding from the available data. Based on a com-
parison of numbers of pilgrims and the ratio between hajjis and religious scholars
in different regions of Java, he concludes that while there is indeed an explosive
growth of pilgrims with the advancement of technology, it also appears that they
tend to come from areas where there are ‘fewer established religious profession-
als’. Inversely:
where the Islam of the kyai was strong – the teachings of pious men whose faith,
in many cases, was close to the mystical synthesis of the aristocratic elite – the
new ideas of Hajjis may have found a less cordial reception than elsewhere.
(Ricklefs 2009: 122)
Ricklefs’s findings regarding the ratio between hajji and kyai numbers points at
a ‘contest of ideas developing in Islamic circles, in which kyais and Hajjis tend
to play separate roles’ (Ricklefs 2009: 123). These findings therefore point at
an increasingly prominent phenomenon: a polarisation of Indonesian society,
affecting not only relations between Indonesians and foreigners, between
Muslims and non-Muslims, but also among Muslims themselves.
Polarising the umma below the winds

Together with economic and political changes brought about by this colonial
policy, which imposed the growing of cash crops for export onto the indigenous
agricultural populations, the developments sketched above all contributed to
different forms of polarisation in Indonesian society.
In the case of Java, the top levels of the priyayi class thrived and had never
been so secure in their positions thanks to the role they were given by the
Dutch in the administration of the Cultivation System, but the lower echelons
of this elite lost out. An emergent middle class consisting of Chinese, Arab
and indigenous Muslim traders benefitted too, but remained politically suspect.
However, the welfare of the main generators of this new wealth – the peasantry
and growing numbers of urban workers – went into decline. The economic and
demographic effects brought about by the Cultivation System also impacted
heavily on the intellectual and religious contexts.
Certainly, mystic synthesis remained part of the religious landscape in nine-
teenth-century Java. Evidence of that is provided by a court text known as
the Serat Centhini and collections of mystical poems known as Suluk, which are
purposefully prolix, paradoxical, obscure and multilayered in their meaning,
as well as by the wisdom literature by figures such as Prince Mangkunegoro IV
(1809–81) of Surakarta. But rather than the dominant discourse, mystic synthe-
sis now became one of several variants of Javanese adherence to Islam and con-
tinues to be so until the present day.18 By the 1840s and 1850s, ‘there existed
significant numbers of professionally religious in Javanese societies – mosque
officials, religious teachers, guardians of holy sites, students at pĕsantrens – who
were collectively known as kaum (the religious folk) or putihan (the white ones)’
(Ricklefs 2007: 49). In the Pasisir they were known as santri, while the Dutch
called them geestelijken, meaning ‘clericals’. This development led to a widening
gap between Islamic and ‘Javanese’ knowledge, starting along the north coast
due to the presence of larger numbers of Arabs and other foreign Muslims, but
gradually also moving into the interior. Attached to such intellectual competi-
tion is also a question of religious authority. Citing from the writings of the
colonial civil servant Emile Gobée (1881–1954) from 1928, Ricklefs points at
the distinction between the teachings disseminated by tarekat gurus and kitab
gurus, while another source, the Javanese aristocrat Raden Natarata, relates of
his experience in the early 1870s when a ‘shariʿa-oriented’ scholar refused to
teach him Sufism, because it is ‘truly forbidden (kula haramakĕn)’ (Ricklefs 2009:
123).19
Against the background of such rifts, in the second half of the nineteenth
century, a new term enters the vocabulary on religion in general and Islam in
particular. This is the word abangan, which is etymologically associated with
the Low Javanese (ngoko) word for the colour red or brown, but which was first
brought into circulation through Christian missionary sources and later gained
greater currency through Clifford Geertz’s seminal book, The Religion of Java
(Geertz 1960). Based on his extensive knowledge of both Javanese and Dutch
text materials, Merle Ricklefs is confident that – in contrast to the term putihan
(white) – abangan was not used as a social category or reference to a group of
people before 1855. Initially, it seems to imply a secular, profane attitude. Given
the semantic baggage carried by words like secularity and secularism, I would
suggest that it is perhaps more accurate to speak of a preoccupation with world-
liness rather than piety. In any case, for the first few decades of its usage, the
meaning of abangan remained rather fluid.
It is not until the ferment of the 1880s, with reformist ideas advocating closer
observance of Islam’s religious duties gaining wider circulation, that the polarity
abangan–putihan becomes more fixed. Laffan has suggested that ‘the Naqshbandis
around Madiun may well have been the first Javanese to begin labelling their
abusive neighbours as “the red ones” (wong abangan) in contradistinction to them-
selves, the truly spotless putihan’ (Laffan 2011: 50). Those identifying themselves
with the latter – although numerically a minority of Java’s overall population
– clearly attach a derogatory meaning to the former. Religious, cultural and
also socio-cultural connotations now converged in a terminology that reflected
a society that was drawing apart:
Islam as resistance
87
differences in approach to Islam mirrored more general social differences. The

putihan were wealthier, active in business, better dressed, had better homes,
seemed more refined in manners, avoided opium and gambling, observed the
pillars of Islam, gave their children more education and disciplined them more.
The abangan differed on these same points. They were poorer, were not involved
in trade and did not provide their children with education. Abangan still observed
some religious duties, but did so in the name of village solidarity. Whereas the
putihan read Arabic works and discussed the Islamic world’s affairs, the abangan
watched wayang performances and attended lascivious entertainments. In the
wayang in particular, Javanese spiritual forces were at work. The two groups
mixed only with the like-minded. (Ricklefs 2007: 102)
The life story of Kartawidjaja, rumours of the sharif’s anti-Christian plot
circulating in the Indies through letters from the jawi community in Mecca, and
the vivid interest of Christian missionaries in the abangan: all formed ingredients
in the growing suspicions among the putihan of a Dutch plan to Christianise
Indonesia; a concern that certain Muslim activists have continued to harbour
until the present day.20
For more or less the period between 1870 and 1900, Michael Laffan draws
attention to another kind of polarisation in Indonesian society. With the opening
of the Suez Canal, Hadhrami migrants flocked in larger numbers to Southeast
Asia, many of them from lower social classes than before. Because of their
Arab descent, in Southeast Asia they were accorded higher status than at home
– especially those claiming honorifics such as sayyid or habib, which signalled
descent from the Prophet Muhammad. In addition, they played a role in con-
tinued tarekat propagation, while their extensive mercantile networks around
the Indian Ocean enabled many of them to play a vital economic role as mer-
chants and moneylenders, and therefore occupy a commensurate privileged
social position (Kathirithamby-Wells 2015: 94–103; Laffan 2003: 43–4). These
developments created resentment among the indigenous Muslims, who not
only questioned the sanctity of the new arrivals, but also envied their commer-
cial success. Under the adage of ‘divide and rule’, the Dutch encouraged such
sentiments and used them to vindicate a new policy of obliging different ethnic
groups to live in separate quarters. In addition, the Indies Dutch also sought
to separate themselves further from the rest of society, eventually leading to an
official ordinance by the governor-general in 1904, instructing the Dutch to
abandon the imitation of local customs. As a result of this segregation:
The ethnic mélange created by the influx of Chinese and Arabs ultimately empha-
sized the position of indigenous Muslims as the absolute underclass. This was
officially entrenched by a tripartite colonial division of society into Europeans
and the Christian allies, the Foreign Orientals (vreemde oosterlingen) and Natives.
(Laffan 2011: 45)
Although intended to secure Dutch political supremacy, such categorisations

also had unintended side-effects. In the late 1870s, Sultan Abd al-Hamid II (r.
1876–1909) became the first Ottoman ruler since his namesake Abd al-Hamid
I (r. 1774–89) to make active political use of the title ‘caliph’, and position
himself as the patron of the Sufi orders – particularly the Naqshbandiyya (Laffan
2003: 41). This formed part of what is generally referred to as the Pan-Islamist
agenda he is said to have adopted – partly at the instigation of the Iranian-born
reformist and agent provocateur, Jalal al-Din al-Afghani (1838–97) – to fend
off threats posed by the European powers against his crumbling realm.21 In the
final decades of the nineteenth century, but even more so in the run-up to World
War I, both expatriate Muslims residing in the Netherlands East Indies and the
remaining sultans in Borneo, Sulawesi and Sumatra – with Aceh in the forefront
– began issuing increasingly urgent appeals to Istanbul for the protection of their
interests by the sultan-caliph. Obviously, this only led to further Dutch concerns
over the rising spectre of political Islam. As will be discussed in the next chapter,
the ‘zero-tolerance’ repression of any, even perceived, expression of politicised
use of Islam by the Dutch colonial authorities stimulated Muslims to explore
alternative ways of safeguarding their interests.
Meanwhile, in Aceh . . .

After the successful annexation and occupation of Java and of south and central
Sumatra, the coastal areas of Borneo and Sulawesi, and other outer islands in
the eastern parts of the archipelago, the Netherlands set its eyes on the pacifica-
tion of Serambi Mekkah – the Sultanate of Aceh:
With the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1871, and with both North Sea powers fearing
intervention in Sumatra of a third force – such as France, the USA or Italy –
the Netherlands began the process of the ‘rounding off’ (afronding) of its oceanic
empire. (Laffan 2003: 39)
This ambition triggered the protracted Aceh War (1893–c. 1910), in which the
Dutch colonial army (KNIL) became bogged down in a vicious and unwinnable
armed conflict that can be regarded as the Netherlands’ ‘Vietnam’.22
According to James Siegel, Dutch failure to secure military success was in
part due to their misconception of the composition of the opposition, even
on the part of the colonial government’s erudite adviser Snouck Hurgronje.
Not dissimilar to the complex situation in West Sumatra, ‘Atjeh was not a
society bifurcated into Islamic and customary elements, but one divided into
four groups – uleebelang [chieftains, CK], ulama, peasants, and the sultan and his
group – each of which had its own view of the nature of Islam and adat [custom-
ary law, CK]’ (Siegel 2000: 11). Less attached to place than peasants, sultans
or chieftains, the religious scholars, who had to leave their villages in pursuit of
knowledge, stressed qualities of men in accordance with common human nature
Islam as resistance
89
rather than affixed social roles, whereas uleebelang power was based on coerced
control of both rice- and pepper-growing populations and the trade relations
through which these products travelled. The position of the sultan was different
again. Based in the capital Bandar Aceh Dar al-Salam, he acted as regulator of
relations in a cosmopolitan multi-ethnic society through the ideological employ-
ment of Islam rather than as the head of an organic whole. Also, his influence
on affairs in the interior was very limited, restricting his abilities to curb the rival
powers of the uleebelangs by making them ‘officers of the state’ through the issu-
ance of authorisation letters known as sarakata (Siegel 2000: 41). Siegel suggests
that the sultan’s relationship with the uleebalangs constituted a modus vivendi in
which the uleebelangs subscribed to the ‘myth’ of Aceh as an Islamic state, making
the sultan into a ‘magical figure’ but without effective power: ‘That Islam did
not become synonymous with a magical sultanate, however, was due to the pres-
ence of another group in Atjehnese society, the ulama’ (Siegel 2000: 47).
Just like the sultan and uleebelangs, the ulama too were ‘encapsulated in their
own worlds’, but theirs was ‘not a natural outgrowth of the rural scene’ (Siegel
2000: 48). Not only were their pesantren physically separate from the villages, but
the ulama were economically dependent on neither the peasantry nor the chief-
tains. Since the roles of the latter two groups were so much attached to the land,
only the pesantren world offered a window of opportunity for escaping the social
obligations associated with village settlement and kinship ties. This constituted a
rantau of sorts, because one could not become a student and scholar by studying
in one’s home region. The transformative itinerant pesantren experience led to
contempt for the adat of one’s home, putting the ulama at loggerheads as much
with ‘heretical practices of the village as they were against the immorality of the
uleebelang’ (Siegel 2000: 59).
Fragmented by appearance, because no one of the ‘four encapsulated groups
existing side by side [. . .] depended on his relationship with someone in another
group for a basic concept of social identity’, and because each entertained dif-
ferent concepts of Aceh and Islam, Siegel proposes that nevertheless ‘[there] was
general agreement that Atjeh was an Islamic society’ (Siegel 2000: 68–9). That
realisation only strengthened in the face of an exterior adversary. So although
Islam was only one of the rallying factors in the proto-nationalism that moti-
vated the Acehnese drive to retain their independence, securing support of the
Sublime Porte on account of an appeal to Muslim solidarity could prove criti-
cal to withstand the Dutch assault. In fact, aside from drawing on a history of
diplomatic contacts in earlier centuries, in the wake of the Padri Wars, Aceh’s
sultan had already sent requests to Istanbul for Ottoman protection from the
Dutch. After the Dutch annexation of Inderagiri (1838), Singkil, Barus and
Siak (1839–40), Sultan Mansur Shah (r. 1838[57]–7023) had attempted to make
contact with Istanbul in 1838, 1849, and again in 1868 or 1869 (Kadi 2015:
154, 159–62).24
The first Acehnese deputation to visit Istanbul after the outbreak of the war
in 1873 was led by the Hadhramaut-born and India-educated Habib Abd al-
Rahman al-Zahir al-Saqqaf of Samalanga (1832/3–1896), but failed under dip-
lomatic pressures exercised by the Netherlands and other European countries
(Kathirithamby-Wells 2015: 99). Although, within a year, Bandar Aceh fell to
the Dutch, who made it the capital of the Dutch-controlled province of Aceh
under the name Kota Raja, it appears that individual Ottoman officers had
made their way to Aceh in the 1875 and 1876 to render military assistance.
Ottoman–Acehnese communications continued during the reign of Abd al-
Hamid II. These were not limited to contacts with Istanbul, but also extended
to the Ottoman-controlled Hijaz; an attempt to call on a Turkish frigate visit-
ing Singapore en route to Japan; and calls on Ottoman diplomats in Southeast
Asia for consular protection, including the consul-general in Batavia. Many of
these initiatives during the 1880s and 1890s continued to involve Hadhramis.
However, due to a combination of factors – including distance, lack of knowl-
edge and political muscle on the part of the Ottomans – in none of these
instances did it result in effective support for the Acehnese.
In Snouck Hurgronje’s assessment, the Aceh War was ‘the great opportunity
for the ulama to wrest power from the uleebelang’ (Siegel 2000: 71). Indeed, aside
from the Habib of Samalanga, Acehnese ulama, such as Teuku Umar (1854–
99), but especially Shaykh Muhammad Samman (1836–91), better known as
Teungku Cik di Tiro, surfaced as leading resistance figures after the collapse
of the sultanate in 1874.25 Their emphasis on the common human nature –
regardless of kinship or their role as villagers – that united Acehnese of different
social strata as Muslims was what appealed to the peasants in the message of the
ulama. However, what makes this first Aceh War a perang sabil or jihad different
from future conflicts is that:
While the ulama envisaged a community of believers on earth, the effective
symbol of their appeal in the Atjehnese War, and in the reform movements, was
paradise. [. . .] It was not until the 1930s that men began to realize a new life in
this world was possible. (Siegel 2000: 74)
Concluding remarks
Aside from the Muslim militancy witnessed during the Padri, Java and Aceh
Wars, the sea change with which societies in Indonesia had to cope in the face
of increasingly intrusive interventions and invasive incursions by the Dutch,
drove the Islamisation process in different directions. In the face of repression,
some opted for political quietism; withdrawing into the relative tranquillity
and reassuring comfort of the pesantren and tarekat worlds. In other instances,
new opportunities arose as Dutch imperialism rendered other social and politi-
cal actors powerless, thus creating niches that could be occupied by growing
Islam as resistance
91
numbers of practising pious Muslims whose awareness of and exposure to devel-

opments elsewhere in the Muslim world had increased thanks to advances in
communication technology and changing social circumstances. Set in motion in
the 1830s, these trends would continue to develop further and open up unprec-
edented perspectives as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth.
CHAPTER 4
Islam and nation-building
The previous chapter has demonstrated that religious polarisation in Indonesian

societies affected not only Muslim relations with non-Muslims and ‘nominal’
Muslims, but increasingly also the interactions among the putihan or santri – the
segment of observant and practising pious Muslims themselves. This dimension
of religious polarisation will be further explored here, as it bears relevance to
the further trajectory of Indonesia’s Islamisation. Another observable trend is
that the confrontational encounters of the Padri, Java and Aceh Wars give way
to strategies of avoidance, with putihan/santri Muslims embarking on a kind of
hijra – re-enacting the migration of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to
Medina in 622 ce in order to escape the persecution of his small community of
followers by the Meccan elite. This distancing from colonial society was not an
entirely novel development; when discussing the emergence of the Islamic edu-
cation system, it was already mentioned that – historically – pesantren and pondok
occupied a distinct space in the micro-geography of the Indonesian village or
town, creating a physical distance in order to symbolise their standing apart
from mainstream society.
At the same time, advances in communication technology – such as the devel-
opment of the steamship and opening of the Suez Canal, but increasingly also
the printing press –made contacts between Indonesia’s Muslim population and
the wider umma more frequent and intensive. The effects of these developments
were paradoxical in the sense that Indonesian Muslims became more conscious
of their simultaneous belonging to a Muslim ecumene and their distinctiveness
from other Muslims in terms of language, culture and – although less clear and
at times even outright ambiguous – ethnicity. This awareness translated into
a sense of national belonging in which religious solidarity remained relevant,
forming for some even its most important constituting element. This notion
of ‘Islamic nationhood’ has contributed to attempts to forge an Indonesian
Islam and the formation of a notion of ‘religious nationalism’ that has also
remained part of the politico-religious vocabulary in postcolonial Indonesia.
While some Muslim activists had the ambition of defining this into concrete
political agendas, others opted for a more cautious approach. As political qui-
etists they tried working toward Muslim emancipation and furthering Islamic
interests through education and religious propagation (daʿwa or dakwah).
The dynamics of Indonesia’s ongoing Islamisation process from the turn
93
of the century and throughout the early 1900s onward must also be seen in
the context of a sea change in Dutch colonial policy. While the failings of the
Cultivation System quickly became apparent because of the havoc it created
to the welfare of the peasantry and of growing numbers of urban workers, it
was not until 1870 that it was effectively abandoned. An important catalyst in
discrediting the Cultivation System and bringing about a rethinking of colo-
nial policy was a novel published in 1860 by a soon-to-be-former colonial
administrator, Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820–87). Written under the pen name
Multatuli (from the Latin multa tuli, ‘I have suffered much’), the satire Max
Havelaar exposed the inherent abuses and scandals brought about by colonialism
in the Netherlands East Indies.
A formally defined alternative policy was not introduced until 1901. It became
known as the Ethische Politiek (‘Ethical Policy’) and was named after the so-called
Ethici – colonial administrators and intellectuals who were uneasy about the
blatant exploitation of the colonies’ general populace by European imperialism.
They felt that there was also a responsibility on the part of colonial govern-
ments to look after the indigenous populations of their dominions and create
opportunities for their development and ‘progress’; a concept that – o bviously
– continued to be defined on the basis of and measured against externally
imposed standards. During the days of the Cultivation System, education had
only been provided for a miniscule number of individuals from the indigenous
population; in Java predominantly recruited from priyayi circles and in Sumatra
from the administrative personnel employed in the Minangkabau coffee indus-
try.1 Increased efforts by the Dutch colonial government to improve access to
state-sponsored education for the indigenous population formed an important
aspect of the Ethical Policy. Between 1900 and 1930, the number of children in
Dutch-language schools rose from just over 21,000 to close to 135,000. During
the same period, the number of pupils attending indigenous schools (often run
by the Islamic mass organisations) increased more than tenfold to one and a half
million. These figures include all levels of schooling, but concern predominantly
primary education; student numbers in Dutch-language secondary schools form
just a fraction of these totals, while access to tertiary education was first limited
to dozens and never amounted to more than a few hundred individuals.
Proponents of this new policy also included figures such as Christiaan Snouck
Hurgronje, who saw it as his task to orchestrate the shift from nineteenth-
century ‘pacification’ to twentieth-century ‘association’ and ‘emancipation’
of Indonesia’s Muslims. To achieve his objective, he devised a two-pronged
approach. First of all, he advocated a splitsingstheorie, according to which Islam
is divided into a political and a religious component (Latif 2008: 54). While the
Dutch authorities respected the latter, manifestations of the former would not
be tolerated. Secondly, he proposed co-opting certain figures from the Muslim
elites to help facilitate the development of a new Muslim intelligentsia. Among
those recruited as informants and collaborators were the eccentric Sundanese

alim Hasan Moestapa (1852–1930) and – most importantly – the Hadhrami
Sayyid Uthman, who has already been mentioned in the previous chapter. Both
held – at one time or another – the position of Honorary Adviser on Native
Affairs, while Sayyid Uthman could more or less be considered the ‘unofficial’
mufti of the Netherlands East Indies.
These varying and at times conflicting trends manifested themselves most
emphatically in what can be considered a defining exponent of the Islamisation
process in twentieth-century Indonesia: the founding of Islamic mass organi-
sations (organisasi massa, or Ormas in Indonesian acronymic parlay). These
movements also became incubators for Islamic political parties and a ‘civil
society’ Islam spinning off what we nowadays call NGOs, as well as what
the autocratic New Order Regime later referred to as Organisasi Tanpa Bentuk
(OTB, ‘Organisations Without Form’). However, not all Muslims bought into
the Indonesian nation-building project that was set in motion during the final
decades of colonialism and the formative years of the independent republic.
On the contrary, some activists preferred alternative Islamically inspired politi-
cal agendas informing both Pan-Islamist ambitions and instances of regional
separatism that surfaced in the postcolonial period. Both tendencies posed a
serious challenge for Indonesia during early independence, as it went through
the process of redefining itself from a federation into a unitary state.
Meccan and Cairene reformism: kaum tua and kaum muda

Looking back at the developments sketched in the previous chapter, nine-
teenth-century Indonesia was a society in flux, throwing up challenges to which
Muslims had to find a response. As discussed in the final sections of Chapter 2
and throughout Chapter 3, this required skilful navigating between safeguard-
ing the integrity of Islamic doctrine and actively promoting wider learning,
while simultaneously coping with the obstacles put in the way of that mission by
an increasingly powerful colonial state. The religious polarisation and the result-
ant diversification in Islamic discourses can be attributed to these dynamics.
From the late 1800s and early 1900s onward, the direction and reforms
which had been issuing from ulama circles in the Haramayn since the seven-
teenth century had to contend with a new trend coming from Cairo. With
the mosque-university of al-Azhar already a centuries-old established centre
of Sunni Islamic learning, the Egyptian capital now also became the centre for
another more drastic reformist trend, sometimes referred to as Islamic mod-
ernism. In Muslim Southeast Asia it operated alongside, and increasingly in
competition with, the continuing Meccan influences. For Michael Laffan, this is
reason to talk of ‘Cairene Reformism’; a term which I will also use in contradis-
tinction to ‘Meccan Reformism’ (Laffan 2003: 116). It adds yet another aspect
95
to Indonesia’s already multifaceted Islamisation process. A detailed unpacking

of these two discourses is all the more important because they have continued to
shape, even dominate, the Indonesian Islamic landscape ever since.
Reform-minded ulama
The Indonesian expatriate community in the Haramayn remained key to the
continuing influence of Meccan renewal initiatives. With the demise of figures
such as Nawawi al-Batini (1813–97/8), a scholar originally from Banten in west
Java, and the Shafiʿi mufti of Mecca, Ahmad bin Zaini Dahlan (1816–86), a
changing of the guard took place with the appointment of Ahmad ibn Abd al-
Latif al-Minankabawi, alias Ahmad Khatib (1860–1915/16), as Shafiʿi imam in
Mecca, sometime between 1887 and 1892.2 Although a less elevated office than
Ahmad Dahlan’s position of mufti, it did mean that the young scholar Ahmad
Khatib ‘joined the religious hierarchy of the Ottoman Hijaz, assuring his future
prominence within the wider Jawi ecumene’ (Laffan 2003: 106). As recently as
1983, Christine Dobbin still had to signal that:
In the 1890s Minangkabau was swept by an orthodox reform movement,
although, lacking adequate research on the subject, it is difficult to draw many
conclusions about it. Its motivating force was Syekh Ahmad Chatib, a descend-
ant from a Padri kadi and a native of the goldsmithing village of Kota Gedang
near Bukit Tinggi. [. . .] His orthodoxy had much in common with that of the
Padris. (Dobbin 1983: 242)
A quarter of century later, with more research having been done, a clearer
and more accurate image is emerging of the achievements and significance of
this Ahmad Khatib. Not only is he considered the last of the great Mecca-based
Jawa ulama of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ‘for historians of
Indonesian nationalism and reformism, Ahmad Khatīb is the most famous ʿālim
to have been born in the Alam Minangkabau’ (Laffan 2003: 106). But there is
more to Ahmad Khatib than that. While Nawawi was respected as a guardian
of the tradition, even though some considered him a disseminator rather than
a contributor, Ahmad Khatib was a more liminal figure. Having had some
exposure to Western-style education, he ‘functioned as a bridge between tra-
dition and innovation’, acting as ‘a midwife’ between what in the Malay and
Minangkabau contexts are called the kaum tua (old generation) and kaum muda
(young generation) (Latif 2008: 76).
Ahmad Khatib was not merely a ‘descendant from a Padri kadi’; his mater-
nal grandfather was none other than Tuanku Nan Rinceh. On his father’s side
he hailed from an aristocratic family who had traditionally held the office of
jaksa kepala (chief of native legal officials) in Padang – the port city on Sumatra’s
west coast. His paternal grandfather Abdallah is thought to have been a Hijazi
emigrant who became imam and ‘state preacher’ (khatib negeri) in Kota Gedang,
whereas his father Abd al-Latif joined the Dutch colonial administration as
district head of Empat Angkat. Thanks to this position, Abd al-Latif was able
to send his son Ahmad to the Dutch primary school and the teachers’ training
school (kweekschool) in Bukittingi. However, more interested in religious studies,
in 1881, Ahmad went to Mecca – accompanied by his grandfather and cousin
Muhammad Tahir bin Jalal al-Din al-Azhari (1869–1956). Better known as
Tahir Jalaluddin, the latter would go on to become a leading Islamic reform-
ist in his own right. In Mecca, Ahmad Khatib attended the lectures of Ahmad
Dahlan, but avoided Nawawi al-Bantini. This seems to suggest a possible division
of the wider jawi community along ethnic lines, possibly exacerbated by different
Sufi affiliations. Although Ahmad Khatib was an initiate of the Naqshbandiyya
order, he was nevertheless hostile to the Qadiriyya branch operating in Banten.
After concluding a strategic and advantageous marriage with the daughter of
the Meccan bookseller Shaykh Muhammad Salih al-Kurdi, Ahmad Khatib was
considered eligible for the office of imam of the Shafiʿi rite in the Grand Mosque.
Appointed to the position by Sharif Awn al-Rafiq of Mecca, this gave Ahmad
Khatib the right to convene his halaqa, or teaching circle, in the mosque rather
than at his home – as even Nawawi al-Bantini had been obliged to do.
From this secure position, Ahmad Khatib felt confident enough to assert his
authority vis-à-vis the leadership pretensions of Arab (in particular Egyptian
and Hadhrami) ulama. He also used it to engage in polemic exchanges with
Sayyid Uthman, the de facto mufti of Batavia, about the permissibility of accept-
ing Dutch patronage for Islamic affairs in Indonesia. Given Ahmad Khatib’s
prestigious office and high profile at the time, it is somewhat surprising that his
prolific writings have not enjoyed the same longevity as the output of Nawawi
al-Bantini. One explanation for this may be the peculiar nature of Ahmad
Khatib’s oeuvre, which is dominated by texts on trigonometry and treatises
attacking Minangkabau adat. Reminiscent of the hostility of Ahmad Khatib’s
Padri ancestors, this persistent animosity towards customary law was a result
of continuing Dutch partisanship toward adat and their association with the
matrilineal Minangkabau aristocracy. Consequently, to Ahmad Khatib, ‘adat
and colonialism implicitly represented a united opposition to the Islam that he
wished to propagate’ (Laffan 2003: 110). Starkly contrasting with the political
quietism of older ulama, Ahmad Khatib’s belligerence and alleged incitement to
a prang sabil or jihad set off alarm bells in Batavia. Snouck Hurgronje instructed
his chief ‘spy’ in the Hijaz, Raden Aboe Bakar Djajadiningrat (c. 1854–c. 1914),
to keep a close eye on the wily Minangkabau scholar.3
In view of his vehement opposition to Minangkabau adat and his growing
criticism of the ‘absolutist practices’ of the masters of Sufi orders, such as the
Samaniyya, but later also the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya; and considering
the fact that he was familiar with and possibly not entirely unsympathetic to the
ideas of the Egyptian reformist Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905), it is tempt-
97
ing to see Ahmad Khatib as a precursor of Cairene Reformism in Indonesia.

However, Michael Laffan remains cautious:
it is worth remembering that in Mecca in the 1890s, Jawi reformists and tradi-
tionalists were not yet engaged in the vitriolic debates about tradition that would
characterize the Islamic movement in the Indies in the 1910s and 1920s. [. . .]
It seems rather that future members of both factions were united in the quest to
regain their independence of action and reinstate Islam as the guiding philoso-
phy in their own communities; whether quietly like Nawāwī, or aggressively like
Ahmad Khatīb. (Laffan 2003: 112–13)
Laffan and Latif agree that, although Ahmad Khatib permitted his students
to read the works of Muhammad Abduh, he probably allowed this mainly with
the intention of better equipping them for refuting the Egyptian’s ideas, and
that he saw himself first and foremost as a religious scholar of the Meccan ulama
establishment. The fact that the young Indonesian Muslims who were among
his pupils would go on to take up positions in the last remaining sultanates of
Sumatra, or ended up as rival traditionalist and reformist activists illustrates the
very liminality of Ahmad Khatib’s position.4
Making Islam modern in Cairo

Where Michael Laffan speaks of ‘Cairene Reformism’, Yudi Latif refers to the
religious trend of which Ahmad Khatib was so sceptical as ‘hybrid “Islamic
reformism-modernism”’. It was a synthesis of the Islamic reformism, started by
the ulama in the seventeenth century, and the ‘Islamic modernism’ embraced
by a new generation of Western-influenced Muslims. Often the beneficiaries of
both an Islamic religious and colonial state education, these modernist reform-
ers had the ambition to adopt that new civilisation while at the same time trying
to remain loyal to Islamic culture. In that sense, they can be considered occupy-
ing an ‘interstitial space between “Islamism” and “secularism”’ (Latif 2003: 73).
Cairene reformism and Islamic reformism-modernism both refer to a new
strand of Islamic thinking about religious renewal and revival triggered by the
activities of the colourful intrigant Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, but developed into
a more consistent discourse by Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida (1865–
1935).5 Recalling al-Afghani’s advocacy of Pan-Islamism discussed in the previ-
ous chapter, his involvement in journalism and politics rather than scholarship
affirms that it is appropriate to qualify al-Afghani’s attempt to make Islam
relevant again for the modern Muslim world as ‘revivalism’ – in contrast to the
more cerebral nature of Abduh’s reformism. Equally defendable is Yudi Latif’s
hyphenated ‘reformism-modernism’, as Cairo had also become an important
staging ground for a new Egyptian intelligentsia exposed to Western educational
influences, set in motion in the 1840s by the Paris mission of Rifa’a Badawi
Raf’i al-Tahtawi (1801–73) and the work of Ali Mubarak Pasha (1823–93) as
minister of schools and works. The advancement of a Western-oriented intel-

ligentsia benefitted further from the introduction of a secular state-sponsored
schooling system that followed in the wake of the British occupation (1882) and
which paralleled in many ways the Dutch efforts in the Netherlands East Indies.
The combined effects of these developments resulted in ‘a radical reorientation
of the Egyptian elite through the foundation of modern schools, journals, and
infrastructure’ that was mirrored in comparable circles in the Indies (Laffan
2003: 116; Latif 2008: 73).6
Against the background of this intellectual onslaught that accompanied
European economic and political imperialism, al-Afghani and Abduh sent out
a clear and urgent message to Muslims worldwide, calling upon them to reunite
by drawing inspiration from the early community of Medina, known as the
salaf salih or ‘pious ancestors’. It is important to stress that the initial reincarna-
tion of the salaf salih envisioned by this first Salafiyya movement was nothing like
that of the literalist Islamism advocated by later activists referred to as Salafis.
Instead, the slogan ‘back to the Qur’an and Sunna’ was coupled with a call for
the modernisation of education. In order to make Islam into a progressive reli-
gion again, Abduh urged Muslims to avail themselves of all knowledge, includ-
ing Western scientific advances. What also distinguishes this religious discourse
is the role given to the individual:
Empowered by free will, the individual is to enact the Sunna through a rational
and personal investigation of the sources of Islam (ijtihad, the exponent of such
being a mujtahid) and the application of all aspects of modernity not hostile to
Islam. [. . .] This methodology forms the structure against which the Cairene
reformists often define themselves. (Laffan 2003: 121)
Abduh’s articulation of this epistemological distinctiveness stands in stark

contrast to the contradictions and inconsistencies in his writings on the envis-
aged ideal Muslim community. While clear in his rejection of ideologies based
on ethnicity (al-jinsiyya) or territorial affiliation (al-wataniyya) as materialist and
destructive to human solidarity, his proposed alternative religious sense of com-
munity captured in the term umma remained ambiguous, because this word ‘can,
like the Malay bangsa, define a multiplicity of meanings spanning “generation”
to “nation”’ (Laffan 2003: 119). Drawing on the Syrian-German social scientist
Bassam Tibi, Laffan adds that this vagueness can be attributed to the fact that,
historically, there never has been a harmonious, undivided Islamic umma.
At the same time, it is important to remain cognisant of the fact that Egypt had
not been completely turned into a centre of modernisation or religious reform.
In fact, Abduh’s ideas met with a very hostile reception at the bastion of tradi-
tionalist Sunni learning: al-Azhar – to which many students from around the
Muslim world continued to flock. In this regard, it is also important to point out
the existence of a so-called riwaq al-jawi or ‘jawi hall’ at al-Azhar, which catered
99
for students coming to this Islamic metropole from Southern Arabia, India and
Southeast Asia. Michael Laffan’s meticulous research of Arabic and jawi source
materials has turned up one Isma’il al-Minankabawi as the shaykh of the riwaq
during the 1880s. Educated in Mecca and active as a Naqshbandiyya recruiter
in Singapore during the 1850s, his Minangkabau origins – together with the
later presence in Cairo during the 1890s of yet another scholar from that same
region, Shaykh Isma’il Abd al-Mutallib – may have motivated Ahmad Khatib’s
encouragement of his own pupils to pursue further studies in Cairo. One indi-
vidual to take up that suggestion was his own cousin Tahir Jalaluddin, who came
to Egypt after a fifteen-year tenure in Mecca. In fact, it was during his time at
al-Azhar (1895–9) that Tahir Jalaluddin made contact with Muhammad Abduh
and also established a relationship with Rashid Rida for future collaboration.
Taking Cairene reformism home: the kaum muda of Sumatra

The prominence of Muslim scholars from the Minangkabau in the early intro-
duction of Islamic reformist ideas is further illustrated by the role played by
returning students of Ahmad Khatib in the dissemination of this new Islamic
discourse in Sumatra and in the profiling of its proponents as kaum muda or
‘young generation’. According to Werner Kraus, this kaum muda activism can
still not be completely divorced from the traditionalist discourse of the kaum tua,
as he sees the Naqshbandiyya order as the predecessor and trailblazer for the
modernist reformism coming from Cairo (Kraus 1984: 125).
Back in Sumatra, the kaum muda found their primary field of activity in edu-
cational reform. The first modern Islamic school was pioneered by Abdullah
Ahmad (1878–1933), who had attended a Dutch-language primary school and
studied with Ahmad Khatib in Mecca (1895–9), followed by a short visit to
Cairo. Initially working at his father’s surau in Padang Panjang, in 1909 he
founded a madrasa; introducing graded classes, classroom teaching instead of
the traditional halaqa, and non-religious subjects that were also taught at secular
state schools. In terms of organisation and curriculum, the Indonesian madrasa
(Javanese reformists were deploying similar initiatives) positioned itself between
a pesantren or pondok and a secular state school. Naming a school madrasa indi-
cated that the educators had the ambition of taking part in the emancipa-
tion project of kemajuan (kemadjoean), or ‘progress’, while remaining rooted in an
Islamic worldview (Latif 2008: 83). In 1915, Abdullah Ahmad’s school received
Dutch recognition as the Hollandsch-Inlandsche School (HIS) Adabijah. This associa-
tion with the colonial authorities was later reason for other Islamic modernists
to disown Abdullah Ahmad’s contributions.7 Other former students of Ahmad
Khatib, including Muhammad Djamil Djambek (1862–1947) and Muhammad
Thaib Umar (1874–1920), were also involved in similar initiatives; but the most
successful endeavour was a school founded by Abdul Karim Amrullah (1879–
1945), alias Haji Rasul (Hadji Rasoel).
Haji Rasul was destined to become the most prominent exponent of his
generation of kaum muda. The son of a local Naqshbandiyya shaykh, Haji Rasul
spent seven years in Mecca before returning to Sumatra in 1906. First working
as an itinerant teacher in the Padang and Bukittingi region, he then set himself
to reform a traditional Islamic school that had been established in the late
nineteenth century, Surau Jembatan Besi. Haji Rasul felt emboldened to take
such a step because of the support he had managed to secure from the Dutch
in an earlier confrontation with penghulu chiefs of the Lake Maninjau region in
1911. In this dispute the local colonial administrator had sided with Haji Rasul,
affirming that – while adat fell within the jurisdiction of the penghulu – ‘matters of
religion were Rasoel’s domain’ (Laffan 2003: 173). Starting in 1912, he initially
worked with the support of Abdullah Ahmad, following the latter’s example of
introducing classrooms and grades in 1916, but also infusing its teachings with a
new internationalist Islam. Eventually, the school became part of a federation of
reformed surau and gained fame under the name Sumatra Thawalib. Reassured by
the earlier Dutch backing he had received, Haji Rasul also oversaw the building
of a new mosque with Middle Eastern-style minarets to replace the old Kubu
mosque at Lake Maninjau with its traditional Minangkabau architecture.
An even wider madrasa network called Persatuan Guru-Guru Agama Islam (PGAI)
was set up in 1918 under the chairmanship of Zainuddin Labai al-Junusi.
This project tried to also bring on board the traditionalist ulama. However,
throughout the Indies, the latter preferred to develop their own initiatives. As
early as 1906, Surakarta’s Susuhanan Pakubuwono IX (r. 1893–1939) founded
Pesantren Mambaul Ulum, while in the Minangkabau, one of Ahmad Khatib’s
former pupils on the traditionalist side of the spectrum, Sulaiman al-Rasuli
(1871–1970), established the Ittihadul Ulama to rival the PGAI.8
The role played by the Naqshbandiyya ‘purification agenda’ vis-à-vis certain
Sufi practices and the bridge function performed by transitional figures such
as Ahmad Khatib, affirm the importance of being cognisant of both continuity
and change when assessing religious reformism.9 Naqshbandi involvement and
interstitial ulama like Ahmad Khatib are illustrative of the blurred lines between
Meccan and Cairene Reformism, between kaum tua and kaum muda. The distinc-
tions between the two are ambiguous and only tend to turn into dichotomies
or binary opposites when demarcations of respective spheres of influence and
political power come into play.
At the same time, it cannot be denied that the introduction of a new Islamic
education system open to Western and West Asian intellectual and cultural
influences, or even mundane changes such as the adoption of Western dress,
resulted in growing tensions between traditionalist and modernist Muslims.
Laffan reports how the kaum tua branded the kaum muda not only as zindiq (her-
etics) and muʿtazila (a controversial rationalist theological school dating back to
the ninth century), but also accused them of being khawarij (a rebellious sect first
101
emerging in the seventh century), and – with the rise of a new Saudi state in
Arabia – agents of Wahhabism. While the Sumatran reformists initially rejected
such appellations, after becoming better acquainted with the writings of Ibn
Taymiyya (1263–1328) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya (d. 1350), they defiantly
identified with this duo’s opposition to local practices, which were considered
bidʿa or unlawful innovations. Angered by this provocation, in 1916, the kaum
tua representatives wrote to the Meccan ulama, who in response issued a fatwa in
which Abdullah Ahmad, Haji Rasul, Djamil Djambek and Zainuddin Labai al-
Junusi were declared ‘apostates and liable to imprisonment by the Sharif should
they journey to Mecca’ (Laffan 2003: 172).
While by the early 1900s the battle-lines appear to have been drawn, it
should also be clear that with their shared santri backgrounds, the differences
between traditionalist and reformist-modernist Muslims tend to fade, in particu-
lar when compared with Sumatra’s matrilineal Minangkabau culture or Java’s
abangan. Notwithstanding their shared preoccupation with kemajuan, there was
also growing diversification among the kaum muda themselves. All this forms part
of what Yudi Latif calls the ‘polyphony’ and ‘polyvalence’ of Indonesia’s public
sphere (Latif 2008: 129–30).
Print Islam
Aside from educational innovation, another important tool in the spread of
reformist Islamic ideas was the introduction of the printing press and the estab-
lishment of new media, such as newspapers and other periodicals. For centuries,
the Muslim world had held off introducing the printing press for a variety of
reasons, including its traditional reliance on the oral transmission of knowledge
and permission to teach from individual teachers to pupils. Additionally, there
were objections by the copyist guilds because of the threat the new technology
posed to their trade; rumours that presses were cleaned with brushes made
of pig bristles; and associations with Western – colonial – influences (Larsson
2011: 194). Consequently, Ottoman ulama had issued fatwas against the use of
the printing press and while – eventually – permission was granted in 1727, it
was not until well into the nineteenth century that, on the back of other mod-
ernisation efforts, it became a more widespread medium throughout the Muslim
world (Albin 2009: 171). The first identified presence and use of a printing press
by Southeast Asian Muslims can be traced to Palembang in 1848. New presses
followed suit in Surabaya and Riau. Between the 1850s and 1870s, these early
publishing houses began turning out the first printed Qur’ans and editions
of the writings of al-Raniri, al-Palimbani and al-Banjari. In Batavia, Sayyid
Uthman had been running his own press since 1875 to turn out tracts against
his Naqshbandiyya opponents. Interestingly, the latter were at the forefront of
what Laffan calls ‘Sufi Print’. Other tarekat were not to be outdone and refused
to give in, and ‘evidence from the 1890s suggests instead that competing local
orders employed similar strategies’ (Laffan 2011: 60–1).
Malay-language periodicals promoting Cairene reformism

Although Laffan questions whether copies of al-Afghani and Abduh’s short-
lived Parisian journal Al-Urwa al-Wuthqa (1884) ever reached a Southeast Asian
Muslim audience, its format and that of the most important organ of Cairene
Reformism, Rashid Rida’s Al-Manar (established in 1898) did stimulate aspira-
tions among Southeast Asian Muslim intellectuals to emulate these publica-
tions.10 However, the gateway this created for Muhammad Abduh’s ideas, and
later for those of Rashid Rida as well, was not in the Minangkabau, Palembang
or anywhere else in what is now Indonesia, but in Singapore.
The first such Malay-language periodical modelled on Al-Urwa al-Wuthqa
and Al-Manar was Al-Imam (1906–8), set up in Singapore by Ahmad Khatib’s
cousin and now Azhar graduate, Tahir Jalaluddin, whom Yudi Latif identifies
as one of the first so-called ‘ulama-intelek [religious scholars who were literate in
modern scientific knowledge]’ (Latif 2008: 18). After his studies in Mecca and
Cairo, Tahir Jalaluddin’s reservations against the Minangkabau’s matrilineal
culture and adherence to adat made him decide not to return home, accepting
instead a position at the court of the Sultan of Perak, in British Malaya, before
moving on to Singapore in 1905. The Al-Imam circle also included Ahmad
al-Hadi (1862–1934), a Hadhrami who had been adopted by the half-brother
of the Sultan of Riau and who had accompanied Tahir Jalaluddin on the
latter’s second pilgrimage to Mecca in 1902–3, where they met with Rashid
Rida. Another associate, a Cirebon-born Acehnese Hadhrami by the name of
Muhammad Salim al-Kalali, about whom little else is known, acted as the jour-
nal’s managing director. Also involved was a son-in-law of Snouck Hurgronje’s
Batavia-based associate Sayyid Uthman: Shaykh Sayyid Muhammad bin Aqil
bin Yahya (1863–1931). When he became the director of Al-Imam Printing
Company after the venture’s commercial reorganisation in 1908, this gave
Rashid Rida reason to believe that Bin Aqil was also responsible for the circula-
tion of his Al-Manar in Southeast Asia. In the same year, Tahir Jalaluddin was
succeeded as editor by his fellow Minangkabau Haji Abbas bin Mohammad
Taha (1885–1945), a Singapore-born intellectual who had been educated in
Mecca and who worked as a translator of educational books from Syria and
Egypt.11 In terms of how Al-Imam’s content reflects the concerns of its reformist
editors, Azyumardi Azra observes that:
Al-Imam’s first concern was with religion and not directly with social, even less
with political change. At the same time, such a tripartite division would have in
some measure been foreign to the editors and writers of the journal, who shared
the traditional Islamic concept of the undifferentiated umma in which spiritual,
103
social, and political well-being is subsumed under other criteria – the good and
profitable life according to Divine Law. (Azra 2006: 149–50)
Although political quietists, Al-Imam’s editors did entertain one pet project:
Pan-Islamism. Given its intellectual lineage and the fact that the periodical’s
brief existence (1906–8) coincided with the final years of Sultan Abd al-Hamid
II’s reign, this is not surprising. However, as a further survey of its issues shows,
the contributors’ most enduring concern and abiding interest was in the general
state of affairs in Southeast Asian – in particular Malay – Muslim societies.
Self-critical in its reflection, Al-Imam sought the root causes for its societal ills –
backwardness, laziness, complacency and subjugation to foreigners – in Malay
ignorance of the teachings of Islam. To escape from this lethargy, the writers
urged their readers to use their God-given intellect and make use of all avail-
able knowledge. Rejecting the claims of their detractors that Islam is hostile to
Western knowledge and progress, they insisted it is imperative for Muslims
to educate themselves, albeit within the confines of the spirit of Divine Law.
Consequently, it is also incumbent on rulers, traditional leaders and the ulama
to stimulate education and economic development, while cleansing Islam of
impurities brought about by incorporating local customs and beliefs derived
from other religions than Islam. This means a return to ijtihad and refraining
from taqlid, which modernist reformists qualify as ‘blind imitation’ (taklid buta).
Michael Laffan, meanwhile, has checked Al-Imam’s discourse for instances of
the ‘joining of religion with place and people’ in order to analyse how Arabic
and Malay terms for ‘homeland’, such as watan and tanah air, or ‘people/nation’
– umma or umat and bangsa – slipped into the vocabulary of the religious reform-
ists, in spite of their warnings against attaching too much importance to ethnic-
ity, at the expense of humankind’s shared inner nature and knowledge of Islam.
Another challenge facing Al-Imam’s editors was how to link jawi religion and
culture to the historiography of the wider Muslim world. The end result of their
efforts to balance or reconcile the different aspects impacting on Indonesian
Muslim identity formation was a tendency to belittle their own traditions and
regard Muslim Southeast Asia as peripheral to what are so persistently per-
ceived to be the central lands of Islam in West Asia. In the final analysis,
Al-Imam’s attempts to merge religion, territory, ethnicity and historical experi-
ence into a notion of Islamic nationhood were prone to the same ambiguities as
Laffan signalled earlier in Muhammad Abduh’s writings.
Another pioneering periodical in the same vein as Al-Manar and Al-Imam
was Al-Munir (1911–15). Although it was primarily targeted at a Minangkabau
audience, its readers too were ‘bound to both Arabic- and Western-language
metropoles’, because ‘more than anywhere in the Indies, reformism and the
networks of the Ethici intersected in the Alam Minangkabau’ (Laffan 2003:
172–3). Established in 1911, Al-Munir was managed by Ahmad Khatib’s former
student and founder of the Adabijah School, Abdullah Ahmad. It also included
Haji Rasul among its correspondents. The latter was chiefly responsible for the
publication’s shift from a pro-Western to a more puritanical strand of reformism
inspired by the thinking of Rashid Rida. The journal encouraged Indonesian
Muslims to go study in Cairo and actively promoted the ideas expounded by
Rashid Rida in Al-Manar. In 1913, it also set up a sister publication in Cairo
called Al-Ittihad, with Abdullah Ahmad acting as its agent in the Indies. Although
focussed on showcasing the inspirational ideas emanating from Cairo, Al-Munir
remained supportive of jawi scholarship in Mecca, which now gravitated around
the figure of Abdallah al-Zawawi (1850–1924). After a long exile in Pontianak
(1893–1908), this scholar had returned to Mecca to take over Ahmad bin Zaini
Dahlan’s position as mufti of the Shafiʿi school, thus becoming the guru besar (pro-
fessor) and mentor of the Indonesian student community (Laffan 2003: 199).
Like Al-Imam, the writers of Al-Munir also promoted Muslim self-improvement
and vigilance against ‘the decline of one’s bangsa and homeland – now phrased
[. . .] as the tanah air’ (Laffan 2003: 174–5). Al-Munir’s editors attached equal
importance to not appearing anti-Dutch: ‘They were Minangkabau Muslims
first and (Sumatran) Malays second – guarded by a benevolent Dutch govern-
ment that spread its protection over the whole Indies’ (Laffan 2003: 176). To
underscore this sense of nationhood, Al-Munir ran a series of articles in which
they celebrated love for the fatherland. The accompanying passive acceptance
of colonial rule also echoed Muhammad Abduh’s attitude towards the British
in Egypt.
This ambition of mobilising a national movement, in which the self-identi-
fication as Muslim and an embryonic sense of ‘Indonesianess’ converged, also
opened the way for Al-Munir editor Abdullah Ahmad to make overtures to
H. O. S. Cokroaminoto (also Tjokroaminoto, 1882–1934), one of the founders of
Indonesia’s first Islamic mass organisation, the Sarekat Islam (SI). Together they
founded yet another newspaper, Al-Islam (1916–17). It differed from other jawi
periodicals in that it also included a final page in rumi (Latin) script – signalling
a new nationwide focus, which also became clear from its ‘significant subti-
tle: “organ for Indies Muslim nationalists” (orgaan voor Indisch-Mohammedaansche
nationalisten)’ (Laffan 2003: 178). The periodical did not last very long, because
the educated elites had begun looking for alternative ways of organising their
activities. That also meant the use of Latin script in publications. As a result of
this reorientation, jawi periodicals quickly went out of fashion, and jawi script
only survived in book printing catering to the traditionalist Islamic – kaum tua
– circles. This genre of books became known as kitab kuning or ‘yellow books’ –
named for the tinted paper from the Middle East on which they were printed.
The literature in Latin script used by the kaum muda was referred to as kitab putih
or ‘white books’ (Bruinessen 1990: 227).
From the 1930s there also began to emerge an Islamic literature written by
105
intellectuals from modernist-activists backgrounds such as Mas Mansur (1896–

1946), the jurist Muhammad Hasbi Ash Shiddieqy (1906–75), the future politi-
cian Mohammad Natsir (1908–93) and Hamka (1908–81), a son of Haji Rasul
who went on to become Indonesia’s leading Muslim ‘man of letters’. It was
through his editorship of Pedoman Masyarakat (1936–43) that the latter established
his reputation as the leading author on Islamic themes – through both fiction and
non-fiction (Riddell 2001: 216–17). In addition, his Minangkabau background
also kindled an interest in reconciling Islamic reformism with the sustained Sufi
influences in his native region. This led to the publication of his articles about
the subject from the 1930s in book form under the title Tasauf Moderen (1939),
or ‘Modern Sufism’, which is still widely read in Indonesia today. His fellow
Minangkabau, Mohammad Natsir, was also a prolific writer, using a number of
pseudonyms to publish articles on Islamic civilisation and the renewal of Islam’s
teachings in Pedoman Masyarakat, Pandji Islam and other outlets. Many of these
were later bundled into a massive two-volume collection published under the
title Capita Selecta (1955–7). Natsir had a keen interest in the philosophers and
theologians such as al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and al-Ghazali; the scientific contribu-
tions of the polymath Ibn al-Haytham; and in Ibn al-Miskawayh, a humanist
thinker who is thought even to have influenced the thinking of the German
philosopher Schopenhauer. In his study of twentieth-century Islamic theologi-
cal discourse in Indonesia, Saleh notes that the writings of these Muslim intel-
lectuals tended to keep doctrinal and textual arguments to a minimum, relying
primarily on logic and reason, but adding the critical conclusion that it made
them prone to ‘gross oversimplifications’ (Saleh 2001: 105).
Muslim emancipation: the rise of Indonesia’s Islamic mass

organisations
Aside from the printing press, another important innovation that has been
crucial in shaping Indonesia’s Islamic landscape is the establishment of Islamic
mass organisations or Ormas. They are an institutional manifestation of a strat-
egy employed by pious Muslims in the Indies to distance themselves from the
coloniser, while becoming more self-assertive by working toward an – initially
– non-political emancipation through their own education initiatives and daʿwa
efforts. This particular focus on learning and teaching was stimulated not least
by the more vigorous education efforts of the colonial state itself as part of its
Ethical Policy.
Differentiated along ‘modernist-reformist’ and ‘traditionalist’ lines, the
Islamic mass organisations have also been instrumental in articulating varying
doctrinal and ideological positions; thus they have influenced the enduring
categorisation of the Muslim segment of the Indonesian people. Since their
foundation in the 1910s and 1920s, the mass organisations have grown into a
phenomenon that is to be considered as the single most important contribut-

ing factor to the Islamisation process in twentieth-century Indonesian society,
because they have been definitive for what Islam in Indonesia looks like today,
in terms of both the religion’s institutionalisation and its discursive formations.
The activities of these organisations also generated a certain critical mass in
terms of capacity-building. Their education systems and other emancipatory
initiatives created a wider pool of human resources from which to draw, thus
expanding the organisations’ support bases in what is in effect a dialectical
dynamic. As has become clear from the discussion so far, intellectual guidance,
direction of activism, and political leadership for Indonesia’s Muslim population
was provided by a handful of individuals. That is not to say that such influential
persons have ceased to exist. Turning Islamic mass organisations into effective
social movements continued to require the inspiration of charismatic leadership
figures.
From Muslim trade union to anti-communist party: Sarekat

Islam (SI)
Although roughly one decade into its existence, it would evolve into a political
party, at its foundation in 1912, the Sarekat Islam (SI, Islamic Union) started
out as a trade union of Muslim merchants with the ambition of becoming a
social movement for the sake of emancipating Indonesian Muslims. The first
organisation of its kind, the establishment of the SI was the earliest instance of
an attempt to fuse Islam and nationalism, thus offering the ingredients for a dis-
course that continues to recur in Indonesian politics. SI also acted as an incuba-
tor in which founders of other Islamic movements and political parties acquired
their first organisational experiences. These include not only the founders of
the Muhammadiyah, the Masyumi Party and renegade Darul Islam, but even
future leaders of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI, Indonesian Communist
Party).
Notwithstanding the ambition to combine Islam and nationhood, the SI
had ‘initially a Javanese character’ (Laffan 2003: 167). The union’s origins are
also a bit muddled. As early as 1905 a Javanese batik trader from Surakarta
– originally named Sudarno Nadi, but better known as Haji Samanhudi
(1868–1956) – established a self-help organisation for Muslim traders under
the name Rekso Rumekso. In her history of the Hadhrami community in the
early 1900s, Natalie Mobini-Kesheh notes that, four years later, a journalist and
former medical student of priyayi origins, Raden Mas Tirto Adhi Suryo (also
Tirtoadisurjo, 1878–1918), was involved in the establishment of a similar organ-
isation in Buitenzorg (Bogor), known as Sarekat Dagang Islamiah (SDI, Islamic
Commercial Union).12 She notes that this was set up as a joint venture with
members of the Bajunayd family of the local Hadhrami community (Mobini-
Kesheh 1999: 42–4). While the first SDI became defunct in 1910, a year later,
107
Tirto teamed up with Haji Samanhudi to restart the trade union under the
name Sarekat Dagang Islam Surakarta. In 1912, Tirto moved to Surabaya
where he met the Dutch-educated nobleman-turned-civil servant, H. O. S.
Cokroaminoto (Raden Mas Haji Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto in full). With its
named shortened to Sarekat Islam, the SI was transformed into a more politi-
cised body with the ambition to represent all Muslims in the Indies.13 The more
senior Haji Samanhudi stayed on as chairman until 1914, when Cokroaminoto
took over.
In view of its self-proclaimed ‘Islamic commonality and cooperativeness’,
even members of the Muslim establishment endorsed by the Dutch colonial
establishment lent their approval to the SI, including Sayyid Uthman who even
spoke at its first mass rally in 1913 (Laffan 2003: 168). With his captivating
personality, Cokroaminoto was regarded by many people in the SI’s rapidly
expanding support base as the embodiment of a ‘messianic figure in the mould
of the Just King’ – the Ratu Adil (Laffan 2003: 167). By 1919, SI claimed that its
membership had passed the two million mark, although that number has been
disputed and put at not more than half a million (Latif 2008: 122, 150). Aside
from its Dutch-educated leaders and claims to represent a nationwide Islamic
movement, the SI also displayed left-leaning tendencies, evinced by the early
involvement in the SI of the two co-founders of the Indonesian Communist
Party: Raden Darsono (1897–?) and its first chairman, Semaun (c. 1899–1971).
The socialist orientation of the SI is further demonstrated by a 1924 publica-
tion from the hand of chairman Cokroaminoto, but with an important differ-
ence from Bolshevik ideology. Appearing under the title Islam dan Sosialisme
(‘Islam and Socialism’), it promoted a form of socialism that was at odds with
the Marxist theory of historical materialism because it also advocated retain-
ing a place for God. In the course of the 1920s, the socialist-communist pres-
ence became the most important factor in the fragmentation of the SI into a
‘White SI’ (SI Putih) and ‘Red SI’ (SI Merah), from which – in 1924 – evolved the
political parties Partai Sarekat Islam (PSI) and Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI)
respectively.
An important figure in purging the SI’s left wing was the Minangkabau
Haji Agus Salim (Hadji Agoes Salim, 1884–1954), Cokroaminoto’s successor
as party chairman and a future minister of foreign affairs. Added to the pan-
theon of national heroes in 1961, the figure of Agus Salim is emblematic of the
transformation of a bright young administrator and intellectual co-opted by the
Dutch colonial authorities into an assertive activist for both Indonesian nation-
alist and Islamic causes. He was born as Masjhoedoelhak in Kota Gedang,
and his father and grandfather had served as jaksa kepala of Riau and Padang
respectively. He adopted the nickname ‘Agus’ – given to him by his Javanese
nanny – as his official name, which the Dutch then styled into ‘August’.14 Agus
Salim’s father – who also worked as correspondent for Al-Imam and Al-Munir –
insisted that his son receive a Dutch-language education. Graduating with the
highest honours, Agus Salim’s ambitions to become a physician were waylaid
by Snouck Hurgronje, who arranged for his admittance to the Colonial Service.
In 1904, Agus Salim was ‘gelijkgesteld, that is, elevated to the official rank of a
European’ (Laffan 2003: 182). Considered a rare honour, he quickly found out
that – in practice – this meant very little as he continued to face both discrimi-
nation and suspicion. Two years later, Snouck Hurgronje recommended Agus
Salim for the post of ‘trainee dragoman’ (interpreter) at the Dutch consulate in
Jeddah. While the Dutch authorities in Minangkabau were concerned about
the possibility of Agus Salim falling under the influence of his relative Ahmad
Khatib, in Muslim circles questions were actually raised about his commitment
to Islam and whether he could be even considered a Muslim at all. This scepti-
cism was eventually dispelled by responses from the editors of Al-Imam, who
even appointed him as their agent in Jeddah.
Agus Salim’s years in Arabia (1906–11) became a transformative experience.
Feeling unappreciated by his Dutch superiors, who – in turn – considered him
undisciplined and arrogant, he found consolation in visiting Mecca and meeting
with Ahmad Khatib:
Here, then, is the source of Salim’s apparent volte-face from emancipated Indiër
to committed Muslim [. . .] It is in the Hijaz then that his homeward vision
would have been founded, to lie ready for his later role as the leader of an
organization which claimed to represent all the Muslims in the Netherlands
Indies. Moreover, being a Minangkabau with experience in the wider Indies,
his vision of an Islamic homeland would have been broad and inclusive. Yet he
was connected to two opposing metropoles – Mecca and Batavia – and his later
(nationalist) activities symbolize the coming together of the reformist and secular
strands of the national movement. (Laffan 2003: 185)
Back in the Indies, Agus Salim first worked at the central administration
in Batavia, before returning home to Minangkabau to establish a Hollandsch-
Inlandsche School (native Dutch school), only to transfer back again to Batavia
to work as a translator for Balai Poestaka, the publishing arm of the Office of
Native Affairs. For a while, he retained the interstitial or liminal position shared
by many members of the emerging indigenous intellectual class – not just in
Indonesia but also in other colonies. In his history of Indonesia’s Muslim intel-
ligentsia, Yudi Latif invokes Stuart Hall to illustrate that for the bangsawan pikiran
or intellectual elite, ‘Islamic identity was not a fixed condition’ and that this
‘hybrid intelligentsia [. . .] would later lead to the formation of the so-called
“intelek-ulama” [modern intellectuals/intelligentsia who were literate in religious
knowledge]’ – a category different from the earlier identified ulama-intelek (Latif
2008: 64, 66). Although Ethici, like Snouck Hurgronje and his protégés in the
Office of Native Affairs, were sympathetic to both Islamic modernism and even
moderate forms of nationalism, they also intended to render these tendencies
109
harmless by manipulating Indonesia’s Muslims into continued association with

the Netherlands.15 In 1915, Agus Salim was sent to attend his first meeting of
the SI as a police informant. However, his meeting with Cokroaminoto brought
about a definitive conversion to the Indonesian cause on grounds of a commit-
ment to both modernism and Pan-Islamism, a step that was ‘not so much an
experience on the road to Damascus, but rather the confluence of several influ-
ences on his life’ (Laffan 2003: 185).
Soon Agus Salim began carving out a place for himself on the Indonesian
political stage. First presiding over the foundation of the Jong Sumatranen Bond
(JSB, League of Young Sumatrans) in 1917, he then took up a post as adviser
to the broader Jong Islamieten Bond (JIB, League of Young Muslims), which
was formed in 1925 as a joint initiative of the SI and the Muhammadiyah.
With his campaigning for an independent Indonesia brought together under
the banner of Islam, Agus Salim continued in the footsteps of Abdullah Ahmad
and Cokroaminoto.16 However, he also began to press his own stamp on the SI:
Agus Salim was instrumental in ending the declarations of loyalty to the Dutch
government that had been issued at the organisation’s national congresses since
1918. He also became one of the chief critics of perceived Dutch favourit-
ism towards non-indigenous Muslims – the largest segment among the Vreemde
Oosterlingen (Foreign Orientals) – which was further enforced by his personal
annoyance over the patronising attitude of Arab expatriates. What kept Agus
Salim’s relationship with the Dutch intact was the opposition he orchestrated
against the SI’s left.
As a demonstration of the Muslims’ ability to act in their own right, Agus
Salim began preparing for the expulsion of the communists, whose materialism
was at odds with the SI’s vision of socialism. In 1921, Agus Salim managed to
impose Islam as the single foundation of the SI. In order to consolidate this strat-
egy, the SI promoted solidarity with the wider Muslim world, exemplified by its
engagement with Pan-Islamism in its international affairs and the establishment
of yet another short-lived newspaper, Doenia Islam (‘World of Islam’, 1922–3),
which Agus Salim edited himself. While Muslim solidarity was one of the main
pillars of the SI, in order to exercise control over its members, Agus Salim
directed that affiliations with other Muslim organisations – with the exception
of its modernist sister organisation, the Muhammadiyah – had to be renounced
(Laffan 2003: 189–91). The combined effect of these moves was the loss of the
SI’s support base among the Indonesian left, as well as increased competition on
the reformist and modernist side of the Islamic spectrum.
Introducing modern Islamic reformism: the Muhammadiyah

The Muhammadiyah was not only established in the same year as the SI, in the
beginning it also shared its Javanese orientation. The founder, K.H. Ahmad
Dahlan (also spelled Achmad Dachlan, 1868–1923) – not be confused with the
Meccan ʿalim Ahmad bin Zaini Dahlan – was born with the name Muhammad
Darwis in the Kauman district of Yogyakarta, the son of the khatib of the sul-
tan’s mosque (Laffan 2003: 168). Ahmad Dahlan had been a student of the
Minangkabau Ahmad Khatib during his first study tour in Mecca (1890–1),
when he deepened his knowledge of Islam and astronomy (Ahmad Khatib’s
specialist field); while during his second sojourn to Mecca (1903–5), the ideas
of Muhammad Abduh had begun to gain greater popularity in the Hijaz.
However, upon his return to his native Yogyakarta, he became involved in Budi
Utomo, an association for aspiring Javanese intellectuals.17 As a batik merchant
by trade, he also joined the SI; even serving on its central committee, until his
preoccupation with the Muhammadiyah became too time-consuming. After
coming back from Arabia for the first time, Dahlan caused great unrest by insist-
ing that the qibla (direction of prayer) in the sultan’s mosque be adjusted based
on his new astronomical calculations. Following his definitive return in 1905,
he set up an experimental madrasa along similar lines as the kaum muda schools
in Minangkabau. This was followed by the establishment of a reformist Islamic
primary school in the Yogyakarta kraton. These modest educational initiatives
formed the starting point of the Muhammadiyah, which Dahlan founded in
1912 and formally registered with the authorities in Batavia in order to obtain
official state recognition.18
In contrast to the SI’s preoccupation with economics and politics, the
Muhammadiyah concentrates on education and social welfare. Using the group-
ings of activities proposed by the California-based Indonesian scholar of Islam,
Muhamad Ali, for categorising the ways in which reformist Muslims became
modern, the Muhammadiyah can be said to concentrate on the revitalisation of
daʿwa or proselytisation and strengthening the umma through education rather
than politics, although it did have a vivid interest in accommodating religious
law. Fauzan Saleh notes that ‘the main factors which led to the establishment
of the Muhammadiyah were the perceived impurity of religious life, the inef-
ficiency of religious education, the activities of Christian missionaries, and the
indifferent attitude of the intelligentsia’ to Islam (Saleh 2001: 83). Contrasting
him with Muhammad Abduh as ‘a man of the pen’, Muhamad Ali describes
Ahmad Dahlan as ‘more a man of action [. . .] who hardly recorded his thoughts
in writing’ (Ali 2016: 38).19
Eager to ensure that Islam remained meaningful for Muslims of the Indies, and
taking their cue from both Christian missionaries and the colonial state, Dahlan
and his initially small but dedicated group began setting up charitable institu-
tions, such as schools, hospitals and orphanages. The early Muhammadiyah
activists made sure to both operate within state-imposed constraints and adopt
procedural and institutional conventions from Dutch administrative practices.
However, Muhammadiyah leaders were at the same time critical of conversions
to Christianity and resentful of the financial support the missionaries received
111
from the state. It was this competition that motivated them to establish their
own alternative Islamic charitable networks and use these as platforms for daʿwa
activities. This still does not mean that relations between the Christian clergy
and the Muhammadiyah can be solely seen in antagonistic terms; on a personal
level, Dahlan maintained good relations with priests, pastors, Christian doctors
and even theosophists. The point raised earlier, not to exaggerate the differ-
ences between traditional and reformist Muslims, is mirrored in Muhamad
Ali’s observation that in modernising Indonesia, ‘Islamic reform and European
colonialism worked often in different spheres but did not fundamentally serve
as contradictory forces’ (Ali 2016: 2). Ahmad Dahlan’s progressive outlook is
further evinced by his attention to the role of women, setting up units within
the Muhammadiyah for both women and girls, called Aisyiyah and Nasyi’atul
Aisyiyah – named after the Prophet’s wife Aisha.
Until Ahmad Dahlan’s death in 1923, the organisation’s activities remained
confined to Java and only following a link-up with Haji Rasul’s Thawalib
movement on Sumatra did it begin to expand across the other islands. In
1926, another Muhammadiyah branch was set up in South Sulawesi involv-
ing, among others, former SI members who were more interested in education
and daʿwa than politics. Between 1932 and 1934, Haji Rasul’s son Hamka
played an important role in consolidating the Muhammadiyah’s position in
South Sulawesi. Since then it has grown into the second-largest Islamic mass
organisation of Indonesia – presently claiming to have thirty million adherents.
Such numbers must not be regarded as paid-up and card-carrying members,
because as the Muhammadiyah expanded, ‘it became increasingly not merely
an association (I. persyarikatan), but a movement (gerakan)’ – that is, not so much
an institutionalised as a dynamic phenomenon that unites people and motivates
them into joint action (Ali 2016: 49).
The following statement by Ahmad Dahlan underscores the primacy he
attached to education: ‘keep going to school, seek knowledge everywhere. Be a
teacher and come back to the Muhammadiyah. Be a doctor and come back to
the Muhammadiyah. Be an engineer, and come back to the Muhammadiyah’
(quoted in Ali 2016: 228). This type of non-religious knowledge was presented
under a variety of names: worldly knowledge (ilmu dunya), general knowledge (ilmu
umum), modern knowledge (ilmu moderen), as well as perhaps a bit more negatively,
foreign knowledge (ilmu asing) and Western knowledge (ilmu-ilmu barat). Aside
from this concern for benefitting from scientific advances, the Muhammadiyah
also promotes a holistic view of education; the acquisition of skills for the job
market must be balanced with an integrated spiritual and physical development,
a sense of nationhood should not come at the expense of religious obligations.
While promoting these complementarities, from the Muhammadiyah’s primary
schools to its universities, priority continues nevertheless to be attached to ‘knowl-
edge about the “seeds of religion” (I. benih agama)’ (Ali 2016: 229).
It has been suggested that the Muhammadiyah’s educational initiatives in

Yogyakarta met with a more welcoming reception than, for example, Abdullah
Ahmad’s Adabijah School because of the organisation’s urban location, where
there was already a greater openness to modernisation. While this may apply to
its starting point, the fact that – already in the first decade of its existence – the
Muhammadiyah had founded close to 300 schools may also have something to
do with the population density on Java as compared with the Minangkabau.
What the Muhammadiyah shared with the kaum muda initiatives on Sumatra was
its willingness to work with the colonial authorities. Indicative of this is the adop-
tion of Dutch designations for state-subsidised Muhammadiyah schools, while
the unsubsidised schools had to be distinguished by using Arabic alternatives
(madrasa) or Indonesian adaptations of the original Dutch (sekolah). How impor-
tant financial support from the colonial government was becomes clear from
the number of schools run by the Muhammadiyah in 1923: 207 Westernised
schools as opposed to eighty-eight madrasa.
Although giving primacy to education and being less politicised than the
SI, the Muhammadiyah does display an interest in the place of Islamic law in
Indonesian society. Rather than relying on ijmaʿ or the consensus of scholars, the
Muhammadiyah favours ijtihad – more specifically qiyas, or individual reasoning
by analogy – in dealing with the so-called muʿamalat, that is, those issues that do
not form part of religious doctrine or acts of worship and for which there are no
explicit stipulations in either the Qur’an or Traditions of the Prophet. Ahmad
Dahlan regarded reason (aql) as an educational tool, but this did not extend to
‘comprehending the divine’ or to ibadat – acts of worship (Ali 2016: 40–1). To
that end, the organisation has established an internal body that is charged with
the production of legal opinions or fatwas. Coming into existence in 1927, this
Majlis Tarjih or ‘Assembly for Deliberation’ is envisaged to maintain unity and
coherence in the positions taken by the Muhammadiyah.20 For that purpose the
members of this body are expected to reach an agreement on the matters under
consideration by deliberating the ‘various opinions in dispute and to decide on
the most acceptable solution (A. marjuh) according to their interpretations of the
Qur’an and the hadith’ (Ali 2016: 167). The role of the Majlis Tarjih is consulta-
tive, so its decisions are not binding on judges of religious courts. In line with its
loyalist attitude towards the colonial regime, the Muhammadiyah also tended
to respect the applicable Dutch laws in the Netherlands Indies, but it was criti-
cal of adat or customary law and the tendency of the Dutch legal administration
to accommodate non-Islamic indigenous legal systems. The Muhammadiyah’s
hands-on initiatives to resolve social problems were underpinned by the inspira-
tion derived from Abduh’s advocacy of talfiq, the prevalence of best practice in
legal reasoning, over adherence to a particular school (madhhab) and its conse-
quential imitation (taqlid).
There is a persistent tendency to associate the foundation of the
113
Muhammadiyah with the first introduction of Muhammad Abduh’s ideas in

Indonesia, but the previous sections have already made clear that the story
is not so straightforward. First of all, Abduh’s ideas had already affected stu-
dents of Ahmad Khatib and entered into the Indonesian public space through
periodicals such as Al-Imam and Al-Munir. Secondly, while Abduh may have
influenced the Muhammadiyah regarding educational organisation and a call
for returning to the original sources of Islam, when it comes to elaborating
religious teachings and beliefs, both Michael Laffan and Fauzan Saleh submit
that Muhammadiyah theologians ‘were more amenable to conservative Ashʿārī
doctrine which Rashīd Ridā, and not Muhammad ʿAbduh offered’ (Laffan
2003: 170). Consequently, Fauzan Saleh’s detailed study of Muhammadiyah
theologians shows that – in terms of doctrine – there is more that unites santri
Muslims from traditionalist and modernist backgrounds than separates them;
the differences are more a matter of accent than of kind.
The Muhammadiyah is adamant that its doctrinal positions are firmly
embedded within Islamic orthodoxy, even though it does not explicitly self-iden-
tify as belonging to the Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamaʿah (‘People of the Tradition and
Community’) – except when it comes to decisions promulgated by the Majlis
Tarjih which ‘are to be based on the precepts of the Ahl-Haqq wa’l-Sunnah’
(Saleh 2001: 68). The Muhammadiyah rejects criticism by its detractors that by
its promotion of tajdid (renewal) as a necessity it has placed itself outside of this
community. This view of tajdid is twofold. First of all, it envisages restoring the
teaching of Islam to the pure and original form in which it is laid down in the
Scriptures, that is, the Qur’an and Hadith. Secondly, ‘since Islam encompasses
at the same time universal values, the tajdīd of the Muhammadiyah also refers to
the implementation of Islamic teachings in accordance with the demands of the
developments of the modern age’ (Saleh 2001: 82). Leading Muhammadiyah
figures such as Munawar Chalil (1908–61) and Jarnawi Hadikusama (1920–93)
have persistently argued that because, in both its social and religious activ-
ism (amal wa ibadah), the Muhammadiyah bases itself on the Qur’an and the
Traditions of the Prophet, the organisation must be considered as adhering to
Sunni orthodoxy. It could even be argued that, since the Muhammadiyah does
not explicitly state that it represents the Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamaʿah, it can ‘claim
fairly that it is a “non-sectarian” movement’ (Saleh 2001: 81).
Moreover, given the Muhammadiyah’s orientation towards the practical
implementation of Islamic teachings, its preoccupations are different from
classical theological schools in that:
The Muhammadiyah [. . .] will not involve itself, for instance, in debating the
nature of God or the number of His attributes as the Ashʿarites or Māturidites
delighted in doing, nor will it be distracted by controversy over the qadā’ and the
qadar, or the validity of the five principles of Muʿtazilism (usūl al-khamsah). (Saleh
2001: 89)
Instead, in regards to purifying Islam, the Muhammadiyah is very much con-

cerned with weeding out instances of bidʿa (unlawful innovations) and khurafat
(superstitions). Together with takhayyul – heretical phantasms – they form the
three central terms in the movement’s theological vocabulary, or what Fauzan
Saleh has dubbed ‘Muhammadiyah phraseology’ (Saleh 2001: 107). The persis-
tence of this concern is demonstrated by the resurfacing of these terms in more
recent polemical exchanges, where the Indonesianised versions, takhayyul, bidʿa,
churafat have been disparagingly abbreviated to ‘TBC’, so as to imply a patho-
logical condition on the part of those who do not subscribe to the positions held
by the Muhammadiyah’s puritan wing. The importance of combatting undesir-
able accretions and innovations was triggered by the success of the Ahmadiyyah
Movement among the Indonesian Muslims, since its arrival in the country in
the 1920s.21 It was this immediate concern that had led to the establishment of
a ‘Consultative Gathering of Ulama’ (Perkumpulan Musyawaratul Ulama) in 1927.
As the predecessor of the Majlis Tarjih, it was tasked with the production of a
number of doctrinal tracts or treatises, in which the fundamental beliefs – to
which Muhammadiyah members must adhere – were laid down.
Eventually these texts have become part of a collection called the Himpunan
Putusan Tarjih or ‘Compilation of Tarjih Decisions’ (Saleh 2001: 109).22 While
this text collection represents the official Muhammadiyah position on doctrinal
matters, that is not automatically the case with the views held by the various
Muhammadiyah thinkers mentioned in this section and other later writers,
such as Hamka. One should also not lose sight of the fact that this early text
compilation dates to the late 1920s, and that the Muhammadiyah’s doctrinal
positions have continued to evolve. An instance of this is Hamka’s exploration
of the issue of predestination, captured in the adage of qada’ wa’l-qadr, which
he began in the 1950s. Although the theological intricacies of this question are
beyond the scope of this book, it points to a shift from unquestioned adherence
to the adage in the Himpunan Putusan Tarjih to the less fatalistic propositions of
Hamka, which are informed by reliance on the use of reason and a resulting
qualified acceptance of human free will in terms of an ability to judge one’s
actions as good or evil.
According to Fauzan Saleh, such a diversification of positions ‘may be consid-
ered a token of the existing “internal pluralism” within the Muhammadiyah’ (Saleh
2001: 79). That, in the course of its 100-year existence, the Muhammadiyah has
developed into a ‘broad church’ also becomes clear from the various factions that
have been identified within the movement by one of its leading historians, Abdul
Munir Mulkhan. First of all, there is the moderately puritan mainstream Dahlan
Group, named after the organisation’s founder; then there is the more reaction-
ary ikhlas group, which takes the most uncompromising stance toward takhayyul,
bidʿa and khurafat. More progressively minded Muhammadiyah members are
united in nationalist and proletarian strands, known as Muhammadiyah Nasionalis
115
(Munas for short) and Marhaenis Muhammadiyah (Marmuh) respectively. Finally,

and indicative of the relativity of the differences between Islamic modernists and
traditionalists, there is a bloc of Muhammadiyah members from traditionalist
backgrounds, referred to as Muhammadiyah NU (Munu).23
An Arab initiative: Al-Irshad

The 1910s also saw the establishment of a smaller organisation, which had its
roots in the Hadhrami community. It was set up by Ahmad Muhammad Surkati
(1872–1943), a Sudanese scholar trained in the Haramayn (1896–1908), who
was recruited to run a school for the Jamʿiyat al-Khayr. This charitable organi-
sation catering to the Arab community in Batavia drew its inspiration from
the Egyptian nationalist party leader Mustafa Kamil and from the Ottoman
Committee for Union and Progress.24 It was during his tenure with the Jamʿiyat
al-Khayr (1908–13) that Surkati established contact with other Muslim reform-
ists in the Indies, who shared his interest in the ideas of Abduh and Rida.
Because of these relationships, Surkati got caught up in the intra-Hadhrami
rivalry between the traditionalists, gravitating around the Alawiyun Sada, usually
referred to as sayyids (descendants of the Prophet), and the reformists who were
generally not of such noble descent.25 In 1914, Surkati was forced to leave the
Jamʿiyat al-Khayr, because of his criticism of the obligatory hand-kissing of the
sayyids and his suggestion that men of non-sayyid descent should be allowed to
marry women of aristocratic birth.
At the request of other reformist activists, including Cokroaminoto, Dahlan
and Salim, Surkati remained in the Indies and founded another madrasa,
which in turn led to the establishment of the Arab Association for Reform and
Guidance (Jamʿiyat al-Islah wa’l-Irshad al-ʿArabiya).26 Although open to all
Muslims, the Irshad movement – as it became known – was primarily geared
towards ‘the propagation of Arabic and Arab norms among locally born Arabs
(al-muwalladūn) first and their Jawi coreligionists second’ (Laffan 2003: 191).
Because of its Hadhrami background, the Irshad movement remained much
smaller than the SI and the Muhammadiyah. The influence it was able to exer-
cise beyond the numbers of its membership or the community it represented
was due to Surkati’s cordial relations with the leadership of other Muslim mass
organisations and the excellent reputation of its education system.27
The puritan Islamic revivalism of Persatuan Islam (Persis)

Compared with the Muhammadiyah or the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama, the
Persatuan Islam (Persis, Islamic Union) was also a much smaller organisation.
Nevertheless, it too occupies an important place on the spectrum of Islamic
organisations in Indonesia; not least because it produced one of the leading
Muslim politicians of the early postcolonial period: Mohammad Natsir, who
not only served as prime minister and leader of the largest and most successful
Islamic party after independence, but in later life continued to play a prominent
role in Islamic activism in Indonesia.
Persis too was founded on Java. But where central and east Java were the
epicentres of the Muhammadiyah and NU respectively, Persis’s activities are
associated with Bandung. Apart from its location in the Sundanese heartland,
Bandung was also the intellectual capital of the Netherlands Indies, as well as
the starting point of a secular nationalist independence movement. Here Persis
was founded in September 1923 by merchants descended from traders who
had migrated two generations earlier from Palembang, but who now consid-
ered themselves Sundanese. It grew out of a Muslim reading group dedicated
to the study of articles from Al-Manar and Al-Munir. Another abiding interest
of the members was the ongoing debate between Al-Irshad and Jamʿiyat al-
Khayr about the status of Arab and non-Arab Muslims. Originally its number
of members did not exceed twenty and the only requirement for joining was an
interest in Islam.
It was not until 1926 that Persis began to espouse modernist principles, and it
was only then that the individual who become the organisation’s leading figure
in its early existence began attending its sessions. Ahmad Hassan (1887–1958)
– later nicknamed ‘Ahmad Bandung’ – was a Singapore-born Tamil, who had
moved to Java to set up a textile business. Although not a scholar or an aca-
demic in either the traditional Islamic or modern Western sense of the word, he
had received considerable training in the Islamic sciences and would become
Persis’s chief ideologue (Federspiel 2001: 121). His arrival also led to a split in
the original study group, with traditionalist Muslims setting up their own group
called the Permufakatan Islam (Islamic Association), which was eventually
absorbed by the Nahdlatul Ulama. During the first few years, Sundanese and
Minangkabau activists dominated Persis membership, but there were also other
foreign-born Muslims like Ahmad Hassan and a number of members of Arab
origin. In comparison with other Islamic mass organisations, Persis remained
very modest in size until World War II. The reason for this was that expansion
of its membership was not a priority for its leaders. Instead, the organisation
focussed on creating a ‘small, loose-knit organization’ that cultivated ‘an esprit
de corps’ (Federspiel 2001: 88–9). Leading activists were also involved with other
Muslim organisations, with Sabirin holding a prominent position in the Sarekat
Islam and Mohammad Natsir serving as one of the leaders of the JIB. Women’s
and youth wings were also added, but it was not until the 1936 Persis Conference
that this constellation was integrated into a more structured organisation.
In its founding statutes, Persis explicitly takes the Qur’an and Traditions of
the Prophet as the basis for its propagation and instruction of Islam. Focussing
primarily on expounding the correct Islamic positions vis-à-vis contemporary
issues, its leaders ‘came to regard themselves as a new brand of religious schol-
ars whose efforts were designed to cleanse religion of unauthorized innovation’
117
(Federspiel 2001: 87). While these objectives are very similar to those of the
Muhammadiyah, Persis activists were more confrontational in their approach
to purifying Islam of undesirable additions. An example of Persis’s assertive-
ness turning into a form of vigilantism was the formation of so-called Islamic
Defence Committees (komité pembela Islam). In 1933 and 1934, the committees
in Pekalongan and in Bandung launched campaigns against visits to the tomb
of the Hadhrami Saint Sayyid Ahmad bin Abdullah al-Attas and against the
Ahmadiyya Movement respectively.
The preferred format of Persis for combatting bidʿa, takhayyul and khurafat was
debate. Exchanges with opponents took place in writing as well as in face-to-face
encounters, both in private and publicly. Most of the publicly staged debates
dealt with challenging traditionalist Muslims, the Ahmadiyya, Christian groups
that were perceived to be hostile to Islam, and atheists. In these encounters,
Persis was generally represented by Ahmad Hassan, who built up a reputation
as an astute debater and who used these exchanges to compose his thoughts for
later publication. As for debates in written form, particularly famous was the ini-
tially private correspondence between Ahmad Hassan and the future President
Sukarno (1901–70) during the latter’s exile on the eastern island of Flores. While
Hassan’s letters have been lost, Sukarno’s replies were published later and
became known as Letters on Islam from Endeh. Hassan also wrote criticisms of Haji
Rasul’s position on female Muslim attire and of his son Hamka’s novels.
In contrast to the Muhammadiyah, Persis did not develop its own organisa-
tion-driven education system; these initiatives were generally left in the hands
of individual activists. An exception was the Pendidikan Islam (‘Islamic Education
Association’), which in 1932 came under the leadership of Mohammad Natsir,
who had given up a scholarship for studying law in the Netherlands in order
to become a teacher. ‘Taken aback by the lack of religious knowledge of his
secondary school classmates’, he had already written a number of textbooks
in Dutch on religious practices and obligations (Madinier 2015: 289). Partly
state-funded, partly fee-charging, the association ran a Dutch-language primary
school (Hollandsch-Inlandsche School) and a junior high school (Meer Uitgebreid Lager
Onderwijs, MULO). Later Natsir added a teachers’ training school (kweekschool)
in Bandung and, by 1938, the association was running schools in five other
Javanese locations. In 1936, Persis introduced a different educational format
under the name pesantren, which focussed primarily on teaching religious sub-
jects. This school was directed by Ahmad Hassan, with Mohammad Natsir as
the principal teacher.
Like other Islamic organisations, Persis too recognised the importance of
print media in getting its message across and for presenting the arguments
made in the debates to wider audiences. Closely associated – but never formally
acknowledged – to the above-mentioned Islamic Defence Committees was the
organ Pembela Islam (1929–35). Circulating in wider modernist Islamic circles, it
was distributed not only in Java but also in Minangkabau, Kalimantan, South
Sulawesi and even southern Thailand. After six years the Dutch withdrew
its publishing licence on account of a fiery rebuttal to criticisms of Islam by
Christian writers. Another Persis periodical was Al-Fatwa (1931–3), which dealt
with legal issues and was printed in jawi script. Al-Lisan, founded in 1935 as
the successor to both Pembela Islam and Al-Fatwa, continued to appear until the
Japanese occupation of 1942. Between 1937 and 1941, the Bandung branch of
Persis ran a Sundanese-language periodical called Al-Taqwa, consisting mainly
of translated reprints of earlier articles from Pembela Islam and Al-Fatwa, with a
particular focus on those dealing with the need to cleanse Indonesian Muslim
life of Hindu and pagan influences. Aside from editing and contributing to
periodicals, Persis writers also published their ideas and thoughts in book form.
Those texts dealt with doctrinal issues, law and jurisprudence, the Qur’an,
Islamic history, the Persis organisation and its objectives, but also politics – in
particular Islam and nationalism.
The interests of Persis leaders induced Federspiel to draw a parallel with ‘the
Afghānī-Abduh-Ridā’ [sic] exposition of Islamic modernism’ (Federspiel 2001:
186). To my mind, more than anything else, Persis’s attitude is a reflection of
the rigidity displayed by the later Rashid Rida, rather than the pragmatism and
intellectual flexibility of his predecessors, al-Afghani and Abduh. That image
is further reinforced by Federspiel’s more accurate identification of an affin-
ity between the positions held by Persis and the ideas of the Pakistani Islamist
ideologue and leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, Syed Abul A’la Maududi (1903–79),
as well as those of the founder of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna
(1906–49). This is much more in line with Persis’s tendency to regard those
holding different positions as real adversaries. It also corresponds to Federspiel’s
characterisation of its members as first and foremost ideologues.
In comparison with other Islamic reformist-modernists, Persis was much less
open to moderation or reconsideration of its position. Ahmad Hassan’s writings
exude learning combined with a firm conviction in the correctness of his own
position, regardless of whether he was writing about theological issues, prophet-
hood, sacred texts, law or nationalism. Persis’s concern with the purification of
Islam is also illustrated by Ahmad Hassan’s preoccupation with tawassul – the
question of the use of intercession in soliciting divine favours. A widespread
practice among Muslim traditionalists, who trace its permissibility to the works
of the Wali Songo, in Ahmad Hassan’s view this harboured the danger of ‘shirk,
or polytheism, especially when it is directed towards the spirits of the dead’
(Saleh 2001: 147). Whereas one would expect this uncompromising rectitude to
translate into a very restrictive definition of who can be considered a Muslim,
Fauzan Saleh suggests that Ahmad Hassan actually took a very minimalist
position, because he was satisfied with just the pronouncement of shahadah or
creed – although fulfilment of the other obligations determine the sincerity of
119
that belief. As an explanation for such a relatively relaxed attitude, Saleh sug-
gests that such ‘[t]olerance is born out of a desire for solidarity which reflects
the worldview held by the association Hassan represented, Persatuan Islam, or
the “union of Islam”. This association sought to bring Muslims together into a
single social union’ (Saleh 2001: 153). On the other hand, Saleh also notes that
Ahmad Hassan qualified ‘religious statements or decisions made by teachers or
ʿulamā’ which are not approved by the Qurʿān and the Sunnah as shirk’ (Saleh
2001: 148).
Consequently, Persis proposed a stark purification agenda to rid Indonesian
Islam of its syncretic elements and superstitions. In line with the erasure of cul-
tural accretions that had no part in what Persis considered the standard Islamic
practices and teachings of Islam, Persis ideology held that:
Within Islam all believers were equal in status before God, so there could be no
race, people, family or individual who could claim superiority. The only legiti-
mate completion among Muslims was to be achieved in piety. Consequently,
claims of Arab superiority over other races, claims of descent from the prophet
giving special status, or the use of titles indicating academic attainment or previ-
ous performance of pilgrimage were not valid in the functioning of the Islamic
community. Ancillary to this principle was the corollary that all languages were
appropriate for carrying the Islamic message. (Federspiel 2001: 184)
This emphasis on piety should not just guide Muslims in their personal conduct,
but should also inform family and communal life. Consequently, religious affili-
ation should have primacy over nationalist feelings of attachment to the country
and its people. The only validity of Indonesia as a political entity was to consoli-
date Islamic identity. Combining this commitment to Islam with the imperative
of dismantling colonialism suggests an allegiance to the Pan-Islamist agendas of
politicised Muslim activists.
The traditionalists respond: the founding of the Nahdlatul

Ulama (NU)
The 1926 establishment of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) by traditionalist religious
scholars was not simply a reaction to the formation of reformist-modernist
Islamic organisations in Indonesia and their challenges of what the latter consid-
ered un-Islamic practices, but which the former regarded as part and parcel of
acculturated orthodoxy. The NU’s founding was also connected with develop-
ments in the Hijaz and the so-called Caliphate Question arising after the 1924
abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938).
In the run-up to this dramatic event, as the leaders of the kaum tua, the
traditional religious scholarly community – among them the future NU’s co-
founder and first chairman Kyai Hasyim Asyʿari (1875–1947) – had been ral-
lying around Sharif Husayn of Mecca (1853–1931). In him they found an ally
for making common cause against attempts by their kaum muda opponents to
gain influence in the Haramayn and the wider Hijaz region. While Sharif
Husayn helped the jawi scholars in keeping Mecca as their enclave by conven-
ing a meeting of Javanese, Malay, Minangkabau and Palembangese residents
of Mecca to warn them against emulating Egyptian kaum muda practices, the
local congregation of scholars from Southeast Asia were also a welcome support
base for the sharif against the advancing Wahhabi movement, again led by the
Al Saud dynasty from Central Arabia. A contributing factor to the growing
kaum tua–kaum muda antagonism was the latter’s shift ‘from the open and eclectic
attitude of Muhammad ʿAbduh and Achmad Dachlan to the rigidity of Rashīd
Ridā and Hadji Rasoel’ (Laffan 2003: 203).
In the confusion caused by the Saudi conquest of Taif and Mecca in October
1924, during which several jawi ulama had died alongside Mufti Abdallah
Zawawi, most of the surviving scholars returned home on vessels chartered
by the Dutch colonial authorities for the evacuation of the Indies community
from the Hijaz. Arriving back home, the repatriated scholars became caught
up in a whirlwind of activity around a recently formed Caliphate Committee,
which – in turn – had been set up within the context of a series of so-called
Al-Islam congresses, organised by the SI with the purpose of bringing the
broadest possible spectrum of Indonesian Muslims together in order to coor-
dinate their activities. Pushed onto the defensive by in particular Agus Salim’s
enthusiasm for the Saudi ruler Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud as a prospective caliph, in
August 1925, traditionalist scholars from central and east Java formed a spinoff
Komité Hijaz (Hijaz Committee). Meeting again ‘in Surabaya in January 1926,
the Hijaz committee decided to reconstitute itself as a permanent organiza-
tion, choosing the name Nahdlatul Ulama’ (NU) or ‘Renaissance of the scholars’
(Bruinessen 2015: 110).
The driving forces behind the newly formed NU were its first rais akbar or
‘Supreme President’, Hasyim Asyʿari, and his former pupil Wahab Chasbullah
(c. 1883–1971), who took the position of secretary (katib) to the Consultative
Council. The senior kyai’s prestige was closely attached to the successful pesantren
he had set up in 1899 at Tebuireng, in the Jombang district – the very heart-
land of east Java’s ‘pesantren world’. Wahab Chasbullah’s reputation rested on
his erudition and abilities for sharp argumentation. Aside from these qualities,
Michael Laffan points up other similarities between Wahab Chasbullah and
the Minangkabau kaum muda leader Haji Rasul: both were former students of
Ahmad Khatib in Mecca, strong advocates of educational reform and propo-
nents of the need for ijtihad to ensure jurisprudence remained in line with social
conditions. Although Wahab Chasbullah’s conventional pesantren background
and resolute leadership had gained him a loyal following, these other affinities
explain why he was at the same time a controversial figure – not to mention his
fondness for fast cars and motorcycles. Consequently:
121
The more devoted of his supporters regarded him as a wali (saint), an ulama besar
(eminent religious scholar) and bapak rohani (spiritual father). For his detractors
he epitomised some of the worst aspects of traditional ulama-hood; he was seen
as authoritarian, self-serving, casuistical, politically naïve and corrupt. [. . .] he
nonetheless had a profound impact on traditional Islam from the late 1910s and,
to a lesser extent, on national politics in the 1950s and early 1960s. (Fealy 1996:
2–3)
From his return from Mecca in 1915 and well into the 1920s, Wahab Chasbullah
maintained close relations with the SI, with Indonesian communists and with a
very young Sukarno, thus becoming a fixture in Surabayan politics too. In part-
nership with the future Muhammadiyah scholar Mas Mansur, he established
the Madrasah Nahdlatul Wathan (Revival of the Homeland School). At the same
time, he remained active within traditionalist circles. Apart from setting up a
commercial cooperative for Muslim traders in Jombang called Nahdlatul Tujar
(Revival of the Traders), of which he was the treasurer with Hasyim Asyʿari
serving as chairman, he also took the initiative for a discussion group called
Tashwirul Afkar.28 Against the background of the earlier mentioned growing
antagonism between Meccan and Cairene reformists, in which Chasbullah pro-
filed himself as the chief spokesperson for the traditionalist bloc, his own once
cordial debates with figures such as Ahmad Dahlan and Ahmad Surkati also
became more acrimonious, while his business relationship with Mas Mansur
broke down in 1922. At the Al-Islam congresses held between 1922 and 1924,
the modernists accused the traditionalists of shirk, while the latter retorted by
branding the modernists as unbelievers (kuffar) – a serious allegation by any
Islamic standard. As a sharp-witted debater, Wahab Chasbullah played a prom-
inent role in these heated exchanges. In the highly charged atmosphere of the
interwar period ‘[h]ostility between the traditionalist and reformist groups in
Indonesian Islam peaked during the late 1920s and early 1930s’ (Fealy 1996:
14). In contrast to the ideological animosity, the NU adopted some of the mod-
ernist-reformists’ institutional and organisational practices, establishing journals
and opening branches in different regions of the archipelago. It must be said
that – in comparison with the Muhammadiyah – the NU has remained more
focussed on Java and Madura, while institutionally it has also remained more
chaotic than its modernist counterpart.29
It is in this antagonistic climate that the fifteen ulama who formulated the
so-called Khittah 1926 – the organisation’s constitution of 1926 – entered an
explicit declaration of subscribing to ‘the doctrines of the Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-
Jamāʿah as far as their religious beliefs and practices are concerned’ (Saleh
2001: 67). As explained earlier, this is one of the key doctrinal differences from
the Muhammadiyah, which – while not denying such adherence – does not go
beyond an implicit recognition of such principles. Aside from this claim of repre-
senting Sunni orthodoxy in its Shafiʿi legalist manifestation, Ashʿari or Maturidi
theology, and the Sufism of al-Junayd and al-Ghazali, the NU is also cognisant
of the cultural dimensions of traditionalist Indonesian Islam. To illustrate this
difference, Fauzan Saleh cites the two divergent approaches propagated by the
Wali Songo, according to which Sunan Ampel and Sunan Giri advocated an
undiluted Islam whereby ‘indigenous customs would not be tolerated’, whereas
Sunan Kalijaga displayed a ‘broad tolerance of local customs [. . .] trying to
accommodate or revive local culture’ (Saleh 2001: 69–70).
Outside Java: the establishment of the Persatuan Ulama Seluruh

Aceh (PUSA)
Not all initiatives for Islamic mass organisations originated on Java. At the
end of the 1930s, reform-minded Acehnese ulama formed an organisation of
their own, the Persatuan Ulama Seluruh Aceh (PUSA, All-Aceh Association of
Ulama). While James Siegel says they had the same goals as nineteenth-century
reformist ulama, Edward Aspinall characterises them as modernist, because they
established madrasa with curricula that fused religious instruction with secular
learning (Siegel 2000: 97; Aspinall 2009: 28). Whereas mass organisations intro-
duced from the outside had little success in Aceh, by the early 1940s, PUSA
claimed to have more than 40,000 members, with another 100,000 in its youth
wing. Although PUSA may be regarded as a local organisation because it was
exclusively Acehnese in composition, Aspinall stresses that it ‘did not exemplify
localism’ (Aspinall 2009: 28). Its ambition was to unite all Muslims through its
religious law with Aceh acting as a source of inspiration and example of Islamic
unity. PUSA’s concern with Aceh’s former glory, when Javanese, Minangkabau
and others flocked there to learn about Islam, was expressed in broad Islamic
terms and presented within an Indonesian framework – because ‘the new signi-
fier, Indonesia’ had also arrived in Aceh (Aspinall 2009: 30).
James Siegel’s close reading of the ideas espoused by PUSA (POESA in his
spelling) shows an affinity with the purification of religion from localised cultural
accretions advocated by earlier reformists of the nineteenth century, the dif-
ference now being ‘the willingness of the villagers to understand them’ (Siegel
2000: 97). Another important feature is its view of the human person, in which
great importance is attached to restraining its instinctive nature, called hawa
nafsu, by the use of reason (ʿaql or akal) in achieving obedience to God’s com-
mands. According to Siegel, the scholars of PUSA even went so far as to state
that ‘[r]eligion is a guide to akal and by means of akal we know religion’ (Siegel
2000: 104). This dialectic between Islam and reason is generated through the
medium of prayer, which is not to be understood as communication with God
(an impossibility due to divine transcendence), but as a technique of self-control.
Involving ritual purification and a fixed set of ritualised actions, its sacredness
consists in its performative character. While this may seem like a denial of the
use of reason, it is the ‘very arbitrary character of prayer that expresses the self-
123
control of the believer’ – a sacred enactment of what is required of a social actor

in secular life (Siegel 2000: 114–15).
The connection between the acts of worship – which are more expansive
than only prayer – and Acehnese society is also the subject of a series of articles
in the organisation’s periodical Penjoeloeh, where one of the authors draws not
only on Islamic Scripture, but also on wider learning and philosophy, even
citing the writings of Dutch historians. Interpreting Acehnese history as a cycli-
cal sequence of periods of rationality and irrationality, they conclude that the
ibadat do not prescribe a particular form of social organisation. However, one
particular period is singled out for emulation: ‘there is one era which we cannot
forget – the era of Al Raniri and Fansoeri [. . .] the time of the flying of the flag
of Islam in the land of Atjeh’ (Siegel 2000: 121). In contrast with the glorious
reign of Sultan Iskandar Muda, the authors regard Aceh during their own time
of writing as having regressed into a dormant state from which it needs to be
awakened through a proper understanding of Islam. While it may have been
a mighty sultanate, Aceh’s reputation did not rest on its political prowess, but
rather on its ‘religious significance as “the doorway to Mecca”’ (Siegel 2000:
125). Since their conclusion was that there is no fixed shape for Islamic societies:
POESA writers offer no suggestions about the shape of a unified society. There is
in their writings nothing like the Western conception of a just society. [. . .] One
looks to history not for an image of social organization but for an expression of a
state of being. (Siegel 2000: 126–7)
This condition has been captured by one of the Penjoeloeh writers in a Qur’anic
image, which Siegel has borrowed for the title of his book: ‘Men want to bind
themselves together with the rope of God, the rope which neither rots in the rain
nor cracks in the sun’ (Siegel 2000: 124).30
Modernist-reformist and traditionalist organisations from a

comparative perspective
An examination of the differences emerging from the mutual criticisms by tra-
ditionalist and modernist Muslims offers valuable insights into the practices of
common believers in Indonesia, because earlier historical sources tell very little
about this due to their focus on scholarship or court culture. It is only from these
disputations and – even more recently – thanks to the work done by anthropolo-
gists that it becomes possible to make some tentative historicised extrapolations
as to what Islam meant to the Muslim community at large.
Many of these differences are on the level of the so-called furuʿ al-ibadat
– the practices of worship. For instance, whereas NU members make twenty-
two rakʿa (a sequence of bows and prostrations) for the supplementary evening
prayers (tarawih) during the month of Ramadan, the Muhammadiyah limit that
to eight. The NU holds its prayers at the end of the fasting and the completion
of the hajj in mosques, while the Muhammadiyah insist they must take place
in the open (Saleh 2001: 76). As part of its campaign against takhayyul, bidʿa,
khurafat, modernist reformers criticise the celebration of the laylat al-qadr or the
Prophet’s birthday; the recitation of Prophetic panegyrics; and the use of music
as developed in the pesantren. They also reject the claims of NU scholars that the
practices of tahlilan (repeated recitation of the first part of the creed), tawassul
(intercession by dead saints) and slametan or kenduri (communal charitable meal)
are divinely vindicated (Saleh 2001: 75–6, 86–8). Based on her examination
of the NU periodical Berita Nahdlatoel Ulama (BNO, ‘News of the Nahdlatul
Ulama’), which appeared during the 1930s, Andrée Feillard has demonstrated
the toleration by the NU of certain forms of martial arts and supernatural
medicinal and healing practices, on grounds that this formed part of kebudayaan
– local culture (Feillard 2011: 64–5).31
Muhammad Ali has noted that Ahmad Dahlan was not opposed to tasawwuf
per se – a point picked up later by the leading Muhammadiyah propagator in
Sumatra, Haji Rasul, and his son Hamka – both of whom published articles and
books on modernised variants of Sufism (Ali 2016: 41; Riddell 2001: 218–20).
He also mentions that while Muhammadiyah leaders were often critical of adat
as part of their mission to purify Islam, on other occasions they also recognised
that they had to adopt a more tolerant attitude if they wished to achieve the
unification of diverse Muslim groups (Ali 2016: 43, 50). These observations are
also in line with Greg Fealy’s contention that by the late 1930s, relations between
the NU and Muhammadiyah had improved. He suggests that this was due to a
shared concern over the growing influence of Christian missionaries and new
colonial legislation, which was regarded as increasingly anti-Islamic (Fealy 1996).
The emergence of Islamic political parties in late colonial

Indonesia
Chiara Formichi has rightly criticised the downplaying of the ‘Islam factor’ in
earlier studies of late colonial politics in Indonesia during the 1920s and 1930s.
By ‘bringing religion back into the analysis’, she wants to make a case for taking
the ideological foundations of such movements seriously (Formichi 2012: 6). An
explanation for such reductive views may be found in the scaling back of the
influence of organisations such as the SI after the expulsion of its left wing, and
in the parallel rise to prominence of figures such as Sukarno and Dr Soetomo
(1888–1938),32 as well as Mohammad Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir (1909–66), all
of whom – despite their (nominal) Muslim backgrounds – decided to opt for a
secular rather than religiously inspired form of nationalism. The lack of appeal
of Islam as a political ideology was further exacerbated by the shift from the
eclectic openness found in the earlier Cairene reformism of Abduh and Dahlan
toward the more rigid interpretation of Rashid Rida and Haji Rasul, which
125
inhibited the kind of inclusiveness required to rally a multi-ethnic and multi-

religious society like Indonesia’s behind the independence struggle. Finally, the
early attempts to politicise Islam took place against the background of the earlier
mentioned Caliphate Question. While the rivalry between different claimants
eroded Pan-Islamist unity, the parallel rise of Atatürk after the notorious aboli-
tion of the caliphate in 1924 also had great appeal outside the newly established
Turkish republic, including giving inspiration to Indonesians such as Sukarno
and Hatta. Together with Muslim divisiveness as a result of factional rivalries
and ideological infighting, this may help explain why politicised Islam lost much
of its earlier lustre, and why it was eventually pushed out of the limelight by the
secular nationalists.
In the early 1920s, Islamic political assertiveness had been on the rise. Both
Michael Laffan and Rémy Madinier talk explicitly of a ‘political hijra’ insti-
tuted by the Sarekat Islam as a watershed event in the politicisation of Islam
(Laffan 2003: 188; Madinier 2015: 39). With Laffan putting that moment in
1919 and Madinier opting for 1923, both agree that the resulting declaration
of non-cooperation with the Dutch further weakened the SI. In spite of these
tribulations, they also present the total of twelve Al-Islam Conferences convened
between 1922 and 1941 as a red thread running through the pre-war trajectory
of political Islam. So while this politicisation of religion in its early evolution-
ary stage was livelier than acknowledged in later historiography, it was already
marred by internal divisions. The previous section already pointed at a link
between the Caliphate Question and the founding of the NU. Events in the
Hijaz, Turkey and – tangentially – also Egypt during 1910s and 1920s remained
relevant to Indonesian political Islam in the final decades of Dutch colonial rule.
This development must be seen against the background of continuing loyalty
of the kaum tua, guided by their patrons in the Haramayn, to Sharif Husayn
of Mecca and the opposition of kaum muda to the latter’s inability or unwilling-
ness to protect pilgrims against disrespect, lack of support and outright abuse.
Already susceptible to the ideas of Rashid Rida, after the Saudi conquest of the
Hijaz in 1926, the kaum muda followed the Al-Manar editor in his preference for
Abd al-Aziz bin Saud as a possible new caliph over the Egyptian King Fu’ad,
who had replaced the now totally discredited Sharif Husayn as an alternative
contestant for the caliphate.
From Islamic Union to Indonesian Islamic Union Party

The transformation, in 1923, of the Sarekat Islam (SI) into the Partai Sarekat
Islam-Hindia Timur (PSI) can be considered ‘as marking the beginning of its
existence as an explicitly Islamic party’, which no longer had as its objective
the emancipation of Muslims within the colonial context, but which was intent
on achieving genuine self-determination by pursuing Indonesian independence
(Formichi 2012: 23). It was on the back of this sea change that, in the course
of the 1920s, individuals who would turn into leading Muslim politicians of the
post-war period became closely associated with the PSI: the future leader of the
Darul Islam (DI), Sekarmaji Marjan Kartosuwiryo (1905–62) joined the party
when he was a medical student in Surabaya; then four years later, the future
Masyumi leader Mohammad Natsir also became involved in the PSI.
The Dutch-educated scion of an impoverished priyayi family, Kartosowiryo
became a more or less full-time political activist after his expulsion from medical
school in 1927. Chiara Formichi surmises that, in that very same year, he
may already have served as General Secretary of the twelfth PSI congress
which was held in Pekalongan.33 At the congress, differences became apparent
between the religious, political Islamic and nationalist concerns of Agus Salim
and Cokroaminoto’s preoccupation with the economic conditions of the indig-
enous population. However, the duo continued to work together in establishing
a ‘Council of Religious Scholars’ (majelis ulama) as a representative body of the
so-called ulil amri – a term used in the scholarly Islamic literature for Muslim
religious leaders who are expected to provide the wider community with guid-
ance. In the wake of this conference, Kartosuwiryo began publishing articles in
Fadjar Asia that created an impression on the Dutch authorities of having to do
with anti-European religious fanaticism. When Agus Salim travelled to Geneva
to attend the International Labour Conference hosted by the League of Nations,
Kartosuwiryo took over the editorship of Fadjar Asia. Aside from his journalis-
tic activities, in 1928, he represented the PSI as a delegate to a large congress
bringing together all Indonesian youth organisations, held in Weltevreden and,
later, at the JIB congress in Bandung. Kartosuwiryo also pioneered a new way of
fundraising, by establishing the PSI’s Komité Zakat-Fitrah, which was responsible
for collecting the mandatory charitable tax. He was also present as executive
secretary at the congress where the party’s name was changed to Partai Sarekat
Islam Indonesia (PSII), signalling its nationalist stance and vision for the future.
The congress also had a broader significance, because it was attended by
wide array of Islamic organisations, as well as by the Lahori Ahmadiyya of
Yogyakarta, the drivers’ union, and even Sukarno and his PNI Bandung branch
representative. Sukarno’s presence was surprising given the conflict that had
arisen between him and the PSI over his 1926 pamphlet Islam, Nasionalisme dan
Marxisme, and the subsequent establishment of the Permufakatan Perhimpunan
Politik Kebangsaan Indonesia (PPPKI, ‘Agreement of the Indonesia’s People’s
Political Associations). Originally a joint initiative of Sukarno, Cokroaminoto
and Agus Salim, by 1929 the PSI’s federative interpretation of the PPPKI
came under pressure as a result of differences of opinion over cooperation
with the colonial authorities and the PNI’s drive towards a merger of national-
ist, religious and socialist organisations into a unified front under the PPPKI
aegis. In the meantime, another rift had occurred between Cokroaminoto and
the Muhammadiyah intellectual Mas Mansur over the former’s work on a
127
Malay version of an English-language Ahmadi translation and commentary

of the Qur’an. This was also the reason for the noticeable absence of the
Muhammadiyah from the PSII’s 1929 congress.
By this time, Kartosuwiryo also began entertaining his own ideas about
the kind of unity that the PSII provided for Indonesia’s Muslims. He not only
framed this in terms of bringing together Islamic groups on a national level, but
also added a transnational or Pan-Islamic component. Consequently:
for Kartosuwiryo and the PSII, kebangsaan [nationhood] was not to be linked to
worldly desires nor was it limited by any territorial boundary. It was wide and
broad, and connected only to the religious affiliation and the unity of Islam:
Islamic nationalism was solely committed to the prosperity of God. (Formichi
2012: 44)
Although Kartosuwiryo left the editorial board of Fadjar Asia after barely a year,
as a protégé of Cokroaminoto he remained a key player in the PSII. It was not
until after the death of Cokroaminoto in 1934 and a falling out with Agus Salim
over the hijra policy of non-cooperation in 1936 that things came to a head
within the PSII.
Natsir, meanwhile, had arrived in Bandung in 1927 from the Minangkabau
to complete his high school education at the AMS (Algemene Middelbare School)
– the same year when Sukarno founded the Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI,
Indonesian National Party), an event that turned Bandung into a hotbed of
anticolonial activism. Natsir was already close to the PSI through his activities
in the JIB, of which PSI leader Agus Salim was one of the founders. At the time,
the party’s internal politics became very acrimonious, resulting in the further
fragmentation of the Muslim camp, when Cokroaminoto declared that party
members could no longer belong to the Muhammadiyah, because the latter had
objected to working against the colonial administration. According to Audrey
Kahin, Natsir never formally joined the PSII, but Howard Federspiel claims
that he had been a member until the 1932 purge of Persis members (Kahin
2012: 15; Federspiel 2001: 90).
Islamic or secular nationalism?

While Islamic politics in the 1920s can be said to be characterised by inter-
nal dissent and fragmentation, the 1930s were shaped by two other develop-
ments: first of all, the confrontation between politics based on Muslim solidarity
and secular nationalism became more pronounced. On the one side stood
PSII leaders Cokroaminoto, Agus Salim and Kartosuwiryo, as well as Ahmad
Hassan and Mohammad Natsir from Persis; on the other side were Sukarno,
Soetomo, Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir. Secondly, as a result of this polarisation
and the increased profiling of Sukarno as the face of the Indonesian independ-
ence struggle, the various Muslim parties, factions and mass organisations were
pushed to bury their differences and unite in the Majelis Islam A’laa Indonesia
(MIAI, Supreme Council of Indonesian Muslims).
While the PNI was not only in danger of getting crushed under heavy-
handed repression on the part of the colonial authorities, but also susceptible to
internal divisions over cooperation or non-cooperation with the Dutch, the PSII
too became increasingly isolated and further divided because of its persistent
rejection of any form of cooperation with the Dutch and its emphatic insistence
on couching nationalist politics in Islamic terms. In 1930, this resulted in the
PSII’s withdrawal from the PPPKI. As part of its alternative Islamo-socialist
programme grounded in the unity of the umma, the party began to revive the
Al-Islam congresses through a permanent Al-Islam Committee initiated by
Cokroaminoto. Persistent disagreements on the principle of non-cooperation
led to further purges and breakaways from the PSII. In 1933, some expelled
party members founded an alternative, cooperationist, party called Partij
Politiek Islam Indonesia. Five years later, after managing to recruit several
Muhammadiyah members, it renamed itself Partai Islam Indonesia (PII, Islamic
Party of Indonesia). Within the PSII itself, remaining leaders such Agus Salim
and Kartosuwiryo struggled to fill the void left by the demise of Cokroaminoto.
In 1936, disagreements between the two over the hijra policy erupted into
open confrontation. Agus Salim’s disagreement with an uncompromising con-
tinuation of the hijra policy formulated by Kartosuwiryo in a document known as
the Brosoer Sikap Hidjra PSII (‘Pamphlet on the PSII’s Non-Cooperation Policy’)
resulted in the ousting of Agus Salim and a victory for the hardliners around
Kartosuwiryo. In her analysis of the ideas contained in the pamphlet, Chiara
Formichi notes that:
the hijrah to Medina-Indonesia – and hence to an Islamic state – is marked
by three steps: jihad, iman (faith) and tauhid (unity). This path is well trodden,
as it places Kartosuwiryo in an intellectual and strategic tradition that con-
nects al-Ghazali (1058–1111), Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), Hasan al-Banna
(1906–1949), Abu ‘Ala Maududi (1903–1979), Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) and
contemporary Islamist militants. (Formichi 2012: 63)
Kartosuwiryo now became the party’s new vice-president. In this new role,
he ‘declared that the PSII was neither communist nor fascist and inspired
by neither Arabism nor “Indonesianess”, as its foundation was only Islam’
(Formichi 2012: 61). However, other members of the party leadership regarded
Kartosuwiryo’s ideas as ‘mystical’ and a step in the direction of founding a ‘Sufi
tarekat’ (Formichi 2012: 67). Consequently, in 1939 it was his own turn to be
expelled from the PSII. With both Agus Salim and Kartosuwiryo gone, the PSII
effectively splintered into three factions. As a result of this constant infighting,
the PSII’s membership base dwindled from hundreds of thousands to 40,000
in 1937. While a dramatic loss, it still compared favourably to the member-
129
ship base of Hatta and Sjahrir’s PNI Baru or ‘new PNI’, which had barely
a thousand members, and other secular nationalist parties, such as the erst-
while Partai Indonesia (Partindo) or Partai Indonesia Raya (Perindra, Greater
Indonesia Party) which hovered between 3,000 and 20,000 throughout the
1930s (Formichi 2015: 58: Kahin 2012: 19).
With Sukarno trying to capitalise on the near-martyr status he had attained
as a result of repeated imprisonment and internal exile during the 1930s to keep
together a nationalist camp that was equally marred by divisions as a result of
disagreements over cooperation or non-cooperation like the PSII, Persis became
one of the most important voices opposing the secular nationalists. In the course
of the 1930s, Mohammad Natsir rose to prominence as one of the most articu-
late critics of secular nationalism, alongside the ever eloquent Ahmad Hassan.
The previous section alluded already to the Hassan–Sukarno correspondence
during the latter’s exile in Endeh. Sukarno was later transferred to Bengkulu
in south Sumatra. Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir were also arrested and detained
at Boven-Digul in New Guinea, but Natsir and Hassan remained free and
therefore able to expound their viewpoints more or less uninhibited – although
closely watched by an ever vigilant colonial security apparatus.
Aside from being a skilful debater and fiery orator, Ahmad Hassan also
wielded a sharp pen dipped in vitriol. In response to a claim by Dr Soetomo,
who was both a proponent of Javanese culture and fervent nationalist, that
Islam was a moribund religion and that the Kaaba was just an idolatrous Arab
shrine, making Mecca less significant for Indonesian patriots than the penal
colony of Boven-Digul, Hassan wrote:
Believers should mark anyone who speaks of [going to prison camp at Boven]
Digul as being better than going to Makkah! Anyone who orders the moving
of the direction of prayer to [the earlier Islamic kingdom of] Demak [in central
Java!] Anyone who abuses the Prophet Muhammad and refers to him as the old
fellow of the people of . . . [the desert]! Anyone who holds the law of polygamy
revealed by God as wrong . . .! Watch out! (Federspiel 2001: 176)
Natsir shared Ahmad Hassan’s indignation over the denigration of the pilgrim-
age by the secular nationalists as a loss of income to Indonesia. Although insist-
ing that hajj was an ‘invisible asset’ of tremendous value, Natsir did not attach
the same importance to international Muslim solidarity as the Tamil expatriate
from Singapore.34 While Natsir acknowledged the influence of Rashid Rida, he
had never warmed to the latter’s idea of the caliphate or Pan-Islamism. Since
he did not see any realistic opportunity for uniting with colonised Muslims
elsewhere, he focussed instead on the Netherlands East Indies. Already in 1932,
Natsir had written a series of articles in Pembela Islam in which he defended
Persis against allegations that it was undermining and effectively splitting the
nationalist movement. He retorted that – since Indonesia lacked any other
criteria or means to create a sense of kebangsaan, such as ethnicity or language –

Islam remained the unifying tie and Muslim organisations could therefore claim
credit for having been at the forefront of raising and forging a sense of national
consciousness and solidarity. In contrast with the antagonism and polemical
tone radiating from Ahmad Hassan’s correspondence with Sukarno, Natsir
actually shared many of the latter’s views on democracy and he also agreed
with the importance of independent thinking. However, using Sukarno’s vivid
interest in Mustafa Kemal’s Turkey and the way religion’s place had been
defined there, Natsir wrote two articles in Pandji Islam (using the pseudonym A.
Moechlis) in which he objected to the reduction of religion to an ‘extra’, and in
which he also cautioned against unbridled ‘freethinking’ (Kahin 2012: 20–1).35
While these articles demonstrate Natsir’s interest in politics, until the end of the
1930s, his other main activity besides writing had been education. However, in
1938 he decided to join the PII, which had just been established by Wiwoho
Purbohadidjojo – like Natsir, a former member of the JIB.
Concluding remarks
Faced with continuing challenge and competition from the secular national-
ist camp, Muslim politicians and activists were increasingly pushed to find a
common ground. In 1937, this resulted in the establishment of MIAI. Initially
set up in protest against a new Dutch marriage ordinance envisaging the con-
clusion and dissolution of marriage contracts through civil courts, as well as
the prohibition of polygamy, it was then reconceived as ‘an Indonesian parlia-
ment based on Islamic legislation’ (Formichi 2012: 59; see also Kahin 2012:
32). Aside from trying to resolve the differences between cooperationist and
non-cooperationist parties, the MIAI also constituted a reconciliation between
reformist-modernists and traditionalists. The organisation’s central body
included not only NU’s Wahab Chasbullah (later replaced by the son of Hasyim
Asyʿari and Mahfudz Shiddieq) and Mas Mansur from the Muhammadiyah,
but also Ahmad Hassan as Persis representative, and the PSII’s Kartosuwiryo
as treasurer.36 The formation of MIAI indicates that, during the interbellum,
religion had become increasingly politicised for traditionalist and modernist
Muslims, political quietists and activists alike. However, the political mobilisa-
tion of Islam by Indonesia’s Muslim leaders for their own purposes was cut short
by the Japanese occupation that lasted from 1942 until 1945.
CHAPTER 5
An Indonesian Islam?
Moving toward the second half of the twentieth century, the Islamisation process
in Indonesia was forced onto new trajectories. The confrontations with Dutch
colonialism during the preceding 100 years, in the form of the Cultivation
System and Ethical Policy, were replaced by the need for a very sudden and
rapid adjustment to the accelerated pace on the way to independence brought
about by the Japanese occupation during World War II. In the ensuing decades,
Muslim activists were not just required to adapt to drastically changing cir-
cumstances; in the face of increasingly repressive governments, between the
late 1950s and the end of the century, they were effectively forced to reinvent
themselves in order to be able to continue their Islamisation efforts under such
restrictive conditions. Then on the eve of the new millennium, regime change
brought a new opportunity for democratisation.
The political history of postcolonial Indonesia can therefore be divided into
three periods, each dominated by a different regime with its own characteristic
ways of governance, presenting different contexts within which the Islamisation
process has continued to evolve over the last seventy years.
The first two decades of independence coincided with the presidency of
Sukarno, in which the elections of 1955 form a kind of caesura. The period
began with a decade of continuing nation-building, when the young republic
was first engaged in armed conflict with the Dutch (1946–9) and then able
briefly to experiment with liberal democracy, an experience in which Islamic
political parties played an important role. This was followed by a briefer period
during which Sukarno basically ignored the outcome of the 1955 elections and
shifted toward what he called ‘Guided Democracy’ (1957–66) – effectively a
presidential system that increased his personal power, although he came to
depend on support from the left in the form of an ever more confident com-
munist party. During the same twenty-year period, the unity of Indonesia was
also challenged by an Islamic state in west Java proclaimed by Kartosuwiryo;
the emergence of other Islam-inspired rebellions in South Sulawesi and Aceh
during the 1950s; and eventually by the establishment of a renegade counter-
government in south Sumatra when Sukarno’s authoritarianism reached its
high at the end of that decade. Faced with exclusion from the political process,
some leaders of the main Islamic political party, Masyumi, felt compelled to
side with the rebels in south Sumatra, which then led to the party’s dissolution.
These threats to Indonesia’s political and territorial integrity increased the influ-
ence and power of the military, which eventually managed to suppress these
uprisings in the early 1960s.
Sukarno’s rule effectively came to an end with a military intervention in
response to a bloodbath in which a number of senior generals perished on 30
September 1965. Allegedly thwarting an imminent communist take-over, the
coup resulted in large-scale massacres of suspected communists and their sym-
pathisers. The murky circumstances under which these crimes were perpetrated
have never been properly investigated, but the estimated numbers of casual-
ties run into at least the hundreds of thousands. For the next three decades,
Indonesian politics would be dominated by the military Orde Baru (New Order
Regime) of coup leader General Suharto (1921–2008). While keeping politi-
cal Islam under very tight control and occasionally manipulating it for its own
purposes, in the course of the 1970s, the New Order Regime did make some
allowances for Muslim participation in governance. This was done in order
to mobilise popular support for its energetic development policies – urgently
needed to repair an economy left in tatters by Sukarno’s disastrous Guided
Democracy. In the second half of his rule, Suharto had to walk a tightrope,
balancing reduced reliance on the military with the reintroduction of Pancasila
as the ‘sole foundation’ (asas tunggal) for all social and political actors, while also
making overtures to the Muslim segment of the Indonesian population as an
alternative political powerbase.
By the late 1990s, it became clear that these concessions had proved too
little, too late. After the dramatic regime change on the eve of the new millen-
nium, the democratisation process that started in 1999 saw an unprecedented
opening-up of the public sphere. This sea change in Indonesia’s political climate
offered new opportunities for socio-political activism across the Islamic spec-
trum, but also presented a new set of challenges for the world’s largest Muslim
nation state. Islamic mass organisations, newly formed political parties, NGOs,
think tanks and other platforms began presenting a range of competing Islamic
discourses. Subscribing to a variety of interpretations and proposing diverg-
ing political agendas, they may envisage very different futures for Islam in
Indonesia, but at the same time they also appear increasingly assertive and self-
confident in articulating an Islam that is distinctly geared towards Indonesia’s
particular circumstances.
Political Islam during the Japanese occupation

In contrast to the Dutch, after invading and occupying the Netherlands East
Indies, the Japanese wartime administration considered political Islam a useful
vehicle for what in present-day jargon of military interventions is called ‘winning
the people’s hearts and minds’. Although the PSII and PII were abolished in
133
1942 and the MIAI disbanded in 1943, the Japanese were more inclined ‘to
make concessions to Islamic, rather than nationalist, let alone priyayi, demands’
(Boland 1971: 8). As a substitute for the Dutch Office of Native Affairs, they
set up an Office for Religious Affairs (Shûmubu in Japanese, Kantor Urusan Agama
in Indonesian), initially under the direction of a Japanese military officer. In
October 1943, Hoesein Djajadiningrat (1886–1960) – a nephew of Snouck
Hurgronje’s confidant in the Hijaz, the late Aboe Bakar Djajadiningrat, and the
first Indonesian to obtain a PhD – took over, but within a year, he was replaced
by NU leader Hasyim Asyʿari. Because of his advanced age, the kyai preferred
remaining at his pesantren in Tebuireng – leaving his Muhammadiyah deputy
Abdul Kahar Muzakir (1907–73), and his own son Wahid Hasyim (1914–53) in
charge of the Office for Religious Affairs.
More important for the future of political Islam in Indonesia was the estab-
lishment of the Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia (Consultative Council of
Indonesian Muslims; better known under its acronym Masyumi, at the time
spelled as Masjoemi). While its predecessor, the MIAI, had primarily focussed
on religious activities, Masyumi was destined to become a political institu-
tion, thus also enhancing the influence of its members – in particular the
NU and the Muhammadiyah. Again, Hasyim Asyʿari was made chairman,
with his son acting as his deputy and another Muhammadiyah leader, Mas
Mansur, serving as one of its vice-chairmen. Closely linked to Masyumi was
the Hizbullah (Party of God); an Islamic youth organisation cum militia set up
in late 1944. Commanded by NU youth wing leader and future deputy prime
minister Zainul Arifin, its top echelons also included the Muhammadiyah activ-
ist and future minister Mohammad Roem (1908–83), and several former PSII
leaders.1 After the Japanese capitulation in August 1945, Hizbullah remained
not only important for the armed struggle against the Dutch, but also because
many of its members eventually merged into the regular armed forces, thus
becoming part of the national army of Indonesia (Tentara Nasional Indonesia,
TNI).
In the final year of the war, Muslim activists became involved in a series of ini-
tiatives deployed in preparation for independence which now seemed imminent
– although no longer on the basis of early Japanese promises to that effect, but
due to a dramatic the turn of events in the Pacific and Southeast Asian thea-
tres of war that was making a Japanese defeat inevitable. One such body was
the Committee of 62, in which Masyumi representatives took part ‘to prepare
Muslims for the liberation of their country and their religion’ (Boland 1971: 16).
This addition is important, because for Muslim politicians, Indonesian inde-
pendence remained closely bound up with the formation of an Islamic state,
even though secular nationalists (which also included politicians from Muslim
backgrounds) campaigned for a unitary nation state in which religion was kept
out of the political process. Whereas the secular nationalists often took their cue
from developments in Turkey, while at the same time pointing at the cultural
and demographic differences between the Arab world and Indonesia, Muslim
leaders drew inspiration from developments in British India and the eventual
emergence of Pakistan. Therefore, Sukarno’s soon infamous ‘Pancasila Speech’
did not bode well for Islamist aspirations in Indonesia.
Toward independence: the Pancasila Speech and the Jakarta Charter

In this landmark address, Sukarno laid out his ‘Doctrine of Five Principles’.
Using the Sanskrit term Panca Sila rather than an Arabic expression with Islamic
connotations, it consisted of nationalism (kebangsaan), humanitarianism (peri-
kemanusiaan), mutual deliberation (musyawaratan) or democracy, social welfare
(kesejahteraan) and the belief in one God (ketuhanan yang maha esa). While studiously
avoiding the name Allah, Sukarno tried placating the Muslims by assuring them
that the third principle of democracy offered sufficient safeguards:
For Muslims this is the best place to promote religion [. . .] And this Islamic
heart of ‘Bung Karno’ wants to defend Islam by mutual agreement, achieved by
deliberation, namely in Parliament . . . That is the place to promote the demands
of Islam [. . .] If we take it that Parliament has 100 members, then let us work,
work as hard as possible, so that 60, 70, 80 or 90 of the representatives sitting in
Parliament will be Muslims, Islamic leaders. Then, the laws which Parliament
promulgates will naturally be Islamic laws. (Boland 1971: 22–3)
This did not convince Masyumi. Consequently, as part of their involvement in

a smaller committee charged with drafting a constitution, Masyumi delegates
such as the NU’s Wahid Hasyim and the new Muhammadiyah leader Ki Bagus
Hadikusomo (1890–1954) campaigned hard for an explicit recognition of Islam
and Islamic law within the framework of an independent Indonesian state.2
Eventually, in June 1945, this resulted in a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ about a
preamble to the constitution that became known as the ‘Jakarta Charter’. The
nine signatories to this document consisted of four secular nationalists and five
Muslim politicians. Given the high profile of the participants in these delicate
negotiations, it is not surprising that ‘in retrospect it can be considered that later
discussions on the relationship of State and Islam in Indonesia were to a large
extent determined by some words of this Djakarta Charter’ (Boland 1971: 25).
A hard-fought addition to the fifth principle of the Pancasila Doctrine,
whereby the belief in one God came ‘with the obligation for the adherents of
Islam to practice Islamic law’, the Jakarta Charter became also known as the
‘Seven Words’, because in Indonesian the phrase read ‘dengan kewadjiban meng-
djalankan Sjari’at Islam bagi pemuluk-pemeluknja’.3 Throughout Indonesia’s seventy-
year history as an independent state with a majority Muslim population, the
Jakarta Charter has remained a bone of contention because, at the last minute,
it was dropped from the formal declaration of independence by Sukarno and
135
Hatta on 17 August 1945. Consequently, what was considered by Muslim

politicians as the most crucial phrase in the whole document had simply disap-
peared and was also not mentioned in the subsequent Provisional Constitution.
Overtaken by the fevered pace of events in August 1945, Boland concludes
that ‘the new Indonesia came into being neither as an Islamic State according
to orthodox Islamic conceptions, nor as a secular state which would consider
religion merely a private matter’ (Boland 1971: 38), whereas Madinier sug-
gests that, for a while at least, the prospect of an ‘Islamisable state’ offered in
Sukarno’s Pancasila Speech remained alive (Madinier 2015: 66).
However, at the time there was no opportunity to dwell on this matter, because
the newly proclaimed independent Republik Indonesia (RI) was almost immediately
confronted with the appearance of a Netherlands Indies Civil Administration
(NICA). Helped by pro-Dutch Indonesian politicians and supported by the
people in certain reoccupied areas (especially those with large Christian popu-
lations), the NICA sought to reimpose Dutch colonial rule by moving swiftly
with the formation of a number of so-called federal states. This inaugurated
almost four years of ‘physical revolution’ – an armed struggle in which the young
republic had to fend off two military attempts to restore Dutch authority by force
in July 1947 and December 1948 (in Dutch still euphemistically referred to as
‘politionele acties’). As a result, the RI found itself increasingly isolated and confined
to Java and parts of Sumatra, eventually forcing the government to retreat from
Jakarta and make Yogyakarta its temporary capital. Aside from the threat of an
imminent Dutch take-over, it also had to contend with a fragmented political
scene: in the wake of the declaration of independence no fewer than forty parties
were established, sixteen of which were represented in the so-called Komité
Nasional Indonesia Pusat (KNIP, Central Indonesian National Committee), the
provisional parliament appointed by President Sukarno.
Islamic party politics and governance in early postcolonial

Indonesia
Initially, members of the wartime Masyumi were reluctant to form a political
party because they were worried about the effects of an explicitly Islamic party
on the national unity that was considered vital for the survival of the infant
Republic and its embryonic government. Only later, once independence was
ascertained, and confronted with a decline in its influence following internal
splits, regional secession attempts and the disappointing outcome of the 1955
elections, did Masyumi shift towards a more assertive Islamist line, adopting a
more intransigent stance in the face of the political manoeuvring by President
Sukarno as he attempted to take Indonesia from a parliamentary system mod-
elled on Western democracies toward Guided Democracy in which he could
rule by decree.
Taking over only the acronym of its wartime parent organisation, Masyumi’s
founding congress of November 1945 ‘added the subtitle, Partai Politik Oemmat
Islam Indonesia (the Political Party of the Indonesian Muslim Community), to
its name’ (Madinier 2015: 75). The organisational structure, made up of a
Leadership Council (Dewan Pimpian) and Consultative Council (Majelis Syuro),
was envisaged to be inclusive, but the composition of both bodies was skewed
in favour of members of the former PSII and PII. While the Islamic mass
organisations were also represented – with the Muhammadiyah supplying eight
members as opposed to the NU who had only four – their chairmen were not
part of the executive, but served only on the Consultative Council. Formally,
the NU’s Hasyim Asyʿari was in charge of this council, assisted by his son
Wahid Hasyim, and with Agus Salim, Ki Bagus Hadikusomo and the octo-
genarian Sumatran reformist Djamil Djambek acting as vice-chairmen. The
distinction between executive and consultative positions also reflected a divi-
sion between political and religious roles, which had been discernible before
the war. However, it became increasingly pronounced as the first two party
presidents, Sukiman Wiryosanjoyo (1898–1974) and Mohammed Natsir, as well
as another future minister, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara (1911–89), began to dis-
tinguish themselves as increasingly pragmatic and consummate politicians. For
them, religion provided ‘a set of general principles whose application could be
adapted to the present day’, in contrast to the functionaries in the consultative
council, who regarded it as ‘an inherent truth which must remain immutable’
(Madinier 2015: 295).
Open to individual as well as institutional membership, in the beginning,
Masyumi’s primary focus was on the formation of the Gerakan Pemuda Islam
Indonesia (GPII, Movement of Young Indonesian Muslims), which was to be
used in the struggle against the Dutch. For the rest, Masyumi’s earliest politi-
cal vision remained community-based. Using the designation Keluarga Masyumi
or ‘Masyumi Family’, Madinier opines that the ‘vagueness of its programmes’
was compensated by its ‘direct control over the various organisations charged
with providing social infra-structure to the Muslim community’ (Madinier 2015:
348). Presiding over a vast network, Masyumi oversaw social care organisations,
retained control of the Hizbullah militia and established a civil defence organi-
sation called Barisan Sabilillah. The latter two remained of crucial importance
during the ‘physical revolution’ between 1945 and 1950. Legal backup and
inspirational support for this armed struggle was provided by the Masyumi
Party Congress and a fatwa from Hasyim Asyʿari, encouraging Muslims to ‘fight
[more accurately, to expend effort] in the way of God (berjihad fisabilillah)’, and
instructing them that under these adverse circumstances this perang sabil was also
a fard al-ʿayn; a duty imposed on individual Muslims (Boland 1971: 43; Formichi
2012: 85). Although the Masyumi executive, dominated by pragmatic modern-
ists, was reluctant to endorse the NU leader’s fatwa, they felt compelled to reiter-
137
ate its dedication to the establishment of an Islamic state. While adopting the
same terminology used by Hasyim Asyʿari in his fatwa – that the RI’s territory
constituted a Darul Islam – the congress also vowed to do so through parliamen-
tary consultation, thus expressing its adherence to the Pancasila.
The difference in attitude between Masyumi’s political realists and its reli-
gious idealists is reflected by the fact that ‘in the case of Masyumi, the notion of
the Islamic state was by turns, and sometimes, simultaneously, a slogan, a myth,
a programme and a reality’; a confusion further exacerbated by the ambiguity
of the Indonesian term negara, which ‘can be understood to refer to a state, a
country, or, in certain cases, a nation’ (Madinier 2015: 285–6). Consequently,
the evolution of Masyumi’s political ideology proceeded in a chaotic and some-
times even contradictory fashion. Together with the political infighting of the
formative years of Islamic political organisations during the 1920s and 1930s
which carried over into the postcolonial era, these internal ideological differ-
ences resulted in the 1947 breakaway from Masyumi of a re-established PSII, the
secession of Kartosuwiryo’s Darul Islam Movement in 1948, and the departure
of the NU four years later. As noted earlier, the Japanese preference for rural
ulama had already undermined the position of outward-looking Islamic modern-
ists, who were often also of Sumatran origin. The first years of the party’s exist-
ence were therefore a chaotic affair. With individual members joining cabinets
of the early independence years in their personal capacity rather than as official
party representatives, Masyumi was effectively split between idealists striving for
an Islamic state, who preferred a role in the opposition, and realists who consid-
ered participation in governance more constructive, even if that meant making
compromises. Madinier attributes this ‘political schizophrenia’ to the different
geographical origins, social backgrounds and political affinities of the Masyumi
leaders (Madinier 2015: 61).
Two developments during the independence struggle were important for
Masyumi’s maturing as a party and the formation of its political identity. The
first one was a communist rebellion, which was rapidly put down by the Siliwangi
Division of the Republican Army in September 1948 and which became known
as the ‘Madiun Affair’. That incident put the army and Masyumi at odds with
the PKI. Ricklefs draws a parallel between the PKI–Masyumi confrontation
and the abangan–santri divide, and agrees with Madinier that the execution
of numerous Masyumi members by the rebels was the starting point of the
party’s virulent anti-communist attitude and the origin of the reverse massa-
cre of alleged leftists in the mid-sixties (Ricklefs 2012: 71–8; Madinier 2015:
147–54). The other development was the secession of Kartosurwiryo’s DI early
in 1948, and subsequent proclamation of the Islamic State of Indonesia (Negara
Islam Indonesia, NII) in August 1949. This development will be discussed in
more detail in the next section; what is relevant here is that Darul Islam’s sim-
plistic Islamist radicalism pushed Masyumi towards the political middle ground.
While this enabled the party to participate in coalition governments of varying

make-ups, it also posed a challenge in terms of presenting a clear and distinct
Islamic image.
Capitalising on the growing nationalist sentiments and international sym-
pathy for the cause of Indonesian independence as a result of Dutch brutality
during its military campaigns in 1947–8, dramatic events in the final phase
of that struggle provided three Masyumi leaders with opportunities to profile
themselves as future statesmen: after the capture of the Sukarno–Hatta cabinet
during the Dutch invasion of Yogyakarta, the only escapee, Finance Minister
Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, proclaimed an Emergency Government of Indonesia
(Pemerintah Darurat Republik Indonesia, PDRI) in Bukittinggi, the republican
capital in Sumatra’s Minangkabau region. Thus keeping the revolutionary ideal
alive, his actions added enormously to Masyumi’s prestige. Meanwhile, after
his release, Interior Minister Mohammad Roem negotiated the final Dutch–
Indonesian agreement for the transfer of sovereignty to the Republic. Finally,
Mohammad Natsir distinguished himself by convincing Prawiranegara to
accept the Roem–van Royen Agreement, which Prawiranegara had criticised
as making too many concessions to the Dutch, and return executive power from
the PDRI to the reinstated Sukarno–Hatta government. These actions raised
this trio from being relatively low-key advocates of realist policies to political
prominence, putting them in an advantageous position for taking power within
Masyumi on the eve of the formal Dutch recognition of independence for the
United States of Indonesia on 27 December 1949. This political constellation
of the Java- and Sumatra-based RI and a number of federal states inherited
from the NICA soon turned out to be untenable. Within a few months it had
collapsed and was replaced by a unitary state. Still led by Sukarno as president
and Hatta as vice-president, the new chairman of Masyumi’s executive board,
Mohammad Natsir, became the first prime minister of what was now once again
called the Republik Indonesia.
Although the years from 1950 to 1957 are regarded as Indonesia’s first exper-
iment with parliamentary democracy, elections were not held until 1955. At the
same time, it was also a period of great instability, during which the country
had six governments. Even though Masyumi was the main government party
in five of these cabinets (providing the prime minister for three), the notoriously
unstable and ineffective coalitions with the PNI followed each other in rapid
succession due to ‘policy differences, disagreements over ministerial appoint-
ments and the role played by party factions’, which were disproportionately
influential because of the absence of an elected parliament accountable to voters
(Madinier 2015: 134).
In April 1952, intra-party squabbling within Masyumi led to the departure of
the NU. The split occurred over the disdain with which the Islamic modernists
treated the traditionalists. When Hasyim Asyʿari’s successor as the NU’s Rais
139
Aam (General President), Abdul Wahab Chasbullah, claimed the posts of foreign
affairs (Abu Hanifah), defence (former Hizbullah leader Zainul Arifin) and reli-
gious affairs (Wahid Hasyim) for NU, this move was criticised and arrogantly
dismissed by the senior Muhammadiyah leader Hamka. The NU’s national
congress reacted by voting in favour of leaving Masyumi altogether and turning
the NU into an independent political party. Used to holding a virtual monop-
oly on the political representation of Indonesia’s Muslims, Masyumi’s haughti-
ness backfired completely in 1953, when the League of Indonesian Muslims
(Liga Muslimin Indonesia), consisting of the NU, PSII and the tiny Persatuan
Tarbiyah Islam (Perti), managed to bring down the PNI–Masyumi coalition and
relegate the latter for the next two years to the opposition.4 By then Sukarno was
becoming personally involved. He used another speech – given in Amuntai in
South Kalimantan – to speak out unambiguously in favour of a national state
because a state based on Islam would lead to the breakaway of areas such as
Bali, parts of Sulawesi, the Moluccas and a string of other eastern islands. This
then constituted a ‘definite break’ between the president and Masyumi (Boland
1971: 48). Another consequence – at face value seemingly a minor issue but
with a long-lasting effect – was Masyumi’s loss of the Ministry of Religion, which
remained under NU control from 1953 until 1971.
According to Madinier, Masyumi’s miscalculations can be attributed to the
disconnect between what he calls – with a nod to Herbert Feith – the Dutch-
educated party elite of ‘administrators’ and ‘solidarity makers’; popular figures
with grassroots-level support but no government responsibility (Madinier 2015:
127). This problem had already been noted by Masyumi executive Kasman
Singodimejo during his years in the JIB: not only were the urban and European-
influenced lifestyles of most Masyumi cadres at odds with those of the rural
peasantry, but because of their Dutch education they also lacked the linguistic
abilities and cultural frame of reference to communicate effectively with ordi-
nary people. Making a similar acknowledgement, Boland notes that, as ‘wield-
ers of symbols, both traditional and nationalistic’, the NU was much better
suited to this solidarity-making role, but that – ironically – the developments of
1952 and 1953 turned NU into ‘a typically government-minded party’ (Boland
1971: 51). In contrast to Masyumi, the NU toned down the anti-communist
rhetoric that had dominated the Muslim political discourse since the Madiun
Affair. In 1954, Religious Affairs Minister K.H. Masykur convened a congress
of ulama who were closely associated with the NU. They issued a fatwa in which
Sukarno was recognised as belonging to the so-called ulil-amri (‘those who are
in command’), thereby giving him legitimacy as the ruler of a Muslim country.
From then on, the NU was often accused of opportunism because of its will-
ingness to join any cabinet to stay in power. Thus, the NU became part of an
informal alliance gravitating around the figure of Sukarno, which also included
the PNI, PSII and PKI, and which outmanoeuvred Masyumi and its leader
Natsir, who could only count on support from Sutan Sjahrir’s PSI and two
Christian parties.
The effects of the collapse of the PNI–Masyumi coalition and the NU break-
away also had repercussions from the first and only free national elections until
1999. With only 43.5 per cent of the votes, overall results for the Islamic parties in
the 1955 elections were disappointing. Although Masyumi itself came in second
after the PNI with 20.9 per cent against 22.3 per cent of the votes, it remained
barely ahead of the NU’s 18.4 per cent – now the third-largest party before the
PKI. Even the oratory abilities of Isa Anshary (1916–69), a native of the former
Padri stronghold of Maninjau in the Minangkabau’s Agam Valley, fell short as
an electioneering device. Referred to as ‘the little Napoleon of Masyumi’, he
was one of the few who was able to develop a rapport with his constituency in
west Java, but it made no difference to the overall outcome of the 1955 elections
(Madinier 2015: 204). Meanwhile, the NU’s electoral success was attributed
to the ‘aroma of orthodoxy’ exuding from what many voters considered ‘emo-
tionally the truly Islamic party’ (Boland 1971: 50). Still predominantly a rural
country, to Indonesia’s Muslim peasantry, the urban-oriented Masyumi seemed
distant and its centralised campaigning could not replace the personalised guru–
murid relationships in which the otherwise rather disorganised NU excelled.5 As
‘an “extra-Javanese” party representing the periphery of the country’, Masyumi
managed to command 40 per cent of the votes in its strongholds of Sumatra and
South Sulawesi, while barely making the 10 per cent mark in the densely popu-
lated NU heartlands of central and east Java (Madinier 2015: 211).
Aside from a disconnect between the Masyumi cadres and its envisaged
grassroots-level electoral support base, another reason for the party’s dismal
performance was its decision to change its overall campaign rhetoric. In order
to avoid alienating non-Muslims and also in response to the language used
by Sukarno, Masyumi refrained from using religious idiom or making refer-
ences to Islam. Instead it employed an abstract political vocabulary appealing
to generic democratic values that failed to convince a significant part of the
Muslim electorate:
As the elections approached, the timidity of Masyumi’s claims was even more
obvious. The party’s press made no bones about playing the Muslim card, but
the party itself seemed to want to hush up its Islamic identity as well as any
demands which were of a religious nature. (Madinier 2015: 302)
Although after the elections Masyumi returned to government, there was no

denying the fact that it had gone from ‘foremost political party’ to being ‘simply
one of four large political parties which could legitimately aspire to a role in
government’ (Madinier 2015: 203). On the back of this relative marginalisation,
relations with Sukarno deteriorated further as the president began exhibiting an
increasingly soloist attitude. In the wake of the Asia–Africa Conference, which
141
he had hosted in Bandung, Sukarno moved closer to the third-worldism and

leftist inclinations of his new-found friends, President Nasser of Egypt and the
Indian Prime Minister Nehru. In 1957, Sukarno announced plans to do away
with parliamentary democracy and opt for Guided Democracy. Invoking the
traditional Javanese village system of mutual assistance, known as gotong royong,
he foresaw people’s representation through ‘functional groups’ (golong fungsional)
rather than political parties. He also abolished the office of vice-president,
thereby ending the Sukarno–Hatta power sharing arrangement (dwitunggal) that
had been in place since 1945. Natsir had always emphasised Masyumi’s com-
mitment to democratic consultation and – because of its anti-communism –
displayed a leaning towards pro-American foreign policies. Having secured not
only support from PNI and PKI, but – because of an increasingly precarious
security situation as a result of various secessionist rebellions and a failed assas-
sination attempt on Sukarno’s life – also from the army, Masyumi found itself
alone in opposing the president’s move towards authoritarianism.
Masyumi became even further isolated when party leader Natsir and Bank
of Indonesia President Sjafruddin Prawiranegara criticised Sukarno for his
rash decision to nationalise Dutch companies and expel tens of thousands of
Dutch citizens over the question of West New Guinea. This led not just to
economic chaos, but also to jeopardised relations with Western democracies,
‘moving Indonesia closer to the Russian bloc’ (Madinier 2015: 247).6 When
in early 1958 political pressure turned to personal intimidation, the Masyumi
leadership found itself forced into a hijra to Sumatra and reluctantly teaming
up with the renegade Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia (PRRI,
Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia) centred on Natsir’s
native Minangkabau area. The individuals going into internal exile included
some of those who had evolved into Indonesia’s leading statesmen during the
challenging immediate post-war years. Now Mohammed Natsir, Sjafruddin
Prawiranegara and another former prime minister, Burhanuddin Harahap
(1917–87), found themselves in the political wilderness and, as the tide turned
against the PRRI, soon also in the actual jungle of Sumatra.7 It was a bitter
irony that for the sake of preserving the integrity and unity of Indonesia, these
political pragmatists found themselves in the company of secessionist rebels.
In the final years of its existence, Masyumi found itself performing a balanc-
ing act that ultimately proved impossible to maintain. Natsir and Sjafruddin’s
dramatic turn from political realism to what was in effect an act of sedition stood
in stark contrast to their earlier commitment to democracy and insistence on
the rule of law. The remaining party leadership found itself emitting ambiguous
signals. Led by a Natsir protégé, Prawoto Mangkusasmito (1910–70), as acting
party president, Masyumi had to disavow support for the PRRI while avoiding
a total breakdown of the party which would almost certainly have occurred if
figures such as Natsir and Prawiranegara were unequivocally condemned. On
the other hand, Masyumi had to act against Sukarno’s attempts to abolish the
party-based system of parliamentary democracy and concentrate power in his
own hands. Eventually, it failed at both. Within two years of its proclamation
the PRRI had collapsed; incapable of responding to the military campaign
launched by the army which had remained loyal to the government in Jakarta,
the USA withdrew its initial support for what it had regarded as a potential ally
in stemming the growing influence of communism in Southeast Asia. While by
1961 the PRRI’s military officers, led by the Aceh-born Colonel Zulkifli Lubis
(1923–93), had managed to negotiate a deal that not only enabled them to
avoid being court-martialled but even to return to the regular armed forces, the
Masyumi leaders faced many years in prison.8
Masyumi was unable to capitalise on two aspects of Sukarno’s strategy to
impose his Guided Democracy. When the president proposed to restore the
1945 Constitution at the expense of the Provisional Constitution negotiated and
drafted in 1950, Masyumi regarded this as an opportunity to offset Sukarno’s
power grab by reintroducing the former duatunggal with Hatta. More significantly
even, with the original constitution back on the table, ‘once again the Djakarta
Charter became one of the most important issues on which some Islamic leaders
brought discussion to a head’ (Boland 1971: 94). However, unable to rally a
united Islamic bloc behind these two points, Masyumi not only stood alone
but was also internally divided. Although critical of the dismissal of the Jakarta
Charter as a ‘historical document’, NU leader Wahab Chasbullah was fearful of
a military putsch, whereas former Masyumi minister Jusuf Wibisono (1909–82)
had been voicing his dissenting opinion in favour of Guided Democracy since
1957. In a last-ditch attempt to save his party and reunite the Islamic bloc, after
his formal election as Masyumi president in what was to be the party’s last con-
gress, Prawoto Mangkusasmito gave in. However, this consent came too late.
Sukarno’s speech on the occasion of Independence Day in 1959, which
became known as the ‘Political Manifesto’ (Manifest Politik, abbreviated to
Manipol) and in which he outlined his ideas for Indonesia’s political future,
was also the prelude to the final demise of Masyumi as Indonesia’s leading
Islamic political party. Manipol consisted primarily of two propaganda slogans:
USDEK, an abbreviation composed of the initial letters of the Indonesian terms
for the 1945 Constitution, Indonesian-style Socialism, Guided Democracy,
Guided Economy and Indonesian Identity; and NASAKOM, an acronym for
a state ideology proclaiming ‘the doctrine of unity of the three component parts
of Indonesian society, the Nationalists (NASionalis), the religious groups (Agama
= religion) and the Communists (KOMunis)’ (Boland 1971: 102). These terms
became the shorthand for Aliranisasi; the Indonesian translation of a Dutch
phenomenon called verzuiling or pillarisation – the division of a society into seg-
mented silos representing different religious and political affiliations (Kersten
2015: 4). Masyumi tried to curb Sukarno’s power grab by forging a new alliance
143
called the ‘Democratic League’, but with only the PSI and PSII joining, while
the NU remained loyal to Sukarno, these efforts came to naught. Confronted
with a series of presidential decrees in early 1960, which further undermined
parliamentary democracy and the existence of political parties, and failing in
‘rekindling the “Natsirian” spirit to condemn Sukarno’s manoeuvre’ (Madinier
2015: 275), Prawoto Mangkusasmito and his colleagues in the executive dis-
solved the party. According to Madinier, Masyumi’s insistence that its dis-
solution had been voluntary ‘is indicative of the extent to which the party was
traumatised by the participation of Natsir and his close supporters in the PRRI
rebellion’ (Madinier 2015: 284).
However, even this step did not absolve Masyumi from the continuing wrath
of Sukarno, whose treatment of the Masyumi leadership in the early 1960s began
to resemble that of Nasser’s persecution of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
After the dissolution of Masyumi and the arrest of Natsir, Prawiranegara and
Harahap, the party was unofficially held together by Mohammad Roem and
Prawoto Mangkusasmito. Jakarta’s al-Azhar mosque became a rallying point for
the Masyumi constituency. Its imam was the former Masyumi deputy and leading
Muhammadiyah intellectual Hamka, who turned his magazine Pandji Masjarakat
into a Masyumi mouthpiece and leading organ for criticising Sukarno’s Guided
Democracy. Thanks to his cordial relations with former Vice-President Hatta
and senior military officers such as Generals Nasution and Sudirman, Hamka
enjoyed a degree of protection. Eventually, however, he too – together with the
rest of the Masyumi leadership – was declared guilty by association and rounded
up by the army which had thrown in its lot with Sukarno. On the back of the
defeat of the PRRI and the loyalist army’s suppression of other regional rebel-
lions, Chief of Staff Nasution had managed to achieve a power-sharing agree-
ment with Sukarno. By 1963, the whole Masyumi leadership was imprisoned.
Darul Islam (DI) and regional secessionist movements

Aside from being a result of the party’s opposition to Guided Democracy and
involvement in the PRRI rebellion, the dismantling of Masyumi was also a
consequence of persistent suspicions as to Masyumi’s attitude toward the DI
uprising led by Kartosuwiryo, which lasted from 1948 until 1962. This rebellion
formed part of no fewer than five regional insurgencies claiming to be inspired
by Islamic political ideology with which Indonesia had to contend from the late
1940s onward. In the course of the 1950s two rebel groups operating in South
Sulawesi and Kalimantan respectively began collaborating with Kartosuwiryo’s
DI. In 1953, troubles also arose in Aceh, but its PUSA-led resistance move-
ment against the central government in Jakarta did not enter into a formal alli-
ance with Kartosuwiryo. Finally, there were three separate guerrilla movements
active in central Java, which claimed to support Kartosuwiryo’s DI but failed to
form a united front.
Kartosuwiryo had separated from Masyumi in 1948 because of disagreements

over how to achieve the establishment of an Islamic state in Indonesia. Already
in pamphlets written during his time in the pre-war PSII, namely the Brosoer
sikap hidjrah PSII (1936) and Daftar oesaha hidjrah (1940), Kartosuwiryo had spelled
out that the ‘PSII was neither communist nor fascist and inspired by neither
Arabism or “Indonesianism”, as its foundation was only Islam’ (Formichi 2012:
61). Although such a stance is reminiscent of figures such as Maududi, Al-Banna
and Qutb, in her landmark study of Kartosuwiryo, Chiara Formichi neverthe-
less insists on seeing his ‘radicalization as a development strictly correlated with
domestic political and social dynamics’ (Formichi 2015: 63).
It is difficult to trace Kartosuwiryo’s activities during the war years, but it
appears that the PSII splinter faction he led continued to exist until 1942 and
that his ‘Suffa Institute’ (Institut Supah, also spelled Soeffah), an educational ini-
tiative which initially provided religious-cadre education but then switched to
guerrilla training for the Hizbullah and Sabilillah, operated until 1948.9 At the
founding of Masyumi as a political party, Kartosuwiryo became a member of
its executive board and a delegate to the provisional parliament, the KNIP.
Things changed with the Dutch invasion of 1947, which turned Kartosuwiryo’s
west Javanese stronghold of the Priangan into a theatre of war, isolating it from
the territories of the republic and thus laying ‘the foundations for the region’s
divergent political path to independence’ (Formichi 2012: 103). Invoking a 1946
speech known as the Haloean Politik Islam, Kartosuwiryo felt obliged to abandon
Masyumi policy of achieving an Islamic state through democratic means, opting
instead for perang sabil (‘war on the path [of God]’) or perang suci (‘purifying’ or
‘holy war’). Although now committed to armed struggle, it must be pointed
out that Kartosuwiryo had always objected to confining the meaning of jihad to
Western understandings as only signifying ‘warfare’:
To Kartosuwiryo, both the national and social revolutions – now explicitly
defined as al-jihad al-ashgar [lesser jihad, CK] and al-jihad al-akbar [greater jihad,
CK] – were necessary to eradicate colonialism by acting on external (state
and government) and internal (citizens’ souls) objects of foreign domination.
(Formichi 2012: 91)
This interpretation constituted the founding principle or groundwork for

what, between November 1947 and May 1948, evolved from a west Javanese
Islamic resistance movement into an Indonesian Islamic Army (Tentara Islam
Indonesia, TII) and a de facto Islamic state. Given the exceptional circumstances
governing west Java during the Dutch hostilities, Masyumi leaders had agreed
to suspend conventional party activities and ‘Kartosuwiryo was nominated imam
of the Islamic community in West Java’ (Formichi 2012: 115). By April 1948,
Kartosurwiryo’s military successes in terms of expanding territory and the vigour
with which his followers implemented governance in accordance with Islamic
145
law caused concern to both the Dutch occupying forces and the Republican
security apparatus. These worries were vindicated by the subsequent proclama-
tion of a parallel government and the release of a Kanun Asasy; an alternative
constitution in August of the same year (Boland 1971: 59)
A second Dutch military invasion in late 1948 and the subsequent capture
of the Indonesian cabinet, enabled Kartosuwiryo to charge further ahead with
what he now called a total war against the Dutch waged by his TII alone,
because Sukarno’s nationalist army was in a state of collapse. It is important to
note here that, at this stage, ‘Kartosuwiryo was placing the Darul Islam’s strug-
gle on the same plane as Soekarno’s, rather than in opposition to it’ and that
‘Republic forces were not identified as the enemy’ (Formichi 2012: 128). This
all changed in early 1949, when Kartosuwiryo – true to his lifelong commitment
to non-cooperation – accused PSI leader Sjahrir of selling out to the Dutch at
the Conference of Linggadjati and also criticised Sukarno for his willingness to
strike a bargain by opting for the path of diplomacy.
Even when relations soured further as the differences between the Republican
government and DI came into even sharper relief after the conclusion of the
Roem–van Royen Agreement and the occurrence of armed clashes between the
TNI and TII, Masyumi stood by Kartosuwiryo because it saw the confronta-
tion as playing into the hands of the Dutch and their continuing divide-and-rule
politics. That spectre became reality when Kartosuwiryo formally proclaimed
the Islamic State of Indonesia (Negara Islam Indonesia, NII) in August 1949:
The Negara Islam was rooted in the law of God and had its base in ‘Medina’.
As had been anticipated in the Brosoer sikap hidjrah PSII and in Haloean politik
Islam, this choice of toponym pointed to the city’s status as the destination of the
hijrah, as a physical migration and a metaphorical transformation. Either way,
Kartosuwiryo referred to the beginning of a new life for the ummah, one in full
conformity with Islam. (Formichi 2012: 134)
Having succeeded in turning theory into political reality, DI’s ambition of

further territorial expansion was complimented by efforts to develop the state’s
legal infrastructure and set up its own administrative entity. One of the first
actions was the promulgation of a criminal code or hukum pidana, which con-
tained not only the conventional fiqh distinctions between different categories of
crime and their appropriate punishments, but also an Islamic version of martial
law. Under the latter’s terms, there were only two communities: the Muslim
umma and that of the infidel colonisers. Consequently, jihad was declared an obli-
gation imposed on individual Muslims (fard al-ʿayn). The code further stipulated
that failure to contribute financial surplus to the treasury was to be treated as
an act of rebellion, while those maintaining good relations with enemies of the
state were declared munafiqun or hypocrites. In Chiara Formichi’s estimation,
this document and the earlier mentioned constitution can be considered ‘one
of very few attempts to formally structure an Islamic state in the Sunni Muslim
world in the twentieth century’ (Formichi 2012: 124).
The Republic’s initial response was conciliatory and at the behest of Vice-
President Hatta, Mohammad Natsir was sent to Bandung to try to make contact
with Kartosuwiryo. Using his Persis friend Ahmad Hassan as intermediary,
Natsir reported back with neither a condemnation nor an endorsement of DI.
Later he also headed a commission which recommended that no military action
be taken against DI as this would only benefit the Dutch. During his brief term
in office as prime minister in 1950–1, Natsir opened official negotiations on
behalf of the newly formed unitary state to reintegrate the guerrilla forces which
were operating not only in west Java, but also elsewhere in the archipelago, in
civil society. Without any concrete results to show for these efforts, Natsir’s suc-
cessor Sukiman shifted from finding a political solution to the military option.
By now, the Republic had to contend not only with DI, which at its peak was
able to mobilise no fewer than 13,000 men; it also faced rebelling guerrilla forces
in central Java, South Sulawesi, the Kalimantan region of Borneo and Aceh.
The three movements in central Java could not muster the same numbers as DI,
and while two of them – the Amir Fatah faction and elements from the army’s
Diponegoro Division – originated in the Masyumi-linked Hizbullah militia, the
Angkatan Umat Islam had no such connections.
Far more serious was the Kasuatan Gerilya Sulawesi Selatan (KGCC, Union
of South Sulawesi Guerrillas) led by Kahar Muzakkar (1920–65),10 a member of
the Buginese aristocracy of the state of Luwu and educated at a Muhammadiyah
school in Surakarta. After returning to Sulawesi with a Javanese wife, Muzakkar
was ostracised (ripaoppa-ngi-tana) (Boland 1971: 62–3). When refused integration
of his forces into the Republic’s army in 1950, Muzakkar put his troops at the
disposal of Kartosuwiryo and was made TII commander of South Sulawesi in
1952. A year later, Muzakkar proclaimed South Sulawesi part of the Islamic
Republican State of Indonesia (its name slightly deviating from Kartosuwiryo’s
NII), and was made Kartosuwiryo’s deputy minister of defence in 1955.
Although Muzakkar’s initial motive for rebelling against the central government
was the frustrated ambition of becoming a military strongman, Boland claims
that after being ‘converted’, Muzakkar became a ‘radical revolutionary’ set on
enforcing what is called the ‘Makalua Charter’ (Boland 1971: 85). In this docu-
ment, the PNI and PKI are condemned as hypocritical and godless, whereas
Masyumi, NU and PSII are rejected as counter-revolutionary. The charter also
contains stipulations which make opposition to polygamy a criminal offence,
and which impose a strict regulation of capital goods, valuables and luxury arti-
cles – reminiscent of the fiscal policies of Kartosuwiryo’s hukum pidana. Boland
further records instances of corporal punishment, as well as acts of banditry
and murder by Muzakkar’s forces. He also claims to have received information
about the persecution of Christians.
147
The rebellious forces on Borneo led by former marine corps officer Kyai
Ibnu Hadjar did not team up with DI until 1954. As his grievances were due
to the political take-over of his domain in Kalimantan by the unitary govern-
ment, Ibnu Hadjar’s involvement was only symbolic: Islamising his political
rhetoric and assuming the title Ulil Amri. Like Boland and Madinier, Formichi
also makes a distinction between the ‘original spark’ of DI and the uprisings in
Sulawesi and Kalimantan:
these regional rebellions were framed in Islamic terms, in more or less detail, only
after having become involved in Kartosuwiryo’s Islamic state project. In West-
Java the process was reversed, as the platform for an Islamic state had first been
developed and implemented when there was no unitary national government to
challenge. (Formichi 2012: 167)
The 1953 insurgence in Aceh was also inspired by the lack of autonomy for
the region under a centralised administration. Shaped by Aceh’s specific politi-
cal, religious and social circumstances, the Acehnese rebels pursued a regionalist
agenda revolving around what Edward Aspinall refers to as the ‘four myths’ of
Acehnese history: the golden age of the seventeenth-century sultanate, the strug-
gle for self-preservation, Aceh as the mainstay of Indonesian national liberation
and the so-called ‘broken promise’ (Aspinall 2009: 31–4). Both Aspinall and
Formichi stress that it was not until Sukarno reneged on his promise to establish
Islamic law in Aceh that PUSA founder and former military governor Teungku
Daud Beureu’eh (1899–1987) decided to ‘join Kartosuwiryo’s DI-TII [and]
declare Aceh a “federal state” within the NII in 1955’ (Formichi 2012: 159). The
alliance between Beureu’eh and Kartosuwiryo must therefore be considered as
motivated by strategic considerations rather than ideological agreements, not-
withstanding the underlying religious motivations of the Acehnese ambitions.
While the army began its operations to rout these various rebellious forces,
Masyumi politicians continued to advocate an ‘alternative path’ (jalan lain) over
‘this “military-centred” (Tentara-centrische) approach’ to what Natsir considered
to be a political and sociological problem (Madinier 2015: 173, 175). While
Isa Anshary, the head of Masyumi in west Java made every effort to resist DI
infiltration attempts, Natsir’s efforts to find a political solution were hampered
by the fall of his cabinet, the willingness of his successor to go along with a
tougher line against DI, and the break with the NU. Although Masyumi had
specified its differences with DI as to how to achieve an Islamic state by taking
a clear stance in favour of parliamentary democracy, rejecting any form of
populism and warning against the danger of the conflict exploding into a full-
fledged politico-religious war, it kept certain lines of communication with DI
open. The ambiguity of these contacts became clear in 1953, when two leaders
of the Masyumi youth wing GPII, Afandi Ridhwan and Achmad Buchari,
were charged and convicted for passing on messages between Kartosuwiryo’s
aides, assistants of Prawoto Mangkusasmito, and Kahar Muzakkar in Sulawesi.

Given the long-standing relations between senior Masyumi and DI leaders,
suspicions of support and allegations of complicity between the party and the
rebels persisted throughout the decade-and-a-half-long confrontation between
the Republic and Kartosuwiryo. While ‘the involvement of certain Masyumi
members in rebellions is indisputable’, Rémy Madinier reckons that this does
not make the party ‘collectively responsible’. However, ‘on the side of the army
and the justice system, but also on the side of Darul Islam, there were many who
had an interest in maintaining this belief in a collaboration’ (Madinier 2015:
179).
The groundwork for DI’s defeat was laid between 1953 and 1955, when the
NU took Masyumi’s place in government and Sukarno’s position grew stronger
through his personal friendship with NU leader Wahab Chasbullah, who – in
defiance of his own organisation – supported the president’s plans for Guided
Democracy: From then on, ‘Kartosuwiryo and his Darul Islam were defined
as “enemies of the state”’ (Formichi 2012: 160). However, that did not prevent
some Masyumi and NU leaders from voicing their dissenting opinions:
Mohammad Roem argued that the DI, TII and Daud Beureu’eh were the
party’s allies in the fight for an Islamic state in Indonesia. In the mid-1950s,
Isa Anshary declared that the ‘Ummat Islam should not support a government
which is not the NII’, and K.H. Chalid Hasjim of the Nahdlatul Ulama pro-
claimed that Muslims who did not strive for the NII were hypocrites who lived in
ignorance (jahiliah). (Formichi 2012: 163)
After Sukarno outlined Guided Democracy, the declaration of a state of

emergency and imposition of martial law, the stage was set for ‘Operation
Annihilate’ (Operasi Penumpasan), a campaign pursued with even more urgency
and vigour after the hijra of Natsir, Prawiranegara and Harahap to PRRI ter-
ritory in Sumatra (Formichi 2012: 168). Meanwhile in Aceh, a deal was struck
to establish a ‘special administrative district’ (daerah istimewa) under another
PUSA leader, Prof. Dr Ali Hasjmy. By 1962, the army had not just quelled the
PRRI uprising and rounded up the Masyumi leadership, while Daud Beureu’eh
was granted amnesty but kept under house arrest, it had also managed to
capture Kartosuwiryo. The latter was summarily tried, executed and buried at
an unknown location. Only Kahar Muzakkar managed to escape and evade
TNI troops until 1965, when he was shot near Lawali in Southeast Sulawesi.
Intellectual developments toward an Indonesian Islam

There can be little argument then over the failing of political Islam in Indonesia
during the first two decades of independence. In contrast to these setbacks,
however, important achievements were realised in the intellectual domain; in
149
fields such as Islamic education and the theorising of Islamic law. It is these
developments, rather than Islamic party politics, that continue to have an
enduring effect on what Indonesian Islam looks like today. The institutional
and administrative framework for these activities is provided by the Ministry of
Religion.
Establishing a Ministry of Religion and building Islamic higher

education
The decision to avoid any reference in the constitution to Islamic law – or Islam
for that matter – did not mean the banning of religion from the public sphere.
The principle requiring every Indonesian citizen to believe in one Supreme
Being is rather an indication of the contrary. While the establishment of a
Ministry of Religion is often interpreted as a concession to Indonesia’s Muslim
population, an attempt to placate their disappointment over the dismissal of
the Jakarta Charter, I suggest an alternative reading by looking at the par-
allel with the Turkish Republic (I have already referred to Sukarno’s inter-
est in developments in Turkey). In both instances, the establishment of the
Presidency for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) in Turkey and Indonesia’s Ministry
of Religion (Kementerian Agama, Kemenag) represent the same desire to bring
religion under state control. After initial hesitation about turning the war-time
Office of Religious Affairs into a government agency, in January 1946, steps
were taken by Prime Minister Sutan Sjahrir’s second cabinet to establish a min-
istry that would take over administrative responsibility for the infrastructure and
institutions developed during the Japanese occupation. After briefly considering
naming this department the Ministry of Islam, in view of the substantial pres-
ence of other religious traditions it was instead decided to call it the Ministry of
Religion. The ministry was composed of four sections: one each for Muslims,
Protestants, Catholics and Hindu-Buddhists (formally called Hindu-Balinese
religion). The new department took over from the Ministry of Interior respon-
sibility for marriage registration and family affairs, mosque administration and
the organisation of hajj; it relieved the Ministry of Justice of the care of religious
courts and the Ministry of Education and Culture of the coordination of reli-
gious education. While Boland disagrees with Clifford Geertz’s qualification of
the department as ‘a santri affair from top to bottom’, he does admit that ‘this
Ministry was primarily set up on behalf of Islam’ (Boland 1971: 106).
A young intellectual by the name of Mohammad Rasjidi (1915–2006), who
was already serving as minister without portfolio, was appointed as the first min-
ister of religion in March 1946. Born as Saridi in Kota Gede (near Yogyakarta)
into what he called an abangan family, he received his early education from the
Muhammadiyah and then attended the Hadhrami-sponsored Al-Irsyad school
where received the name Mohammad Rasjidi from Ahmad Surkati himself.
Between 1931 and 1938, Rasjidi studied at Cairo University. Presumably at
the advice of Abdul Kahar Muzakir, one of the later signatories of the Jakarta
Charter on behalf of the Muhammadiyah, Rasjidi took classes in philosophy
from a pupil of Muhammad Abduh: Mustafa ʿAbd al-Raziq. Muzakir also
introduced Rasjidi to the future Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb.
According to Rasjidi’s biographer, Azyumardi Azra, this exposure to Sayyid
Qutb’s Salafi ideas shaped Rasjidi’s abiding ‘revivalist or even fundamentalist
spirit’, because the ‘education and intellectual milieu in Cairo completed his
religio-intellectual journey’ (Azra 1994: 95–6). This is a noteworthy conclu-
sion, because throughout his subsequent scholarly career Rasjidi came into
contact with an array of very different ideas, which apparently did not leave
the same impression. Returning to Indonesia before the eruption of World
War II, his activities in a number of Muslim organisations positioned him well
for important functions in the religious establishment. After serving as minister
until November 1946, Rasjidi went on to pursue a diplomatic and academic
career, remaining one of the key contributors to Indonesia’s postcolonial Islamic
discourse.
Because of the urgent need for qualified candidates to staff the young repub-
lic’s religious courts, provide religious instruction in its state schools and run
the ministry’s own burgeoning bureaucracy, religious education was one of the
ministry’s primary concerns.11 As an educationist by profession, Mohammad
Natsir was one of the driving forces behind the development of an Islamic
system of higher education. Together with Vice President-designate Hatta and
the NU’s Wahid Hasyim, he had launched the initiative for Sekolah Tinggi Islam
(STI, Higher Islam School). First operating in Jakarta, in 1948 STI was trans-
ferred to Yogyakarta along with the Republican government. Its programmes of
study in theology and social sciences were modelled after the 1936 curriculum
of al-Azhar, and gradually expanded into law and other secular subjects such as
education, economics and technology.
From 1945 until 1960, this institution was led by the earlier mentioned Abdul
Kahar Muzakir, who had spent more than twelve years in Egypt and the wider
Middle East. Aside from studying at al-Azhar, he had also frequented both
secular and Islamist circles around the Wafd party and Sayyid Qutb. Following
the elevation of Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University to state university level
in 1950, STI merged with another Islamic university founded by a number of
religious scholars in Solo to form the Universitas Islam Indonesia (UII). A year
later, the government decided to split off the theology faculty from Yogyakarta’s
UII and continue it as the Perguruan Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri (PTAIN).
Jakarta also got a new tertiary Islamic education institute called Perguruan
Tinggi Islam Jakarta (PTID), later renamed Universitas Islam Djakarta (UID).
Six years later, in Jakarta, the Ministry of Religion founded the Akademi Dinas
Ilmu Agama (ADIA, State Academy for Religious Officials). In 1960, ADIA was
merged with PTAIN into the Institut Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN, State Institute
151
for Islamic Studies). With initially two campuses in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, the
IAINs had four faculties offering three- and two-year undergraduate and post-
graduate courses in religious studies (Usuluddin, including theology and da’wa),
law (syariah), education (tarbiyah) and humanities (adab). Since the 1970s, IAIN
campuses have proliferated in all major Indonesian cities.
Developing an Indonesian fiqh or a national school of Islamic law

Although with dropping the Jakarta Charter, there has never been any explicit
reference to Islamic law in the Indonesian constitution, fiqh or jurisprudence is
nevertheless considered a core field of Islamic learning. Thinking through the
relevance and foundations of Islamic law in the Indonesian context, not only
in terms of usul al-fiqh as a ‘toolbox’ for jurists, but also in regards to the maqasid
al-shariʿa or the ‘higher objectives of Islamic law’, was initiated by two scholars
of very different backgrounds: Hasbi Ash Shiddieqy (1904–75) and Hazairin,
also known as Gelar Pangeran Alamsyah Harahap (1906–75).12
Hasbi Ash Shiddieqy’s family belonged to Aceh’s religious scholarly elite.
Aside from a traditional Islamic upbringing at his father’s pondok, he also attended
the Al-Irshad school in Surabaya. Although associated with the Muhammadiyah
as well as the even more puritan Persatuan Islam (Persis), and serving briefly as a
Masyumi politician in the Constituent Assembly (1956–9), Ash Shiddieqy’s main
occupation in independent Indonesia was in academia. Eventually rising to the
post of Dean of the Faculty of Shari‘a at IAIN Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta
in 1960, he also served as a professor and guest lecturer at other Islamic uni-
versities in Aceh, Semarang and Surakarta. Unlike Ash Shiddieqy, Hazairin
never received any formal Islamic religious training and was for that reason not
recognised by traditional ulama as ‘fulfilling the technical requirements of a muj-
tahid’ (Feener 2002: 107). Born in Bengkulu of a father of Persian descent and a
Minangkabau mother, Hazairin received a Dutch state education and – having
decided on a legal career – then opted for advanced training at colonial law
schools where he specialised in adat or Indonesian systems of customary law. Both
as a juridical practice and as a field of academic inquiry, the systematic study of
adat was the brainchild of Cornelis van Vollenhoven (1874–1933), and Hazairin
studied under his pupil Barend ter Haar (1892–1941), eventually receiving a doc-
torate from the School of Law in Batavia (Jakarta).13 After working in the colonial
court system, when Indonesia gained its independence, Hazairin first served in
the provincial administration of south Sumatra before deciding on an academic
career. Except for a brief stint as minister of home affairs (1953–4), he lectured
in law at the secular Universitas Indonesia and ended his career as rector of the
IAIN Syarif Hidayatullah in Jakarta.
The greatest intellectual influence on Hasbi Ash Shiddieqy’s thinking about
Islam as a religion in general and Islamic law in particular came from the
Egyptian Azhar Shaykh Mahmud Shaltut (1893–1963), with whom he shared
an interest in demystifying Islam in order to make it more accessible to Muslims

without a background in traditional Islamic learning. It also led him to the con-
viction that the Muslim tradition could only be properly appreciated through
the study of its historical development, so that its doctrinal and legal positions
could be contextualised and reinterpreted in the light of contemporary circum-
stances. In theorising Islamic law in the Indonesian context, Ash Shiddieqy
considered it imperative to first disentangle a conflation of three terms that
was obscuring its proper understanding. Legal scholars from faculties of law at
secular universities generally use the term Hukum Islam for Islamic law, whereas
their colleagues at Islamic state universities tended to fall into a rather cavalier
mixing-up of shari‘a and fiqh, leading them to ‘suggest that both are universal,
absolute and everlasting’ (Wahyudi 2007: 78). Ash Shiddieqy insisted, however,
that only shari‘a can be considered as universal and eternal, whereas fiqh deals
with specifics and is therefore subject to change.
As a puritan Islamic reformist from the Persis mould, Ash Shiddieqy consid-
ered his intellectual labours on Islamic law as a contribution to the purification
of Islam, but with the understanding that a ‘return to the Qur’an and Sunna’
formed the starting point for the transformation of a generic understanding of
fiqh into an interpretation which would take the Indonesian context into account.
The legislative intentions of the Qur’an are not meant to complicate things, but
to provide Muslims with clear rules for the acts of worship (ibadat) and general
guidelines for human interaction (muʿamalat), whereas the Sunna of the Prophet,
captured in the authoritative hadith collections, provide detailed elaborations
of these Qur’anic provisions. Notwithstanding this seemingly scripturalist ori-
entation, Ash Shiddieqy remained always open to writings of different legal
traditions and schools of thought: the practice known as talfiq, which had also
been pursued by Abduh and Shaltut. His aim was ‘not only to transcend estab-
lished madhhab boundaries, but also to construct a new system of distinctively
“Indonesian fiqh”, or Fikih Indonesia’, which was to be ‘determined according to
Indonesian personality and characteristics’ (Feener 2002: 98). Such an interpre-
tative endeavour is no longer to be executed by individual scholars but through
a collaborative effort called ‘collective ijtihad’. This also meant a revision of the
notion of ijma‘, or consensus of scholars. To that end, Ash Shiddieqy proposed
composing a body of scholars trained at the IAINs and appointing them as what
in the tradition is called the ahl al-hall wa’l-‘aqd – or ‘people who can loosen and
bind’ (those holding authority).14 He also stressed that their competence and
authority in developing an Indonesian fiqh should be restricted to the muʿamalat
and would not concern ibadat. This way doctrinal purification could be recon-
ciled with a discursive Indonesianisation of the Islamic legal tradition. His intro-
duction of the term ‘Indonesian fiqh’ also sought to offer a compromise between
Indonesian nationalism and Muslim reformism.
Hazairin had a similar interest in promoting a distinctly Indonesian version
153
of Islamic law. Although largely an autodidact, Hazairin was nevertheless a per-

ceptive student of Islam with a keen ability for reflective thinking about religion.
In his view, students at the IAINs and similar institutions of higher Islamic learn-
ing should concentrate on acquiring knowledge of Islam by combining the study
of traditional Islamic subjects with modern sciences. Sharing Ash Shiddieqy’s
ambition ‘to see a new generation of scholars working within the context of a
modern and distinctly Indonesian national madhhab’, Hazairin’s introduction
of this term reflected the same ‘nationalistic orientation’ that underlay Ash
Shiddieqy’s promotion of an ‘Indonesian fiqh’ (Feener 2002: 109).
However, on account of Hazairin’s specialist training in adat, his approach
had a different accent from Ash Shiddieqy’s, emphasising the role of indigenous
customs because of their potential to offset the alien Arabian facets of Islamic
law with more acceptable local cultural features. With this, Hazairin sought to
turn legal precepts inherited from the Middle East into a living legal practice
that would better suit the Indonesian situation. Whereas Ash Shiddieqy drew
inspiration from Islamic religious scholars such as Mahmud Shaltut, Hazairin
turned to cultural anthropology to aid Qur’anic exegesis in line with the require-
ments and challenges faced by Indonesian Muslims. Guided by Islamic ethical
and legal principles, as well as a nationalist ideology, Hazairin insisted that
‘religion was to be the measure of the validity of adat and not vice versa’ (Feener
2002: 112). This was diametrically opposed to van Vollenhoven’s privileging of
customary over Islamic law. Rejecting the position of the guru of his specialist
field constituted Hazairin’s first step in the ‘Indonesianization of fiqh’ (Wahyudi
2007: 33).
Hasbi Ash Shiddieqy’s conceptualisation of an ‘Indonesian fiqh’, through his
immersion in both classical Arabic texts and the writings of latter-day reformists
from the Middle East, and Hazairin’s stress on the particular cultural circum-
stances that had shaped the Islamic content of Indonesian law foreshadowed
comparable initiatives by Indonesian scholars of Islamic law in the 1980s and
1990s and the decision of the New Order Regime in 1991 to accommodate
Hazairin’s earlier call for the compilation and codification of Islamic legal mate-
rials through a Presidential Decree on the Islamic Law Compilation (Kompilasi
Hukum Islam, KHI-Inpres).
Islam and the military: finding a modus vivendi under

Indonesia’s New Order
After successfully quelling the regional uprisings in west Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi
and Kalimantan, by the mid-1960s, the military’s reputation was at a high.
Rumours of an impending communist take-over and the assassination of a
number of very senior officers under very murky circumstances, offered General
Suharto, a hitherto obscure logistics officer, the desired pretext for taking action.
In 1965 the army committed effectively a coup d’état (kudeta) against Sukarno,
inaugurating a period of military rule that lasted for more than thirty years and
which became known under the name Orde Baru (New Order Regime). Before
long, the military intervention derailed into a pogrom against alleged commu-
nists and their sympathisers, resulting in the massacre of hundreds of thousands;
not only at the hands of the country’s official armed forces, though: the perpetra-
tors also included irregulars and militias associated with Islamic mass organisa-
tions and Muslim student unions. Aside from the anti-communist scare fed by the
military usurpers, the violence was also motivated by the sharpened santri–abangan
divisions resulting from the Aliran politics of the 1950s. The NU’s Ansor (youth
wing) was particularly motivated to collaborate with the government, because
the PKI had been its most fervent competitor for the loyalty of Java’s rural popu-
lations since the Madiun Affair and 1955 elections.15 The exact circumstances of
the coup and the ensuing atrocities remain the subject of much speculation, as
there have never been any official investigations with publicly shared findings.16
By 1966, the military was politically more firmly in the saddle than ever before
and able to transform General Nasution’s ‘Middle Way’ role of Indonesia’s
armed forces in the 1950s into what under Suharto became known as its ‘dual
function’ (dwifungsi) – a comprehensive role, extending from conventional
national security tasks to direct military involvement in government and busi-
ness. Under these circumstances, the hopes of former Masyumi leaders to return
to the political scene were quickly dashed. Not only were they kept imprisoned or
under house arrest until 1967, when political parties were again tolerated in the
late 1960s, it also became clear that the Suharto government would not permit
any leading roles for erstwhile Masyumi or other Orde Lama, or ‘Old Order’,
politicians. Thus ex-Vice-President Hatta was prevented from reconstituting
his Partai Demokrasi Islam Indonesia (PDII) and former Masyumi politicians
Natsir, Roem and Prawoto were disqualified as leaders of a newly established
Islamic party, Partai Muslimin Indonesia (PMI, also known as Parmusi). Instead
the regime first approved the son of former Muhammadiyah leader Bagus
Hadikusomo, Jarnawi Hadikusomo (also spelled Djarnawi Hadikusama, 1920–
93), as the chairman of Parmusi. However, when the latter began reaching
out to former Masyumi leaders, he was replaced with another – more pliable
– Muhammadiyah figure, Muhammad Syafa’at Mintaredja (1921–84). Just
before the carefully orchestrated elections of 1971, Mintaredja was traded for
what was in effect a New Order straw man: Djaelani (John) Naro (1929–2000).
Not surprisingly, with only 6 per cent of the votes, Parmusi came out fourth
– far behind the government party Golkar (Golongan Karya), the Sukarnoist
PNI, and the NU. Two years later, the New Order Regime tried to establish
an even tighter control over party politics, by forcing the four permitted Islamic
parties, Parmusi, NU, PSII and Perti to unite under a single umbrella: the Partai
Persatuan Pembangunan (PPP, United Development Party).17
155
The main reason for this move was to neutralise the NU, which had given
the strongest performance of all Islamic parties in the 1971 elections by securing
more than 18 per cent of the votes. Ironically, this inaugurated a reversal in the
political fortunes of the NU under New Order. Thanks to close personal ties
between senior NU leaders and Sukarno, as well as on account of its continuing
loyalty toward his Guided Democracy plans, the traditionalist NU had done
well under the Old Order, despite the fact that – as a political party – it was
poorly organised. For decades, the organisation had largely depended on the
authority of an NU aristocracy of ‘blue-blooded’ ulama, centring on the family
networks of figures such as Hasyim Asyʿari and Wahab Chasbullah, who saw
themselves as heirs to the Wali Songo – the ‘model bridgers of cultural bounda-
ries’ (Ricklefs 2012: 87). By the early 1970s, the NU had made huge advances
in restructuring its activities and modernising its outlook. The NU’s influence
was not just widespread among Java’s vast rural population; it also went down to
the grassroots level. This did not suit the New Order Regime and the envisaged
dwifungsi of its military support base:
Indeed, NU had shown itself nearly impervious to control by any regime. Its
foundation was a network of personal and familial relations among kyais and its
institutional base was its pesantrens, which operated as independent educational
institutions teaching the classic works of Traditionalist Islam – the so-called
‘yellow books’ (kitab kuning) – with funding from students, their families, business
activities of the kyais and endowments. It was not easy for any government to
take control of such a network, so the New Order decided instead to compete.
(Ricklefs 2012: 150)
Capitalising on the lingering distrust among large sections of the abangan

because of the involvement of NU’s Ansor in the 1965–6 atrocities, the regime
turned the government party Golkar into a voting machine for canvassing
support among the abangan and thus creating a ‘bulwark against Islam’ (Ricklefs
2012: 151). To meet this challenge, the NU adopted a confrontational strategy,
but found itself paying a dear price for its defiance. In 1971, it not only lost
the prized office of minister of religion and its status as an autonomous politi-
cal party by its forced absorption into the PPP two years later, but many of its
individual members holding public office lost their positions as well. While this
eventually enabled the NU to grow into the main opposition force against New
Order, in the course of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Indonesia’s intra-Islamic
power relations evinced a reversal in fortunes.18
Between Islamism and accommodationism

The year 1968 can be considered a watershed year for this role reversal between
modernist and traditionalist Muslims. The importance of youth activism in this
changing of the guard conjures up associations with trends elsewhere in the world
during that fateful year. However, in contrast to the student protests against the
established order in Western Europe and North America, Indonesia’s Muslim
youth activism had its own dynamics and it moved in two different directions.
One strand kept a distance from the regime, focussing instead on propagation
(dakwah) and religious training (tarbiyah) grounded in interpretations of Islam
that belong on the puritan side of the modernist-reformist spectrum. The other
strand adopted a more constructive stance in terms of engaging and cooperating
with the New Order Regime – a reason for its detractors to refer to its propo-
nents as ‘accommodationists’ (Hassan 1980). In both instances, these Muslim
youths were mentored by intellectuals and leaders from the older generation.
Identifying this key moment in the Islamisation process under New Order
comes with a caveat: its subsequent development between the late 1960s and
early 1980s unfolds against the background of religious affiliations in the top
echelons of the New Order government. Not only were Christians dispropor-
tionately well represented in the senior ranks of both the military and the
police, but what Ricklefs calls ‘Suharto spirituality’ was a ‘long way from Islamic
orthodoxy’ (Ricklefs 2012: 118). Although there were resonances with some
aspects of Sufi practices among traditionalist santri, Suharto’s orientation was
much closer to the abangan. And yet, in spite of this affinity, because of their
earlier communist associations, the regime remained suspicious of the abangan’s
unregulated religious practices. While the taxonomy of Indonesian religiosity
became more sophisticated with the introduction of alternative terms for the
abangan’s ‘non-standard Islam’, such as kebatinan (‘mystical cults of “interiority”’)
and kejawen (Javanism), these were not legally recognised sets of religious beliefs
and practices (Hefner 2011: 73; Ricklefs 2012: 269). Collectively referred to
as kepercayaan, these were not administered as institutionalised religions (agama)
by the Ministry of Religion, but fell under the responsibility of the Ministry of
Culture. In addition, they were closely monitored by a special unit from the
Attorney General’s Office known as PAKEM – short for Peninjauan Aliran
Kepercayaan Masyarakat (Observation of People’s Belief Streams) (Ricklefs
2012: 137).
Once they realised that a return to Indonesia’s political stage was not on the
cards, the former Masyumi leadership opted for an alternative route towards
influencing Indonesian society. Since his early days as an educator, Natsir had
been concerned with the lack of knowledge of Islam among his peers. In the
1920s, this had been his main reason for becoming a teacher instead of pursu-
ing a legal career. Analysing the situation in which Indonesia’s Muslims found
themselves almost forty years later, he came to the conclusion that their condi-
tion was still very much the same and that Masyumi’s earlier political failures
and the inability of its former leaders to canvass sufficient support for a return
to politics and governance was still a result of these intellectual shortcomings.
Working together with Roem, Rasjidi and Haryono, in 1967, Natsir was able to
157
get government approval for the establishment of the Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah
Indonesia (DDII, Indonesian Islamic Propagation Council):
A majority of these reformists belonged to what was often called the Keluarga [or
Keluarga Besar] Bulan Bintang (Family [or Large Family] of the Crescent Star),
which saw Mohammed Natsir as its political and spiritual leader. Ties among its
members were unusually close, involving long-standing friendships and family
relationships, and also ‘solidarity based on the spirit of Islamic reformism and
the years of shared suffering during the period of Sukarno’s Guided Democracy.’
Most members of the ‘family’ remained distinct from the fundamentalists who
saw the struggle of the Muslim community (perjuangan ummat Islam) as one aimed
at establishment [sic] of an Islamic state. Natsir and his fellows, rather, ‘interpret
perjuangan [struggle] in a religio-political sense, as a striving to achieve an Islamic
society (though not necessarily an Islamic state) and an influential role for Islamic
parties.’ (Kahin 2012: 163, quoting Samson 1978)
Aside from wanting to improve Islamic religious instruction along the puritan
lines which he had embraced during his Persis years but had largely abandoned
as Masyumi party leader, another motivation behind Natsir’s founding of the
DDII was his concern with growing trends among the abangan to convert to
Christianity, and his indignation at the government’s failure to put a halt to this
and curtail Christian missionary activity in general.
The DDII’s activities benefitted greatly from Natsir’s network of interna-
tional contacts, which he had been building since his days as Indonesia’s most
senior Muslim politician in the 1950s. Natsir was an appreciated figure in neigh-
bouring Malaysia, but also in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. He was a founding
member and vice-president of the Karachi-based World Muslim Congress and
involved in the establishment of the Muslim World League (MWL), a globally
working organisation initiated by Saudi King Faysal (1906–75), of which Natsir
became chairman in 1969. In particular, Natsir’s relations with Saudi Arabia
and other Gulf States provided the DDII with access to generous financial
support, which became especially beneficial for its youth activities when the
DDII expanded its influence to Indonesia’s university student population. To
this end, ‘the Dewan Dawʿah had initiated a campus-based program under the
name of Bina Masjid Kampus (Campus Mosque Building)’ (Kahin 2012: 178).
One of its most successful exponents was the ‘preacher combatant’ training pro-
gramme (Latihan Mujahid Dakwah, LMD) at the Salman Mosque on the campus
of the Institute of Technology in Bandung (ITB). This initiative was coordinated
by one of Natsir’s personal protégés, Imaduddin Abdulrahim (1931–2008), and
Endang Saefudin Anshari (1938–96) – the son of Isa Anshary. Such initia-
tives were an important tool in mobilising Indonesia’s Muslim population for
Islamic causes, such as protests against the new marriage law proposal of 1973
or the growing influence of foreign investors in Indonesia. In the face of sub-
sequent government crackdowns in January 1974, after the so-called Malari
incident (Malapetaka Limabelas Januari) in which students rioted against a visit by

Japan’s Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, and again in 1978, during the army
campaign for the ‘Normalisation of Campus Life’ (Normalisasi Kidupan Kampus,
NKK), Bandung’s LMD was transformed into the ‘Communication Forum
of the Indonesian Mosque Youth’ (Badan Komunikasi Pemuda Masjid Indonesia,
BKPMI). From there, the same formula spread to other university campuses
across Indonesia, creating a kind of underground refuge for Muslim activists
once the government’s NKK campaign got under way.
One of the side effects of DDII’s networking with activists elsewhere in the
Muslim world was the growing influence of foreign governments and Islamic
organisations. As a result of this trend, ‘Imaduddin Abdulrahim’s Indonesian
approach was thus replaced by a distinctly internationalist and increasingly
re-politicized Islamic discourse’ (Kersten 2015: 77). This shift created a tension
with the DDII’s own rhetoric, in which it cautioned against the dangers of a
ghazwul fikri or ‘intellectual invasion’ from the outside. Introduced by Hamka in
a speech at the 1969 Muhammadiyah congress, it is clear that this warning only
applied to Western ideas and did not extend to Islamic influences of Middle
Eastern provenance.19 Although by the late 1960s, Natsir had shifted away from
political pragmatism, Kahin maintains that – in terms of political ideology –
Natsir remained closer to the Pakistani Jamaat-e Islami leader Maududi than
the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb.
However, in 1970 Natsir recruited two GPII members of Yemeni descent,
Abdullah Sungkar (1937–99) and Abu Bakar Baʿasyir (b. 1938), to become
DDII activists in the Surakarta or Solo area. Two years later, the duo founded
their own Islamic school called Al-Mukmin (‘The Believer’) in the city’s Ngruki
district. Because of their militant revivalism and unabashedly Islamist agenda
for the restoration of the caliphate, the school gained notoriety under the name
Pondok Ngruki. It appears that, in 1976, Sungkar and Baʿasyir were also inducted
into the underground remnants of the DI and that they later founded a sepa-
rate organisation called Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). When Sungkar and Baʿasyir
were arrested in 1979 and imprisoned for three years, it is claimed that other JI
members were responsible for the subsequent assassination of the vice-rector of
Surakarta’s Universitas Sebelas Maret, an attack in which they were allegedly
assisted by another shadowy organisation known as Komando Jihad (suppos-
edly a front for covert operations coordinated by military intelligence chief Ali
Murtopo). Thus, ‘by the mid-1970s Surakarta was already becoming what it
has remained – a city known for active Islamic proselytisation and even Islamic
extremism, along with high levels of Christianity’ (Ricklefs 2012: 185). When
they were in danger of being rearrested in 1985, Sungkar and Baʿasyir were
helped by Natsir to escape to Malaysia, setting them on a course of international
and violent Islamist activism that was reimported into Indonesia upon their
return after the fall of the New Order Regime.20
159
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Islamic modernist-reformist spectrum,

another Muslim youth activist had been on the rise: Nurcholish Madjid (1939–
2005). Born in the NU heartland of east Java during the 1950s, Madjid’s family
were outcasts because of their Sarekat Islam and Masyumi connections.21 For
that reason, he left the area to attend the famous Pesantren Pondok Modern Gontor
(where, ironically Abu Bakar Baʿasyir was also educated), which offered mod-
ernised Islamic education in Arabic and English. Like Imaduddin Abdulrahim,
he began his activist career in the Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam (HMI,
Association of Muslim Students) – a student union which was not affiliated
with either the Muhammadiyah or NU, but which nevertheless had strong con-
nections with the ‘Masyumi Family’. Although he did not share Abdulrahim’s
politico-religious outlook, Madjid also advocated the further development of an
Indonesian Islam, as became clear when his writings from the late 1960s until
the mid-1980s were first published in book form, appearing under the title Islam
Kemodernan Keindonesiaan (‘A Modern Indonesian Islam’, 1987).
When Madjid became HMI chairman in 1967, he was hailed as a ‘Young
Natsir’ (Natsir Muda). In an article published a year later, he demonstrated sharing
Natsir’s view that modernisation should not be equated with Westernisation,
but two years later the honeymoon ended when Madjid disavowed political
Islam and the need for an Islamic state in a speech that became famous and
notorious for the slogan ‘Islam Yes; Islamic Party No!’ (Kersten 2011: 56). Even
more upsetting to the former Masyumi establishment was Madjid’s proposal for
a radical renewal of Islamic thinking, in which he pleaded for the ‘secularisation’
and ‘desacralisation of politics’. Although he made a careful distinction between
secularisation as a process and secularism as an ideology, his argumentation
was dismissed as ‘sophistry’ in the very polemical responses written by Endang
Anshari and Mohammad Rasjidi (Kersten 2011: 57).22 According to the latter,
in contrast to the genuine mujaddidun or Islamic renewers, Madjid had gone
from being the anointed successor of Natsir to becoming the ‘ummat’s enfant
terrible’ (Kersten 2011: 63). In spite of this opposition, Madjid’s ideas caught on,
becoming the starting point of what became known as the Gerakan Pembaruan
Pemikiran Islam or ‘Movement for the Renewal of Islamic Thinking’. It received
the backing of two other senior Muslim intellectuals, Harun Nasution (1919–98)
and Abdul Mukti Ali (1923–2004).23 This duo shared the young activists’ advo-
cacy of using advances made in the study of religion by the Western humanities
and social sciences.
Born as Boedjono, Mukti Ali had received both a secular Dutch-language
and Islamic education at east Java’s Pesantren Termas and at Yogyakarta’s Sekolah
Tinggi Islam. 24 After performing hajj in 1950, Mukti Ali left for Pakistan to study
Islamic history at the Faculty of Arabic Literature in Karachi and then moved
on to the Institute of Islamic Studies (IIS) which had just been established by the
Canadian scholar of religion, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, at McGill University in
Montreal. There he became excited by the holistic fashion in which the study
of Islam was presented. It was designed to enable Muslim students to become
appreciative of modern discourses on such issues as intellectual freedom, the
concept of the state, women’s rights and interfaith dialogue. Back in Indonesia,
Mukti Ali was put in charge of the first comparative religious programmes intro-
duced at the recently established IAINs, which formed the foundations for his
1972 initiative for a Forum for Inter-Religious Consultation (Musyawarah Antar-
Umat-Beragama). Just like the emergence of the Islamic literature of the 1930s and
the DDII’s dakwah activities, this undertaking was a reaction to the spectacular
growth in conversions to Christianity during the 1950s and 1960s, but offered a
more positive response to that phenomenon.25
By 1968, when Suharto had replaced Sukarno as president and with Natsir
and Rasjidi increasingly side-lined, Mukti Ali’s star was soon on the rise. New
Order’s first priority was to improve Indonesia’s economic situation, which was
in a terrible state as a result of the disastrous economic policies under Sukarno.
Muslim intellectuals such as Mukti Ali were inclined towards a degree of coop-
eration, since the regime appeared to allow a space for the development of
what became known as a ‘civil’ or ‘cultural Islam’ (Islam Sipil or Kultural), for
which there was a place in Indonesian public life. When appointed minister
of religion in 1971, Mukti Ali began defining what Karel Steenbrink has char-
acterised as a ‘Weberian’ religious policy grounded in his earlier academic
work in comparative religious studies and his involvement in interfaith dialogue
(Steenbrink 1999: 285).26 It was against this background that Mukti Ali began
facilitating a set of reforms targeting all levels of Islamic education that would
provide the necessary preconditions for the emergence of a new Muslim intel-
lectual capable of elaborating this concept of cultural Islam in the context of
the government’s development policy. As part of his overhaul of Islamic educa-
tion, Mukti Ali proposed a rejuvenation of the values of the traditional Islamic
education system so that the pesantren too could become catalysts of community
development and agents of change in Indonesia and facilitate community devel-
opment. This revamping of pesantrens was enthusiastically received by the NU
leader Abdurrahman Wahid (1940–2009). Affectionately known to Indonesians
as Gus Dur, he was the grandson of NU founder Hasyim Asyʿari and already
an influential figure in the organisation.
The hands-on reform of the IAINs fell to the new rector of IAIN Syarif
Hidayatullah in Jakarta (1973–84), Harun Nasution. Born into a northern
Sumatran penghulu family, Nasution studied at the Dutch Islamic Teachers’
College (Kweekschool met de Koran). After an unhappy stint in Saudi Arabia, his
father permitted him to move to Cairo, where he attended the American
University, because he lacked the Arabic-language skills to gain access to al-
Azhar. Cut off from Indonesia by the war, Nasution married an Egyptian
woman and then joined Indonesia’s embryonic diplomatic service as a consul
161
working under Mohammad Rasjidi at the embassy in Cairo. At the height of the
Guided Democracy period, Nasution was forced to resign: according to some,
this was because of his strong anti-communist views, while others have sug-
gested that his Sumatran origins had become a liability because of the activities
of the renegade PRRI. On Rasjidi’s recommendation, Nasution was admitted
to McGill University. Like Mukti Ali, Nasution too was stimulated by the intel-
lectual climate at McGill, first obtaining an MA degree with a dissertation on
the Masyumi party and then, in 1968, receiving a doctorate on the basis of a
thesis on Muhammad Abduh, in which he offered a positive argumentation for
Muʿtazili influences on the thinking of the Egyptian reformist.27 As rector, he
oversaw the introduction of an innovative study programme and new curricu-
lum, designed to equip students with an understanding of Islam as a civilisation.
It encompassed the study of various legal and theological schools, alongside
philosophy and Sufism, including the ‘deviant’ works of the Mu‘tazila and Ibn
al-ʿArabi, as well as the writings of Western scholars of Islam. These reforms did
not go unchallenged and his former mentor Mohammed Rasjidi became one of
his fiercest critics, objecting in particular to Nasution’s openness to the scholar-
ship of Western and Westernised scholars of Islam.
Thanks to the support from the New Order Regime, Mukti Ali’s religious
policies and the educational reforms of Harun Nasution were instrumental in
shaping Indonesia’s ongoing Islamisation process during the 1970s and 1980s.
Helped by the financial windfall from which Indonesia profited as an oil-export-
ing country since the oil boom of 1974, the infrastructure of Islamic tertiary
education was expanded massively, and increasing numbers of talented students
were sent overseas for postgraduate studies, not only to the Muslim world, but –
following the example of their mentors – also to universities in Australia, Europe
and North America. The effects of this became very noticeable in the 1980s
and 1990s, triggering developments that eventually escaped from the regime’s
control.
The ‘greening’ of Indonesian society

The next key moment in the relationship between New Order and Indonesia’s
Muslims came in 1983–4. First of all, it saw the reaffirmation of Pancasila
as state doctrine. New Order went even further when – in contrast to the
early independence years and the Aliran politics of the 1950s – Pancasila was
declared the asas tunggal, or ‘sole foundation’, for all socio-political actors.
However, this decision occurred alongside the introduction of the ‘reactualisa-
tion agenda’ (1983–93) by Minister of Religion Munawir Sjadzali (1925–2004);
and the NU’s decision to leave party politics altogether. Presented under the
slogan Kembali ke Khittah 1926 or ‘Return to the 1926 Founding Document’,
this proved a strategically important decision for the NU. On the one hand,
it enabled the traditional ulama establishment within the NU, led by General
President Achmad Siddiq (1926–91), to focus on their role as educators and

recalibrate the organisation’s course into a depoliticised ‘Middle Path’ or
‘tawassut wa al-iʿtidal’ (Kersten 2015: 88). On the other hand, it propelled
the NU’s new executive chairman, the mercurial Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus
Dur), into the role of key critic of the regime.28 Erudite and fluent in Arabic
and English, Abdurrahman Wahid’s profile is hardly that of a conventional
religious scholar. Educated in the pesantren milieu and at schools in Jakarta
during his father Wahid Hasyim’s stints in government, Gus Dur did not attend
Islamic universities, but went to Cairo and Baghdad to study Arabic literature,
although he never graduated. Upon his return, he quickly moved up the ranks
in the NU, culminating in his 1984 election as chairman of the executive board.
From then on, he used this platform to evolve into the role of de facto opposition
leader against Suharto.29
Leaving aside the regime’s imposition of the Pancasila Doctrine and the
NU’s decision to avert (and subvert) this as much as possible by refocussing on
its original mission, it was the government’s own religious policy towards the
Muslim population that accelerated the Islamisation process in the second half
of the 1980s – leading to what is called the penghijauan or ‘greening’ of Indonesian
society. The name is symbolic in a double sense, as the word does not only refer
to green as the symbolic colour of Islam, but also to the military.
The combined effects of the initiatives of the DDII, Nurcholish Madjid’s
Renewal Movement, and the changes introduced under Mukti made Indonesia
look much more ‘Islamic’ than twenty-five years earlier. Much of this was driven
by a growing middle class of educated, upwardly mobile, urban Muslims. Living
and working in major cities, with their immediate material needs increasingly
met, they also formed a market for the ‘commodification’ of religion.30 This was
not only exemplified commercially – by an expanding halal food and Islamic
fashion industry – but also manifested itself intellectually and spiritually, in
the appearance of NGOs and ‘think tank’-like organisations catering to the
immaterial needs of this new Muslim bourgeoisie. Former student activists such
as Nurcholish Madjid set up research institutes and foundations, which not
only offered educational courses and programmes on religion, spiritual well-
being and self-improvement to urban Muslim professionals, but also provided
employment opportunities for graduates from the IAINs. Some entrepreneurial
individuals were able to combine the commercial and the spiritual, such as the
singer Rhoma Irama (b. 1949) and the TV preacher Abdullah Gymnastiar (b.
1962), also known as Aa Gym.
This Islamisation trend also began to affect the political elites, until it even
reached the very top – with President Suharto and his family performing hajj
in 1991. In the course of the 1980s, Suharto had been reducing his reliance
on generals from Christian backgrounds and, with his trust diminishing in
other senior officers with their own political ambitions, the president had been
163
putting out feelers to the Muslim camp. Aside from the symbolic step of pre-
senting himself as a practising Muslim, which in turn motivated other top
government and military officials to emphasise their own Islamic credentials,
Suharto approved the formation of a platform for bringing together the coun-
try’s Muslim intelligentsia as a new political power base. Both observers of
political and religious developments in contemporary Indonesia and some of
the actors who were involved in these events have provided different accounts
of the establishment of what became known as the Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim
se-Indonesia (ICMI, All-Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals). It is
generally agreed that what had started out as an impromptu plan of five Muslim
student leaders for a symposium was quickly turned into a grander scheme when
the former DDII campus activist Imaduddin Abdulrahim and Muhammadiyah
intellectual Dawam Rahardjo suggested turning the one-off campus event into
a more sustained effort to bring various groups of Muslim intellectuals together.
In order to get the necessary official support, they approached Suharto’s confi-
dant, Minister of Technology B. J. Habibie. Realising the political possibilities
of this initiative, Suharto gave his consent and instructed Habibie to personally
take charge of what was now becoming a government-led plan for a formal
discussion forum bringing together Muslim government officials, technocrats,
academics, activists and – last but certainly not least – the leaders of Indonesia’s
Muslim mass organisations.
From the outset, ICMI’s main vulnerability was the refusal of NU leader
Abdurrahman Wahid to sign up to the project. Instead, he founded an alterna-
tive, more inclusivist and critical body of intellectuals called Forum Demokrasi.
Optimism regarding ICMI’s potential as a new political power base soon
evaporated when participants and observers began presenting different and
diverging interpretations of its role, ranging from protecting the economic
interests of the Muslim middle class to the cultural and symbolic significance
that such a new Islamic organisation could harness. ICMI’s initial success as a
regime-friendly umbrella organisation bringing together a broad spectrum of
intellectuals of varying Muslim backgrounds was thus undermined by its own
internal ideological diversity and the inevitably resulting differences of opinion
on how to relate and be loyal to the regime. Its demise was only hastened
when key figures became disenchanted, either departing of their own voli-
tion or being unceremoniously expelled from the organisation. Even though
ICMI’s founding had initially been perceived as a ‘watershed of the state’s
politics of accommodation towards Islam’, its importance was outweighed by
the continuing structural significance of Muslim mass organisations such as
the Muhammadiyah and NU, as well as state- and regime-related institutions
like New Order’s government party Golkar, MUI and the state bureaucracy in
general (Effendy 2004: 196).
Regime change and reformation: taking Indonesian Islam

into the twenty-first century
Although 1995 started with celebrations to commemorate fifty years of inde-
pendence, the half-centenary mark also saw an upsurge of politically motivated
religious violence which would mar the final years of Suharto’s rule, as he and
his government tried to come to terms with a rapidly changing globalising
world. As the Internet began making inroads into Indonesia’s mediascape, state
sovereignty and nationalist protectionism felt under siege from a worldwide
surge of (neo-)liberalism. Trying to demonstrate its democratic credentials and
respect for human rights, the regime ordered the release of the last former min-
isters from the Sukarno era still remaining in detention.
The unforeseen effect of this decision was a campaign by young Muslims
demanding a similar amnesty for imprisoned Islamic activists, while the detrac-
tors of ICMI responded by establishing alternative platforms and organisa-
tions for safeguarding national unity by expressing their unwavering support
for the Pancasila Doctrine. Another of the government’s major concerns was
the establishment of an alliance of political opponents of Suharto, uniting the
Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (PDI, Indonesian Democratic Party) led by the
daughter of the late President Sukarno, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Abdurrahman
Wahid’s NU, and what the government called Organisasi Tanpa Bentuk (OTB,
Organisations Without Form).
The Muslim opposition and the end of Suharto’s reign

In a desperate attempt to fend off imminent challenges to his authority,
Suharto attacked the PDI–NU tandem by orchestrating Megawati’s ousting
from her position as party leader and a failed bid to depose Abdurrahman
Wahid from his top seat in the NU. Suharto’s last full year in power turned
into a veritable annus horribilis, as Indonesia felt the full impact of the 1997
international currency crisis and was put at the mercy of the IMF. Despite
the governing party Golkar’s victory in the national elections, the regime
was unable to quell a rebellion in ICMI against Suharto’s intention to
seek a seventh term in office as president. More than a thousand Muslim
intellectuals proposed Muhammadiyah leader Amien Rais as an alterna-
tive candidate, while the Islamic periodical Ummat added to the pressure by
naming him its ‘man of the year’. The regime retaliated by expelling Rais
from ICMI, thus further eroding its envisaged role as a rainbow coalition
of Muslim New Order loyalists. The only ones left in the Muslim camp
propping up Suharto’s presidency were government bureaucrats and – as
an ultimate irony – representatives of the DDII and the Komité Indonesia
untuk Solidaritas dengan Dunia Islam (KISDI, Indonesian Committee for
Solidarity with the Muslim World), which operated under the patronage of
165
Suharto’s then son-in-law, Lieutenant General Prabowo Subianto and his

coterie of so-called Green Generals.
By early 1998, thousands of students began taking to the streets in order to
protest against Suharto’s re-election. In the ensuing riots, 1,200 lost their lives;
not least due to Prabowo and KISDI’s involvement in sowing dissent within the
Muslim camp by sending in thugs associated with self-proclaimed Islamist vigi-
lante organisations. With student opposition coordinated by the Kesatuan Aksi
Mahasiswa Muslim Indonesia (KAMMI, United Front of Indonesian Muslim
University Students), it was now manifestly clear that the Muslim bloc was the
new political lynchpin of manoeuvres that were under way within the regime
for an internal handing-over of power. While Amien Rais was posturing as the
main face of the opposition and NU leader Abdurrahman Wahid left every-
body guessing where his ultimate loyalty lay, Suharto sought the advice of nine
influential Muslim intellectuals led by Nurcholish Madjid. On 21 May 1998,
they managed to convince the ageing president to hand over the reins to Vice-
President Habibie. Although greeted with enthusiasm by the middle classes,
the new measures would prove too little and too late to save New Order. The
newly opened political space was quickly filled by a proliferation of new politi-
cal parties; no fewer than 130 had registered before the year was out, but there
were only five serious contenders and most of these were led by familiar faces
from the political arena.
Vying for power were a reunified PDI–Perjuangan (struggle) of Megawati
Sukarnoputri; the government party Golkar now led by former Muslim student
activist and HMI chairman Akbar Tanjung; and three major Muslim parties: (1)
a revamped New Order-era PPP under NU stalwart Hamzah Haz, (2) Amien
Rais’s Partai Amanat Nasional (PAN, National Mandate Party) and (3) the NU’s
Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa (PKB, National Awakening Party). DDII activists
and its highly effective youth wing were quick to establish more openly Islamist
competitors, such as the Partai Bulang Bintang (PBB, Crescent Star Party),
Sarekat Islam, Masyumi and the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS, Justice and
Prosperity Party). However, they were dwarfed in size when compared with NU-
and Muhammadiyah-affiliated parties. Although results for all Islamic parties in
the first free and fair elections since 1955 were very disappointing, some individ-
ual Muslim politicians performed very well: in 1999, NU leader Abdurrahman
Wahid became the first democratically elected president since the declaration
of independence almost fifty-five years earlier, and Muhammadiyah chairman
Amin Rais took the position of Speaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly
(Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat, MPR)
Reformation or restoration?
After decades of authoritarianism and with the leaders of the country’s largest
Muslim mass organisations now holding the two highest political offices in
the land, Indonesia’s transition period was inaugurated under the name
Reformasi – ‘Reformation’. This democratisation process came with its own set
of challenges.
Due to the breakdown of law and order in the wake of the 1998–9
regime change, and as the military struggled to redefine its role in a drasti-
cally changed political environment, political violence erupted once again.
During the final years of New Order, there had already been clashes between
indigenous Dayaks and Madurese migrants in West Kalimantan and new
fermentations in the notoriously rebellious northern Sumatran province of
Aceh, while Muslim gangs elsewhere turned to burning churches and assault-
ing Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese community. At the turn of the century, this
violence took on a distinctly religious garb: not only did Muslim vigilantes,
youth gangs and self-defence militias (PAM Swakarsa) clash along Islamic and
Christian lines, but there were also intra-Muslim attacks on – for example –
traditionalist dukuns and bomohs accused of practising black magic. John Sidel
describes this change in character as a shift from ‘riots’ to ‘pogroms’. Amidst
the chaos, it was very difficult to determine who held political responsibility
for this escalation.
President Abdurrahman Wahid’s term in office was brief and unsuccessful.
An unorthodox and mercurial figure both as a religious leader and head of state,
he also lacked the administrative aptitude to bring the necessary structure to
democratic governance. In 2001, this led to his impeachment and replacement
by Megawati Sukarnoputri. Aside from having to shepherd through important
changes to the political culture and government system, she also had to contend
with the occurrence of acts of terrorism on Bali and in the capital Jakarta, per-
petrated by radicalised Islamists with links to Al-Qaeda and its alleged proxy in
Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). These incidents turned Indonesia into
the US’s key Southeast Asian ally in the ‘War on Terror’. However, Megawati
was unable to hold onto office in the elections of 2004 due to the actions of the
Poros Tengah or ‘Central Axis’ – an alliance of moderate Muslims who objected
to a female head of state. Forged by PAN leader Amien Rais, it had already
succeeded in denying Megawati the presidency after her PDI-P won the 2001
elections. This opened the way for retired General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
usually referred to as ‘SBY’. His decade in office can be considered as a come-
back of sorts for New Order; an observation corroborated by the narrow loss of
the 2014 presidential elections by Prabowo Subianto, Suharto’s erstwhile son-
in-law and a former special forces officer, against Djoko Widoyo, the candidate
endorsed by Megawati Sukarnoputri. The continuing presence of such figures
from both the Old and New Order era evince the resilience and sustained politi-
cal relevance of what I have called elsewhere Indonesia’s ‘eternal political elites’
(Kersten 2015: 33).
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that Reformasi has also led to an
167
unprecedented opening-up of the public sphere. It has had mixed effects on

Indonesia’s Islamisation process at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Islamic political parties have not performed well in the four elections that have
been held since 1999. With their collective share hovering around a quarter of
the total cast votes, it seems that the Muslim electorate prefers secular parties
like the PDI-P and Golkar. Political openness has also resulted in a polarisa-
tion between what I refer to as ‘reactionary’ and ‘progressive’ Muslims. While
the former consist not only of supporters of Islamist parties, but also include
vigilante organisations such as the Front Pembela Islam (FPI, Islamic Defenders
Front), the latter are mainly found among activists working for NGOs, think
tanks and advocacy groups or academics associated with the IAINs. These
Muslim intellectuals come from both NU and Muhammadiyah backgrounds.
The ideological stand-off between the two camps revolves around a number of
issues.
Islamic statehood and the role of Islamic law in society continue to be
debated. While the election results of Islamist parties, such as PBB and PKS,
lack the critical mass to make these viable issues in the political process, they
have adjusted their strategies and tactics to achieve maximum results.31 When it
became clear that an introduction of the Jakarta Charter in the new constitution
proved again not feasible, the PKS took the lead in trading it for another Islamic
concept: proposing the Mithaq Madina or the ‘Madina Charter’ of the Prophet
Muhammad, which had brought together Muslims, Jews and Christians in
seventh-century Arabia, as a model for Indonesia’s multi-ethnic and multi-
religious society. Similarly, they took advantage of the political decentralisation
during Reformasi, using the devolution of power and delegation of administrative
responsibilities from the central government to provincial and local authorities
to introduce and implement aspects of Islamic law through regional by-laws
called Peraturan Daerat Syariat or Perda Syariat for short.
Tensions between reactionary and progressive Muslims rose in 2005–6,
which constitutes yet another watershed year in the Islamisation of postcolonial
Indonesia. This coincided with the seven- or eight-year mark in a democrati-
sation process, which experts consider a litmus test for its success as it moves
from the transition to the consolidation phase. In July 2005, the Majelis Ulama
Indonesia (MUI, Indonesian Ulama Council) issued a number of controversial
fatwas, the most significant one being ‘Fatwa 7’, in which the notions of secu-
larism, pluralism and liberalism are condemned as ‘un-Islamic’. Reactionary
Muslim intellectuals and Islamist politicians regard this ruling as a vindication
of their criticism of progressive Muslims, whom they have accused of encourag-
ing ghazwul fikri; allowing an ‘intellectual invasion’ of Western ideas regarding
minority rights and gender relations to take root in Indonesia. Islamic vigilante
organisations considered the fatwa as a licence to persecute ‘deviant’ Muslims,
including Indonesia’s tiny Shiʿa minority and the Ahmadiyyah m ovement. A
year later, on the occasion of Pancasila Day 2006, the progressive bloc responded
with a ‘Declaration of Indonesianess’ (Maklumat Keindonesiaan), in which they
countered that the MUI fatwa violated the underpinnings of the Indonesian
state, especially because the notion of pluralism represented the same principles
enshrined in the Pancasila.
The situation was not helped by the indecisiveness of the SBY administra-
tion and the hesitation of law enforcement agencies to protect religious minori-
ties. Nor did a ‘conservative turn’ in the top leadership of the Muhammadiyah
and – to some extent – also in the NU, during the national congresses of
these two mass organisations in 2005, do any good to the causes of progressive
Muslims. Until that year, outgoing chairman Ahmad Syafii Maarif had been
supportive of the accommodation of a ‘cultural Islam’ attuned to the situa-
tion in Indonesia and offered patronage to a group of junior cadres, united in
the Jaringan Intelektual Muhammadiyah Muda (JIMM, Network of Young
Muhammadiyah Intellectuals), which was founded in 2004. The latter formed
the modernist counterparts of the Anak Muda NU, or young NU cadres, who
had been formulating a comparable progressive discourse since 2001, which
they presented under the name Islamic Post-Traditionalism. Two years earlier,
another young NU intellectual, Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, had taken an even bolder
step by founding the Jaringan Islam Liberal (JIL, Liberal Islam Network), which
had worked like a lightning rod for Islamist intellectuals on the reactionary
side of the spectrum. These progressive NU cadres were protégés of Said Aqil
Siraj, who – in 2010 – succeeded PPP politician and former Vice-President
Hamzah Haz as executive chairman of the NU, but who also had to contend
with more conservative ulama in the NU’s Consultative Council, in particular
Maarif Amin. As head of MUI’s Fatwa Drafting Committee, Amin had not
only been the man behind the controversial Fatwa 7, but had also managed to
become the president’s closest adviser on religious affairs. In 2015, he was able
to consolidate his standing by his appointment as chairman of MUI and election
as general president of the NU.
Concluding remarks
The decade that has passed since the issue of Fatwa 7 has given rise to grave
concerns regarding the prospects of religious plurality, the rights of minori-
ties, freedom of thought, and the manoeuvring space for progressive Muslim
intellectuals and activists in the face of challenges from the reactionary Islamic
camp. However, in the summer of 2015, two publications were released at
the national congresses of the NU and the Muhammadiyah. Entitled Islam
Nusantara (‘Southeast Asian Islam’) and Islam Kebinekaan (a pun on Indonesia’s
national slogan Bhinneka Tunggal Ika – ‘Unity in Diversity’), these books make
a case for a distinctly Indonesian Islam, offering a counter-narrative to the
169
internationalist Islamist discourse of the reactionary Muslims, whose tendencies

toward Arabisation can considered just as much an instance of ghazwul fikri or
‘intellectual invasion’ as the openness of the progressives to ideas of non-Islamic
provenance.
Conclusion
The history of Islam in Indonesia is best understood as an ongoing story. Its

beginnings and origins remain uncertain, but we do know that it commenced
relatively late on the timeline of the emergence and expansion of Islam, and
it did not reach Indonesia as part of the early Arab conquests. Also it can
be safely said that the arrival of Islam was not the result of an instantaneous
big bang. Affecting a sprawling archipelago with an amazing ethno-linguistic
and cultural-religious diversity to begin with, the arrival and introduction of
Islam is best conceived as having multiple starting points, different modalities
and involving a variety of mediators. In regards to the latter, and in order to
come to a correct interpretation and accurate understanding, it is imperative to
acknowledge the roles of both external and internal actors in encounters that set
in motion a process of adhesion, conversion and adaptation that has been going
on for more than 700 years.
This is why this book’s narrative has presented this Islamisation process as
a dynamic interplay of centrifugal and centripetal forces which has produced
a distinct variant of what Marshall Hodgson called the Islamicate cultures of
which the globalised Muslim civilisation is composed. The result of the absorp-
tion of influences from other parts of the Muslim world mediated by Arabised
versions of regional languages, filtered through older cultural deposits and
adapted to local circumstances, Islam in what is now the unitary Republic of
Indonesia forms part of a wider geographical zone on the eastern periphery of
the Indian Ocean. The notion of a network offers a suitable trope for capturing
this interactive dynamism.
Within this Southeast Asian island world, the Islamisation process has
evolved into different manifestations. It transformed coastal and riparian Malay
petty states into new political entities, sometimes with imperial aspirations. Its
Muslim population used cultural references to heroic figures and merged into
political institutions that had been carried across the Indian Ocean from the
Mediterranean, and West and South Asia. With conditions in Java’s interior
more favourable to the development of intensive rice cultures similar to those in
the mainland river plains and deltas of Burma, Thailand and Cambodia, Islamic
religious influences were creatively absorbed into an intensively Indianised
Javanese cultural environment, producing a ‘mystic synthesis’ which continues
to exist until today alongside other manifestations of Islam.
Conclusion
171
While the Islamisation of Southeast Asia was pushed in particular directions

by increasingly intensive European colonisation and the region’s eventual ter-
ritorial occupation during the age of high imperialism, this development must
not be isolated as a distinct sequential stage, but rather as part of a continuum
of overlapping phases involving repetitive introductions, extending and inten-
sifying into increasingly intricate patterns of networking, and responses and
adaptations to ever new challenges. As parts of maritime Southeast Asia were
integrated into a new political entity known as the Netherlands East Indies, its
Muslim population began developing a sense of self-awareness in line with this
imperialist construct and aided by new means of communication. This led to a
new self-identification as Muslims from the Indies and the formulation of dif-
ferent forms of solidarity shaped by exposure to Islamic reformism, notions of
modernity and nationalist ideologies. This bred a degree of assertiveness that
motivated Muslims to explore different avenues of emancipation and political
activism.
The subsequent decolonisation was a confusing experience for the Muslims
of what had now become the independent Republic of Indonesia. Aspirations
for an Islamic state competed and clashed with the formation of what was
initially conceived as a federal, but quickly evolved into a unitary, nation-
state, coextensive with the territory of the former colony. This led to ideo-
logical tensions, political power games, and even regional opposition against
the allegedly imperialist designs of what many in the outer islands regarded as
a Java-centric polity rather than an egalitarian multi-ethnic and multi-religious
state. Out of this political turmoil evolved a conceptualisation of an Indonesian
Islam which gradually took shape through a process informed by pragmatism
and compromise, but also circumscribed by political constraints. As the infant
republic moved from an aborted experiment with parliamentary democracy
to a presidential system of Guided Democracy, interrupted by a military coup
and followed by more than three decades of autocratic rule, it arrived at the
eve of the new millennium to face the challenge of another democratisation
process. During these seventy years as an independent country, the majority
of its citizens continue to explore, but also wrestle with, their identity as both
Indonesians and Muslims.
Notes
Chapter 1
1. Nusantara is mentioned in a fourteenth-century Javanese text (Vlekke 1943). The other des-
ignations became current with increased interaction with the Muslim world and during the
age of European exploration and expansion (see Laffan 2009; Clifford [1904] 1990; Reid
1988, 1993).
2. The term came into circulation after World War II, during which there had been a
‘Southeast Asian theatre’ of military operations that was put under the command of the
British naval officer Lord Mountbatten (Heryanto 2007: 76).
3. The evidence for this is not only linguistic, but also material and cultural in terms of ship-
building techniques, utensils, musical instruments, artistic patterns and practices such as
headhunting (Taylor 1976: 26).
4. It also has been referred to as ‘Hinduisation’ (Cœdès 1948). The editor and translator
of the English version of this seminal work have corrected this less accurate designation
(Cœdès 1968).
5. For the influence of the mandala model in Indonesia, see Lombard (1990: III).
6. As discussed in works like Lombard (1990) and Guillot et al. (1998).
7. The name seems to indicate an awareness of the styles used by the Mamluk rulers of Egypt
(Feener and Laffan 2005: 194 n. 34).
8. Pires ended his days in China, but there is no certainty as to the exact date of his death,
which has been given as either 1524 or 1540.
9. Pointing at a similar style used in Ayyubid Yemen (Laffan 2009: 38).
10. On Java itself, a comparable transliteration of Javanese into Arabic script became known
as pegon. Something similar also happened on Sulawesi (Celebes), where a Bugi-Arabic
script called serang was used (Ali 2016: 24).
11. See Levtzion (1979); Nock (1933).
12. A dated, but still insightful, study of these aspects of Southeast Asian Islam is found in
Skeat (1900).
13. From the Arabic hikāya meaning ‘story’.
14. The continuing relevance of geography is also illustrated in Hefner (1985, 1990).
15. These include the first vice-president of Indonesia, Mohammad Hatta; two early prime
ministers, Sutan Sjahrir and Mohammad Natsir; the leader of Masyumi, Indonesia’s main
postcolonial Islamic party – again Natsir; the linguist, philosopher and literary figure,
Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana; and Indonesia’s leading Muslim man of letters in the twentieth
century, Hamka – an acronym of Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah.
16. See Chapter 2. Cham–Javanese connections are also discussed in Kersten (2006).
17. For recent examinations of Tamil influences on Muslims in maritime Southeast Asia, see
Tschacher (2001).
18. The arrival of Europeans during the ‘Age of Discovery’ may not have been one of the
incentives for initial acceptance of Islam, but – as will be discussed in later chapters – it
Notes
173
did provide a politico-religious rallying point for Muslim solidarity in resisting the ensuing
incursions of European colonialism.
19. Van Bruinessen has recorded the names and deaths from Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani in 1166 to
ʿAbdullah al-Shattar in 1429 ce (Bruinessen 1994b: 2).
20. See Julian Baldick’s entry on the subject in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (Baldick 2016).
21. See Goitein’s seminal multivolume publication of the documents found in the Geniza
(1967–2000). Of particular relevance for the present account is his so-called India Book,
which was still unfinished at the time of his death (Goitein and Friedman 2007).
22. See Alatas (1997: 32–3).
23. Also spelled as Hamza al-Fansuri or even al-Pansuri.
24. He also used to make a case for Persian domination of the Muslim Indian Ocean and
China trade (Attas 1967: 51).
25. Only a limited number of texts were signed and the attribution of others is often contested.
Further complications are that none of these texts are in manuscripts that can be attrib-
uted to Fansuri personally; the addition of interpellations and other ‘updates’ when copy-
ing manuscripts was a common and widespread practice acknowledged by most scholars
(Guillot and Kalus 2000: 10–12).
26. A similar argument can be made in regards to Masʿud al-Jawi of Uwaja.
27. Vladimir Braginsky has written a riposte in which he makes some valid reservations
regarding the reliability of the epitaph text, but for the rest mainly rehashes the arguments
informed by his own philological focus (Braginsky 2001).
Chapter 2
1. More appropriately transcribed as ‘al-Mukammal’.
2. The characterisation ‘gunpowder empire’ for the realms of the Ottoman Turks, the Shiʿa
Safavid dynasty in Persia and the Moghuls of India, is taken from the final volume of
Marshall Hodgon’s Venture of Islam (Hodgson 1974).
3. For a detailed study of this episode from Ottoman history, see Casale (2010).
4. Important evidence of the latter is the century-long presence of a large gun known as lada
sa-ckupak, which was later taken by the Dutch and dispatched to the Netherlands (Reid
1969: 397).
5. For an additional perspective, featuring the involvement of Portuguese and Luso-Asian
traders with both Jewish and New Christian backgrounds, see Alves (2015).
6. Also known as Kyahi Gundil, Anta Kusuma has since become a pusaka or heirloom with
magical powers, under the name Kotang Antakusuma. It is said to have been made from
goatskin (see Moertono 2009: 75). It was passed on to Sunan Kalijaga’s heir Ngadi
Langu, who then bestowed it on Panembahan Senapati, the founding father of the House
of Mataram.
7. Jaʿfar al-Sadiq (d. 765) was the fifth and last imam to be recognised by all Shiʿa
Muslims before they split off into the Sevener (Ismaʿili) and Twelver (Imami) branches.
Retrospectively, he is also the founder of the Jaʿfari School of Law, and his scholarship in
both fiqh and hadith studies is even acknowledged by Sunni Muslims.
8. A corruption of the Arabic word shaykh.
9. All principalities and fiefdoms of the Pasisir had family ties to Demak through descent or
marriage.
10. Accounts of this eastward expansion of Islamic influences are found in Oud and Nieuw Oost-
Indiën, an encyclopaedic work written in the early eighteenth century by a VOC minister
(Valentijn 1724); see also Hägerdal (2001).
11. The shrine of Tembayat holds central stage in the Islamisation of Java’s interior and also
has a connection with Sunan Kalijaga (Rinkes 1996: 69–121).
12. There was another ‘international incident’ in 1688, when the VOC arrested, on suspicion
of inciting trouble, one Sharif Habib Allah, a wandering scholar from Surat in India, who
was en route to Palembang. This led to remonstrations by the Muslim governors of Surat,
who claimed this individual was under the protection of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb
(1658–1707). Wanting to avoid a diplomatic scandal, the VOC set the holy man free
(Ricklefs 2006: 75).
13. Al-Attas’s writings on shaʿir formed part of a polemics he had with Andries Teeuw,
Professor of Malay Literature at Leiden University, whose statement that ‘in Malay litera-
ture copyists were always potential rewriters’ sounded too negative to al-Attas – reading
connotations of fraud into it (Teeuw 1966: 440; Attas 1968: 8, 12–15).
14. See Ibn Rushd’s Definitive Statement (Colville 1999: 76–110).
15. The characterisation is from Anthony Reid (1969: 397).
16. A detailed study of al-Burhanpuri’s book, also in relation to its Southeast Asian context, is
found in Johns (1965).
17. Michael Feener, personal communication, 18 October 2006.
18. For detailed studies of Al-Raniri’s wujudiyya, see Attas (1966).
19. John Bousfeld has drawn parallels with ‘Monist’ philosophies, including later thinking such
as that of Spinoza (Bousfeld 1983: 104–8).
20. A notion that has been critically interrogated by O’Fahey and Radtke (1993).
21. For a detailed discussion of this episode, see Rinkes (1996: 15–46).
22. See also Michael Feener’s study of the influence of probably the most famous mystic in the
history of Sufism, al-Hallaj (Feener 1998).
23. According to some sources, he was actually related to Hamzah Fansuri in one way or
another (Azra 2004: 71).
24. For the significance of the Yemen connection, see also Feener and Laffan (2005).
25. This is based on a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that, after his death, every
century a scholar will rise up to reinvigorate the Islamic faith.
26. It has been suggested that this text, entitled Ithaf al-Dhaki, was written at the personal
request of al-Singkili (Azra 2004: 75; Riddell 2001: 127–8).
27. On ʿAbd al-Muhyi, see Rinkes (1996: 1–14). Both lineages featured prominently in the
politico-religious unrest and wars affecting Sumatra and Java in the first half of the nine-
teenth century.
28. On the influence of Sufi orders in Banten in the wake of al-Maqassari’s stay, see van
Bruinessen (1995: 180–3).
29. Al-Palimbani’s year of birth is given as 1704 by Azyumardi Azra (2004: 113) and as 1719
by Michael Laffan (2011: 29).
30. A Khalwatiyya-Sammaniyya branch also sprang up in South Sulawesi, where it functions
alongside and – to some extent – in rivalry with the Khalwatiyya-Yusuf order. However,
this branch is not traceable to Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani; instead, its introduction is
attributed to another Indonesian student of al-Samman, Yusuf of Bogor, who was a judge
at the court of the Bugi ruler of Bone (Bruinessen 1991: 259–60).
31. Azyumardi Azra’s claim that this was the first instance of a Southeast Asian scholar being
included in such sources (2004: 113) is now called into question by Feener and Laffan’s
article on Masʿud al-Jawi (2005).
32. As early as 1715, Ratu Pakubuwono had already commissioned the writing of the
Serat Menak, a lengthy collection of romantic tales featuring the Prophet Muhammad’s
Uncle Hamza, which are still popular among South and Southeast Asian Muslims. The
Notes
175
Serat Menak is a Javanese recast of the Malay rendition of these stories (Ricklefs 2006:
86).
33. Other Garebeg ceremonies were held on the occasion of the end of Ramadan (Eid al-Fitr)
and the final day of the pilgrimage to Mecca (Eid al-Adha); see Carey (2014: 16). An excel-
lent account of the survival of such practices until the present day is found in Woodward
(2011).
34. Hamengkubuwono I of Yogyakarta; Susuhunan of Surakarta Pakubuwono III (1749–88);
and Prince Mangkunegoro I of the other, competing, court in Surakarta.
35. The term santri received much wider circulation as a result of Clifford Geertz’s The Religion
of Java (1960) and Islam Observed (1968). It has become a referent for pious urban Muslims
as opposed to the nominally Muslim peasantry of Java, known as abangan.
36. Even today, leading scholars who have also made the pilgrimage are designated ‘K.H.’ –
Kyai Haji.
37. Technically, pondok refers to the accommodation part of what is in fact a pesantren ‘com-
plex’, providing the students with board and lodging.
Chapter 3
1. After much speculation, it is now assumed that the name ‘padri’ is a corruption of the term
‘padre’ – used in early eighteenth-century English records for rebellious religious figures in
the Bengkulu area (Kathirithamby-Wells 1986).
2. They never managed to attain the same level of supremacy on the Malacca Straits
(Dobbin 1983: 65).
3. First presented in a fragmented version as part of a Malay language textbook (Hollander
1857).
4. For a detailed study of the historical and historiographical significance of Imam Bondjol
for Minangkabau identity and Indonesia nationalism, see Hadler (2008).
5. The Dutch believed that Jalal al-Din was actually Tuanku Nan Tua’s son (Laffan 2011:
92).
6. See also the descriptions of an equivalent phenomenon and practice found among Sufis in
Banten, known as debus (Bruinessen 1995: 187–9).
7. I follow Hadler’s practice of using the spelling Bonjol for the village and Bondjol to refer to
the person of Peto Syarif (Hadler 2008: 972).
8. Since 2001, his face features on the 5,000 Rupiah banknote (Hadler 2008: 973, 2009: 18).
9. Fort van der Cappellen was named after Godert van der Cappellen (1778–1848), who
served as governor-general from 1815 until 1825, and Fort de Kock after Hendrik Merkus
de Kock (1779–1845), the lieutenant-governor-general (1825–30) commanding Dutch
forces during the Java War.
10. Indicative of the political destabilisation, Hamengkubuwono II held the office of Sultan
three times: 1792–1810, 1811–12 and 1826–8, not only twice trading places with his own
son (Hamengkubuwono III), but also with a great-grandson (Hamengkubuwono V).
11. Diponegoro was considered ineligible to the throne on account of being Raden Mas
Surojo’s son by an unofficial consort.
12. Only one prince can bear one particular titled name. His father considered his appoint-
ment as the third sultan an auspicious moment to bestow the long-vacant title on his oldest
son (Carey 2014: 148).
13. Such ‘lending’ of children is very common in Javanese society (Geertz 1960: 36–41).
Prominent contemporary examples include Presidents Suharto and B. J. Habibie.
14. For example, Louw and de Klerck (1893–1909); Nypels (1895).
15. Alternatively, they can also be translated as ‘new’ and ‘old faction’, respectively (Saleh
2001: 85).
16. To be distinguished from Ahmad Khatib al-Minankabawi (1860–1915/16), who will be
discussed in Chapter 4.
17. Sayyid Uthman ibn Abdullah ibn Aqil and Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje would hence-
forth stimulate and reinforce each other’s careers. For a detailed biography of Sayyid
Uthman, see Kaptein (2014).
18. For contemporary manifestations, see Daniels (2009) and Woodward (2011), as well as
the many publications on contemporary religion in Indonesia from the hand of Julia Day
Howell.
19. A student of Snouck Hurgronje, Gobée had served as consul in Jeddah (1917–21), before
becoming deputy adviser of native affairs (1922–4) and eventually again returning to
Batavia as adviser of native affairs (1926–37); see Hering [2002] (2013).
20. For a detailed study of this formative period, see Laffan (2011: 162–70).
21. For a critique of this representation, see Ismail Hakki Kadi’s examination of documents
and accounts of Southeast Asian Muslims from the pre-Hamidian period which challenge
this ‘Eurocentric/colonial perception’ (Kadi 2015: 150).
22. While there appears to be agreement as to the start date of the war – the invasion by a
Dutch expeditionary force in 1873 – in the absence of a peace agreement, the suggested
end dates range from 1904 to 1927.
23. Mansur Shah became de facto ruler of Aceh in 1838, but was only formally acknowledged
as sultan in 1857.
24. For a detailed discussion of the Acehnese embassy to Istanbul of 1849–52, see Kadi et al.
(2011).
25. Teuku Umar, also known as Johan Pahlawan, was a dubious character; repeatedly chang-
ing sides in the course of the war, he collaborated with the Dutch in 1894 and 1866
(Göksoy 2015: 194).
Chapter 4
1. For a detailed discussion, see Latif (2008: 57–66).
2. His name is also spelled ‘Achmad Chatib’.
3. For more details on Snouck Hurgronje’s key informant in the Hijaz, see Laffan (1999).
4. Both Laffan and Latif record very similar ‘roll calls’ of leading Muslim intellectuals and
activists of the first half of the twentieth century, including the Minangkabau reformists
Muhammad Tahir Jalal al-Din, M. Djamil Djambek, Abdullah Ahmad, Abdul Karim
Amrullah, M. Thaib Umar and Haji Agus Salim; the Javanese founder of the modernist
Islamic mass organisation Muhammadiyah, K.H. Ahmad Dahlan, and his successor K.H.
Ibrahim; and the traditionalists K.H. Hasyim Asyʿari (founder of the Nahdlatul Ulama),
Shaykh Sulaiman al-Rasuli, Khatib Ali and Djamil Djaho.
5. For more on these individuals consult: Keddie (1972, 1983); Kedouri (1997); Kerr (1966).
6. For a more detailed discussion of these early modernisations in Egypt, see Hourani (1983:
67–102).
7. Claims that Abdullah Ahmad was even appointed as an adviser to the Office of Native
Affairs in 1924 have so far remained unsubstantiated (Laffan 2003: 174).
8. Haji Rasul expanded his activities to daʿwa campaigns in British Malaya and Java.
He established relations with Islamic organisations such as the Sarekat Islam and
Muhammadiyah, becoming the latter’s chief propagandist in west Sumatra (Latif 2008: 81).
9. On the continuity-change dynamics in the modern Muslim world, see Voll (1994).
Notes
177
10. The earliest identifiable newspapers ever printed in Southeast Asia using jawi script were
Jawi Peranakan (Straits Settlements, 1876) and Wazir Indië (Batavia, 1878); see Laffan (2003:
145).
11. See also Othman and Haris (2015).
12. He was the model for the character of ‘Minke’, the protagonist in Pramoedya Ananta
Toer’s (1925–2006) magisterial Buru tetralogy (Latif 2008: 97–8).
13. On the growing importance of Surbaya in the Netherlands East Indies, including its role as
a centre of Muslim activism, see Formichi (2012: 19–25).
14. Also Masyhudulhak – from the Arabic Mashhud al-Haqq.
15. Yudi Latif has recorded the anecdote that detractors of the Ethici around Governor-
General Alexander Idenburg (1861–1935, in office 1909–16) referred to the SI as Salah
Idenburg – ‘Idenburg’s error’ (Latif 2008: 427).
16. A spin-off from Jong Java, the JIB may not be a mass organisation in its own right, but
was nevertheless very important for the intellectual formation of future Muslim leaders,
including Mohammad Natsir, Mohammad Roem and Kartosuwirjo (Latif 2008: 203–11;
Formichi 2012: 28).
17. For a detailed discussion of Budi Utomo (Boedi Oetomo in the old spelling), see Ricklefs
(2006: 175–213).
18. In the run-up to the Muhammadiyah’s centenary in 2012, there was a flurry of new
publications about the organisation and its founder. Among them is a recent biography
of Ahmad Dahlan by one of the Muhammadiyah’s foremost intellectuals and a former
member of its Central Board (2005–10); see Mulkhan (2010).
19. Fauzan Saleh makes a similar point (Saleh 2001: 155–6).
20. Originally it was called Perkumpulan Musyawaratul Ulama or ‘Association of the Deliberation
of the Ulama’ (Saleh 2001: 108).
21. The Ahmadiyyah was introduced by Indonesian students returning from Panjab, who
were accompanied by a representative from India, Rahmat Ali. Initially, the organisa-
tion’s activities were restricted to Sumatra, in particular the Minangkabau region, but they
soon spread also to Java (Federspiel 2001: 61–2). The most detailed study in English of the
Ahmadiyyah in Indonesia is Burhani (2013).
22. For its continuing relevance, see Zuly Qodir, quoted in Kersten (2015: 58).
23. Based on an interview with Abdul Munir Mulkhan, Kota Gede (Indonesia), 23 October
2012.
24. Surkati’s background is discussed in Abu Shouk (2002).
25. For a discussion of this conflict, see Mobini-Kesheh (1999: 91–107).
26. For details on the history of this schooling system and its curriculum, see Mobini-Kesheh
(1999: 71–90).
27. Among the graduates of its education system was Muhammad Rasjidi (1915–2001), a
Javanese abangan-turned-santri, who later became state minister for religious affairs, a diplo-
mat and leading academic figure (Azra 1994: 89; Mobini-Kesheh 1999: 77).
28. The name is still used for a journal published by an NU-affiliated NGO (Kersten 2015: 47,
65–6).
29. Although one of the leaders of its youth wing, Ansor, was an Acehnese nobleman, Zainul
Arifin (1909–63).
30. See Sura 3: 103.
31. Citing Clifford Geertz, Fauzan Saleh notes that a particular form of self-defensive martial
arts known as pencak silat forms part of the pesantren curriculum (Saleh 2001: 88).
32. I have retained the original spelling, to distinguish Dr Soetomo from another independ-
ence fighter, Sutomo or Bung Tomo (1920–81).
33. According to Boland, Kartosuwiryo only became General Secretary in 1931 (Boland 1971:
56).
34. This would change in Mohammad Natsir’s post-war political career.
35. For a detailed study of Sukarno’s views on Mustafa Kemal and Turkey, see Formichi
(2013).
36. Boland has a different opinion, claiming that neither the NU nor Muhammadiyah joined
the MIAI (1971: 11).
Chapter 5
1. Quite exceptional for an NU leader, who tend to come from Java and Madura, Zainul
Arifin was Acehnese and a descendant of the sultans of Barus.
2. He had replaced Mas Mansur in 1944. After the Japanese surrender, Mas Mansur was
arrested on collaboration charges. Briefly imprisoned, his health suffered and he died in
1946 (Madinier 2015: 57).
3. For a detailed discussion of these proceedings, see Boland (1971: 24–34).
4. Based in Minangkabau, Perti’s support base also extended to Kalimantan and Sulawesi.
5. For a more detailed discussion of the 1955 elections, see Madinier (2015: 202–18). The
most extensive and authoritative study of this crucial episode in Indonesian political history
is still Feith (1957).
6. Quoting an article written by Natsir in 1958.
7. For a detailed discussion, see Kahin (2012: 114–38).
8. For a discussion of the Masyumi prison years, see Kahin (2012: 139–53).
9. The name is taken from the Arabic term suffa, which refers to a part of the Prophet’s
mosque in Medina which functioned as makeshift accommodation for travelling converts.
Ahl al-Suffa or ‘People of the Bench’ has also been offered as an explanation for the origins
of the word Sufi, although this is contentious.
10. Not to be confused with the Muhammadiyah intellectual Abdul Kahir Muzakir.
11. For detailed discussions, see Boland (1971); Jabali and Jamhari (2002); Saeed (1999).
12. This section draws on the discussions on Islamic law found in my previous book on Islam
in Indonesia (Kersten 2015: 182–8) and is informed by the seminal work conducted by
Michael Feener (2002, 2007) and Yudian Wahyudi (2006, 2007).
13. Hazairin was the first and only Indonesian legal scholar during the colonial period to
receive a local doctorate in law with a thesis on the legal system of the Rejang people of his
native Bengkulu in Sumatra; see Hazairin (1936).
14. For a detailed discussion of ahl al-hall wa’l-‘aqd, see Zaman (2016).
15. Also known as Banser – an abbreviation of Barisan Ansor Serba Guna or ‘Ansor All-
Purpose Forces’ (Ricklefs 2012: 68).
16. One of the earliest and most thorough attempts is the so-called ‘Cornell Paper’, named
after the American university where the academics who have conducted the underlying
research are based. Their report created much furore and its findings were contested by
the new Indonesian regime, with one of the main contributors, the late Ben Anderson,
being declared persona non grata in Indonesia until the end of the New Order Regime in
1998; see Anderson and McVey (1971). A more recent study is Kammen and McGregor
(2012).
17. For more detailed discussions, see Boland (1971: 149–56); Kahin (2012: 154–62); Madinier
(2015: 426–33).
18. The most detailed study of the relation between NU and the military is Feillard (1995).
19. See Kersten (2017).
Notes
179
20. For detailed discussions, see Kahin (2012: 196–203); Ricklefs (2012: 180–5). The most
elaborate study of JI is Barton (2004).
21. For a detailed discussion of the early life and career of Nurcholish Madjid, see Kersten
(2011: 45–68).
22. After cutting short his diplomatic career, Mohammed Rasjidi went to study at the
Sorbonne under the supervision of the famous French Orientalist and Sufi expert, Louis
Massignon, obtaining a doctorate with a study of Javanese religion, which was only
published in 1977 as Documents pour server à l’histoire de l’Islam à Java. Both Ricklefs and
Steenbrink have criticised Rasjidi’s thesis for ridiculing NU ulama and its lack of academic
rigour, respectively (Ricklefs 2012: 45; personal communication from Karel Steenbrink, 14
March 2007).
23. For biographical sketches, see Muzani (1994); Munhanif (1996).
24. This pesantren was modelled after the Western schooling system and – together with
Hasyim Asy‘ari’s Pesantren Tebuireng – it is regarded as being at the top of Indonesia’s pesant-
ren hierarchy (Steenbrink 1996: 156).
25. Between 1953 and 1964, the number of Catholics on Java almost doubled, while
Protestantism grew by about 20 per cent annually (Hefner 2000: 107).
26. Serving from 1971–8, Mukti Ali was the first minister of religion not to represent either
Masyumi or the NU.
27. In 1987, published in Indonesian with the provocative title Muhammad Abduh dan Teologi
Rasional Muʿtazila.
28. For a detailed study of the NU during the 1980s and 1990s, see Barton and Fealy (1996).
29. The literature on the life and personality of Abdurrahman Wahid in Indonesian is vast; the
most detailed biography in English has been written by Greg Barton (2002).
30. This phenomenon is discussed in various contributions to Fealy and White (2008).
31. Detailed discussions are provided in Hilmy (2010) and Platzdasch (2009).
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Index
abangan, 86–7, 156 Anom of Kudus, Ketib, 47

Abbasid Caliphate, 17, 26 al-Ansari, Shaykh Abdullah, 71
Abd al-Hamid II, Sultan, 88, 90, 103 Anshari, Endang Saefudin, 157, 159
Abd al-Mutallib, Isma’il, 83, 99 Anshary, Isa, 140, 147
Abduh, Muhammad, 96, 98, 99, Ansor, 154, 155
113 Arab Association for Reform and Guidance,
Abdul Kadir, Sultan, 27, 34 115
Abdulrahim, Imaduddin, 157, 158, 163 Arabia, 3, 15
Abshar-Abdalla, Ulil, 168 Arabic language, 39, 40
accommodationism, 156 Arabs, 11, 115
Aceh, 2, 11, 14, 26, 27 architecture, 32
and insurgence, 147, 148 al-Arifin, Ahmad Abd, 13, 30, 31
and learning, 41–3 Arifin, Zainul, 133
and Ottoman Empire, 27–8 Arnold, T. W., 15
and PUSA, 122–3 Ash Shiddieqy, Muhammad Hasbi, 105,
Aceh War, 88–90 151–2, 153
Adat, Raja, 14, 62 ashrams, 52–3
Adipati Natakusuma, Raden, 49–50 Asyʿari, Kyai Hasyim, 119, 120, 133, 136,
al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 88, 97, 98 137
Ageng, Sultan (Tirtayasa), 37, 46 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 119, 125, 130
agriculture, 13, 80–1, 85 Austronesians, 8
Agung of Mataram, Sultan, 27, 36–7, 48–9, al-Azhar University, 42, 53, 94, 98–9, 150,
50, 69–70, 74 160
Agus Salim, Haji, 107–8, 109, 120, 126, 127,
128 Baʿasyir, Abu Bakar, 158
and independence, 136 Babad Diponegoro, 69
Ahmad, Abdullah, 99, 100, 101, 104 Babad Tanah Jawi, 18
Ahmad Khatib, 95–7, 99, 100, 102–3, 108, Badr al-Din, Sultan Mahmud, 47
110, 113, 120 banditry, 60
Ahmadiyyah Movement, 114, 117, 167 Bandung, 116–18, 126, 127, 141, 146
Akbar, Emperor, 27 al-Banjari, Muhammad Arshad, 46, 47, 51,
Alam, Raja, 14, 62, 64 52, 53, 81, 101
Alam Bagagar Syah, Sultan, 64, 79 al-Banna, Hasan, 118
Alauddin Ri’ayat Shah, 21, 27 Banten, 31, 25, 26, 32–4, 45–6, 53, 83, 95–6
alcohol, 49, 60 Barisan Sabilillah, 136
Alexander the Great, 18, 47 Barus, 21, 22–3, 44, 79, 89
Ali Mubarak Pasha, 97–8 Batavia see Jakarta
Ali Ri’ayat III, 21 al-Batini, Nawawi, 95, 96, 97
Alwi, Sayyid, 50 bendaharas (dignitaries), 14
Amangkurat I, 37 Bengal, 15, 18, 58
Amangkurat II, 37 benzoin, 13, 14
Amin, Maarif, 168 Beureu’eh, Teungku Daud, 147, 148
Ampel, Sunan, 30, 34, 35, 36, 37, 69, 122 Bin Aqil bin Yahya, Sayyid Muhammad, 102
Annales School, 7, 8, 10 Bodi Caniago, 57, 62
Index
193
Bonang, Sunan, 30, 34, 35, 68 Dan Fodio, Usman, 45

Borneo, 25, 31, 35, 45–7, 82, 88, 146–7 Dar al-Islam, 1, 9, 23, 46
Britain see Great Britain Darsono, Raden, 107
Brunei, 1 DDII (Indonesian Islamic Propagation
Buchari, Achmad, 147–8 Council), 157, 158, 162, 163, 164,
Buddhism, 8–9, 12 165
al-Bugisi, Abd al-Wahhab, 52 De Kock, Gen. Hendrik, 76
al-Bunduqari, Baybars, 19 Dekker, Eduard Douwes, 93
al-Burhanpuri, Muhammad Fadl Allah, 41, Demak, 13, 30–3, 34, 35, 36, 129
44, 47, 50, 53, 59, 72 Desawarnana (Nagarakrtagama) (poem), 12
Burhanuddin, 45, 59 DI (Darul Islam), 126, 137, 143–8
Burma, 7, 8 Diponegoro, Prince, 63, 64, 65–6, 67–72,
73–6
Cairo, 94–5, 97–9, 104, 150 Djajadiningrat, Aboe Bakar, 96, 133
Caliphate Question, 119–20, 125 Djajadiningrat, Hoesein, 133
Cambodia, 7, 8, 15 Djambek, Djamil, 136
camphor, 13, 14, 21 dress codes, 61, 76
Capita Selecta (Natsir), 105 Dutch East India Company, 28, 34, 37, 46,
Carita Sultan Iskandar, 47, 51 50, 57–8
Carita Yusuf, 47, 51
cassia, 58, 60 East India Company see Dutch East India
Celebes see Sulawesi Company; English East India Company
Chalil, Munawar, 113 Egypt, 15, 42, 43, 55, 125; see also Cairo
Champa, 15, 29 ‘Eight Tigers’, 61–2
Chasbullah, Wahab, 120–1, 130, 139, 142, English East India Company, 58
148, 155 Ethical Policy, 93, 105
China, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 27
Christianity, 3, 87, 110–11, 156, 160 Fadjar Asia (newspaper), 126, 127
Cik di Tiro, Teungku, 90 Fansuri, Hamzah, 20–3, 37–8, 39–40, 41–2,
Cilegon massacre, 83 44
Cirebon, 31, 32–3, 34, 35, 36 Al-Fatwa (newspaper), 118
cock fighting, 49, 60 fatwas, 112, 136–7, 139, 167–8
coffee, 58, 60, 62, 73, 76 Faysal of Saudi Arabia, King, 157
Cokroaminoto, H. O. S., 104, 107, 109, 115, financial crisis, 164
126, 127–8 FPI (Islamic Defenders Front), 167
colonialism, 1, 2, 3, 47–8, 93 France, 55
and Java, 64, 66–8 Fu’ad of Egypt, King, 125
and Minangkabau, 13, 76
see also imperialism gambir, 13, 14, 58
Committee of 62, 133 gambling, 49, 60
communications, 92 al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid, 26, 40, 46, 53, 105,
communism, 1, 107, 137, 142, 154 122, 128
Concert of Europe, 65 Giri, Sunan, 35, 36, 74, 122
Crawfurd, John, 66, 67 gold, 14, 57, 58
criminal code, 145–6 Golkar, 154, 155, 163, 164, 165, 167
Crusades, the, 19 GPII (Movement of Young Indonesian
Cucuf, 35 Muslims), 136, 147–8
Cultivation System, 79–80, 85, 93 Great Britain, 55, 58, 66, 67
Gresik, 12, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34–7, 69
Daendels, Herman, 55, 65, 66, 67 guerrilla forces, 146
Dahlan, Ahmad bin Zaini, 81, 95, 96 Guided Democracy, 131, 132, 140–1, 142,
Dahlan, K. H. Ahmad, 109–10, 111, 112, 148
121, 124 Gujurat, 12, 15, 28, 42, 45
Dalem, Sunan, 35 Gunung Jati, Sunan, 30, 32–3, 34
guru ordinance, 83 Imam Bondjol see Syarif, Peto

Gymnastiar, Abdullah, 162 imperialism, 56, 65, 79–80
India, 8, 9, 15
Habibie, B. J., 163, 165 Indian Ocean, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 29
Hadhramaut, 3, 20, 42, 50, 90 indigenous people, 2, 12, 14–15, 26, 57, 93
Hadhrami, 3, 20, 37, 42, 84, 87, 90, 94, 96, Indonesia, 1–2, 7–8, 170–1
102, 106, 115, 149 and ‘greening’, 162–3
al-Hadhrami, Ismaʿil, 19 and independence, 94, 133–8
al-Hadi, Ahmad, 102 and Reformation, 165–7
Hadikusomo, Jarnawi, 113, 154 see also Aceh; Java; Sumatra
Hadikusomo, Ki Bagus, 134, 136 Indonesian army (TNI), 133, 145, 148,
Hadiths, 113, 152 153–4
hajj pilgrimage, 27, 44, 84–5 Ingalaga, Senapati, 36
Hajji Mataram, Kyai, 50 insan kamil (‘perfect man’), 26–7, 41
Hamengkubuwono I, Sultan, 50, 75 Internet, 164
Hamengkubuwono II, Sultan, 66, 67 Irama, Rhoma, 162
Hamengkubuwono III, Sultan, 69, 70 iron, 14
Hamengkubuwono IV, Sultan, 67, 72 Al-Irshad, 115
Hamka, 105, 111, 114, 124, 139, 143, 158 Iskandar II, 28
Harahap, Burhanuddin, 141, 143 Iskandar Muda, 21, 27, 28, 41–2, 123
Hasanuddin, 33 Islam, 2, 3, 18, 170–1
Hasjmy, Dr Ali, 148 and Aceh, 89
Hassan, Ahmad, 116, 117, 118–19, 127, 129, and Arabia, 15–16
130, 146 and Diponegoro, 69–72, 73–5
Hasyim, Wahid, 133, 134, 136, 139, 150, 162 and education, 52–4, 80–1, 99–100
Hatta, Mohammad, 124, 125, 127, 129, 135, and ‘greening’, 162–3
138, 154 and independence, 133–4
and Masyumi, 141, 142, 143 and Java, 29–31, 85–7
and Natsir, 146, 150 and Kartosuwiryo, 144–5
Haz, Hamzah, 165, 168 and law, 25–6, 27, 45, 151–3
Hazairin, 151, 152–3 and literature, 37–40
Hijaz Committee, 120 and mass organisations, 94, 105–23
Hikayat Jalal al-Din, 58 and Mataram, 36–7
Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai, 12, 18 and Minangkabau, 14, 59, 60–2, 76–7, 78
Himpunan Putusan Tarjih, 114 and modernism, 97–8, 159–61
Hinduism, 9, 12, 83 and Natsir, 156–7
Hizbullah, 133, 136 and networking, 43–4
HMI (Association of Muslim Students), 159, and politics, 88, 124–30, 167
165 and Southeast Asia, 9–13
Husayn of Mecca, Sharif, 119–20, 125 and worship, 123–4
see also Ministry of Religion; Pan-Islamism;
IAIN (State Institutes for Islamic Studies), Sufism; Wahhabism
150–1, 153, 160 Al-Islam (newspaper), 104
Ibadat, Raja, 14, 62 Al-Islam Conferences, 125, 128
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, Muhammad, 51, 55, 61 Islamic Defence Committees, 117
Ibn al-ʿArabi, Muhyi al-Din 19, 20, 27, 40, Islamic Education Association, 117
41, 42–3, 46–7 Al-Ittihad (newspaper), 104
Ibn Battuta, 11, 12, 15
Ibn Rushd, 40 Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, 30, 31–2
Ibn Saud, Abd al-Aziz, 120, 125 Jahangir, Emperor, 27
Ibnu Hadjar, Kyai, 147 Jakarta, 33, 34, 135, 142–3, 150–1, 160, 162,
ICMI (All-Indonesian Association of Muslim 166
Intellectuals), 163, 164 Jakarta Charter, 134–5, 142, 149, 150, 151,
Al-Imam (newspaper), 102–3, 113 167
Index
195
Jalal al-Din Ahmad, 58, 60, 61, 82 Kudus, Sunan, 30, 31–2
Jamaat-e-Islami, 118 al-Kurani, Ibrahim, 44, 45, 47
Jambi/Melayu, 10
Jamʿiyat al-Khayr, 115, 116 Lampung, 33
Jangkung, Seh, 31 language, 2, 10, 39
Japan, 27, 130, 131, 132–3 League of Indonesian Muslims, 139
Japara, 32, 36 Lemah Abang, Seh, 31
Java, 9, 10, 81 Al-Lisan (newspaper), 118
and Diponegoro, 69–71 literature, 37–40, 47–8, 104–5
and Islam, 11–12, 85–7 Logan, James, 1
and literature, 38–9, 40, 48–9 Lombok, 83
and religious practice, 49–51 Lubis, Col Zulkifli, 142
and state-building, 28–30
and Sufism, 82–3 Maarif, Ahmad Syafii, 168
see also Banten McGill University, 159–60, 161
Java War, 64–7, 68, 75–6 Madina Charter, 167
al-Jawi, Masʿud, 19, 20, 22, 37 Madiun Affair, 137, 139
Jeddah, 84 Madjid, Nurcholish, 159, 162
Jerusalem, 32 madrasas (schools), 99–100
JI (Jemaah Islamiyah), 158, 166 al-Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, 45
jihad, 47, 144, 145 Mahdi Uprising, 83
JIL (Liberal Islam Network), 168 Majapahit dynasty, 10, 13, 28, 30–1
al-Jilani, Abd al-Qadir, 19 Majlis Tarjih, 112, 113, 114
al-Jili, Abd al-Karim ibn Ibrahim, 27, 40, Malabar Coast, 15
41 Malacca, 10, 11, 13, 14
JIMM (Network of Young Muhammadiyah Malay states, 1, 7, 12, 25, 26–8
Intellectuals), 168 and Islam, 16, 18
Joedah, Molana, 33–4 and law, 26
Joseph, 47 and literature, 39–40
jungle produce, 13, 14 Al-Manar (newspaper), 102, 104
al-Junusi, Zainuddin Labai, 100, 101 ‘mandalas’, 8, 9
Mangkubumi, Prince, 50, 60, 69
Kajoran, Raden, 37 Mangkunegoro I, Prince, 50, 69, 75, 78
Kali Nyamat, Ratu, 32 Mangkunegoro IV, Prince, 85–6
Kali Raja, 79 Mangkusasmito, Prawoto, 141, 142, 143
Kalijaga, Sunan, 30, 31, 33, 36, 43, 69, 70, Manipol, 142
122 Mansur, Mas, 105, 121, 126–7, 133
Kamil, Mustafa, 115 Mansur Shah, Sultan, 89
KAMMI (United Front of Indonesian Muslim Mantri Muhamad Ngarip, Raden, 71
University Students), 165 al-Manufi, Muhammad, 43
Kartawidjaja, 82–3, 87 Maolana, Seh, 31
Kartosuwiryo, Sekarmaji Marjan, 126, 127, al-Maqassari, Yusuf, 45–6
128, 143–6, 147–8 Maret, Sebelas, 158
KGCC (Union of South Sulawesi Guerrillas), Mas Rahmat, 82
146 Mas Surojo, Raden, 66, 67
kingship, 26–7 Mas Suryadi, Raden, 50
KISDI (Indonesian Committee for Solidarity Masyumi (Consultative Council of Indonesian
with the Muslim World), 164–5 Muslims), 131, 133, 134, 135–40, 141–3,
kitab kuning, 104, 155 165
Kitab Usulbiyah, 47 and DI, 147–8
KNIP (Central Indonesian National and New Order Regime, 154
Committee), 135, 144 Mataram dynasty, 32, 34, 35–7
Komando Jihad, 158 matrilineal kinship, 13–14
Kota Piliang, 57, 62 Maududi, Syed Abul A’la, 118, 158
Max Havelaar (Dekker), 93 and politics, 126, 127, 129–30

Mecca, 18, 27, 44, 81 and Sukarno, 141, 143
and hajj, 84–5 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 141
and occupation, 55, 56 Neo-Sufism, 42, 44–5
and Reformism, 94–5 Netherlands Indies Civil Administration
and Saudi Arabia, 119–20 (NICA), 135
Medina, 44, 55, 56 Netherlands, the, 1, 3, 55–6, 63–4, 93
Megawati Sukarnoputri, 164, 165, 166 and Aceh, 88–90
MIAI (Supreme Council of Indonesian and Java, 64, 65, 66, 67–8
Muslims), 128, 130, 133 and the law, 112
Minangkabau, 13–14, 56–64, 76–9, 81–2 and Minangkabau, 76–9
al-Minankabawi, Isma’il, 99 and segregation, 87–8
Ministry of Religion, 149–51 and Sufism, 83
Mintaredja, Muhammad Syafa’at, 154 see also Dutch East India Company
‘mirrors of princes’ genre, 26, 43 New Order Regime (Orde Baru), 132, 153–5,
Miskin, Haji, 61, 63, 64 156, 160
missionaries, 3, 18 newspapers, 102–4
Moestapa, Hasan, 94 NII (Islamic State of Indonesia), 137, 145
Mojo, Kyai, 71–2, 74–5 NU (Nahdlatul Ulama), 119–22, 123–4,
monarchy, 26–7 138–40, 155, 161–2
Mongols, 17, 19 Nusantara, 1, 7, 168
mosques, 30, 31, 32
Mughals, 27 opium, 49, 60, 87
Muhammad Iskandar Shah, 12 Ormas (mass organisations), 105–23
Muhammadiyah, 109–15, 123–4 Ottoman Empire, 44, 55, 88, 89–90
muhaqqiqun, 43, 45, 47
al-Muhyi, Shaykh Abd, 45 Padri Wars, 56, 58, 61–3, 64, 77–9
MUI (Indonesian Ulama Council), 167–8 Pajajaran, 33–4
Mukti Ali, Abdul, 159–60, 161 PAKAM (Observation of People’s Belief
al-Mulk, Nizam, 26 Streams), 156
Al-Munir (newspaper), 103–4, 113 Pakualam I, 67, 75
Murmo Wijoyo, Kyai, 68 Pakubuwono II, 49–50
Muslim Brotherhood, 118, 150 Pakubuwono IV, 51
Muslim World League (MWL), 157 Pakubuwono, Ratu, 47, 49, 50, 51
Muslims see Islam Palembang, 8, 9, 10, 46, 47
Mutamkin, Kyai Haji Ahmad, 47 al-Palimbani, Abd al-Samad, 46–8, 51, 52, 53,
Muzakir, Abdul Kahar, 133, 150 81, 101, 116
Muzakkar, Kahar, 146, 148 Pamuncak, 79
mystic synthesis, 48, 64, 69, 76, 85, 86, 170 PAN (National Mandate Party), 165
mysticism, 82–3, 85–6 Pan-Islamism, 88, 94, 103, 109, 127
Pancasila Doctrine, 134–5, 161, 168
Napoleon Bonaparte, 55 Pangaran Tranggana, 13
Naqshbandiyya, 41, 46, 59–60, 62, 81–2, 83, Pangeran Ratu, 33
88, 96, 99–101 Parameswara, 12
Naro, Djaelani (John), 154 Pasisir, 11, 13, 18, 29, 31, 36, 65–6, 86
NASAKOM, 142 Patah, Raden, 30
Naskah Tuanku Imam Bondjol, 58, 77 pawang (spirit doctor), 12, 57
Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 141, 143 PBB (Crescent Star Party), 165, 167
Nasution, Harun, 159, 160–1 PDI (Indonesian Democratic Party), 164
nationalism, 78, 92, 129–30, 133–4 PDRI (Emergency Government of Indonesia),
Natsir, Mohammad, 105, 115–16, 117, 150 138
and DI, 146, 147 Pembela Islam (newspaper), 117–18
and independence, 136, 138 Penang, 58
and Islam, 156–7, 158, 159 pengajian (schools), 53–4
Index
197
pepper, 14, 28, 57 al-Raniri, Nur al-Din, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 101,
Persia, 9, 11, 26, 39 123
Persis, 115–19, 129 Rasjidi, Mohammad, 149–50, 159, 161
pesantren (schools), 52–3, 72, 80, 160 Rasul, Haji, 99–100, 101, 124
Philippines, the, 1, 7 religion, 2, 12, 156, 166, 167, 168; see also
PII (Islamic Party of Indonesia), 128 Buddhism; Christianity; Hinduism; Islam
Pijnappel, 15 rice, 7–8, 13, 18, 28
Pires, Tomé, 11, 15, 35 Rida, Rashid, 97, 99, 102, 104
PKB (National Awakening Party), 165 Ridhwan, Afandi, 147–8
PKI (Indonesian Communist Party), 106, 107, Roem, Mohammad, 133, 138, 143
137 Ronggo Prawirodirjo III, Raden, 65–6
PKS (Justice and Prosperity Party), 165, royalty, 12, 14
167 rural life, 52, 59
PMI (Parmusi), 154
PNI (Indonesian National Party), 126, 127, Sahid, Raden see Kalijaga, Sunan
128, 138, 139–40 Sailendra dynasty, 9
Polo, Marco, 11, 15 Salafism, 56, 98
pondok (school), 53, 53, 59, 80, 81 al-Salih, Sultan al-Malik, 12, 19
Portugal, 13, 16, 28 Samanhudi, Haji, 106, 107
PPP (United Development Party), 154, 155, al-Samman, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim,
165 46
PPPKI (Agreement of the Indonesia’s People’s Sammaniyya, 46, 53, 61
Political Associations), 126–7, 128 santri, 51, 71–2, 75, 86, 92
Prapañca, 12 al-Sanusi, Muhammad ibn Yusuf, 43, 53
Prapen, Sunan, 35 Sarekat Dagang Islamiah (SDI), 106–7
Prawata, Susuhunan, 31 Al Saud dynasty, 120
Prawiranegara, Sjafruddin, 136, 138, 141, Saudi Arabia, 76–7, 101, 157
143 Sayf al-Rijal, 42
print media, 101–5, 117–18 seafaring, 7, 8
prostitution, 60 Sejarah Banten, 18, 33, 34
PRRI (Revolutionary Government of the Sejarah Melayu, 12, 18
Republic of Indonesia), 141, 142, 143 Semaun, 107
PSI (Partai Sarekat Islam), 125–6 Sentot, 78–9
PSII (Partai Sarekat Islam Indonesia), 126–7, Serat Cabolek, 47
128–9, 144 Serat Centhini, 85
PUSA, 122–3 Shah Jahan, 27
putihan, 86–7, 92 Shaltut, Shaykh Mahmud, 151–2, 153
Shamil, Imam, 45
Qadiriyya, 20, 44, 46, 59, 83, 96 Shams al-Din al-Sumatrani (Shamsuddin), 22,
Al-Qaeda, 166 41–2, 44, 47
al-Qarani, Uways, 19 al-Shaʿrani, 47
Qur’an, the, 53, 112, 113, 152 al-Sharji, Shihab al-Din Ahmad, 19
al-Qushashi, Ahmad, 44, 45 Shattariyya, 44–5, 48, 51, 53, 59, 60, 61–2,
Qutb, Sayyid, 150, 158 82
Shiʿa community, 167
Raffles, Thomas Stamford, 66, 67 SI (Sarekat Islam), 104, 106–8, 109, 125,
Rahardjo, Dawam, 163 165
Rahmanudin, Kyai, 74 Siddiq, Achmad, 162
Rahmat, Raden, 29–30 Singapore, 64, 82, 90, 99, 102, 116, 129
Rahmatullah, 30 Singasari dynasty, 10
Rais, Amien, 164, 165 al-Singkili, Abd al-Raʿuf, 43, 44, 45, 53, 59
Raja di Buo, 79 Siraj, Said Aqil, 168
Raja Pandita, 29 Sjadzali, Munawir, 161
rajas (rulers), 12, 18, 26 Sjahrir, Sutan, 124, 127, 129, 149
Snouck Hurgronje, Christiaan, 3, 4, 15, 47, Surkati, Ahmad Muhammad, 115, 121,
93–4 149
and Aceh, 88, 90 al-Suyuti, 47
and Agus Salim, 108 Syarif, Peto, 58, 63, 64, 77–8
and Mecca, 85
socialism, 107 Tahir Jalaluddin, 96, 99, 102
Soetomo, Dr, 124, 127, 129 al-Tahtawi, Rifa’a Badawi Raf’i, 97
South Africa, 46 Taj al-Din, Sultan Ahmad, 47
South China Sea, 10, 11, 29 Tanaka, Kakuei, 158
Southeast Asia 24 Tanjung, Akbar, 165
and geography, 7, 9 Taptojani, Kyai, 71
and immigration, 87–8 Al-Taqwa (newspaper), 118
and intellectual tradition, 37–8 Tarjuman al-mustafid (al-Singkili), 45, 53
and Islam, 9–13, 15–18, 23, 170–1 Tasauf Moderen (Hamka), 105
Spice Islands, 25 Tax Revolt (1908), 78, 81
Srivijaya, 8–10 taxation, 67, 68, 76
state-building, 25–6 technology, 84, 92
STI (Higher Islam School), 150 Tegalrejo, 70–1
student riots, 165 Tembayat, 36
Subianto, Lt Gen. Prabowo, 165, 166 terrorism, 166
Suez Canal, 84, 87, 92 Teuku Umar, 63
Sufism, 16–19, 20–1, 22–3, 44, 81–3 Thailand, 1, 7, 8, 12–13
and Java, 51 al-Thani, Iskandar, 27
and Minangkabau, 59 TII (Indonesian Islamic Army), 144, 145
and Sammaniyya, 46 Tirto adhi Suryo, Raden Mas, 106–7
and ‘Unity of Being’, 41, 42–3 TNI see Indonesian Army
see also Neo-Sufism tobacco, 60, 76
Suharto, Gen., 132, 153, 154, 156, 164 tombstones, 11, 12, 15, 35
and Islam, 162–3 trade, 7–8, 9, 16, 20
and resignation, 165 and Minangkabau, 57, 60
Sukarno, 117, 121, 124, 125, 126, see also Dutch East India Company
127–8 Trunajaya, 37
and Aceh, 147 Tuanku Lintau, 62, 64, 77
and coup, 132, 154 Tuanku Mensiangan, 61
and economics, 160 Tuanku Nan Rinceh, 61, 63, 64, 77, 95
and Guided Democracy, 140–1, 142–3, Tuanku Nan Salih, 61–2, 64
148 Tuanku Nan Tua, 60, 61, 63, 64
and nationalism, 129, 130 Tuban, 32, 34
and Pancasila, 134, 135 al-Tuhfa al-mursala ila ruh al-nabi (al-
and presidency, 131, 138, 139 Burhanpuri), 41, 53
Sulawesi, 25, 45, 46, 146 Turkey, 125, 130, 134, 149
Sulayman the Magnificent, 27
Suluk Garwa Kancana, 49 UII (Universitas Islam Indonesia), 150
Sumatra, 10, 46, 81 Umar, Teuku, 90
and Islam, 11–12, 13, 21, 22 United States of America, 58, 142, 166
and kaum muda, 99–101 ‘Unity in Diversity’, 2
see also Malay states; Minangkabau ‘Unity of Being’, 27, 40, 41–2
Sunda Straits, 10 USDEK, 142
Sungkar, Abdullah, 158 Uthman, Sayyid, 94, 96, 101
Sunni Islam, 53
Surabaya, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34–5 Van den Bosch, Johannes, 76, 78
Surakarta, 50, 51, 65–7, 71–2, 74, 78, 86, Van der Cappellen, Godert, 68, 72–3
100, 106, 146, 151, 158 Vietnam, 7, 15
surau (school), 59, 60 violence, 61, 62, 165, 166
Index
199
VOC see Dutch East India Company World Muslim Congress, 157
writing culture, 20, 22
Wahhabism, 51, 55, 56, 101
Wahid, Abdurrahman, 160, 162, 163, 165, al-Yafiʿi, ʿAbdallah ibn Asʿad, 19–20
166 Yemen, 19
Wali Songo (‘Nine Saints’), 20, 22, 29–32, 34, Yogyakarta, 50–1, 64, 69–74, 78, 110, 135,
38, 43, 68–9, 74, 118, 122 138, 150
West New Guinea, 141 and Java War, 65, 66, 67, 68
Westphalia, Treaty of (1648), 2 youth activism, 155–6, 157–8
Wibisono, Jusuf, 142 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang, 166
Widoyo, Djoko, 166 Yusuf of Makassar, Shaykh, 37
Willem I of the Netherlands, King, 55–6, 63, Yusup (Yusuf), 33–4
68, 73
Wiryosanjoyo, Sukiman, 136, 146 al-Zahir, Sultan al-Malik, 11
women, 111 al-Zawawi, Abdallah, 104, 120

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CAROOL KERSTEN

THE NEW EDINBURGH ISLAMIC SURVEYS SERIES EDITOR: CAROLE HILLENBRAND

Contemporary Issues in Islam Asma Asfaruddin

© Carool Kersten, 2017

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

Typeset in 11/13pt Monotype Baskerville by

ISBN 978 0 7486 8183 9 (hardback)

The first word of appreciation has to go to Professor Carole Hillenbrand, the

Abangan literally ‘red ones’. Refers to nominal Muslims

Pawang shaman, spirit doctor (see also bomoh, dukun)

Suluk particular Javanese religious practice, incorporating

gions, is in Dutch. Coinciding with the expansion of the Netherlands’ territorial

Map 1 The Indian Ocean Zone

The arrival of Islam

Encounter with a world

hosting the elaborate synthesis at royal metropoles elsewhere in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia and the Muslim world

used by Muslim scholars in subsequent historical and geographical compendia,

The Indian Ocean as an ‘Arabic-speaking Mediterranean’?

The beginnings of the Islamisation process

The plausibility of these accounts can be tentatively corroborated by the

Who and why? Agency and motives for Islamising Indonesia

The ‘Sufi thesis’

fifteenth centuries. In a number of publications written in the course of more

– motivated by his self-admitted personal enthusiasm for the spiritual dimen-

Sufis, Arabs and the rise of a Malay-Muslim writing culture: two

mentioning the presence in Southern Arabia of a thirteenth-century scholar

literature at SOAS, such readings often involved a fair amount of hineinterpre-

Map 2 Southeast Asia

From the sixteenth century onward, maritime Southeast Asia’s integration

Islamic rule in the Malay-speaking parts of Indonesia

Politico-religious symbiosis along Java’s northern coast

cal order. Finding such a balance is further complicated by the interrelations

subsequent centuries: a combination of piety and militancy that would often

Power shift to the interior: the Mataram Empire and Islam

The formation of an Islamic intellectual tradition in Indonesia

extensive travel and wide-ranging cultural interactions. Combined with occa-

Emergent Muslim writing cultures in Indonesia

– Muhyi’l-Dīn ibnu’l-ʿArabī of Spain (638/1240)’, as well as ‘the marked influ-

Widening and deepening Islamic learning

Aceh in particular had established a reputation as a centre of Islamic learning,

Debating theosophy in Aceh: wahdat al-wujud vs wahdat al-shuhud

Wandering students and itinerant scholars

these connections may actually be centuries older. Maintaining such a shared

Al-Palimbani’s anti-colonial interventions were not limited to scholarly writings;

Texts and power at the Mataram court

(Ricklefs 2006: 115). As Javanese cultural synthesis features more prominently,

Javanese religious practice and culture

identification as ‘Muslim’ grew increasingly firm, developing into a religious

Islamic education and learning: institution and curriculum

of ashram-like retreats for indigenous asceticism (called tapa in Javanese or peta-

pesantren. There, intermediate and advanced students progress through a learn-

The exposure of Indonesian Muslims to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century

The early Padri movement in west Sumatra’s Minangkabau

Prelude: the Minangkabau at the eve of the nineteenth century

trade policies forced indigenous middlemen into becoming Dutch agents or