The Tradition and Its Heirs: Genealogies of Knowledge and the Politics of Religion in Indonesia

Abstract

Who has the authority to define Islam in Indonesia—and what happens when religious knowledge becomes entangled with institutions, political power, and social conflict?The Tradition and Its Heirs: Genealogies of Knowledge and the Politics of Religion in Indonesia traces the making and remaking of Islamic authority across one of the world's most consequential Muslim societies.Beginning with Nūr al-Dīn al-Rānīrī and the seventeenth-century intellectual world of Aceh, Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad follows the changing institutions, scholars, and political struggles through which Islam has been interpreted in Indonesia. The book examines Islamic higher education and legal studies, Mohammad Natsir, H. M. Rasjidi, Azyumardi Azra, the young intellectuals of Nahdlatul Ulama, political Islam after the New Order, sharīʿah and human rights, globalization, terrorism, and the long conflict in Aceh.Originally published in Indonesian in 2004, the book was largely written while the uncertainties of Reformasi were still unfolding. This English edition preserves that contemporary vantage point while placing its arguments in conversation with developments and scholarship from the two decades that followed.The result is both an intellectual history and a rare historical record of Indonesian Islam at a moment of profound transformation.With a Foreword by Azyumardi Azra, this book will be of particular interest to readers of Indonesian and Southeast Asian studies, Islamic studies, political Islam, intellectual history, religion and politics, and contemporary Muslim societies.