Indonesian Islam Social Change through Contemporary Fatawa by M. B. Hooker (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003. 310 pages.)

Abstract

Detailed, extensive, and provocative, this book presents and assesses twentieth-
century Indonesian fatawa (legal rulings) on a range of issues. Over the
course of his well-documented discussion of decisions rendered by four
main Indonesian fatwa-issuing bodies, Hooker highlights their methods of
reasoning and the authorities they heed. He argues “that only the fatawa can
tell us what Islam is on” the continuum of merging state and religious
authorities in Indonesia at the beginning of the twenty-first century (p. ix).
Confronting the question of secularism and revelation, as well as tensions
between new and old authorities, Hooker posits the authority of God,
revealed Islamic knowledge, and 1,400 years of intellectual tradition intertwined
with colonial and postcolonial state authority in complex ways.
This book consists of an introduction, five chapters, and an epilogue and
appendix of Indonesian fatawa sources. The substantial introduction begins
by reviewing the ideas of several Middle Eastern reformers who had an
influence on “defining” Indonesian Islam, especially in the early twentieth century. However, underscoring the distinctiveness of indigenous Indonesian
Islam, Hooker describes its particular characteristics, such as its
emphasis on the Shafi`i madhhab (legal school), local legal texts, sixteenthto
eighteenth-century tasawwuf literature, royal court literature, and the
diverse translation of Islamic prescriptions into daily life. Despite this diffuse
localization of Islam, the Dutch colonial state and the subsequent Republic of
Indonesia severely limited Islam’s public presence until the recent passage of
two legal initiatives.
Finally, Hooker discusses the “new scholasticism” in Indonesia, the
crux of his introduction, in which he stresses four Indonesian intellectuals:
Hazairin, Harun Nasution, Nurcholish Madjid, and Abdurrahman Wahid. He
asserts that they represent a “creative” rather than a “responsive scholasticism,”
first emerging in the 1960s, that is “self-confident enough to propose
serious change, alteration,” and “adaptation of classic scholasticism” (p. 45).
This section, which takes an optimistic tone toward these four intellectuals,
appears to be disconnected from the rest of the book. None of them are
closely related to the four fatwa-issuing bodies, except for Abdurrahman
Wahid, a former leader of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and president of Indonesia
who has become increasingly isolated from mainstream Indonesian Islam
due to his perceived commitment to liberal democratic values over Revelation.
On the other hand, a discussion of scholars prominent at significant
historical junctures mentioned later in the text would have been more
insightful and would have contributed to the author’s overall argument ...