Islam and Society in Southeast Asia Edited by Taufik Abdullah and Sharon Siddique, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1987.

Abstract

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