Religion and Nationalism by Joko Wicoyo

After an introduction which describes the general roles of Islam in a modernizing society and illustrates the traditional role of Islam in Indonesia, the writer proceeds to a clear and detailed historical account of Indonesian Islamic reformism.

The first section describes reformist educational-social-religious-tendentious emerging in the early twentieth century among Minangkabau and Arabs, then mobilized by such organizations like the Muhammadiyah and Persatuan Islam. The second section provides an account of such reformist political parties as Sarekat Islam, which was established in 1911 and shared many of the reformist beliefs. The third section considers the Dutch reaction to those movements expressed both in governmental repression and missionary competition. The forth section analyzes the response of traditionalist and nationalists, the former rejecting reform in favor of the old schools of law (madzhap), rites, charms and mysticism, while the latter subordinated God to the romanticized motherland. The writer’s conclusion usefully formulates the basic presuppositions of these four factions and the essential tenets of reformation in Indonesia.

In my mind, this book doesn’t claim a central thesis. It only states certain patterns which illustrate the general image of reformism in Indonesia by giving account of historical context to such ethnographic dichotomies as santri/abangan as emphasized by the work of Clifford Geertz, and by stressing the influence of Dutch Christianity on reformism. I think the writer gave detailed and insightful illustrations about the role of educational-social-religious reformists and their roles to compete with the challenging forces of Dutch colonialism and Christian penetration by not to continue their traditional activities to uphold Islam. He suggested to apply new methods which had been brought by the colonial and the Christian missionary powers to make educational-social-religious reformists’ movements succeeded. I think this issue will attract young Indonesian generation in enriching their perspectives towards the social, cultural educational and political movements which were based on religious awareness which was used to be the basic spiritual principle to fight colonialism and Christianity brought by the Dutch in that time. I think in this book, Delia Noer was successful to synthesize an impressive array of Dutch, Indonesian and Malay documents as well as interviews with major figures and their descendents like Sjech Ahmad Chatib, Sjech Thaher Djalaludin, Sjech Muhammad Djamil Djhambek. HAMKA, Haji Abdullah Ahmad etc.