Southeast Asia Programs Publications. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. ix, 146 pp. (B&W photos.) US$69.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-5017-2456-5.
Haji Abdul Malik bin Abdul Karim Amrullah, affectionately known as Hamka, was one of the most important modernist Islamic thinkers in contemporary Indonesia. James R. Rush, in his recently published monograph, Hamka’s Great Story: A Master Writer’s Vision of Islam for Modern Indonesia, addresses the importance of Hamka to not only Islam in Indonesia but to the making of Indonesia as a nation-state. Khairudin Aljunied’s work is the second book-length monograph concerning Hamka published in English, and he pushes Hamka’s influence beyond the confines of Indonesia. He wants to reposition Hamka as “an ummah (global Muslim community)-oriented scholar with strong ties throughout the Malay world” (5). He categorizes this ummah-oriented scholar’s thought as an example of cosmopolitan reform, bringing various approaches to Islamic thought together with other ideas and intellectual traditions from around the globe. Aljunied also uses cosmopolitan reform to characterize Hamka’s modernist view in order “to underscore Hamka’s attempt to overcome extremist, communalist, bigoted, and gendered tendencies that defined many of the societies in the Malay world” (6). According to Aljunied, Hamka balanced multiple intellectual milieus in thinking about each of these issues, and offered modern interpretations rooted in various Islamic traditions of thought and action. Hamka’s interpretations challenged a host of negative tendencies in the Malay world. His cosmopolitan thought was divided into six key issues: reason, moderation, social justice, gender, Sufism, and history.
In the first chapter, Aljunied introduces Hamka’s reclamation of “guided reason,” which uses reason guided by revelation from the Qur’an and Hadith to fight intellectual stagnation (19). Hamka pushed back against traditionalists, whom he understood to be practicing blind obedience to Islamic scholars, ulama. Yet he also carefully separated himself from those modernists who called for rationality as the only source of understanding, separate from revelation. Aljunied presents Hamka as a master of navigating the lines between traditionalists and modernists in Indonesia and the Malay world. This is not only significant in Hamka’s thought, but also further reflects the breakdown of divisions between traditionalists and modernists. However, Hamka did not just pull from a variety of Islamic sources and traditions of thought. He also drew from thinkers such as Plato in developing his thinking on “moderation in all things” articulated in the second chapter (37). Hamka’s moderation in all things included thought, emotions, and behaviour, which he understood as fighting against and dismantling both the Western perception of Muslims and fanaticism of particular Muslim positions, including nationalism.
At the heart of Hamka’s cosmopolitan reform was a full vision of social justice guided by Islamic concepts: “khalifatullah fil’ard (vicegerents of God on earth), amanah (sacred trust), shura (mutual consultation), and maslahan (general welfare)” (54). In chapter 3, Aljunied displays how this full conception of justice was not only based on these Islamic concepts but on how Hamka envisioned incorporating social justice into democracy. This not only places Hamka in the ongoing debates around democracy and its compatibility with Islam but creates the possibility of democracy guided by Islam that does not fall into the trap of seeing the two as incompatible or as separate spheres of life. Hamka opened up alternative understandings of democracy imbued with social justice built on Islamic concepts.
Chapters 4 and 5 are the strongest of the monograph. Hamka’s thoughts on women, in chapter 4, and Sufism, in chapter 5, are grounded in social justice and challenge the place of women and Sufism in the Malay world. Aljunied goes so far as to call Hamka a “male Islamic feminist” who advocated for equality and women’s rights based on guided reason, bringing interpretations of the Qur’an and hadith to bear on the modern place of women in Islam (83). He called for the empowerment of women as a “cornerstone of the Islamic tradition” (80). Hamka saw intellectual stagnation reflected in Muslim understandings of women’s rights as well as Sufism. His problem with Sufi Orders was similar to his concern with the glorification and obedience to the ulama. Hamka’s vision of Sufism without a Sufi Order grounded in the shari’a, one that “aimed to ‘cleanse the soul, educate and refine the emotions, and enliven the heart,’” inspired a host of movements such as urban Sufism in Indonesia (92).
The final chapter indicates how Hamka approached all of the issues of Sufism, gender, social justice, moderation, and reason through reformist histories “utilized as an instrument to reconstruct the minds of ordinary Malay-Muslims” (104). Hamka’s public reformist histories bridged the gap between academics and the public while struggling against both Western stereotypes and Malay interpretations.
Aljunied clearly indicates how Hamka brought a wide range of European, non-European, and Islamic thought together to provide new interpretations of Islam that engage with modern circumstances and are uncompromising to “the central tenet of Islam, which is part of a common humanity accountable to God and that we are morally responsible toward one another” (122–123). This work is a foundational piece in building broader awareness of Hamka’s thought and presence in the Malay world, and it opens up the possibility of future research that further unravels the thought and life of Hamka. Aljunied’s exposition of Hamka’s cosmopolitan reform rests on an assumption of his popularity in the Malay world rather than a demonstration of this popularity. Undoubtedly, Hamka was and still is an important modernist thinker in the Malay world. However, more work needs to be done to understand how his thought is engaged with by Muslims in their local communities. This is not to dismiss the popularity of Hamka as evidenced by the number of volumes written in Indonesian and Malay in response to Hamka as well as the sheer volume of Hamka’s works, which have been sold in the Malay world. However, it seems like more research on the lived realities of Hamka’s cosmopolitan reform would support Aljunied’s work and continue his commitment to bringing Hamka to broader audiences.
James Edmonds
Arizona State University, Tempe