Encountering Traditions. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021. xvi, 255 pp. US$28.00, paper. ISBN 9781503606333.
This book makes important contributions to the study of Islamic higher education in Indonesia. It is carefully researched and well written and will be particularly useful for Indonesia specialists unfamiliar with Islamic education in the country as well as for Islamic Studies scholars unfamiliar with Indonesia.
Author Megan Brankley Abbas focuses on efforts to establish Indonesia’s higher education system in the 1950s and the roles of McGill University and the University of Chicago in shaping its approach to the academic study of Islam. Analytically, Abbas focuses on “fusionism” that combines academic and confessional approaches to the study of religion and the problems that this poses for scholars on both sides of this divide. The book is, however, not without problems. Three such problems stand out: Abbas does not pay sufficient attention to religious differences among the community of Indonesian scholars she engages; she also pays insufficient attention to influential Indonesian scholars who did not study at McGill or Chicago; and finally, the book is somewhat dated because it does not consider the challenges and opportunities that arose with the founding of Islamic universities teaching secular as well as religious subjects at the turn of the twenty-first century.
The introduction outlines an analytic framework arguing that intellectual dualism, the distinction between religious and secular knowledge, is a distinctively modern phenomenon and that contemporary fusionism is an effort to reunite the two modes of thought. She argues that in Indonesia, fusionism is associated with modernist Islamic theological perspectives, especially those of the late nineteenth/early twentieth-century Egyptian reformer Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905). The remainder of the book explores the ways in which the tension between dualism and fusionism played out in Indonesian Islamic educational institutions from the 1950s through the end of the twentieth century.
While this is an important analytic tool, Abbas overestimates its explanatory power, often attributing religious disputes to concerns about the propriety of studying at Western universities while ignoring theological differences. A cogent example is that Abbas attributes Mohammad Rasjidi’s (1915–2001) vituperative attacks on Harun Nasution (1919–1998) and Nurcholish Madjid (1939–2005) to his concerns about studying Islam in the West. Abbas notes that while all three studied in Western universities—the Sorbonne, McGill, and Chicago respectively—Rasjidi branded his opponents as “Orientalists.” The author fails to consider any underlying theological differences. Rasjidi was affiliated with the Wahabi-affiliated Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia (DDII, Indonesian Council for the Propagation of Islam) and the Saudi sponsored the Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami (World Muslim League). Nasution and Madjid had no use for intolerant Wahabi teachings. Nasution was a modernist who sought to revive the medieval rationalist Mutazilah school of Islamic thought. Madjid was a traditionalist who aatempted to reform the Asharite school, the most common in Indonesia, along rationalist lines. Abbas does not adequately consider these differences.
As Abbas notes, intellectual fusion has led to the development of modes of Islamic studies rooted in Western, or more appropriately, transnational social science and humanities disciplines. Yet, she does not advance convincing arguments that this has had a major impact on Indonesian Islamic thought.
Chapter 1 describes the efforts of Indonesian Muslims to establish a degree-granting Muslim higher education system in the 1950s. Abbas describes the ways in which Indonesian Muslim leaders including fundamentalist Mohamed Natsir (1908–1993), modernists Mohamed Hatta (1902–1980) and Agus Salim (1884–1954), and traditionalist Wahid Hasyim (1914–1953), worked towards this goal. Their efforts led to the establishment of the Institut Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN, State Institute of Islamic Studies) system in 1960. The chapter includes a detailed account of the political contexts in which these developments took place. Regrettably it does not discuss the ways in which the utterly incompatible religious orientations of the system’s founders led to tensions that have continued until the present. The fact that IAIN was only permitted to teach religious subjects is not even mentioned.
Chapters 2, 3, and 4 concern the roles of McGill and the University of Chicago in shaping Ministry of Religion policy and the IAIN system. Chapter 5 concerns what Abbas terms “academic imperialism.” These chapters include useful biographical sketches of or notes about some of twentieth-century Indonesia’s most influential Muslim scholars, many of whom studied at McGill University or the University of Chicago. These include Mukti Ali (1923–2004, McGill), who introduced the comparative study of religion in the IAIN system, Madjid (Chicago), Nasution (McGill), and Amien Rais (b. 1944, Chicago). There are also biographic notes on Dewan Dakwah founder Mohamed Natsir (1908–1993) throughout the book.
Abbas’s treatment of Rasjidi, Natsir, and DDII is overly sympathetic. Natsir, not Rasjidi, founded the organization and led it until his death in 1993. Abbas acknowledges that the Dewan Dakwah journal Media Dakwah is anti-Semitic, but fails to mention the fact that DDII was associated with the terrorist organization Laskar Jihad at the beginning of the twenty-first century. She does present a clear account of DDII’s efforts to discourage Indonesians from studying in the West. Her statement that it encouraged Indonesians to study in the “Middle East” is misleading. DDII is associated with Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Islam dan Bahasa Arab (Institute of Islamic Sciences and Arabic Language), a Saudi/Wahabi educational institute that is a gateway to Wahabi universities in Saudi Arabia.
Abbas’s account of Madjid’s thought is confusing, as Madjid identified as a theologian not an academic. He wrote extensively about classical Islamic sciences, including tafsir (Qur’anic exegesis), kalam (systematic theology), falsafah (philosophy), and Sufism. Abbas describes Madjid’s views on pluralism as “radical universalism” and suggests that it was based on “eclectic” appeals to “wildly diverse” Western sources (169–170). Even a cursory reading of his work shows that it was rooted in the Quranic doctrine of “people of the book” that recognizes Judaism and Christianity as revealed faiths with Sufi teachings expanding on them.
Mark R. Woodward
Arizona State University, Tempe