The Islamic Reformist Mosaic in Muslim Southeast Asia

This chapter amplifies John Esposito’s emphasis on the rich diversity of approaches to Islamic thought, focusing attention on Southeast Asia, often considered marginal to Islam’s Arab heartlands but which is in reality the home of the most populous Muslim country, Indonesia. It argues that several Muslim intellectuals have been especially influential in giving rise to what the author terms the “Islamic reformist mosaic” in twentieth-century Muslim Southeast Asia. The term captures the various strands of reformist thinking in Muslim Southeast Asia, each viewing its message of reform as most urgent and important. Even though these strands are diverse, they have coexisted, sometimes in a state of tension, and at other times in dialogue and mutual agreement. Put differently, while differing in their visions and aims, when viewed as a whole, these strands of Islamic reformism form a unified and coherent frame of thought that distinguishes itself from the ultra-traditionalist and ultra-secularist leanings in Southeast Asian Islam. From this vantage point, Islamic reformism is thus a sum of seemingly discordant parts that in its entirety has shaped and pushed the boundaries of Islamic thought in Muslim Southeast Asia in novel directions.