The Political and Social Language of Indonesian Muslims: The Case of Al-Muslimun

There is a stereotype long held in the West and in the Arabic world that Islam in Southeast Asia is lacking in depth and commitment to general principles of Islamic belief and practice. Western scholarly and nonscholarly writings about Southeast Asia over the past century have usually spoken of Islam's accommodation as it encountered peoples influenced by animism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. 1 Most studies that appeared up until the 1940s, while not denying the significant impact of Islam and the existence of some pious Muslims in the region, presented Islam in Southeast Asia as hopelessly mixed with local cultural practices and out of step with more purist forms in the Middle East. The trend was reinforced by certain Indonesian nationalists in the second quarter of the twentieth century who were persuaded that Islam's dominance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had harmed native political strength and created conditions favorable to the establishment of European colonialism.2 In general this perception of a syncretic Islam prevailed among scholars East and West until the 1970s.