Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia

Although it is themost populous country in theMuslim world, Indonesia haslong been overlooked in scholarly discussions of modern Muslim legalthought. This neglect has been compounded by the fact that western scholarshipon this Southeast Asian country has been dominated by historians,anthropologists, and political scientists rather than scholars conversant withthe Islamic sciences. Since the mid-1990s this situation has begun to change,however, as a new generation of scholars trained in classical and modernIslamic scholarship have come on the scene. These young researchers havemade Islamic thought in Indonesia available to a global English-languagereadership for the first time.Fluent inArabic aswell as Indonesian, R.Michael Feener has establishedhimself as among the most important members of this new generation of studentsof Indonesian Islam. The present book, a significant revision, updating,and expansion of his 1999 dissertation, seeks to provide a “road map” of“major trends in IndonesianMuslim thought on issues of law and society” (p.xvii) by focusing on the intellectual currents from the 1920s to the early2000s. The author argues, correctly I believe, that this effort is significant notjust because Muslim thought in Indonesia has yet to receive the attention itdeserves, but because “Indonesia has become arguably the world’s mostvibrant center for contemporary Islamic thought” (p. 225) ...