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BAB I
PENDAHULUAN
Dunia intelektual Islam kerap menilai pemikiran keislaman para intelektual
Muslim Indonesia sebagai kelas dua dan bersifat pinggiran (periferi). Proses
pengislaman kawasan ini yang berlangsung pada saat kemunduran Islam dan
kehadiran Islam yang tidak langsung dari pusat Islam menyebabkan kemunculan
persepsi tersebut. Baru belakangan saja dunia intelektual Islam mengakui distingsi

dan kontribusi intelektual Muslim Indonesia dalam berbagai wacana keislaman
penting.
Ternyata masyarakat, termasuk masyarakat Muslim Indonesia, sedikit sekali
yang mengenal, membaca, memahami, dan mengapresiasi khazanah pemikiran
intelektual Muslim negeri sendiri. Hanya para peminat atau pengkaji saja yang secara
intens membahas secara serius dan mendalam karya-karya mereka.
Kesulitan semakin terasa untuk mendapatkan buku yang mengelaborasi
khazanah pemikir Muslim Indonesia secara kronologis dari masa paling awal
kehadiran Islam hingga kontemporer, sehingga terlihat kontinuitas; aksentuasi; dan
genuisitas mereka. Padahal fokus ini sangat penting sebagai bentuk apresiasi dan
pengenalan terhadap buah pemikiran mereka untuk melihat bagaimana Islam
dipahami dalam konteks keindonesia yang sebelumnya memiliki wadah sosial-
budaya mapan dari masyarakat pra-Islam.
Saya sendiri merasakan kesulitan untuk mendapatkan buku pengantar tentang
dinamika intelektual Muslim di Indonesia dan pemikiran mereka. Memang ada
beberapa dalam bentuk tesis maupun disertasi yang dipublikasikan maupun atau
karya umum yang membahasnya namun tidak secara kronologis memotret
perkembangan tersebut sehingga seringkali mahasiswa mesti membaca banyak bahan
yang terkadang dikeluhkan mereka. Belum lagi jika sumber tersebut dalam bahasa
asing, maka mereka akan lebih kesulitan.
Atas dasar tersebut maka buku ini mencoba mengisi kekosangan di atas.
Tujuannya memberikan bacaan awal kepada mahasiswa tentang dinamika intelektual
Islam sejak masa paling awal perkembangan masyarakat Muslim Indonesia hingga
sedikit masa kontemporer. Buku ini mensurvei perkembangan, perubahan, dan
kesinambungan wacana intelektual Islam di Indonesia melalui penggalian pemikiran
figur-figur intelektual Muslim Indonesia terkemuka yang saya anggap memengaruhi
wacana keislaman dalam berbagai bidangnya. Saya menganggap mereka sebagai
representasi dari arus dinamika intelektual Islam di Indonesia dari beberapa periode.

Survey ini bersifat kronologis dari abad ke-17 M yang dianggap sebagai
periode awal kemajuan intelektual Islam di Indonesia berdasarkan ketersediaan
karya-karya intelektual Muslim Indonesia, sekalipun mungkin presedennya telah ada
sebelum periode itu. Kemudian pelacakan mengalir secara periodik berdasarkan
hitungan abad hingga memasuki masa kontemporer.
Secara metodologis kajian ini membahas tokoh-tokoh Muslim Indonesia
sebagai representasi tiap periode. Bahasannya mencakup biografi, konteks historis
kehidupan mereka, peran sosial mereka, pemikiran pokok, dan karya-karya
intelektualnya. Sumber buku ini lebih bertumpu pada sumber primer untuk
membahas bagian pemikiran mereka sejauh dapat ditemukan dan sumber skunder
untuk bagian lainnya. Kemudian disajikan pula rekomendasi sumber bacaan untuk
pendalaman kajian lebih lanjut.
Kesulitan dari kajian semacam ini adalah dalam menentukan figur
representatif yang dipilih karena banyak sekali tokoh yang ada. Dalam hal ini saya
menggunakan kriteria berupa pengaruh pemikiran mereka dalam perkembangan
intelektual Islam Indonesia pada masanya masing-masing. Tentu saya tidak dapat
menghindar dari subyektifitas yang kuat sehingga hal ini menjadi kelemahan bahasan
ini. Karena diharapkan muncul kajian lain untuk membahas figur penting yang
barangkali tidak termasuk dalam buku ini.
Sistematika buku ini dibagi dalam tiga bab. Bab pertama pendahuluan yang
menjelaskan konteks kehadiran buku ini. Bab kedua menjelaskan kondisi geografis;
demografis; relegius; etnisitas, dan linguistik Indonesia yang menjadi wadah
kehadiran Islam dari abad ke-13. Bab ini juga membahas keyakinan-keyakinan pra-
Islam yang berkembang di Indonesia dan pengaruhnya terhadap masyarakat
Indonesia pada waktu itu serta sketsa sejarah Islam sekaligus dialektikanya dengan
berbagai unsur keindonesiaan.
Terakhir saya ingin menyampaikan terima kasih kepada beberapa pihak yang
mendukung penyelesaian buku ini. Tentu saja pertama Prof.Dr.Mohammad Ali,
Dirjen Pendidikan Islam Kementerian Agama yang memberikan kesempatan kepada

saya untuk riset bahan selama sebulan di The Autralian National University (ANU)
Canberra, Prof.Dr.Mahasin, MA (mantan Direktur Perguruan Tinggi Islam), Prof.Dr.
Dede Rosyada, MA sebagai pengganti Prof. Mahasin yang ‘menggawangi’ program
riset tersebut, Kasubdit Ketenagaan Diktis Dr. Mohamad Ishom, Kasi Pengembangan
Tenaga Akademik Subdit Ketenagaan Khoirul Huda Basyir,Lc,MA, para
pembimbing riset Prof.Dr.Abdul Mujib, Dr.Muchlis Hanafi, MA, Dr. Imam
Subhi,MA, Suparto, P.hD, dan pihak-pihak lain yang tidak dapat saya sebutkan.
Akhirnya saya mengharapkan saran, kritik, dan masukan dari khalayak untuk
kesempurnaan buku ini. Semoga bermanfaat.
BAB II
ISLAM DALAM KONTEKS INDONESIA
A. Gambaran Umum Indonesia
Geografi
The Republic of Indonesia comprises some four-fifths of the archipelago
which, stretching eastwards from the south-eastern angle of Asia, separates the Indian
from the Pacific Ocean, at the same time as it constitutes a discontinuous land link

between Asia and Australasia. Extending for approximately 3,400 miles from west to
east, and about 1,250 miles from north to south (in a zone bounded by longitudes 92°
and 141° east and by latitudes 6° north and 11° south), it embraces some 3,000
islands of highly diverse size, character and resources. In popular topographical
terminology these are perceived as constituting four groups. The Sunda Raja or
Greater Sunda complex, including the four large islands of Sumatra, Java (Ḏj̲āwa),
Celebes ( Sulawesi), and the larger part of Kalimantan, constitutes the core of the
country from the point of view of areal extent, size of population, wealth of natural
resources, and intensity of economic activity. The Nusa Tenggara or Lesser Sundas
form a chain of smaller islands extending from Bali to western Timor (the eastern
half of this latter island is under Portuguese control). The third group, known as
Maluku, includes the island arcs lying north of the eastern Lesser Sundas and east of
Celebes. Irian Barat, or the western half of the island of New Guinea, which was
incorporated within the Indonesian polity as recently as 1963, is by all standards the
least developed part of the country.
Structurally the Indonesian archipelago comprises three main tectonic
components, each with a distinctive morphological expression. Both the western and
eastern sectors—known to physiographers as the Sunda and Sahul Shelves
respectively—are developed on stable continental platforms of ancient indurated
rocks, relatively subdued relief, and comparatively shallow seas. Between, and
partially bounding, these platforms are a series of geologically recent mountain
ranges that now appear on the map as fragmented but structurally continuous island
arcs separated from each other by deep semi-oceanic basins. As might be expected in
view of their geological history, these island arcs are zones of instability, manifested
primarily in earthquakes of high frequency but moderate intensity and, more

particularly, in a wide range of volcanic activity. On the continental platforms the
starkness of this tectonic skeleton is peripherally mitigated by a mantle of alluvium
giving rise to extensive coastal plains: elsewhere slopes tend to be steep, and level
land exiguous. Finally, deriving from this structural context are substantial mineral
resources: notably petroleum, tin ore, coal of various grades, and bauxite, all from the
Sunda Shelf and its borders; low-grade iron ores from Borneo and Celebes; and small
quantities of high-grade magnetite and hematite elsewhere. Other mineral resources
which have been exploited on a small scale include nickel in Celebes, manganese,
phosphate, sulphur, and iodine in Java, and gold and silver in Sumatra and West Java.
Indonesia's location determines that its climatic régime is broadly equatorial.
Variations in insolation intensity and duration are minimal, so that temperatures at sea
level are uniformly high and extremely constant. Annual ranges are small, usually of
the order of 5° F, with diurnal ranges up to three times that amount. The season,
distribution and quantity of rainfall depend on location and aspect in relation to the
seasonally reversed wind systems which the¶ presence of continental land masses
here imposes on the equatorial régime. Whereas an annual total of at least 80 inches
is experienced throughout most of the archipelago, slopes athwart the warm moist air
streams that prevail during the northern-hemisphere summer are much wetter.
Padang, at the foot of the Barisan Range, for example, has an average annual rainfall
of 177 inches. In the eastern half of Java and the Nusa Tenggara, by contrast, an
extreme southerly location within the Indonesian polity combines with proximity to
the Australian arid zone to produce average annual totals of less than 60 inches. This
is also the only part of the country to experience a markedly drier season. Generally
speaking, rain everywhere tends to fall in heavy showers of comparatively short
duration.
High temperatures and abundant moisture ensure that soils, apart from those
developed on recent alluvium or volcanic ash, tend to be strongly ferrallitic in
character, their outstanding agronomic feature being a low natural fertility. In
primeval times virtually the whole territory was covered by a mantle of equatorial

rain-forest of great floristic richness, which itself subsumed a variety of plant
associations ranging from true rain-forest to coastal mangrove, fresh-water swamp-
forest, limestone associations, and mountain vegetation. Centuries of human
occupance, however, have done much to modify both the extent and the character of
these forests. Today less than a fifth of the archipelago is under primary forest or
something approaching it, and this is distributed very unevenly throughout the
country. Whereas more than four-fifths of Irian Barat and eastern Kalimantan are
forested, the comparable proportion for both Java and the Nusa Tenggara is nearer
one fifth of their respective areas.
From the point of view of ecological adaptation, as contrasted with that of
contemporary administration, the pre-eminent dichotomy in the Indonesian world is
that between Java and the rest of the country, the so-called Outer Islands. And
nowhere is this distinction more apparent than in the evolution of agricultural
practices. Traditionally the first of these regions has been associated predominantly,
though by no means exclusively, with the delicate ecological equilibrium of slash-
and-burn shifting agriculture (technically known as swidden), and the heartland of
Java with the stable equilibrium of permanent-field, wet-padi farming. Only in the
nineteenth century was this distinction somewhat blurred by the introduction into
both regions of new crops such as sugar, tobacco, coffee, and subsequently rubber,
and by the imposition in Java, by a paternalistically inclined colonial government, of
an agro-industrial system which intruded the disequilibrating forces of commercial
agriculture into the very heart of the village, often making the Javanese farm worker
occupationally conduplicate, coolie and peasant at the same time time.
Indonesia is the fifth most populous nation in the world, with a current
population exceeding 100 million souls. Of these, approximately two-thirds are living
on the islands of Java and Madura, which together comprise only seven per cent of
the land area of the country. In terms of average densities, this means something like
1,200 persons per square mile in Java, but only 62 per square mile in the Outer
Islands (though this figure conceals wide variations within the region, e.g., Bali with

750 persons per square mile; Sumatra with 80, Kalimantan with 18, and Irian Barat
with 6). In large measure this imbalance in population distribution is¶ attributable to
what Clifford Geertz has described as the concentrative and tumescent qualities of the
wet-padi ecosystem as integrated with commercial farming in colonial Java. The
dispersive, inelastic properties of the swidden ecosystem would seem likely to make
large-scale transfers of population from Java to the apparently underpopulated Outer
Islands not only unpopular, but also ineffective unless accompanied by a major
transformation of the ecosystem.
The population of Indonesia is disposed in a hierarchy of settlements ranging
from innumerable villages at the lowest level to the capital, Jakarta, at the highest.
Although Jakarta, with a population of three million, is more than twice the size of
Surabaya, the next largest city, it appears to accord better with the graduated
distribution of city sizes characteristic of economically developed countries than with
the concept of the primate city as evidenced in numerous other formerly colonial
territories. In fact the notion of primacy would seem to be more appropriate to the
situation in the Outer Islands, where some of the higher order urban centres are nearly
four times as populous as the next largest cities in their territories. Whereas urbanism
reaches a higher level in Java than elsewhere in Indonesia, urbanization appears to be
proceeding more rapidly in the Outer Islands. The several levels of the city hierarchy
subsume a considerable variety of urban forms, ranging from traditional ceremonial
and religious foci to the commercial-administrative conurbations which rose to pre-
eminence during the colonial period, from largely unchanged pre-industrial market
towns dominated by the expediential mores of the bazaar to modern industrially
oriented port cities. (P. Wheatley)
Etnografi
The cultural diversity of the several hundred ethnic groups of Indonesia is
striking; a common pattern underlying the diversity is discernible, but elusive and
hard to specify. For this reason, no consensus has been reached on a classification or
taxonomy of Indonesian peoples and cultures. A workable, if somewhat imprecise,

classification is as follows: (A) societies with political organization predominantly on
a territorial basis; (B) societies, politically organized on a territorial basis, but with
chiefs of genealogical groups also having political and legal powers; (C) societies in
which political power is exclusively vested in chiefs of genealogical groups (or of
local segments of such groups).
Societies of group A constitute real states, which have played an active rôle in
the history of South-East Asia. Examples are the principalities of Java and Bali, the
Malay states of eastern Sumatra and of the Malay Peninsula, and the sultanates of the
Bugis-Makassar area of southern Celebes. Without exception they have adopted a
world religion: mostly Islam, but a syncretic form of Hinduism and Buddhism in the
case of Bali. Political authority is (or was—in Indonesia these States have lost the
semi-independence they have preserved in Malaya) in the hands of established
dynasties, assisted by courtiers, administrators, and territorial chiefs who form a
nobility, and (in the case of Java) drew their emoluments from the taxes they levied in
the district granted to them by the ruler as an apanage of their office. The rulers, and
their regalia, are usually considered to be the sacral centres, the spiritual depositories,
of the wellbeing of their realms. Kinship organization in these societies is generally
of the bilateral (cognatic) type, based on single-family households. Economic
activities are centred on agriculture (rice grown on elaborately irrigated fields),
stockbreeding, and trade (some of it inter-insular).
Societies of type B (such as the Batak and the Minangkabau, both of Sumatra)
have or had some measure of centralized political government, but the chiefs of
genealogical groups (clans and lineages) have considerable authority over their
kinsfolk. The lineages in question may be matrilineal (Minangkabau) or patrilineal;
they have a tendency to maintain regular marriage relationships with specific other
lineages, in which the bride-bestowing lineage is superior to the bride-receivers. This
type of social structure links up with a whole system of cosmic classifications,
involving dichotomies as male/female, upperworld/underworld, and superior/inferior,
and speculations on numerology and colour classification. Such a system appears

most clearly among those Batak groups which are not yet converted to Islam or
Christianity.
Rice cultivation (on irrigated fields as well as by the slash-and-burn method)
is important, as is the growing of commercial crops (coffee, rubber). Peoples of this
group are no less prominent in modern Indonesian affairs than those of group A.
Societies of type C, finally, occur on the smaller, and in the interior of the
larger islands: the Dayak peoples of Borneo, the Toradja of Celebes, etc. Many still
adhere to their original religion, or were only recently converted to Islam or
Christianity. The archaic religion is predominantly an ancestor cult,¶ with elaborate,
frequently potlatch-like, mortuary rites and (e.g., with the Dayak) a developed
priestly theology and rich mythology, manifesting the same type of classification
system as mentioned for B. Kinship forms vary around the theme of matrilineal
combined with patrilineal descent or inheritance. Agriculture (“dry” rice, maize,
sago) predominates, foreign trade is rudimentary. For these people in particular a
general Indonesian problem is acute: how much of their traditional way of life can
and should they preserve in a nation striving towards a modern and unified culture?
(P.E. de Josselin de Jong)
Bahasa
With a few exceptions which will be mentioned, the indigenous languages of
Indonesia belong to the Austronesian family. Austronesian languages extend over
Madagascar, southern Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippine Islands, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Papua/New Guinea, the Melanesian, Micronesian and Polynesian islands and New
Zealand. Although the existence of such a family was postulated as early as 1780 by
William Marsden, it was left to W. von Humboldt, in 1836, to define it more closely
and to give it the title “Malayo-Polynesian” by which it was to be known for more
than a century; this has now been displaced by “Austronesian”, a term coined by
Wilhelm Schmidt in 1899. The Austronesian family, comprising perhaps some 500
languages in all, is currently subdivided into three subgroups, Indonesian, Polynesian
and Melanesian; Micronesian is held by some to constitute a fourth subgroup. The

majority of the people who have embraced Islam in this area speak Indonesian
languages; therefore it is these languages that are important to the study of Islam in
South East Asia, particularly Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Achenese, Minangkabau,
Buginese and Macassarese.
Owing to the lack of real evidence, the early history of the speakers of
Austronesian languages is little more than conjecture. Their probable original
homeland, which would of course be the homeland of the ancestors of the
Indonesians, has been located by speculation in places ranging from Tartary, the
Indo-China area and southern China to Melanesia or Taiwan.
Not all the languages of Indonesia belong to the Indonesian subgroup;
communities speaking non-Indonesian languages can be found in North Halṃahera,
Ternate, Tidore and Irian Barat (formerly known as West New Guinea). Besides these
should be mentioned the non-indigenous languages spoken in the country, such as
Chinese (mainly Hokkien, Kheh, Cantonese), Dutch, English and Arabic.
On the other hand languages of the Indonesian subgroup are spoken by
communities beyond the borders of Indonesia: Malay in Malaysia, southern Thailand
and Brunei, and other languages of the Indonesian subgroup in Sarawak, Sabah,
Taiwan, Madagascar, the Philippines and Portuguese Timor. In addition, Malay or
other Indonesian languages are spoken by communities of Indonesian origin living in
Ceylon, South Africa, Surinam and the Netherlands.
There is no general agreement on the total number of languages within
Indonesia. Apart from the absence of an agreed definition of language, detailed
linguistic studies are lacking for most areas. A figure commonly mentioned is 250,
but possibly¶ more reliable estimates are those which put it at 200, or a little less. The
number of speakers of any single language can vary from perhaps over 50 millions, as
in the case of Javanese, to the 40,000 or so who speak some of the lesser tongues.
Some idea of the distribution of the main languages can be obtained from the
accompanying language map; for some suggested amendments to the data given in it,

see I. Dyen, A lexicostatistical classification of the Austronesian Languages (Indiana
University 1965, 48-50); naturally a map of this scale cannot show the minority
speech communities which have grown up outside their original areas as a result of
population movement.
A broad division of the Indonesian languages into Western and Eastern,
suggested by the Dutch scholar J. L. A. Brandes, failed to withstand the test of time.
Epigraphic material.
The decisive early external influence on Indonesian culture was unquestionably
Indian, and the earliest known inscriptions are written in Sanskrit. One of these,
found near Kutei in the island of Kalimantan (formerly called Borneo), is thought to
date from about 400 A.D.; it commemorates the rule of Mūlavarman over a
Hinduized state. The earliest inscriptions from the Malay Peninsula, Buddhistic texts,
and also the earliest epigraphic evidence from Western Java, are judged likewise to
date from this time.
The oldest evidence of a language indigenous to the area is found in
inscriptions on stone from South Sumatra, dating from 682 A.D., and associated with
the state of Srivijaya; despite the occurrence here too of many Sanskrit words, the
basic language has sufficient affinity with later Malay to be given the name Old
Malay. Although Old Javanese inscriptions begin only about a century later (circa
786), subsequent material in this language proved to be much more abundant than
that in Old Malay; copper inscriptions appeared up until about the 12th/18th century.
Epigraphic evidence of the other recorded ancient Indonesian language, Old Balinese,
begins in 882 A.D., and continues to appear over nearly two centuries. It may be
noted that all three languages employed scripts of Indian derivation. There is of
course no reference to Islam in the early inscriptions.
Malay and Bahasa Indonesia.
Malay, originating probably in Sumatra, has been disseminated widely
through the Indonesian area, in which it has for centuries been the lingua franca. On
account of its usefulness for commercial, political and religious purposes it has

always attracted more attention from foreigners than have other Indonesian
languages. It is the language of a considerable corpus of manuscript material
produced in the 11th-13th/17th-19th centuries. Malay, the official language of
Malaysia, and Bahasa Indonesia (see below), the official language of Indonesia, have
both been developed directly from this earlier form of Malay. Linguistically speaking,
Malay and Bahasa Indonesia can scarcely be held to be separate languages; the two
different names reflect the political division of the Indonesian cultural area which
ensued on the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1239/1824. The following remarks on some of
the characteristics of Malay apply equally to Bahasa Indonesia.
We may mention first some features of the Indonesian languages in general
which are at the same time applicable to Malay. Observers have noted conspicuous
mutual resemblances between the languages of the Indonesian subgroup. The number
of vowel phonemes is limited, being basically [a], [i],¶ [u] and [ǝ], with sometimes a
considerable range of non-phonemic variation ([i] to [e], [u] to [o] etc.); variation in
the length of vowels, when it occurs, is also non-phonemic. Common diphthongs are
[ai], [au] and [ui]. The consonantal system is relatively simple; the glottal stop
(hamza) is widespread; single consonants are preferred, and consonantal clusters
avoided, both at the beginning and end of words; but certain two-consonant
combinations, notably nasal combinations such as -mb-, -nd- etc., may occur within
the word. Thus a common pattern for the Indonesian “word-base”, which is likely to
be disyllabic, will be consonant/vowel/consonant/vowel/consonant.
Affixation, another trait of the Indonesian languages, can best be illustrated
with specific reference to Malay examples; but it must be mentioned that infixation is
no longer productive in Malay, if indeed it ever was a feature of this language. Very
briefly, the verbal prefixes in Malay include ber-, me-x
-, pe(r)- and ter- and the
suffixes are -i and -kan; a verb may occur without any affix; in certain cases two
prefixes may be used simultaneously, as may prefix and suffix. Prefixes commonly

employed in conjunction with or to form substantives are ke-, pex
- and per-, while a
common suffix (which again may be used in conjunction with a prefix) is -an.
Further, it may be remarked that substantives have no grammatical gender,
and they do not normally undergo morphological change for case or number; thus
mata unless further qualified can be translated 'eye' or 'eyes'. Reduplication of the
substantive, a very common feature of Indonesian languages, can correspond to the
plural number, but does not always do so. Perhaps the one syntactical feature of
Malay which ought to be mentioned is the fact that the attributive adjective follows
the noun it qualifies.
Pengaruh Eksternal terhadap bahasa Indonesia
Of the languages which were introduced into the area in historical times, it
was undoubtedly Sanskrit which first exerted a major influence. The occurrence of
Sanskrit and partially Sanskrit inscriptions has been mentioned. Javanese and Malay
proved to be particularly susceptible to Sanskrit influence, and in many cases it was
via these two languages that Sanskrit influence reached other languages of the area.
Sanskrit has given to these languages common grammatical particles, and moreover
has enriched the lexicon in the spheres of religion (for example āgama, dosha), of
ideas (e.g., buddhi, jīva), court ritual (e.g., upacāra, āsthāna), of statecraft (e.g., dūta,
drohaka), of relationship (e.g., svāmin, putra), and so forth, with appropriate
adaptation to the phonology of the recipient language.
Arabic is the other language which has exerted a significant influence on the
Indonesian languages over a long period if time; perhaps none was more deeply
influenced than Malay, and Arabic influence has permeated through to the other
languages often via Malay. This influence can be seen in Malay syntax, at least in
religious writings, and in the 'popular' lexicon as well as the 'learned', though
understandably to a greater extent in the latter. Examples of everyday Malay words of
Arabic derivation are: asal (< aṣl), fasal (< faṣl), hal (< ḥāl), ilmu (< ilmʿ ), mungkin

(< mumkin), perlu (< farḍ), sebab (< sabab), selamat (< salāma), taubat (< tauba).
Before the coming of steam, contact between Arabia and the Indonesian Archipelago
was maintained mainly via India; traces of Indian languages, and Persian,
consequently appear in borrowings from¶ Arabic. This possibly explains also,
perhaps, the unexpected occurrence of words of Sanskrit origin in the vocabulary of
Islamic practice in Malay; so, for 'heaven' shurga (< Skt. svarga) is preferred to the
Arabicsamāʾ; for 'hell' naraka (< Skt. naraka) rather than jahannam or al-nār; for
'fasting' puasa (< Skt. upavāsa) rather than ṣawm. Alternatively—and this seems
more likely—the use of these words may be due to the taking over by the first
Muslims of terms already current in the area of proselytization.
The relative position of Sanskrit and Arabic as sources of influence on Malay
and other Indonesian languages can be summed up thus: Up to and including the
7th/13th century Sanskrit held the field; during that time Sanskrit appeared in
inscriptions in combination with Indonesian languages, and indeed inscriptions
wholly in Sanskrit occasionally appeared. However, by the beginning of the 8th/14th
century Islam had secured a foothold in the Archipelago, and before the century was
out Arabic influence had begun to manifest itself on the language; in that century
appears the first clearly Islamic Malay inscription, known as the Trengganu Stone,
written moreover in an Arabic type of script. From then on, Sanskrit was steadily to
yield ground to Arabic in the field of language; some of the Sanskrit vocabulary in
the inscriptions has failed to survive into modern times, while there has been no
comparable loss of Arabic elements once they have been incorporated in the
language. The position of Arabic has of course been strengthened by the force of
religion exerted through religious instruction and the Ḳur ān, and numbers ofʾ
manuscripts in Arabic have been brought into, or produced in, Indonesia. Excepting
possibly in the island of Bali, no comparable Sanskrit subculture persists;

nevertheless, since 1942 Indonesian linguists have often resorted to Sanskrit when
creating new terms for Bahasa Indonesia.
The remaining non-Indonesian languages which have influenced Malay and
Bahasa Indonesia are relatively unimportant and can be dealt with briefly.
Considering the centuries of Chinese contacts with the Archipelago, Chinese dialects
have had a remarkably slight influence, excepting possibly at the colloquial level;
from India has come vocabulary of Hindi, Persian, Urdu, Tamil derivation; three
European languages which have exercised significant influence are Portuguese,
Dutch and English, the last, being the most widely taught foreign language in
Indonesia, can be expected to exert a continuing influence on Bahasa Indonesia.
Through the centuries there has of course been a continuing interaction of the
Indonesian languages on one another.
Aksara
Broadly speaking, the pattern of influences which emerged in the previous
section will be reflected in any discussion of the scripts used in Indonesia. The
earliest Sanskrit inscriptions were written in a Pallava script, and developments of
this were used subsequently in the inscriptions and other writings in Indonesian
languages: Old Javanese (from which modern Javanese script has been derived, and
akin to the Old Malayinscriptions from Sumatra), Balinese, Madurese, Sundanese;
also in the Sumatran languages Batak, Redjang and Lampong, and others. Although
superficially very different, the Bugis and Makassar scripts show definite affinities
with those mentioned. In fact, there is so far no evidence to refute an opinion put
forward by H. Kern and others that all the early scripts of the Archipelago are of
Indian origin.

(LINGU
ISTIC MAP OF INDONESIA)
For some languages (exemplified by Malay), though not for others, the
diffusion of Islam resulted in the adoption of a new Arabic type script. For Malay the
adoption was virtually total, and apart from epigraphic material referred to above no
writings are known in pre-Arabic script. As far as the other languages are concerned
the new script met with varying degrees of acceptance; in Javanese it was used for
certain kinds of literature, in Bugis and Makassarese it was rarely employed, while in
Achenese and Minangkabau for example it came into general use. The principal
modification to the script necessitated by Malay phonology was the addition of the
following letters to represent sounds not found in Arabic: for ch; for ng; for p;
for g; and for ny. In the Malayalphabet (which in this respect is more consistent
than some other alphabets of Perso-Arabic origin) the precedes the . The vowel
signs fatḥa, kasra and ḍamma are seldom used; their Malay names (baris diatas, 'line
above', baris dibawah 'line below' and baris dihadapan 'line in front', respectively)
are reminiscent of the equivalent terms in Persian. The letters of this script are known
in Bahasa Indonesia as huruf Arab, but in Malay as Jawi. Use of this script is
declining in Malaysia, and in Indonesia it has almost disappeared, surviving only in
the religious sphere. It has been superseded by romanized script, introduced from
Europe as early as the 11th/17th century by Christian missionaries. Thus other
languages than Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese for example, make use of a romanized
script for publications at the present time. The romanized spelling of Bahasa

Indonesia and of Malay, being based respectively on Dutch and English orthography,
tend to emphasize the dissimilarity of the two; however, on 27 June 1967 agreement
was reached on a new unified spelling to be used both in Indonesia and Malaysia. The
letters which functioned identically in the two former orthographies have been
retained in the new spelling: b, d, f, g, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w, z; so have the
combination ng, and the letters q, v, and x which occur in some borrowed words.
Where usage in the two former orthographies differed, changes had to be made:
(Table)
The agreed new symbols for the vowels are a, e, e, i, o, and u [thus, except in
material for reading practice, there will be no differentiation between the symbol for
e taling (“long e”, sometimes hitherto given an accent sign), and e pěpět (“short e”,
sometimes written hitherto ě)]. The present spellings for diphthongs (ai, au, oi), are
retained. It is not yet certain that the new spelling will be generally adopted in
Indonesia.
Bahasa Indonesia
It has been seen that both Old Javanese and Old Malay appeared on the early
inscriptions. In the intervening centuries both languages have developed and they
have played prominent roles in the cultural history of the Archi-¶ pelago, Javanese as
the language of the sophisticated polities of Central and Eastern Java, Malay as the
language of the port-states and of mercantile intercourse in general. In view of the
numerous literary works produced in Javanese, and of the cultural prestige of the
Javanese in the area, it would not have been surprising to find Javanese become the

language of Indonesia; however, owing in part perhaps to the complexities arising
from the “stratification” of the Javanese language, in part to the geographical
dissemination of Malay through the islands, Malay was to become the language of the
independent nation. The modern Indonesian form of Malay is known officially as
Bahasa Indonesia (literally “the language of Indonesia”); foreign writers generally
use this term to refer to the language in preference to the less precise “Indonesian”.
The adoption of Bahasa Indonesia to be the official language of the country was
virtually assured even before Dutch rule ended in 1949. In spite of advocacy by some
that Dutch should become the primary language, and misgivings on the part of others
as to the capability of Bahasa Indonesia to function as the language of a modernizing
state, the determination of Indonesian nationalists to utilize the language as the
vehicle of expression of their will in the end decided the issue. In 1928 the nationalist
youth movement formally resolved in this sense; and the suppression of the Dutch
language as a consequence of the Japanese occupation of the East Indies in 1942
removed another obstacle from the path of Bahasa Indonesia, which was declared to
be the official language of the new Republic of Indonesia in the constitution adopted
in 1945. The present situation therefore is that Bahasa Indonesia is in general use for
radio, newspapers and books; it is spoken and understood by nearly all Indonesians,
the exceptions being mostly middle-aged or elderly; since it is now taught in schools
throughout Indonesia it may be assumed that within a generation or so it will be the
everyday tongue of all Indonesians—and thus incidentally the everyday tongue of
more Muslims than any other language. The majority of Indonesians will continue to
study and speak a regional language as well (Javanese, Sundanese etc.), which will in
fact be their mother tongue. The use of Dutch, still surprisingly popular with older
educated Indonesians, is bound to decline rapidly; to a great extent it is being
displaced by English.(Russell Jones)
B. Indonesia Pra-Islam: Segi Keagamaan
INDIGENOUS BELIEFS

An important contribution to our understanding of indigenous beliefs comes in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as European missionaries began to move into areas of
eastern Indonesia and the Philippines which had to this point been relatively isolated from
external religious ideas. Despite their obvious cultural bias, the accounts missionaries
compiled provide the historian with the first sustained contemporary descriptions of native
religious customs outside a court environment. Most striking in these early European sources
is not the regional variation in belief which observers noted, but the similarities. All affirm
that the ordinary man and woman conceived of the natural world as animated by a vast array
of deities who inhabited trees, rivers, caves, mountains and who were capable of great
kindness or extraordinary malevolence. Otherwise inexplicable events such as volcanic
eruptions, earthquakes, epidemics, a failure of the rains, were a sign that the spirits were
angry and needed to be appeased with appropriate offerings. In arming themselves against the
vagaries of fate, individuals could seek assistance from their ancestors and from past leaders
and heroes who, after death, had become powerful spirits in their own right. Often they were
believed to have entered the bodies of animals, like the tiger, the crocodile or the pig. In
eastern Indonesia such beliefs were especially obvious, and one Portuguese account describes
how the people of Maluku (the Moluccas) 'worshipped the celestial bodies, the sun, moon
and stars, they made idols to the honour of their fathers and forefathers. These were made of
wood and stone with faces of men, dogs, cats and other animals.'1 A key factor in
communicating with the spirits was propitiation and ritual performed at designated sites like a
sacred mountain or at the grave of ancestors. Offerings of food, drink, cloth, and certain
symbolic items were most common, but on some occasions the spilling of blood was deemed
necessary to allay anger, or ensure the fertility of the soil and the continuance of supernatural
favours. After some animal—a goat, pig, or a buffalo—was slaughtered, its head was usually
offered to the spirits while the participants ate the rest of the meat in a ceremonial feast. On
special occasions a human being might be sacrificed, the victims usually obtained by raids
into neighbouring territory or by the purchase of slaves. In the Visayas, for example, the
people 'are in the habit of buying some Indios from other provinces to offer them as
sacrificial victims to the devil'.2 Ritual and offering were part of the lives of everyone,
especially during the great life crises of birth, marriage and death, but the most elaborate
ceremonial was often that associated with funerals. The careful preparation of bodies for

burial, the dressing of the corpse, the provision of goods, food, drink, clothing and transport
described in several societies, attest to a belief in life after death, where an individual would
enjoy a status commensurate with his or her standing while alive. Although men also
assumed high ceremonial positions, early European observers were struck by the prominence
of females in religious ritual. When the Spanish first arrived in the Philippines they saw old
women (called babaylan in the Visayas and katalonan in the Tagalog areas) through whom
the spirits spoke. Several societies accorded particular respect not only to women but to
'Indians dressed as women', a reference to the transvestites who symbolically combined the
regenerative powers of both sexes. To a considerable extent the prestige of such figures was
due to their ability to deal with both male and female sacral items and to provide a medium
for spirit pronouncements. When they fell into a trance, induced by incantation, dance, and
the music of bells, drums and gongs, they became more than human. Shamanistic skills were
especially valued in times of illness because this was attributed to non-human agencies.
Missionaries in the Philippines described curing sessions in which 'the woman leader can talk
to herself with many posturings', anointing the head of the sick person with oil and telling
him the anito (spirit) would give him strength. The secret knowledge which set such
individuals apart could not be obtained without instruction. In the late seventeenth
century in Ceram the Dutch missionary Valentijn described how children were taken
into the jungle for months at a time to be inculcated by magic rituals as 'devil priests'.
Equipped with these secret skills, the shaman was able to help protect the community
against witches and sorcerers who had somehow mastered the magic arts and were
ready to use them in harmful designs. Some sorcerers could fly, some could kill
without raising a hand, others could cast charms to make the most loving wife reject
her husband. In Maluku these alleged 'witches' were called collectively by the Malay
word suangi (ghost) and were frequently accused by a shaman in trance of having
caused illness or other calamities. 'When kings, dukes or ministers fall ill, they order
some suangi to be killed.'3 On one occasion missionaries said that over a hundred
people were put to death as suangi because the ruler had died.4 Surrounded by an
army of supernatural beings, some kindly but capricious and others simply
malevolent, and facing the added danger of hostile elements in human form, the

communities depicted by the missionaries placed enormous importance on the
possession of amulets and other objects believed to have protective powers. Among
the most widely valued weapons against magic were bezoar stones (called by Malays
mestika galiga), especially from a wild pig and deer. Similar attitudes were attached
to other objects such as old spears, krises and cloth, possession of which gave to the
owner an extra-human power. In Ambon, for instance, a very rare type of bracelet
known as mamakur, together with holy stones, Chinese porcelain and clothes worn by
deceased ancestors, were carefully preserved to ward off harm. Great credence was
also given to dreams and omens, by which messages from the non-human world
could be transmitted. If a sneeze on leaving the house was a warning of ill fortune,
how much more did the eclipse of the sun or moon presage impending catastrophe?
In Ternate, said the Dutch, people believed it was a portent of death, either of their
own relatives or the king himself. It was in the hope of appeasing the mighty forces
inherent in the heavenly bodies that the people of Makassar kept representations of
the sun and moon in their homes long after the court had adopted Islam. Evidence
from this period relating to indigenous religious practices is not as extensive for the
rest of Southeast Asia as it is for eastern Indonesia and the Philippines. It is
nonetheless apparent that many of the customs described by missionaries in the island
world were once common throughout the region. Animal and sometimes human
sacrifices to the spirits, for example, could be found in Burma at least into the
eighteenth century, despite Buddhist prohibitions against the taking of life. Although
some observances have disappeared, students of the modern period will certainly
discern much that is familiar in early missionary descriptions of native religions.
Indeed, any study of Southeast Asian cultures will stress the tenacity of indigenous
beliefs and will point out that for a number of societies they have remained a
completely satisfactory means of explaining the world. Such studies will also
emphasize that all the world religions which became established in Southeast Asia
succeeded because they not only made some accommodation with existing attitudes
but elaborated and enhanced them. In Burma, for instance, kings on behalf of their

subjects continued to honour the spirits of their forebears before statues covered with
gold in the belief that 'proper respect to the ancestors will bring prosperity'.5
Significantly, these ceremonies came to be held on Buddhist holy days even though
propitiation of the spirits of departed relatives receives no canonical sanction in
Buddhist teachings. In Vietnam (Dai Viet) by contrast, the classical Chinese works of
Confucianism elevated the indigenous veneration for deceased forebears into the
central focus of household ritual. 'The piety they display towards the souls of their
relatives,' said the Jesuit missionary Alexander of Rhodes, 'surpasses anything we
could imagine in Europe. They go to incredible lengths to find suitable places for
tombs . . . and spare no trouble or expense to lay out banquets for them after death.'6
Well before the arrival of Islam and Christianity, a dominant theme in Southeast
Asia's religious development is thus already apparent. The major features of the
indigenous belief system survived because for the most part they were able to coexist
or to be engrossed by the ritual and teachings associated with the world religions. In a
sense an alliance was struck between the new 'deities' and the old. A story found in
Burma and the Thai areas describes how the earth goddess, wringing water from her
hair, aids the Buddha to victory by flooding the armies of the evil Mara. In Burma
this conjoining of indigenous and imported ideas is symbolized by the common
depiction of the seated Buddha in the pose of touching the earth with his right hand,
the signal to the earth goddess to witness the merit of his previous lives.7 In much the
same way the elaboration of ceremonial and the incorporation of awe-inspiring
vocabulary had confirmed the importance of many existing customs. Beneath the
formalized Confucian Oath to Heaven carried out in fifteenth-century Vietnam, for
instance, can be seen traces of earlier allegiance rituals during which spirits were
invoked, animals sacrificed and their blood communally drunk. For Buddhists the
notion of kamma (karma) and the possibility of punishment for wrongful action
extending into future lives imbued the oath-taking ceremony with added solemnity. A
fourteenth-century inscription from the Thai kingdom of Sukothai thus describes a
pact with a neighbouring king calling on the ancestors and guardian spirits of waters

and caves to bear witness that all those who broke the oath were destined for hell and
would 'never expect to see the Buddha, the Dharma or the native religions. Indeed,
any study of Southeast Asian cultures will stress the tenacity of indigenous beliefs
and will point out that for a number of societies they have remained a completely
satisfactory means of explaining the world. Such studies will also emphasize that all
the world religions which became established in Southeast Asia succeeded because
they not only made some accommodation with existing attitudes but elaborated and
enhanced them. In Burma, for instance, kings on behalf of their subjects continued to
honour the spirits of their forebears before statues covered with gold in the belief that
'proper respect to the ancestors will bring prosperity'.5 Significantly, these
ceremonies came to be held on Buddhist holy days even though propitiation of the
spirits of departed relatives receives no canonical sanction in Buddhist teachings. In
Vietnam (Dai Viet) by contrast, the classical Chinese works of Confucianism
elevated the indigenous veneration for deceased forebears into the central focus of
household ritual. 'The piety they display towards the souls of their relatives,' said the
Jesuit missionary Alexander of Rhodes, 'surpasses anything we could imagine in
Europe. They go to incredible lengths to find suitable places for tombs . . . and spare
no trouble or expense to lay out banquets for them after death.'6 Well before the
arrival of Islam and Christianity, a dominant theme in Southeast Asia's religious
development is thus already apparent. The major features of the indigenous belief
system survived because for the most part they were able to coexist or to be
engrossed by the ritual and teachings associated with the world religions. In a sense
an alliance was struck between the new 'deities' and the old. A story found in Burma
and the Thai areas describes how the earth goddess, wringing water from her hair,
aids the Buddha to victory by flooding the armies of the evil Mara. In Burma this
conjoining of indigenous and imported ideas is symbolized by the common depiction
of the seated Buddha in the pose of touching the earth with his right hand, the signal
to the earth goddess to witness the merit of his previous lives.7 In much the same way
the elaboration of ceremonial and the incorporation of awe-inspiring vocabulary had

confirmed the importance of many existing customs. Beneath the formalized
Confucian Oath to Heaven carried out in fifteenth-century Vietnam, for instance, can
be seen traces of earlier allegiance rituals during which spirits were invoked, animals
sacrificed and their blood communally drunk. For Buddhists the notion of kamma
(karma) and the possibility of punishment for wrongful action extending into future
lives imbued the oath-taking ceremony with added solemnity. A fourteenth-century
inscription from the Thai kingdom of Sukothai thus describes a pact with a
neighbouring king calling on the ancestors and guardian spirits of waters and caves to
bear witness that all those who broke the oath were destined for hell and would 'never
expect to see the Buddha, the Dharma or the Sangha'. Similarly the amulets and
talismans which provided such protection against harmful forces became even more
effective as they absorbed the potency of beliefs from outside. In the Buddhist states
such items were commonly made in the form of the Buddha or a revered monk, and
larger Buddha images often became the palladium of the kingdom, special powers
being attributed to them. The persistence of spirits is the primary heritage of
indigenous religious beliefs, but increasingly spirits became drawn into a world
where the dominant religion was that patronized by the king and his court. In Burma
the official abode of a pantheon of 37 nats (spirits) was the Shwezigon pagoda at
Pagan, but the ruler gave each one a specific fief from whose inhabitants the nat
received propitiation. In return for this royal patronage and the people's homage,
spirits were expected to render service to the king and recognize the moral authority
of the court religions. In Vietnam a fourteenth-century Buddhist scholar related how
an earth spirit appeared to an earlier king in a dream, promising that his planned
attack on Champa would be successful if he sacrificed to her. With the aid of a
Buddhist monk the appropriate offerings were made, and subsequently a shrine was
established for the 'Imperial Earth Lady' in the capital. Legends suggest that this
process of political and religious integration sometimes met resistance. This same
scholar referred to 'depraved divinities' and 'evil demons' who had refused to act as
guardians of religion and who were therefore ordered to 'quickly depart to another

place'.8 In Buddhist history across the mainland the subjection of spirits to the
authority of Buddhism is a recurrent theme. The Padaeng Chronicle from the Shan
state of Kengtung recounts how one demon, displeased at the construction of the city,
'went to haunt the golden palace, defying attempts by the ruler to expel him'. Monks
were brought in to recite holy scriptures and strengthen the sacred religion. However,
the demon 'cameto haunt even more, the holy water putrified, the leaves of the magic
trees withered, and the Bhikkus were defeated'.9 The situation was rectified only
when a learned monk was brought in to carry out the purification of the Buddha's
religion and teaching (sasana). In 1527, the king of Lan San went so far as to ban
spirit worship and order the destruction of all sanctuaries associated with the spirit
(phi) cult, erecting a Buddhist temple in the capital where the shrine of the guardian
spirit had previously stood. Despite periodic questioning as to the extent to which
they should be honoured, spirits never showed any sign of disappearing from
Southeast Asia's religious life. The reason appears to lie in the relevance of spirit
belief to human existence here on earth. Whereas the great religions were concerned
with the future or, in the case of Confucianism, with questions of cosmic significance,
the attention of spirits could be drawn to the most mundane matter whether it
concerned illness or warfare, a trading venture or childbearing. In the early
seventeenth century Tagalog Filipinos gave Spanish missionaries a clear explanation
of the relationship between the lesser anito and Bathala, whom they had named as
supreme among the pantheon of spirits. 'Bathala', they said, 'was a great lord and no
one could speak to him. He lived in the sky, but the anito, who was of such a nature
that he come down here to talk to men, was to Bathala as a minister and interceded
for them.'10 A not dissimilar view of spirits is expressed in an early nineteenth-
century Burmese chronicle which describes how a king of Pagan was once advised by
a hermit to worship the Buddha when he looked to the future, but to the nats when he
looked to the present.11 The survival of spirit worship is particularly telling in the
case of Islam and Christianity, both of which place a primary doctrinal stress on

monotheism. These two religions were to become the dominant faiths in island
Southeast Asia, and it is to their history that we shall now turn.
1 Hubert Th. Th. M. Jacobs, A Treatise on the Moluccas (c. 1544), Rome, 1971, 75.
2 Cited in Pablo Fernandez, History of the Church in the Philippines (1521-1898),
Manila, 1979, 3.
3 Jacobs, A Treatise, 181.
4 Georg Schurhammer, Francis Xavier. His Life, His Times, III, trans. M. Joseph
Costelloe, Rome: Jesuit Historical Institute, 1980, 92.
5 Than Tun, trans., The Royal Orders of Burma, AD1598-1885, Kyoto: Center for
Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, 1983-7, IV. 144.
6 Solange Hertz, trans., Rhodes of Vietnam, Westminster, Maryland, 1966, 59.
7 John Ferguson, 'The symbolic dimensions of the Burmese sangha', Ph.D. thesis,
Cornell University, 1975, 24. The emphasis on the earth goddess legend found in
Southeast Asia is absent in orthodox Theravada Buddhist literature from India and Sri
Lanka.
8 Keith Taylor, 'Authority and legitimacy in 11th Century Vietnam' in David G. Marr
and A. C. Milner, eds, Southeast Asia in the 9th to the 14th Centuries, Canberra and
Singapore, 1986, 139-76.
9 Sao Saimong Mangrai, The Padaeng Chronicle and the Jengtung State Chronicle
Translated, Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, University of Michigan,
1981, 113-14.
C. Sketsa Islam di Indonesia
Islam came to Indonesia as the second of three more or less successive waves
of profound influence from outside. Of the three, it is the only one to have spread
quite generally and to have achieved an immediately visible and dominating imprint
on the Indonesian's thought and action. Even so, this imprint is not uniform
throughout the vast area of the Indonesian archipelago. There are notable regional
differences. On the other hand, Indonesia clearly constitutes one of the outer fringes

of the world of Islam. There is relatively much adaptation of Islam to local customs
and traditions; conversely there is relatively little positive contribution to Islam,
whether as doctrine or as practice, even so far as Indonesia proper is concerned, let
alone the more centrally located parts of the Islamic world.
Neither the chronology nor the nature of the spread of Islam in the Indonesian
archipelago is satisfactorily established, especially for the earlier period.
The nature of the spread is often described as a combination of two kinds of
process. At times it operates like an oil stain, with people (on an individual or on a
familial basis) gradually deciding to embrace Islam. At other times it goes by leaps
and bounds, with entire communities opting for Islam, often as the only available
means to hold their own, for example in the face of Western expansionism or other
critical events. Under the latter kind of circumstances, prompting or pressure by
Muslims may occasionally play a role. On rare occasions the use of force has been
recorded, but this appears as untypical. Whatever the nature of its spread, Islam
reached Indonesia as a fully-grown way of life: there was no necessity for an
Indonesian contribution to its tenets and practices.
During historic times, the cultural, religious, economic and political history of
the area has been marked to a large extent by three successive waves of influence
from outside. One originates from the Indian subcontinent and is expressed in terms
of the naturalist religions and philosophies of that area, especially Hinduism and
Buddhism. The second is Islamic; at first it originated from the Indian sub-continent
as well, but later on its source of inspiration shifted to the Middle East. The third is
European, especially Dutch; it has a Christian component, but this has not been
preponderant at all times. A fourth outside influence, not comparable to a wave
because of its more or less persistent nature and also its restricted impact, is the ages-
old Chinese presence in Indonesia. Of the three waves, the first was more or less
spent when the second arrived. But the third was already advancing when the second
was still in full flow; and the two have kept moving simultaneously ever since, up to
the present.

When each of these waves first arrived, the territory of the present-day state of
Indonesia was not distinct as such. To discuss these forces as impinging on
“Indonesia” is therefore an anachronism. Yet as a descriptive device it is not too
objectionable, for four reasons: (1) Irian (New Guinea) does not really count for
present purposes, (2) the Philippines, where Islam arrived through Indonesia, have
always had a separate status, (3) Malaya cannot be overlooked entirely but needs no
more than casual references here, (4) parts of islands in the archipelago not belonging
to the Indonesian Republic, like Northern Kalimantan (Borneo) or half of Timor, play
no significant part in Indonesian Islam
A common characteristic of all three waves is that their first approach was
prompted by trade activity; the third differs from the other two in that it has gradually
taken shape as political-economic conquest by foreigners, followed by colonization.
The three are alike once more in that none has resulted in a full disruption of
Indonesian continuity, but they differ again in that the bearers of both the Hindu-
Buddhist and the Islamic waves have gradually identified with, and become virtually
undistinguishable from, their new Indonesian setting, whereas the carriers of Western
impact have assiduously and to an increasing extent maintained a separate identity.
Moreover, of the first and the second, the second is now predominant and the first
greatly reduced both in visibility and in importance
As regards the chronology of the spread of Islam, it is generally assumed that
Islam gained a foothold on Indonesian soil, in the ports of the Northern tip of
Sumatra, towards the end of the 7th/13th century. Although the history of Muslim
trade with China is rich in vicissitudes, it has existed, more or less successfully, ever
since the 8th century AD. There is no reason to assume that it did not occasionally
involve parts of the Indonesian archipelago. In this connection one thinks in particular
of the spice trade, involving especially the Moluccas area. But it is only in 1292 that
the Venetian traveller Marco Polo, visiting the North Sumatran ports of Perlak,
Samudra and Lambri, refers to the former two as more or less Muslim port towns in
fully pagan surroundings. A stone dated 696/1297, made in Cambay (Gujerat), marks

the tomb of a ruler Malik al-Ṣāliḥ of Samudra-Pase, who must have been a Muslim.
The strong links between this area and India are also emphasized by another traveller,
the Moroccan MuslimIbn Baṭṭūṭa, 746/1345-6. The slow spread that would have been
likely, given such a foothold, gained a dramatic impetus by the islamization of the
coastal state of Malacca, originally the creation (around 1400 AD) of an expatriate
Javanese. A highly successful maritime empire, Malacca became a centre for the
diffusion of Islam in all directions. Another Cambay tomb stone covers the remains
of one MalikIbrāhīm, who died in Gresik, East Java, in 822/1419. Malaya and the
various parts of Northeast Sumatra were islamized in the coastal areas; and in the
early 10th/16th century some small Muslim principalities existed on the North coast
of Java. What introduced the decisive element of competition was the Portuguese
crusader spirit, established in India in 1498 and immediately carried Eastward in the
capture of Malacca—by then Muslim—in 1511. The third wave, when reaching
Indonesia, was engaged in a race against the second. Thus, the further spread of Islam
acquired a disproportionately important element of religious-commercial-political
strategy.
As regards Sumatra, the second half of the 10th/16th century saw the
islamization of the Lampung and Bengkulen areas; but it was only in 1919 that the
last group of people in the inland parts of SouthSumatra became Muslims.
Menangkabau was islamized soon after the fall of Malacca by people from North
Sumatra, the realm of Atjèh, who engaged in the spice trade. Indeed, during the
10th/16th and 11th/17th centuries the ever continuing spice trade served as the token
under which virtually every major commercial-political-religious event in the
archipelago took place. The Batak area, in central North Sumatra, took longer to be
penetrated. The southern reaches were islamized during the third quarter of the 19th
century, but the central part gave in slowly to Christianity. Somehow the islands West
of Sumatra, Nias, eluded the appeal of Islam and also to an extent that of Christianity
as well.

Kalimantan (Borneo) has kept its pagan interior up to the present. Its coastal
areas have been settled, and largely islamized, by people from various other¶ parts of
the archipelago, and particularly in the North and West, also by Chinese and Ḥaḍramī
Arabs. The various emerging realms had invariably a Muslim, sometimes Ḥaḍramī,
imprint. Notable amongst these were the realms of Banjarmasin, Kutai and Pontianak.
The former lasted from the middle of the 10th/16th to the middle of the 19th century,
and it included the Hulu Sungai area.
Celebes ( Sulawesi), in its turn, remained mostly pagan in its central area
where only the Toraja embraced Christianity. Its Northern tip became Christianized.
But its two Southern tips, containing important maritime areas—again in the spice
trade—, were islamized, mainly from Java, early in the 11th/17th century. This
spread was not without violence.
The Moluccas succumbed partly to Portuguese efforts at christianization and
then saw Catholicism replaced by Protestantism under Dutch pressure. But as from
the second half of the 16th century the realm of Ternate was a centre of diffusion of
Islam, both Westward and Eastward.
In the Lesser Sunda Islands, another clear demonstration is found of how the
spread of Islam was related to political vicissitudes. The phenomenon of emergent
realms imposing themselves by means of religious identification is visible even in
these relatively remote parts. Thus, the Western tip of Bali and also the islands of
Lombok and Sumbawa have been largely islamized at some time, while the
remaining islands have hardly been touched by Islam until recently.
In Java, the political overtones of islamization have been even more
noticeable. The Muslim coastal principalities already mentioned began as vassals of
the Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of the interior. Gradually, there was a shift in
supremacy. Once united under the realm of Demak, Muslim power could tip the
scales. As from the second half of the 10th/16th century, all of Java and also Madura
have become formally islamized: by leaps and bounds in the political centres and
much more slowly in remote mountain areas.

A shift, gradual but important, in the overtones of Indonesian Islam has
occurred with the onset of more effective and intensive direct contacts between
Indonesia and the heartlands of Islam. It is sometimes argued that this process, which
can perhaps be dated as beginning around 1875, is a re-islamization with orthodox
overtones, aimed at replacing the rather vague Indonesianized variants of earlier days.
In many places this must have meant the end to the sway of mystical ideas. At the
same time it opened the gate for the reformist and modernist ideas of those days.
A renewed stress on the social and political implications of the Islamic
identification, with consequences for the spread of Islam, has ensued from the
emergence of nationalism. Although no precise information is available on each of
the areas concerned, it is clear that since the emergence of nationalism, and especially
since the end of World War II (August 1945), the still pagan populations of Indonesia
have been under increasing pressure to embrace Islam. Having retained their separate
pagan identities for so long, their apparent need is now to become integrated in the
Indonesian nation, and the adoption of Islam appears propitious for the purpose.
Curiously enough, comparable considerations in more sophisticated urban settings do
not necessarily favour Islam. Indeed they prove here and there to favour a
Christianity no longer identified with a foreign colonial élite.
As to the nature of the reception of Islam in Indonesia, the earliest more or
less detailed data refer to Northern Sumatra in the early 17th century. There are
Islamic manuscripts and there are (Dutch) eye-witness reports. The area was clearly
still a major centre of diffusion of Islam. The data suggest a relative predominance of
mysticism of the philosophical-speculative kind, represented by various
brotherhoods; but it soon comes under the emergent attack of a more orthodox
theology
There has been much discussion on questions concerning the relative ease
with which the Islam was received and embraced by Indonesians; and also
concerning the way in which they then adapted it. Some of the argumentation follows
lines of historical parallelism. It has been suggested that Hindu-Buddhist influence,

having once become a noticeable mercantile force in parts of the archipelago, was
induced to assume yet another variant, namely as a ritual legitimization of existing
but changing power structures. Indeed, the priestly functions required for the purpose
were not without precedent in older Indonesian tradition. It has been suggested
furthermore that in comparable fashion the formal introduction of Islamic institutions
has been superimposed on the mere establishment of trading communities of Muslims
here and there in Indonesia, again as a means for existing or emergent powers to hold
their own against competitors. Such a suggestion might seem weak, inasmuch as it
could appear that the absence of a clergy and of the appropriate ritual should render
Islam less suitable for the purpose. But one notes that during an apparently critical
period of Muslim expansion Islamic scholars, and especially mystical philosophers,
have played decisive roles as powers behind the throne—for example in Java the nine
holy men (walī) credited with bringing Islam, and in Sumatra at least one mystic who
also served as prime minister.
The third, the Western wave of influence, has injected itself into the
archipelago as competitive, both commercially and religiously (that is, culturally),
against the spread of Islam. It thus might have offered the Indonesians an option as
regards the creed that could most suitably be adopted for purposes of
selfcontinuation; but Christianity may never have appeared so attractive as Islam, in
consequence of the continued non-integration of the Western element. In remaining
alien, it did not really lend itself to adoption with modification. Church authorities
have usually scorned attempts at a more or less sectarian, and mostly local, adoption
of Christian ideas. Besides, inasmuch as Christianity is to Muslims a superseded
religion, and one of protected status, they are not naturally inclined to embrace it.
In consequence, the religious map of Indonesia shows Christianity in a few
areas converted from paganism before the advent of Islam (for example, part of the
Moluccas, Northern Celebes, part of the Batak area of Sumatra) and amongst mixed
urban populations. It shows Hinduism-Buddhism entrenched in one area (central and
eastern Bali). It still shows survivals of paganism in some remote parts, mostly in the

interior of islands. And it shows Islam as the religion that has won out in the long run,
even though the political stress of the 1950's and 1960's has somewhat undermined its
predominance. It is often said that the Muslims constitute 90% of the Indonesian
population. Statistically unverifiable, this figure is generally accepted as a rough
estimate. Given a total population of about 130 millions, this¶ makes the Indonesians
one of the largest sections of the world Muslim community.
The specific characteristics of Islam thus spread and still spreading throughout
Indonesia are so difficult to sum up that time and again disputes have arisen, mostly
between non-Muslim observers, as to the question whether Indonesians are or are not
true Muslims. Those trying to argue a negative answer have tended to assert that
Islam is merely a veneer under which the solid base of Indonesian paganism, with
here and there a top layer of Hindu-Buddhism, remains fully distinct. If there is truth
in this, yet it does not detract from the efficacy and tenacity of the Islamic
identification of the Indonesian Muslims. The rationalization and legitimation even of
things possibly pre-Islamic in origin or conception yet currently effective will
invariably occur in terms of Islam and be generally deemed adequate as such.
In matters of law, the S̲h̲āfiʿī school reigns supreme, and seems never to have
suffered from real competition. Even so, the Indonesian situation may well have been
more markedly complex than situations elsewhere, especially because colonial
administration has tended to emphasize rather than to obscure such matters as the
discrepancy between formal Islamic law on the one hand and customary law on the
other. Indeed Islamic law has figured for long years as the least important of three
competing systems: customary law, as represented by quite numerous and very
different systems in the several parts of the archipelago, Dutch code law
(constitutional and penal, not civil) as more and more emphatically imposed for
purposes of uniform administration, and Islamic law itself, adopted by Indonesians
for quite limited purposes only, and to an extent varying with time and place. The
tendency has been to have each legal system represented by its own jurisdictional

arrangements. In the case of Islam this has tended to bring to the fore the category of
the scholars of Islam, the ʿulamāʾ or kyahi. Not only was this one way in which these
scholars of Islam managed to maintain part of their importance dating back to the pre-
colonial days of the early Muslim expansion; it also pitted them, unintentionally
perhaps yet quite effectively, against the traditional élites of pre-Islamic days, the
class who in Java are called prijaji. On the other hand, it is this very competition that
excludes for Indonesia the possibility of an important public role, as in the heartlands
of Islam, for religious functionaries like the muftī and the ḳāḍī.
What does appear, however, is the scholar in a slightly different, somewhat
less traditionally institutionalized role. The politically effective scholar is perhaps the
main common link between the political structure in the heartlands of Islam and those
of Indonesian tradition as modified, here and there, by Hindu-Buddhist influence. At
the same time, he has made for continuity in the history of Indonesian Islam ever
since its adoption. He is the power behind the ruler, at once effectuating and
rendering visible the Islamic character of the state. It does not matter, in this
connection, that the nature and operations of the state in question remain conceived
along typically and traditionally Indonesian lines. Thus it is to him, for example in the
semi-mythical form of the nine walīs of Java, that the islamization of Indonesia is
mostly ascribed. And it is again upon him, once he has regained his public voice
through modern organization, that the task devolves to speak the binding or
unbinding word on political authority. It is he, once more, who plays a leading role in
recent and contemporary political organizations of Muslims.
Of the legal institutions of Islam, the waḳf should be mentioned at this point.
There are no specifically Indonesian provisions or uses, even though the institution
occurs quite generally. It is assumed that the economic importance of property thus
set aside is less than in many other Islamic countries. The matter of guardianship has
tended to be difficult, as almost everywhere else.

Turning to Islamic education, one can distinguish two main types. One is the
traditional boarding school, the pesantrèn, also called madrasa; the other is more
modern education as provided originally by private organizations as for example
Muhammadīya, to be mentioned below. The latter type now embraces the full range
from elementary to higher education. As regards the former type, some of its features
are perhaps still reminiscent of the Persian or Turkish dervish conventicle. But the
preponderant feature of the pesantrèn, in its turn perhaps reminiscent of the Indian
ashram, is to be a centre of learning and of education for pupils from nearby and—if
it is well-known—also from far away. The leader, kyahi, is primarily the scholar who
retains his authority over his pupils even after having granted the id̲j̲āza [q.v.] or
licence to teach. He will be the spiritual leader and mentor at all times. In the notion
of the teacher, the Indian idea of the guru has come to emphasize the Islamic respect
for the ʿālim. There has traditionally been unorganized, yet more or less regular,
intercourse between the best of these schools and the centres of learning at Mecca and
Cairo: the former reflecting, with a time-lag, what went on in the latter. It has proved
extremely difficult, both in colonial days and later, to forge a link between this type
of schooling and so-called modern education. This has by and large worked to the
detriment of traditional Muslimeducation. Gradually, the name madrasa has been
adopted for religious schools conforming to a more “modern” pattern of education.
By 1954, there were three levels of these, namely elementary (13,057 schools),
intermediate (776), and secondary (16).
Another peculiar aspect of Indonesian Islam is architecture. With a few fairly
recent exceptions, of imitation of Arab style (e.g., Medan, Kebajoran), mosques in
Indonesia show a style that illustrates nothing better than the continuity from pre-
Islamic into Islamic periods. Mosques like the one of Kudus recall Hindu-Javanese
building styles, even though they are now unequivocally recognized as Islamic
buildings. A common feature is the roof in three or four layers or tiers, almost
pagoda-like, that contributes significantly to the circulation of fresh air. An entirely

Indonesian feature is the use of the bedug, a huge drum, to announce the times of
prayer even to those who might fail to hear the ad̲h̲ān. On the other hand, the various
grades of mosque personnel are hardly exceptional.
As regards the fulfilment of religious obligations Indonesians are again not
very special or exceptional. The ṣalāt is variably performed, as everywhere; the
payment of zakāt is haphazard. In matters of ritual purity Indonesians are relatively
strict, perhaps on account of traditions older than Islam. Also the pilgrimage has
always tended to be an attraction and a challenge to Indonesians. Relatively many,
including women, will perform it when circumstances allow. Indeed the pilgrim may
achieve a kind of special status in his community. The ḥajjī is a potential leader of
opinion if he returns to a relatively small and remote community. The pilgrim will not
enjoy great prestige unless he is at the same time more or less learned in Islamic
doctrine. This applies the more since the pilgrimage has become safer and more
within the means of relatively many: all this thanks to means of transport made
available by non-Muslim Westerners. The attraction of the pilgrimage is
demonstrated by the tendency for Indonesians to borrow money for the journey, in
contravention of the explicit injunctions of Islam.
Mysticism remained influential for quite some time. In Northern Sumatra, its
sway must have stretched at least into the first decades of the 20th century. In
Southern Celebes, it seems to have lasted almost until the Japanese occupation. In
these areas there are indications of the existence of local chapters of various mystic
orders, including the more famous ones from the heartlands of Islam. The list of
brotherhoods is impressive and includes such famous names as S̲h̲ādiliyya,
Ḳadariyya, Naḳs̲h̲bandiyya, Ḵh̲alwatiyya, Samaniyya, Rifāʿiyya, Tid̲j̲āniyya. There is
however no effective record of their organization, let alone of their functioning. Nor
is it clear what role they have played in the spreading of Islam or, for that matter, in
society at large.

The two areas referred to differ from the third area influenced by mysticism,
Java, in one major respect. In Javanese Islamic mystical writings a clear and decisive
adaptation of mystical ideas is manifest. At the point where Sumatran took over from
Indian mystics, not much of a break occurred; but here, one sees a complete change in
the spiritual climate. On the other hand, this specifically Javanese mysticism does not
seem to have spread to other islands.
Everywhere, orthodox teachings have gradually gained the upper hand.
Unfortunately, this process and its causes have hitherto eluded historical research.
Accordingly, it comes as something of a surprise to see that in the middle of the
twentieth century numerous organizations of a more or less esoteric (kebatinan)
nature flourish, several of them adorned by names of famous mystical brotherhoods,
that seem to attract quite a few urban intellectuals.
A few minor special features remain to be listed. First and quite interestingly,
there are few locally scattered indications of S̲h̲īʿī influence; Ḥasan-Ḥusayn
celebrations, for all practical purposes in no regular relationship to S̲h̲īʿī doctrine,
occur in certain places in the Menangkabau area, West Sumatra, which owing to its
matriarchical pattern of customary law has seen several events in which Islamic
doctrine played a rather exposed role.
Another feature, rather specifically central Javanese, is the so-called wong
putihan, or “white (in the sense of pious) person”. Relatively few in numbers, these
people are notable and indeed conspicuous by their devotion to (orthodox) Islam:
they tend to congregate in the neighbourhood of a mosque.
After this listing of more or less traditional features of Indonesian Islam it is
necessary to consider recent and contemporary developments. The gradually
increasing efficacy of colonial rule had its consequences. For example, the relative
importance of the various centres of diffusion of Islam were affected by the
circumstances that Dutch commercial and political action transferred the centre of
operations in the archipelago to Java, with the hitherto relatively unimportant port of

Jakarta (Batavia) as the key point. Again, the response to Dutch expansion, becoming
manifest off and on as resistance in various forms (including occasional violence, for
example the war against Dipo Negoro in Java, 1825-30), tended to assume Muslim
character. The very polarization between Dutch impact and continuing Indonesian
identity enhanced a response in terms of Islamic identification on the Indonesian side.
This tendency becomes more predominant around the beginning of the 20th century,
in two forms. The earlier one is more or less forcible resistance, often in the name of
Islam. The later one, to be mentioned below, is political organization, usually with its
primary goals stated in terms other than resistance, again often in the name of Islam.
In the latter case, Islam tends to become instrumental, a legitimation for a nationalism
that may or may not articulate itself in Islamic terms.
The turning-point was, in a sense, the period of enlightenment in colonial
policy, which was at the same time the period of more or less forcible introduction of
effective Netherlands-Indies administration in parts of the archipelago hitherto not
really controlled. Most notable for its expressly Muslim resistance was the so-called
Atjèh war of 1873-1904. This is also the period during which the Netherlands Indies
authorities, guided by the famous orientalist and islamologist C. Snouck Hurgronje,
adopted a new policy. Its aim was, in the last resort, to promote effective Dutch rule
by removing Islamic motives for resistance; or, to express it more crudely, to rule
effectively notwithstanding the potential or actual adverse implications, for such rule,
of the fact that so many Indonesians identify as Muslims.
During roughly the same period, Indonesian Islam shows a variety of
tendencies, as is to be expected in times of turbulence. To begin with, Indonesia has
seen the reflexion of the so-called reformist or modernist tendencies in the heartlands
of Islam, even though no Indonesian thinkers have arisen who could be compared
with modernistic Muslim leaders in an area like the Indian subcontinent. It has even
seen its own variant of the breach between the two components of this tendency: one
ending up in the rationalism of a Muslim assertion of a predominantly political
nature, the other in a most typically Indonesian variant of fundamentalism entrenched

in local chauvinism. The former trend will be discussed in more detail below. The
latter, somewhat belated in its effective manifestation, appeared after the end of the
Japanese occupation, first in the remote mountains near the South coast between
Central and Western Java in the form of a small, entrenched state, the Negara Dār ul-
Islām founded by Kartosuwiryo in 1948 (suppressed in 1962), and then also as a
militant movement in areas like Southern Celebes and Kalimantan (1949). It was
subdued, but not necessarily eliminated so far as its true inspiration goes, by the
Indonesian state.
In the second place, a range of more or less sectarian movements and
organizations appeared. These were inadequately studied at the time. A common trait
seems to be that if they strive for the reassertion of the Islamic identity, this does not
so much aim at determining the full round of life but rather at providing adequate
shelter under adverse circumstances. Some of this sectarianism is imported from
elsequere in the world of Islam. Wahhābism see wahhābiyya], a forerunner here as
everywhere else, had made its influence felt in Sumatra and also in Java already by
the end of the 12th/18th century. The Indian sect of the Aḥmadiyya [q.v.] maintained
missionaries in Indonesia for a number of years before and after the Japanese
occupation; but it does not appear to have reached more than a handful of more or
less marginal individuals, mostly in towns. Not unlike the Aḥmadiyya in their basic
inspiration, various sects have emerged on Indonesian soil in the course of time, each
representing some syncretistic attempt to harmonize elements from various sources
(old-Indonesian pagan, Hindu-Buddhist, Christian, Muslim) into religious-
philosophical teachings, not without mystical or even magical (invulnerability!)
elements, to satisfy thirsty souls. The contemporary kebatinan movements have been
mentioned. Some parts of Indonesia are clearly more fertile in this respect than
others; at all times the appeal of sects of this kind is mostly local. It is not unusual to
find the leaders of such sects described as kyahi, the word that, as stated, also serves
as the Indonesian translation of ʿālim, scholar in the sciences of Islam.

In the third place, there is the phenomenon, already alluded to, of Islam
serving as an ideological support for political action. This places Islam in a somewhat
odd context, namely as one out of three main competing bases for the political self-
assertion that nationalism purports to achieve. Another is Marxism, whether in the
strict (Russian or Chinese) communist form or in more diluted, socialist-revisionist
presentations. The third is nationalism pure and simple, which assumes the goals of
national self-assertion as against Western domination to be a sufficient ideology in its
own right: in the last resort, a kind of anti-ideology, as represented, for example, in
Sukarno's ideal of the ongoing revolution. In this connection, a source of confusion
exists in the circumstance that Islam as an ideology is not necessarily restricted to one
of the three basic positions, but will in fact tend to permeate each of the others as
well, if only to an unclear yet limited extent. The point is that whilst the three
formulae are mutually exclusive, and thus fiercely competitive, they are at the same
time necessarily comprehensive, in the sense that each must make a point of
embracing any of the specific features of the others, lest it forfeit public appeal. After
all, each is, by its own standards, the movement that embodies the entire nation in its
effort to reassert itself. Indeed, before independence they were for all practical
purposes one and undistinguishable.
The actual manifestation, during the four decades prior to World War II, of
the three tendencies just described, has been greatly influenced by the adoption of
Western organizational patterns and communication devices. This is the period of
emerging Muslim organizations of many different kinds. Sometimes (as in the case of
most sects) they are regionally confined; but not seldom they aim at, and achieve, a
nation-wide scope.
The first properly Indonesian association, a Javanese one with mainly educational
purposes, was founded in 1908. It was followed in 1911 by the first typically Muslim
organization, Sarekat Dagang Islam, later Sarekat Islam. Conceived as an
organization of (small) traders, it was initially economic rather than political, and
anti-Chinese rather than anti-Dutch. Within five years it was perhaps still to some

extent religiously determined and kyahi-influenced: but to all intents and purposes it
had become a political party of a clearly nationalist character.
The year 1912 saw the establishment of a somewhat different organization,
the Muḥammadiyya. Guided by such men as K. H. Dahlan, it represented an attempt
to spread amongst Indonesian Muslims the modernism then fashionable in Egypt and
India. Given the Indonesian setting, this movement was perhaps somewhat more
orthodox-puritanical than similar organizations elsewhere, and also somewhat more
concerned with education. Significantly, these and other organizations tended to
operate a number of subsidiaries, through which to reach special categories of people,
such as women and youth.
A third Islamic organization emerged in 1926, under the name of Nahdat ul-
ʿUlamāʾ. It was meant to serve as a stronghold of more traditionalist orthodox ideas as
upheld by the great majority of established scholars. But whilst competing for public
support with the other two and whilst unable to avoid acquiring political significance,
it was prevented from becoming fundamentalist in the same way as, much later, the
Dār ul-Islāmmovement did.
Among the three organizations, as also in connexion with other political
organizations, a pattern of unsteady and not always easy relationships developed; the
mounting significance of nationalism tended to make for a special kind of unity,
effective specifically as against the impact of Dutch colonial rule. Together, these
organizations have succeeded in galvanizing the highly varied Indonesian population
into an emergent nation, and one that in asserting itself in response to colonialism,
however developmentally oriented that might be, acted in certain respects as more
uniformly Muslim. On the other hand, the simultaneous existence of important non-
Muslim parties and organizations proves that there were limits to political unity in the
name of Islam.
A shift in organizational alignment occurred in 1937, with the
Muḥammadiyya and the Nahdat ul-ʿUlamāʾ jointly creating the Majlis ul-Islām il-Aʿlā

Indonesia (MIAI), the Supreme Islamic Council of Indonesia. This competed with the
third organization, then called Partai Sarekat IslamIndonesia, until their merger in
1939. But in 1938 a new Partai IslamIndonesia had been created, formed to some
extent from the earlier Jong Islamieten Bond (Young Muslims' Association).
The Japanese interlude, 1942-5, had a double significance for Indonesian Islam.
Envisaged in the long run, it hastened decolonization in a manner entirely
unconnected with Japanese intentions. Seen in the short run, it brought a critical
change in Islamic policy on the part of the ruling authorities; and the change was not
quite the same in Java as it was in the other parts of the country.
The Islamic policy of the Japanese forces was a relatively well-prepared two-
pronged attempt to solve two problems at once: to nip any Muslim opposition in the
bud, and to obtain if possible public allegiance through making Muslim leaders of
public opinion rally to the Japanese cause. A specially trained Japanese staff was in
charge. On the one hand the existing organizations were abolished and a series of
efforts made to replace them by one comprehensive organization that would abide by
Japanese instructions. On the other hand, the kyahi category were made into special
targets of opinion-control. This went to the extent of making them attend special
courses. In order to support the activities concerned, a network of offices was
maintained throughout the area, as a kind of perverted development from the one
Office for Indigenous Affairs that the Dutch had maintained previously.
Notwithstanding all this, there was an element of wavering on basic issues in the
Japanese Islamic policy that only strengthened the urge of Indonesian Muslims to
assert themselves regardless of outside pressures, and that did nothing to help them
articulate this urge.
The end of the Japanese occupation, in August 1945, ushered in Indonesian
independence, in two stages. The emergency declaration of independence of 17
August [see dustur, p. 665] resulted in an Indonesian Republic, really effective in part
of Java only, vying with Dutch attempts to set Indonesia on its feet again according to
a new formula. Sovereignty was officially transferred in 1949, to the Indonesian state.

During the intermediary stage, the two claimants for authority were equally
preoccupied with soliciting the allegiance of Muslims; and in the process Muslims
were largely left to their own devices in their attempts to overcome the disruptive
effects of Japanese-imposed organization and ideas.
Since independence, Indonesian Islam has played mainly two roles in public
life. On the one hand, it is one of the main tributaries to the national identity and
indeed to national ideology. The Pantja Sila, the five-point national doctrine, has been
carefully phrased so as to allow Muslims to recognize it as theirs, without alienating
non-Muslims. One of the five points is the recognition of the overlordship of the
Almighty. Yet as an ideological creed it stands for a nationalist ideology, which is in
the last resort competitive with Islamic ideology and which as such is a rallying point
for Christian and other groups. All this is reflected at the more institutional plane.
Insofar as independent Indonesia had to have its own Islamic policy, and one
necessarily different from both the Dutch and the Japanese policies, it manifested
itself as part of the activities of the newly installed Ministry of Religion. Intended to
cater for the needs of any religious community, this ministry has inevitably acquired a
strong Muslim imprint, and this with a kyahi shading.
On the other hand, Islam has become one of the three major political forces in
the country, in the sense that it has proved possible to use people's identification as
Muslims as a means to rally them around certain political causes, not necessarily of a
clearly or exclusively Islamic nature. This is sometimes explained as an after-effect of
denominationalism in the Dutch political party system; but the true explanation may
well lie in the traditional role of Islam in the framework of Indonesian self-
identification. A significant occurrence in this connexion is the Piagam Djakarta of
June 1945, a kind of preliminary document to the constitution, in which mention is
made of Islamic law as having to be applied to all Indonesian Muslims. As a political
force Islam finds itself competing with two other forces already mentioned, namely
Communism and ideological nationalism. Under these conditions there does not
appear to exist an immediate urge for Muslim leaders to elaborate and expound

relatively novel ideas of an explicitly and consistently Islamic nature. In effect, the
pre-war pattern of more or less exclusively political organizations of Muslims has
returned, with names somewhat modified—this also due to Japanese interference—
and still with the same unstable mutual relationships.
The Mashumi (Majlis Shuro Muslimin Indonesia), the Japanese replacement
for MIAI, was at first reorganized into Partai Politik IslamIndonesia [see ḥizb, p.
534], and as such considered itself the one and only political organization of
Muslims. But it did not long remain so. The Partai Sharikat IslamIndonesia once
again came back, thus upholding a record of vitality dating back to 1912 and
unhampered by earlier defections (1923, 1932, 1936, 1938). As a more or less local
organization for Menangkabau (Sumatra), there emerged the Partai Islam “Persa-¶
tuan Tarbiyah Islamiya”. In 1952, the Nahdat al-ʿUlamāʾ broke away from the
Mashumi and established itself as an independent party, thus resuming a tradition
begun in 1926. Under the political pressures of the day, the Mashumi and PSII were
suppressed and an attempt at a reunification of the remaining organizations was made
in 1959. After the end of the Sukarno régime, yet another Islamic party emerged in
1967, the Partai Muslimin Indonesia. The similarity of political platforms as between
these several parties is such that it is not really clear which could be identified as
fundamentalist and which as more or less “modernist”. Each and every one figures
primarily as the political organ of all the Muslims of the country, with a degree of
mutual competition as the inevitable result.
Under the circumstances, yet another dimension of Islamic life demands
attention. This is the need for the consciously pious individual Muslim to envisage,
and accordingly to mould, life on the socio-economic and political plane in
accordance with the teachings of Islam. So far, some of this need finds expression
(but hardly any effectuation) in the kebatinan movements already mentioned. But
political parties and other available institutional forms seem hardly equipped to
satisfy it. (C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze)

BAB III
SEJARAH INTELEKTUAL MUSLIM INDONESIA
A. Formasi Intelektual Muslim Indonesia
B. Intelektual Muslim Indonesia
1. Nurdin al-Raniri
2. ‘Abd al-Rauf al-Sinkili
Nama lengkapnya adalah ‘Abd Al Rauf bin ‘Ali Al Jawi Al Fansuri Al
Sinkili.1
Menurutnya tidak diketahui secara pasti tahun kelahirannya. Hanya saja
berdasarkan dugaan Rinkes dan hal ini disepakati mayoritas para pengkaji Al Sinkili
ia diperkirakan lahir sekitar tahun 1615 M.
Masih menurut Azra, Al Sinkili mengawali pendidikannya bersama ayahnya
yang juga seorang ulama kenamaan di Kesultanan Aceh pada masa itu. Ada
1
Azyumardi Azra, Jaringan Ulama Timur Tengah dan Kepulauan Nusantara Abad XVII dan XVIII
Melacak Akar-Akar Pembaruan Pemikiran Islam di Indonesia, Cet V (Bandung: Mizan), 1999, 189.

kemungkinan, lanjut Azra, ia sempat mengenyam pendidikan di Fansur sebelum
melanjutnya kembara intelektualnya ke Tanah Suci mulai dari Doha Qatar, Yaman,
hingga Makkah dan Madinah. Di kawasan inilah ia terlibat aktif menimba aneka
pengetahuan agama dengan beberapa ulama terkemuka sehingga membentuk jaringan
keilmuan yang luas. Salah satu ulama yang banyak memengaruhi pembentukan
intelektualnya adalah Ibrahim Al Kurani Jika menurut dugaan Al Sinkili berangkat
ke kawasan Arabia sekitar tahun 1642 M dan kembali ke Aceh tahun 1661 M, maka
hampir dua dasawarsa ia menempa diri sebelum mengembangkan karirnya sebagai
ulama terkemuka di Nusantara.2
Melanjutkan uraian Azra, kehadiran Al Sinkili di tanah kelahirannya segera
saja menarik pihak istana untuk menempatkannya sebagai Qadhi Malik Al Adli atau
Mufti yang berwenang mengelola peradilan agama. Setelah dinyatakan layak menurut
pandangan pihak istana, maka dengan mudah ia menggenggam jabatan tersebut.
Tugas utamanya menangani administrasi masalah-masalah keagamaan.3
Al Sinkili termasuk figur prolifik sehingga produktif menulis berbagai karya
dalam beragam disiplin pengetahuan. Di antara karya pentingnya adalah Tarjuman Al
Mustafid di bidang tafsir yang disebut-sebut sebagai karya pionir bidang ini dalam
bahasa Melayu, Syarh Hadits Arba’in dan Al Mawa’izh Al Badi’ah dalam bidang
hadits, Daq’iq Al Huruf dan Kifayat Al Muhatajin ila Masyrab Al Muwahhidin Al
Qa’ilin bi Wahdat Al Wujud, dan Risalah Mukhtasharah fi Bayan Syurut Al Syaikh
wa Al Murid pada bidang tasawuf, serta Mir’ah Al Thullab fi Tashil Ma’rifat Al
2
Azra, Jaringan Ulama…, h. 190-196
3
Penunjukan Al Sinkili sebagai Mufti Kesultanan setelah ia lolos verifikasi yang dilakukan Katib Seri
Raja bin Hamzah Al Asyi, pejabat Keureukon Katiboy Mulo yang menangani bidang peradilan. Sistem
peradilan di Aceh telah terbentuk sejak masa Sultan Iskandar Muda yang terdiri dari empat macam
pengadilan yaitu: pengadilan yang berwenang menangai masalah sengketa piutang berikut sanksinya
yang digelar selama enam hari dalam seminggu bertempat di dekat Masjid Raya, pengadilan kriminal
yang dipimpin Orangkaya (pejabat/bangsawan istana), pengadilan agama yang dipimpin Qadi, dan
Alfandeque (pangadilan niaga) di kawasan pelabuhan dipimpin Orangkaya Laksamana yang
menangani sengketa perdagangan. Lihat: Anthony Reid, An Indonesian Frontiers Acehness and Other
Histories of Sumatra (Singapore: Singapore University Press), h. 103-104. Apabila melihat isi naskah
MT yang membahas masalah muamalah, munakahah, dan jinayah, maka terdapat kemungkinan ia
dijadikan pedoman para hakim di lembaga pengadilan tersebut meskipun bukti-bukti ke arah itu belum
ditemukan.

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