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Salafism is a revivalist current in Sunni Islam rooted in the teachings of the fourteenth century Hanbalite jurist Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah and the eighteenth century Arabian reformer Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. Salafis condemn Sufism (Islamic Mysticism) and most forms of popular Muslim piety, including music, as shirk (polytheism) and unbelief. The Wahhabi variant of Salafism is the only form of Islam permissible in Saudi Arabia and the ideology underlying ISIS and other violent extremist movements. This essay shows that despite the expenditure of vast sums by the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments and NGOs efforts to promote Salafi teachings and armed struggles by ISIS and others to impose them, Salafism has a very limited popular appeal. It is based on textual, ethnographic and survey data from two of the most populous Muslim countries, Indonesia and Nigeria. It also shows that efforts to promote Salafism have led to a resurgence of traditional Sufi oriented piety, especially devotional music traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting Arabic clothing styles and in other ways mimicking Saudi Arabian cultural practice is one of the defining characteristics of the Indonesian tarbiyah (Islamic education) movement and the more general influence of Saudi Arabian Wahhabism and other forms of Middle Eastern style Salafism that has emerged in Indonesia since the early 1980s. This paper includes a translation of and extended commentary on a short story by Professor Komaruddin Hidayat of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta that is highly critical of this trend. This is a counter narrative that references two Indonesian national heroes: Kyai Hasyim Asy'ari (1875-1947) one of the founders of Nahdatul Ulama, the country's largest Muslim organization and Mohammad Hatta (1902-1980), the first Vice President. Professor Hidayat uses a short story to make the point that Islamic authenticity need not be based on the emulation of Saudi Arabian cultural practices and that Islam, Indonesian cultures, and nationalism are entirely compatible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that in practice, concepts of magico-spiritual power (Javanese: kesekten; Indonesian: kesaktian) are linked with sexuality, particularly female sexuality, in some segments of contemporary Central and East Javanese Muslim society. Few scholars have turned attention to the interconnectedness of these seemingly contradictory topics. Feminist studies tend to focus on the ways in which women locate themselves within and critique Sharia-based discursive and social orders, without considering the roles that magico-spiritual power and associated practices play in these Islamic systems or in Islam in a more general sense. Similarly, male scholarship that considers the cultural relevance of Islam and magic rarely refers to gendered and sexual dimensions as praxis from a feminist perspective. By drawing on examples of 'magical women' including the Javanese spirit queen of the southern ocean Gusti Kanjeng Ratu Kidul, the historical Hindu figure Ken Dedes, and contemporary ritual sex practices at a Muslim saint's grave, we show how women, female spiritual beings and female sexuality, and sexuality in general, can be considered sources of magico-spiritual power in Muslim Java. Our arguments conclude that in Javanese Islam, transgression of Sharia sexual norms can be both a sign and a source of magico-spiritual power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the young state of Indonesia, old local authorities like sultanates have reasserted themselves. This reemergence of localized authority does not necessarily conflict with nation building. Survey research among adult samples ( N = 399) in the neighbouring sultanates of Yogyakarta and Surakarta found that social representations of history were implicated in the relationship between monarchism and national identity. In Yogyakarta (but not Surakarta), a positive intersection between local and national representations of history was found: events and people associated with the sultanate were also regarded as instrumental to the birth of the nation. In Yogyakarta, support for the sultanate was higher than in Surakarta: respondents argued that Yogyakarta had the culture and history required to justify status as a special autonomous region. In Yogyakarta but not Surakarta, monarchism was positively related to national identity and trust in national democratic political institutions. The intersection between local and national representations of history, especially concerning the instrumentality of the local monarchy in giving birth to the nation in Yogyakarta, created historical continuity/positive intersectionality where the superordinate nation and the local monarchy are networked in a system of power and meaning that lends trust in democratic institutions from monarchism, and strengthens national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of demonization and hate speech by the Front Pembela Islam (FBI) in Indonesia to legalize violent attacks to individuals and organization that they consider to be religiously deviant or sinful. It states that the discursive frame from the Majelis Ulama Indonesia has enabled FBI to avoid being recognized as terrorist organization because of their violence and demonization campaigns. The civil and uncivil modes of the discourse and praxis of FBI were also discussed.

While Islamist forms of terrorism have received a great deal of attention from scholars, insider accounts by indigenous scholars are still under-represented. This Special Issue of the Asian Journal of Social Psychology brings together three articles on religious terrorism and sacred violence in Indonesia, the world's most populous Islamic state. They bring together qualitative methods, including interviews with terrorist members of KOMPAK and Jemaah Islamiyah (including the Bali Bombers), with quantitative methods using structural equation modelling to explain a national representative sample's attitudes towards sacred violence. The articles converge towards an indigenous theory of Islamist terrorism for Indonesia involving three steps: (i) existential threat (triggered by violence inflicted on Muslims, nationally or internationally, and perceptions of the impurity of the secular Indonesian government), (ii) self-categorization of the world into infidels and believers (thus arguing that the current situation is a state of war where violence against non-combatants is justified), and (iii) jihadi ideology as the trigger for turning existential threat into religious violence. It is the interpretation of scripture offered by trusted leaders, often reinforced by oaths of obedience, rather than scripture itself that fuels the indigenous psychology of violent (lesser) jihad presented here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with two faces of Hadhrami dakwah in post- New Order Indonesia. One is that of Habib Syech bin Abulkadir Assegaf (Habib Syech) who promotes traditional Sufi piety and opposes religious and political violence. The other is that of Al-Habib Muhammad Rizieq bin Hussein Syihab (Habib Rizieq), one of the founders of Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front, FPI). He is known as much for his politics as for his piety. Both are examples of the new institutional and ritual forms that Sufism takes and the increasing significance of Hadhrami sayyid in post-New Order Indonesia. They lead social movements located in new, primarily urban, social spaces. As is true of many religiously inspired social movements they draw on and seek to amplify emotions. Habib Syech stresses love and compassion; Habib Rizieq, fear and hatred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1965 the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was the second largest communist party in Asia. Indonesian politics was predicated on a precarious balance of nationalist (PNI), Muslim (Masyumi) and communist (PKI) political parties, the military, and the country's charismatic president, Sukamo (Feith 2006; Lev 1967). In the wake of an abortive coup on 30 September, the military, Muslim, and nationalist death squads killed at least 200,000 people thought to be party members or supporters. This orgy of violence brought the authoritarian military-dominated New Order government of Indonesia's second president, Soeharto, to power. He was to rule Indonesia with an iron hand until 1998. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a well established part of Indonesian religio-political discourse. Anti-Zionism if not outright anti-Semitism is foundational; Israel has few friends in Indonesia. Various media reactions to the 2008-2009 Gaza attacks are placed within wider ethnographic and linguistic contexts to explore how news is spun in a cultural system of conflict. In becoming part of a cultural system of conflict, discourses about Israel take on the properties of myth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper refutes the linkage of Muslim education in Indonesia with radicalization, and addresses the commonly held, if incorrect, perception that theological conservatism has a causal relationship with violent extremism. Rather than a causal agent for extremism, Muslim education in Indonesia tends to operate as a protective mechanism against radicalization, as does participation in vibrant religious and cultural celebrations. Students attending the secular universities are most susceptible to extremist discourse, through the process of re-Islamization and the development of a stark and detached rational understanding of Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the ways in which tropes of the Crusades are used in contemporary Indonesian Islamic discourse. It is based on the analysis of contemporary textual materials and on ethnographic research conducted between 1978 and 2009. It is argued that tropes of the Crusades and now linked to an Islamist discourse that is Anti-Western and Anti-Semitic and that they are employed as mythological archetypes that link the colonial past with contemporary Indonesian politics and world affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indonesian democratic transition of the late 1990s led to the formation of numerous political parties many of which are religious. Only the Islamic parties are politically significant. It is possible to distinguish two basic types of religious parties. Some are based on explicitly religious principles; others are nominally secular but are led by religious figures or appeal to particular religious communities. While Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, Islamic parties have had only limited appeal. The openness of the political system and the ability of minor parties to enter coalitions has provided their leaders access to office and patronage. Even the Islamist Justice and Prosperity Party that resembles the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has chosen political participation instead of confrontation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the ways Indonesian hadith translations are used to legitimize cooperation between the conservative Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the secular government. Critiques of modernism, radical activist rhetoric and kejawen Islam; Reports of the sayings and the religious and social behavior of the Prophet Muhammad; Methodological perspectives; Hadith scholar Imam Nawawi; Exposition of hierarchy.