Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

Muslim Thought and Practice in Contemporary Indonesia 1 8 5flexible structures of Islamic thought, piety, and ethical and legal traditions.Muslims in contemporary Indonesia have also taken a leading role in findingn e w, Qur’an-based solutions to the challenges of the modern world faced bypeople of all faiths. Many Indonesian Muslims, like most religious people,want to apply the ideals of their faith to the realities of their lives and communities.Naturally, the specific ways these ideals are envisioned and implementedvary. Using the comparative terminology of Indonesianist CliffordGeertz (1968), some of the styles of religious thought and practice now developingin contemporary Islamic Southeast Asia, which have strong ties with thepast, are now seen by Muslims in other regions of the world as models for ashared future in an increasingly interconnected world.The Coming of Islam and Formative Institutions of LearningIslam came to Indonesia through networks of world trade. There are recordsof small Muslim settlements in Indonesia dating to the first centuries of Islamichistory. Significant numbers of local conversions to Islam, however, didnot occur until the fourteenth century. By that time, Southeast Asia had alreadylong been at the nexus of important seafaring networks that extendedacross the Indian Ocean, from East Africa and the Middle East to the coast ofthe Indian subcontinent and China (Reid 1988–1993). From 1300 to 1700,many societies in Indonesia integrated Islam into their most basic institutionsand religious traditions, including educational, political, and ethical and legals y s t e m s .Muslim students and teachers traveling between Southeast Asia and theMiddle East supported these developments. Scholars traveled to study withrenowned teachers in centers such as Mecca, Medina, Cairo, Damascus, thescholarly towns of Yemen, and elsewhere (Azra 1992). In addition, Muslimscholars from India and the Middle East found their way to various parts of thearchipelago, where they evidently had no difficulties in attracting students.Some of these individuals spent years as itinerant teachers, moving from oneport to the next. Others settled in Southeast Asia, where they married intoprominent local families and thus gained further influence in local politicaland economic circles.“ P e s a n t re n ” or “pondok pesantre n ” is a Javanese term for a residential Muslimschool. The term has come to be used generally to refer to traditional Musliminstitutions of learning elsewhere in the archipelago, such as daya in Aceh andthe s u r a u in Minangkabau, both on Sumatra. Beginning with the memorizationof the Qur’an and Arabic grammar, students were prepared to engageideas, institutions, and individuals from all across the Muslim world. Althoughthese institutions were often located in remote areas of the countryside, set