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A HISTORY OF ISLAMIC SOCIETIES – Book Sample

Contents – A HISTORY OF ISLAMIC SOCIETIES

• Introduction to Islamic societies
• PART I THE BEGINNINGS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATIONS
• THE MIDDLE EAST FROM c. 600 TO c. 1000
• Middle Eastern societies before Islam Ancient, Roman, and Persian empires
• The Roman Empire The Sasanian Empire
• Religion and society before Islam Religions and empires
• Women, family, and society (co-author, Lena Salaymeh) Marriage, divorce, and sexual morality
• Property and inheritance Seclusion and veiling
• Conclusion
• THE PREACHING OF ISLAM

• Historians and the sources
• Arabia
• Clans and kingdoms Mecca
• Language, poetry, and the gods
• Muhammad: preaching, community, and state formation The life of the Prophet
• The Quran
• The Judeo-Christian and Arabian heritage Community and politics
• Conclusion: the umma of Islam
• THE ARAB-MUSLIM IMPERIUM (632–945)

• Introduction to the Arab-Muslim empires
• The Arab-Muslim conquests and the socioeconomic bases of empire The conquests
• The administration of the new empire
• Regional developments: economic and social change Iraq
• Syria and Mesopotamia Egypt
• Iran
• The integration of conquering and conquered peoples Conversions to Islam
• Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages
• The caliphate to 750
• The Rightly Guided Caliphs
• The Umayyad monarchy (661–685)
• The imperial caliphate: the Marwanids (685–750) The crisis of the dynasty and the rise of the ʿAbbasids
• The ʿAbbasid Empire Baghdad
• inistration: the central government
• rovincial government

• Local government Resistance and rebellion
• Decline and fall of the ʿAbbasid Empire The decline of the central government
• Provincial autonomy and the rise of independent states

• COSMOPOLITAN ISLAM: THE ISLAM OF THE IMPERIAL ELITE

• Introduction: religion and identity
• The ideology of imperial Islam Umayyad architecture
• The desert palaces
• The Umayyads and the ancient empires Islam and iconoclasm
• The ʿAbbasids: Caliphs and Emperors The caliphate and Islam
• The inquisition
• Architecture and court ceremony The Arabic humanities
• Persian literature
• Hellenistic literature and philosophy Culture, legitimacy, and the state

• URBAN ISLAM: THE ISLAM OF SCHOLARS AND HOLY MEN

• Introduction
• Sunni Islam
• The veneration of the Prophet Early Muslim theology
• Ashʿarism
• Scripturalism: Quran, Hadith, and law (co-author, Lena Salaymeh) Law in the seventh and eighth centuries
• Tradition and law: hadith
• Reasoned opinion versus traditionalism The schools of law
• Asceticism and mysticism (Sufism)
• Shiʿi Islam
• Ismaʿili Shiʿism

• WOMEN, FAMILIES, AND COMMUNITIES
• Muslim urban societies to the tenth century Women and family (co-author, Lena Salaymeh)
• Women and family in the lifetime of the Prophet Women and family in the Caliphal era
• Property and inheritance Urban communities
• The non-Muslim minorities The early Islamic era
• Islamic legislation for non-Muslims Christians and Christianity
• Early Islamic era to the ninth century Christian literature in arabic Crusades and reaction
• The Egyptian Copts Christians in North Africa
• Jews and Judaism (co-author, David Moshfegh) Egyptian and North African Jews: the Geniza era The Yeshivas and rabbinic Judaism
• The nagid
• Jewish culture in the Islamic context
• Continuity and change in the historic cultures of the Middle East Religion and empire
• Conclusion

• PART II FROM ISLAMIC COMMUNITY TO ISLAMIC SOCIETY EGYPT, IRAQ, AND IRAN, 945–c. 1500

• The post-ʿAbbasid Middle Eastern state System Iraq, Iran, and the eastern provinces
• The Saljuq Empire, the Mongols, and the Timurids The Saljuq Empire
• The Mongols The Timurids
• The western regions Fatimid Egypt
• Syria and the Crusades The Mamluk empire
• Military slavery
• The iqtaʿ System and Middle Eastern Feudalism
• Royal courts and regional cultures: Islam in Persian garb The post-ʿAbbasid concept of the state
• Muslim communities and Middle Eastern societies: 1000–1500 CE Women and family: ideology versus reality (co-author, Lena Salaymeh)
• Royal Women
• Women of urban notable families Working women and popular culture Jurisprudence and courts
• Urban societies: the quarters and the markets Religious communities
• Shiʿis
• Schools of law Sufis
• Islamic institutions and a mass Islamic society Muslim religious movements and the state
• The collective ideal Sunni theory Mirrors for princes
• The philosopher-king
• The personal ethic
• Normative Islam: scripture, Sufism, and theology Sufism in the post-ʿAbbasid era
• Al-Ghazali: his life and vision Theology
• Alternative Islam: philosophy and gnostic and popular Sufism Islamic philosophy and theosophy
• Ibn al-ʿArabi
• Popular Sufism: the veneration of saints Dialogues within Islam
• Conclusion: Middle Eastern Islamic patterns Imperial Islamic society
• States and communities in a fragmented Middle East Coping with the limits of worldly life
• State and religion in the medieval Islamic paradigm

• PART III THE GLOBAL EXPANSION OF ISLAM FROM THE SEVENTH TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURIES
• Introduction: Islamic institutions Conversion to Islam
• North Africa and the Middle East
• Turkish conquests and conversions in Anatolia, the Balkans, the Middle East, Inner Asia, and India
• Conversions in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa Muslim elites and Islamic communities
• The reform movement
• Social structures of Islamic societies Islamic states

• THE WESTERN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES
• Islamic North Africa to the thirteenth century Muslim states to the eleventh century
• The Fatimid and Zirid empires and the Banu Hilal

• The Almoravids and the Almohads
• Scholars and Sufis: Islamic religious communities
• Spanish-Islamic civilization
• Hispano-Arabic society (co-author, David Moshfegh) Hispano-Arabic culture
• The Reconquista
• Muslims under Christian rule
• The Jews in Spain (co-author, David Moshfegh)
• The synthesis of Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin cultures
• The breakdown of convivencia (co-author, David Moshfegh)
• The expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal (co-author, David Moshfegh) Jews in North Africa
• The expulsion of the Muslims (co-author, David Moshfegh)
• Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries Tunisia
• Algeria
• Morocco: the Marinid and Saʿdian states
• The ʿAlawi dynasty to the French protectorate
• States and Islam: North African variations

• ISLAM IN ASIA

• Introduction: Empires and societies
• The Turkish migrations and the Ottoman Empire Turkish-Islamic states in Anatolia (1071–1243)
• The rise of the Ottomans (c. 1280–1453): from ghazi state to empire The Ottoman world empire
• The patrimonial regime: fifteenth and sixteenth centuries The janissaries and civil and religious administration Ottoman law (co-author, Lena Salaymeh)
• Provincial government
• Royal authority, cultural legitimization, and Ottoman identity The Ottoman economy
• Rulers and subjects: Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire Jews
• Greek Orthodox and Armenian Christians Coptic Christians
• Christians in the Ottoman Near East Muslim communities
• Women and family in the Ottoman era (1400–1800) (co-author, Lena Salaymeh) The Ottoman legal system and the family
• Freedom and slavery Family and sexuality
• The postclassical Ottoman Empire: decentralization, commercialization, and incorporation Commercialization
• New political institutions Networking
• Power, ideology, and identity Center and periphery
• The Arab provinces under Ottoman rule Egypt
• The Fertile Crescent
• The Safavid Empire
• The origins of the Safavids Iran under the early safavids The Reign of Shah ʿAbbas
• The conversion of Iran to Shiʿism State and religion in late Safavid Iran The dissolution of the Safavid Empire
• The Indian subcontinent: the Delhi sultanates and the Mughal Empire The Muslim conquests and the Delhi sultanates
• Conversion and Muslim communities The varieties of Indian Islam
• Muslim holy men and political authority The Mughal Empire and Indian Culture

• Authority and legitimacy
• The decline of the Mughal Empire
• The reign of Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) Islam under the Mughals
• The international economy and the British Indian Empire
• Islamic empires compared
• Asian empires as Islamic states
• Inner Asia from the Mongol conquests to the nineteenth century The western and northern steppes
• Turkestan (Transoxania, Khwarizm, and Farghana) Eastern Turkestan and China
• Islamic Societies in Southeast Asia Pre-Islamic Southeast Asia
• The coming of Islam
• Portuguese, Dutch, and Muslim states
• Java: the state, the ʿulamaʾ, and the peasants
• The crisis of imperialism and Islam on Java: 1795–1830 Aceh
• Malaya Minangkabau
• ISLAM IN AFRICA
• The African context: Islam, slavery, and colonialism Islam
• Slavery Colonialism
• Islam in Sudanic, savannah, and forest West Africa The kingdoms of the western Sudan
• Mali Songhay
• The central Sudan: Kanem and Bornu Hausaland
• Non-state Muslim communities in West Africa: merchants and religious lineages
• Zawaya lineages: the Kunta
• Merchants and missionaries in the forest and coastal regions Senegambia
• The West African jihads The Senegambian jihads
• ʿUthman don Fodio and the Sokoto Caliphate The jihad of al-Hajj ʿUmar
• The late nineteenth-century jihads Jihad and conversion
• Islam in East Africa and the European colonial empires Sudan
• Darfur
• The coastal cities and Swahili Islam Ethiopia and Somalia
• Central Africa
• Colonialism and the defeat of Muslim expansion

• CONCLUSION

• The varieties of Islamic societies
• The global context
• The inner spaces of the Muslim world
• The Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean
• The desert as ocean: Inner Asia and the Sahara The rise of Europe and the world economy
• European trade, naval power, and empire
• European imperialism and the beginning of the modern era

• PART IV THE MODERN TRANSFORMATION: MUSLIM PEOPLES FROM THE NINETEENTH TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES
• Introduction: imperialism, modernity, and the transformation of Islamic societies Islamic reformism

• Islamic modernism Nationalism
• Patterns of response and resistance The contemporary Islamic revival
• NATIONALISM AND ISLAM IN THE MIDDLE EAST
• The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the modernization of Turkey The partition of the Ottoman Empire
• Ottoman reform
• The Young Ottomans The Young Turks
• World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire Republican Turkey
• The Turkish Republic under Ataturk The post–World War II Turkish Republic Islam in Turkish politics: 1950–1983 Islam and the state: 1983–2000
• The AKP: a new synthesis and a new governing party The current state of Turkish politics
• Iran: state and religion in the modern era Qajar Iran: the Long Nineteenth Century The constitutional crisis
• Twentieth-century Iran: the Pahlavi Era The ʿulamaʾ and the Revolution
• The Islamic Republic Islam and the state
• Egypt: secularism and Islamic modernity The nineteenth-century reforming state British colonial rule
• Egyptian resistance: from Islamic modernism to nationalism The liberal republic
• The Nasser era Sadat and Mubarak
• The Islamic Revival
• Secular opposition movements Revolution and reaction
• The Arab East: Arabism, military states, and Islam Notables and the rise of Arab nationalism Arabism and Arab states in the colonial period
• Syria Lebanon Iraq to 1958
• Transjordan and Jordan
• The struggle for Arab unity and the contemporary Fertile Crescent states Syria
• Iraq Lebanon
• The Palestinian movement and the struggle for Palestine Zionists and Palestinians to 1948
• The Palestinian movement and Israel from 1948 to the 1990s Toward a two-state solution?
• The Arabian Peninsula Yemen
• Union of the two yemens Islam and the state
• Saudi Arabia
• Political and religious opposition Foreign policy
• The Gulf states
• Oman Kuwait Bahrain Qatar
• United Arab Emirates

• Arab states, nationalism, and Islam
• 51 North Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Algeria
• The French occupation
• The rebirth of Algerian resistance: to the end of World War II The drive to independence and the Algerian revolution Independent Algeria
• Tunisia
• The colonial era
• Independent Tunisia: from the 1950s to the present Morocco
• Under colonial rule Independent Morocco

• Libya
• Islam in state ideologies and opposition movements: the Middle East and North Africa
• Women in the Middle East: nineteenth to twenty-first centuries (co-author, Lena Salaymeh) Imperialism and Reform in the Nineteenth Century
• Changes in family law Women’s secular education
• Labor and social and political activism Post–World War I nation-states
• Turkey Iran
• Egypt from the 1920s to the present Post–World War II Arab States
• Education, work, and social activism in the Arab countries Changing social mores
• Islamism and feminism
• Western gaze and obsession with veiling Twenty-first-century revolutions

• ISLAM AND SECULARISM IN CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN ASIA
• Muslims in Russia, the Caucasus, Inner Asia, and China The Caucasus and Inner Asia under Tsarist Rule Islamic reform and modernism: the Jadid movement
• The revolutionary era and the formation of the Soviet Union Soviet modernization
• The pre–World War II era Post–World War II Post–Soviet Russia
• The Caucasus
• Azarbayjan
• Newly independent states in formerly Soviet Central Asia The Muslims of China
• Conclusion
• The Indian subcontinent: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh From the Mughal Empire to the partition of the Indian subcontinent
• Muslim Militancy from Plassey to 1857 From the Mutiny to World War I
• From cultural to political action From elite to mass politics
• The Pakistan Movement
• The Muslims of post-Partition India Pakistan
• Foreign policy Afghanistan Bangladesh Conclusion
• Islam in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines Dutch rule and economic development in the Indies
• Southeast Asian responses to Dutch Rule Islamic traditionalism and revolt
• The priyayi, the merchant elites, nationalism, and Islamic modernism The conservative reaction

• Islamic and secular nationalist political parties: 1900–1950 The Indonesian Republic
• Sukarno and a secular Indonesia: 1955–1965 The Suharto regime: state and Islam, 1965–1998 Indonesian Islam: 1998 to the present
• British Malaya and independent Malaysia
• The Malaysian state and Islam in a multiethnic society The Philippines
• Conclusion

• ISLAM IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AFRICA
• Islam in West Africa
• Colonialism and independence: African states and Islam West African Muslim-majority countries
• Mali Mauritania Senegal
• Nigeria: a divided society
• Muslims in other West African states
• Islam in East Africa Sudan
• Independent Sudan Military rule
• Civil war Somalia
• Ethiopia and Eritrea Swahili East Africa
• Zanzibar Tanzania Kenya Uganda
• The Shiʿi communities
• Universal Islam and African diversity

• ISLAM IN THE WEST
• Muslims in Europe and America Muslims in the United States
• American converts
• Muslim identity issues in the United States Canada
• Eastern Europe
• Bosnia and Yugoslavia Albania and Albanians Bulgaria
• Muslims in Western Europe Immigrant identities in Europe
• Immigrant status by country Britain
• France Germany
• Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain The anti-immigrant reaction
• Conclusion: secularized Islam and Islamic revival
• The institutional and cultural features of pre-modern Islamic Societies The nineteenth- and twentieth-century transformation of Islamic Societies
• Nations, nationalism, and Islam The Islamic revival
• Religious revival Transnational Islam “Islamism” and political action
• Transnational politics: military and terrorist organizations Contemporary patterns in the relations between states and Islamic Societies
• Islamic and neo-Islamic states Secularized states with Islamic identities
• Secularized states and Islamic opposition Islamic national societies in Southeast Asia
• Muslims as political minorities Concluding remarks
• Glossary Bibliography
• Annot ic Societies, second edition
• Index

The priyayi, the merchant elites, nationalism, and Islamic modernism

While Islamic kiyayi and peasant resistance was rooted in the traditional structures of Indonesian society, Indonesian nationalism and Islamic modernism had their origins in the late nineteenth-century reactions of the priyayi aristocracy and the merchant elites to the consolidation of Dutch rule.

The first priyayi response to the stripping away of royal authority and aristocratic privileges was a backward-looking revival of local court cultures. Then, to compensate for the loss of political autonomy, the old nobility began to serve in the colonial administration. In addition, Dutch policy brought into being a new lower stratum of priyayi. On Java, Dutch policies required medical, engineering, legal, and teaching professionals, and technically trained civil servants in the forestry, mining, agricultural, railway, telegraph, and health administrations.

The new professionals and administrators were drawn from the lesser-ranking priyayi families, the scions of the newly rich in Minangkabau and the outer islands, the children of provincial chieftains, and Ambonese and Mindanau Christians.

These newly educated professionals and administrators interposed themselves between the old aristocracy and the peasantry, and competed with the village ʿulamaʾ and headmen. Even though they benefited from policies that attempted to integrate Indonesians into Western culture and Dutch administration, the new administrators were opposed to European domination.

They clamored for increased educational opportunities and for more political power.

On the outer islands, the merchants of Sumatra, Singapore, and Malaya, tied to a Muslim system of international economic and cultural exchanges, also opposed Dutch rule as a threat to both their commercial and religious interests. They opposed Dutch restrictions on Muslim trade and pilgrimage, and the competition of Christian missionaries.

These new and frustrated strata were the basis of an ideological and political renaissance in the early twentieth century. Inspired by the Russo-Japanese War and by the Indian and Chinese nationalist movements, and threatened at home by Chinese political competition, Western-educated Indonesians and Muslims banded together to promote Indonesian cultural and political awareness.

Out of these several milieus came new programs for secular nationalism, socialism, and Islamic revival, each of which aspired to an independent and modern form of Indonesian and Malayan civilization.

The Priyayi and Secular Nationalism.

Priyayi bureaucrats, professionals, and intellectuals favored secular and nationalist culture and identity. By embracing both the Javanese cultural past and the European cultural present they hoped to arrive at an authentic contemporary ethnic identity, distinct from that of the Dutch and the Chinese. Schools were critical to this cultural goal.

Some were founded by the Dutch, some by priyayi, to teach practical subjects such as surveying, arithmetic, and geography along with Javanese language, literature, and script. By 1861, there were 44 government schools in Java with 1,931 pupils. By 1900, the numbers of students had grown to 50,000.

The new nationalism in 1908 found its first organizational expression on Java with the formation of Budi Utomo. The founders of Budi Utomo (Noble endeavor) looked to Hinduism and Buddhism as the sources of Javanese culture, and to modern Dutch education as the key to reviving Javanese civilization. At first loyal to Dutch rule, by 1917 Budi Utomo was calling for Indonesian autonomy and a parliamentary regime.

Budi Utomo was soon followed by the Indische Partij, formed in 1911 by Efi Douwes-Deckker to represent the “Indos” of mixed European and Indonesian descent and to present their claim for equality with Europeans. This was the first party to claim political independence for a united Indonesia. Taman Siswa (Garden of learning), founded in 1922, was devoted to an educational program to restore Javanese arts and culture. The association founded some 250 schools and tried to create a national community of students and teachers to promote the maturation of the Indonesian nation and its aspirations to independence.

At the same time, a Malay national identity was being formed by a Malay-language vernacular press. Until 1855, all newspapers and periodicals were written in Dutch. With the growth of commerce and advertising, the press adopted the widely understood bazaar form of Malay.

The Jawi Peranakan, the offspring of Malabari Indian traders and Malay women, were among the leaders of the Malay language revival and of an incipient Malay national consciousness. They worked as clerks, interpreters, schoolteachers, and merchants, and ranked after the Arab community in prestige and authority.

In 1876, they published the first Malay newspaper, Jawi Peranakan (Javanese by birth), and sponsored the publication of Malay romances, poetry and tales, and translations of Arabic religious literature. Wazir Indie, aimed at Malay officers of the Indies government, appeared in Batavia in 1878.

The Amsterdam-based Bintang Hindia called on Indonesians to imitate the Chinese and the Arabs to develop a secular modernity. In Singapore, several Malay-language journals, owned or operated by indigenous Muslims, also promoted a concept of nationhood based on an ethno-linguistic community that excluded Chinese or Indian inhabitants of the region from its program.

A society for linguistic knowledge worked out Malay equivalents for English terms and absorbed Arabic words into Malay usage. Out of these efforts came a shared language and a new Malay consciousness, transcending specific localities.

Islamic Reformism and Islamic Modernism.

In parallel with these ethnic–national movements, new forms of Islamic religious, social, and political action were born in the major ports of Sumatra, Java, and Malaya. Indonesian and Malay Islamic revivalism and Islamic modernism were the product of a new Javanese and Malay middle class. The culture system and the growing export economies of Java and Sumatra created new transport, metalworking, bricklaying, shipbuilding, fishing, agricultural processing, and other industries.

 In the coastal towns, the Javanese and Sumatran middle class linked up with Arab trading communities. The ranks of government officials and teachers increased. The new middle classes leaned toward a lifestyle suitable both for the well-to-do and to the devoutly Muslim. They observed the pillars of Islam, eschewed opium and gambling, and educated and disciplined their children.

The pilgrimage, extended stays in the Arabian holy places, studies in Cairo, and contacts with Hadhramauti immigrants brought Malay and Indonesian Muslims into contact with Islamic reformist and modernist teachings, heightened their consciousness of Muslim identity, intensified their commitment to proper Muslim worship and behavior, and made them aware of Muslim worldwide opposition to European colonialism.

 Returned pilgrims took a prominent place in their communities as merchants, landowners, and moneylenders, promoted reformed Sufi orders, and challenged the authority of the rural kiyayi. They were the standard bearers of Islamic reform and modernism.

There were two principal strands of reformism. Legal-oriented reformism emphasized the religious obligations of daily life. Sufi-oriented reformism, promoted by the Naqshbandiyya and the Qadiriyya, integrated legal and ritual practice with mysticism. The reformers opposed the established schools of Islamic jurisprudence (madhhabs), and popular Sufi practices such as celebrations of the death days of saints, and customary marriage, funeral, and holy-day ceremonies.

They brought into public debate such religious questions as whether the correct procedure in prayer was to recite the niya (intention) aloud or silently, and whether savings banks and cooperatives were legitimate. They denounced the practices of both the traditional ʿulamaʾ and of the village penghulus (customary chiefs).

The most extreme reformist, indeed fundamentalist, movement, called the Rifaʿiyya, was founded by Haji Ahmad Rifaʿi. He rejected both the traditional schools of law and mystical practices, and called for the purification of Islam from folk-cultural accretions. Only the original Islam as revealed in the Quran and the example of the Prophet could be the basis of true belief and practice.

His followers withdrew from society, built separate mosques, avoided association with other Muslims, and rejected the authority of officials who served under the colonial regime. The reformers were called putihan (white-robed) or santri (holy men).

Islamic modernism grew up alongside and intertwined with Islamic reformism. The growth of the middle classes, the pilgrimage, and contacts with indigenous and immigrant Arab Muslims introduced Indonesian Muslims to the ideas of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad ʿAbduh. They resembled the reformists in their call for a return to Quran and sunna, but they were also imbued with the conviction that Islam was a rational religion that should be integrated with modernity.

They stood for a flexible interpretation of Islamic law stressing its applicability to contemporary conditions, giving priority to considerations of public interest and welfare, and wide scope for independent judgment in the application of the law (ijtihad).

Singapore, a melting-pot of Southeast Asian peoples, became the principal center of both Islamic reformism and modernism. Indonesians on pilgrimage passed through it because Dutch restrictions made British-ruled Singapore a more convenient port. Singapore also had a large Malay population, immigrants from Minangkabau, Javanese laborers in transit, and large Arab and Indian Muslim communities. The Arab settlement was especially important.

Many Arabs worked in Singapore as brokers arranging the pilgrimage traffic. Shaykhs and sayyids from Hadhramaut had great prestige, and were respected for their religious probity. They were a commercial elite, owned land and houses, invested in plantations and trade, and controlled the batik, tobacco, and spice trades.

They built mosques, organized festivals, and cultivated Arabic and Muslim cultural sophistication. They contributed to the development of a cosmopolitan Muslim religious consciousness no longer tied to particular localities. In Singapore, Islam was no longer the religion of village communities, but of mobile individuals united in an international association.

From Singapore, reformist and modernist Islam spread throughout Southeast Asia by trade, pilgrimage, and by the movement of students, teachers, and Sufis.

Minangkabau was another center for revitalized Islamic religious and social action. Minangkabau’s history of Islamic reform began early in the nineteenth century with the Padri movement, which attempted to bring custom into accord with Shariʿa. That struggle ended in Dutch rule, but reformist Sufis, especially of the Naqshbandi order, continued to denounce customary practices and to insist on the reform of Islam.

The Malay Peninsula was also a theater of modernist developments. The modernist view was represented by the Kaum Muda, or Young Group, who were determined to revitalize education. The Young Group was in bitter competition with the “Old Group” (Kaum Tua) traditionalists, the defenders of the old-style boarding schools predominantly located in rural areas.

A leader in the movement was Shaykh Ahmad Khatib (1855– 1916), who had studied in Mecca, been introduced to the ideas of Muhammad ʿAbduh, and returned to raise a new generation of Sumatran and Malayan scholars who in turn founded new schools, publications, and religious missions. Shaykh Muhammad Tahir (1867–1957), who had also studied in Mecca and absorbed the ideas of Muhammad ʿAbduh, founded the newspaper al-Imam, published in Singapore from 1906 to 1908. Al- Imam tried to awaken Muslims to the need for education. Tahir taught that the decline of Islam was due to neglect of the divine law and that submission to the Quran and hadith would uplift the lives of individual Muslims and help bring about a renaissance in the Muslim community.

 Al-Imam stressed the importance of using reason in religious matters and challenged customary beliefs and practices. Even though the Kaum Muda favored the modernization of customary law along Western and secular lines, on the question of women’s dress they were often more conservative than the traditionalists.

Education was the primary concern of the Kaum Muda. In the 1910s and 1920s, it established madrasas in Singapore, West Sumatra, and south-central Java. In the 1920s, Penang became the center of reformist thought, owing to the work of Sayyid Shaykh al-Hadi, who founded the Madrasa al-Mashhor in 1919 and the Jelutong Press in 1927 to publish books on the subject of the emancipation of women and other reform issues.

By the 1920s, there were thirty-nine such schools and 17,000 students in Sumatra. The new madrasas combined a religious curriculum with a program of studies in history, geography, mathematics, and other secular subjects, organized in graded classes, provided with textbooks, and taught by salaried instructors. Madrasas introduced the Roman alphabet rather than the modified Arabic script known as jawi.

They also provided education for girls, and sponsored scout clubs, student newspapers, and sports.

On Java, reformism and modernism blended together in the foundation of several educational, missionary, and, ultimately, political movements. The most important of these was Muhammadiyya, founded in 1912 by Hajji Ahmad Dahlan for the reform of the practice of Islam and the betterment of the Muslim community. Dahlan was the son of a religious official, a pilgrim to Mecca, a mosque officer, and a trader in batik. His movement appealed to poor and middling traders.

Muhammadiyya advocated a pious life based on the duties described in the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet, but rejected the medieval Muslim legal and philosophical systems  and the authority  of Muslim saints in favor of  ijtihad, or individual reasoning in religious matters. Muhammadiyya discouraged elaborate birth, circumcision, wedding, and funeral rituals, and opposed the veneration of shrines, but not Sufism as such.

 It stressed the importance of ethics, controlling base desires, and the deepening of wisdom and moral understanding. Muhammadiyya taught that personal virtue had to be expressed in social action.

Muhammadiyya’s primary project was the creation of modern-type religious schools. While the pesantren were devoted to recitation of sacred scriptures and mystical formulae, the Muhammadiyya schools taught Islamic religious principles, the Arabic language, Dutch, and secular subjects. They introduced a graded

program of study, rationalized methods of instruction, and emphasized comprehension and reasoning rather than memorization. Muhammadiyya made effective use of Western-inspired styles of association, management, and fund raising.

 By 1929, the movement had founded countless village schools, teacher- training colleges, and many libraries, clinics, orphanages, hospitals, and poorhouses. A women’s movement and youth and scouting groups were attached to Muhammadiyya. The ultimate goal of the Muhammadiyya- related societies was tabligh, or evangelical teaching of the reformed Islamic faith.

A later Islamic reformist movement, Persatuan Islam, founded in West Java in 1923 by merchants led by Hajji Zamzam and Hajji Muhammad Yunus, held similar views. In addition, Persatuan Islam also denounced the wayang puppet theater because it represented Hindu culture and encouraged the freedom of women. Persatuan Islam was also opposed to secular nationalism as a form of idolatry of the nation. In its view, only by a return to true Islamic principles could the political power and the freedom of Indonesian and other Muslim peoples be restored. The movement founded colleges to train missionaries. A journal and numerous tracts were published in standard Indonesian, and study-groups were formed to educate Muslims.

A crucial step toward the construction of a united Indonesian movement was the informal union in 1918 of the Sumatran Kaum Muda and the Javanese Muhammadiyya. Between 1918 and 1923, further efforts were made to unify the various Kaum Muda groups and channel them into political action.

Radical intellectuals penetrated the Sumatran student movement to preach against capitalism and imperialism, oppose government taxes and forest policy, and call for independence both from the feudal authority of local notables and from the imperial rule of the Dutch.

The Sumatran student groups appealed to petty traders and to smallholding peasants, and eventually provoked scattered rebellions that were put down by the Dutch in 1926 and early 1927. Thus, the Islamic movement began with a religious and reformist orientation focused on correct belief and practice of Islam, and through educational and social action cultivated a political consciousness in opposition to Dutch rule and the authority of the traditional aristocracies.

The conservative reaction

The formation of movements that emphasized religious reform, educational modernism, and political action provoked a countermovement among the traditional ʿulamaʾ. In 1921, the Union of ʿUlamaʾ of Minangkabau was formed, followed in 1926 by the Nahdatul ʿUlamaʾ (Union of ʿulamaʾ, NU) of Java. Nahdatul ʿUlamaʾ was built around a network of religious notables centered on the pesantren of Jombang in East Java. NU rejected the reformist emphasis upon the Quran and sunna in favor of the traditional practice of Islam.

It reaffirmed that Islamic law, the traditional schools of law, and Sufi practices were at the core of their spirituality. However, NU adopted the organizational techniques of Muslim reformist and nationalist m . The kiyayi, who in the nineteenth century had organized resistance to Dutch rule and priyayi

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