Book Review

NAKAMURA MITSUO, SHARON SIDDIQUE & OMAR FAROUK BAJUNID (EDS.), 2001

Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

211 pp., pb. S$39.90, ISBN 981-230-111-9

ROBERT W. HEFNER, 2000

Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press

xxiv & 285 pp., pb. £11.95 ISBN 0-691-05047-3, hb. £36.50 ISBN 0-691-05046-5

These two works represent valuable additions to the increasing body of research into democracy, pluralism and civil society in a Muslim Southeast Asian context, supplementing earlier studies such as Masykuri Abdillah’s "Responses of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals to the Concept of Democracy (1966-1993)". Taken together, these latest volumes offer a range of interesting comparative perspectives.

Their origins are somewhat different. The edited volume by Mitsuo, Siddique and Bajunid published by the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) represents the proceedings of a conference held in November 1999 in Japan funded by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. Hefner’s study, on the other hand, presents the fruits of research carried out during several visits to Indonesia during the period 1991-98, with a postscript added summarising the tumultuous events surrounding elections and regional fragmentation in 1999.

The geographical focus of each work is complementary in a most valuable way. The ISEAS volume covers those countries of the ethnic Malay-Indonesian world: Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, with several contributions also addressing the Muslim minority communities in Southern Thailand and the Southern Philippines. Hefner’s work focuses in on Indonesia, picking up on many broad issues raised by contributors to the ISEAS volume and unpacking them in minute detail within a particular county context.

The ISEAS volume places a primary focus on the modern-day situation in the diverse communities examined. It is most interested to evaluate the extent to which the Muslim communities of the Malay-Indonesian world have been able to reconcile Islamic doctrine with contemporary understandings of civil society. Hefner, on the other hand, sets himself much more ambitious goals in terms of timeframe. He makes introductory comments about the establishment of Islam in the Indonesian region some seven centuries ago, then discusses the colonial period, and then focuses in on the 20^th century, addressing in some detail the Sukarno years and the New Order period. We thus are presented with a chronological feast. However, Hefner successfully binds together what could be quite a diverse smorgasbord by relating all his discussion to the civil society theme, passing his comments through a common filter by asking how the information presented has contributed to the condition of Indonesian civil society today.

The particular backgrounds of the authors provide different perspectives. All the contributors of the main papers in the ISEAS volume are "Muslim activists and scholars from the region", associated in varying ways with Asian institutions of higher education. Hefner, on the other hand, is a westerner based in the United States, where he serves as Professor of Anthropology at Boston University.

In spite of the variety of perspectives presented in the ISEAS volume, the contributors speak with one voice in a particular way. They are all pro-civil society, as it were, and clearly in favour of seeking an appropriate fusion between Islamic thought and contemporary notions of democracy and pluralism. What is absent from this volume is an alternative perspective which might have been provided by revivalists such as Ahmad Soemargono of Indonesia or Abdul Hadi Awang of Malaysia, whose views on the subject would more visibly have been developed from the Islamic primary texts. The editors have thus missed an opportunity to reflect a vigorous debate which is taking place in Muslim Southeast Asia between the devotees of the civil society train and those who regard it as a subtle western subterfuge devoid of sufficient Islamic input.

In this respect Hefner’s volume is a useful counterfoil. This may seem curious, given that it is a work by a single researcher who originates from outside the region. But Hefner is at pains to move beyond his own cultural paradigms, and observes importantly that "a dialogical and transcultural perspective is a better point of entry to modern democracy’s meanings than is a narrowly philological approach that freezes the notions in a mythic Western past" (xvii). He is thus able to capture the debates taking place within Indonesian society around the notion of civil society. The revivalist perspective is very visible, but not unduly so, and the subtleties of an alliance between Islamist thought and "regimist" Islam is skilfully shown to be part of the great debate presently underway.

In terms of overall conclusions, the two volumes are complementary. Mitsuo summarises the ISEAS volume in concluding that "Islamization and democratization have been going hand in hand through the last decades of the twentieth century in Southeast Asia… Islamic civil society has been one of the essential components in the recent popular demands for democratization. Conversely, democratization is enhancing a greater public role for Islamic civil society" (21). Hefner unpacks the debates in Indonesia in observing that during the last years of the New Order regime in the 1990s "... there was no seamless consensus among Muslims on democracy or pluralism. There was a dominant pattern, however. A handful of ultraconservatives supported the regime and co-ordinated their actions with [Major-General] Prabowo and other hard-liners. But ... [this] only stiffened the resolve of the great majority of Muslim leaders to democracy, nonviolence and the rule of law." (207)

Both works see Southeast Asian Muslim societies as pioneers in the search for Islamic civil society. Hefner explains the reason for this by observing that "if any region of the world seemed well suited for the issues of hybridity and globality, it was Southeast Asia" (xvii).

It is most helpful to read these two volumes together. Indeed, the ISEAS volume includes several cross-references to Hefner’s work, and strongly recommends it, affirming his distinction between civil Islam and regimist Islam. These works would be ideal as undergraduate texts on courses in Southeast Asian or Islamic Studies and, no doubt, will provide important perspectives for postgraduate researchers focusing on developing notions of democracy and pluralism within the Islamic world.

Peter G. Riddell

This review was published in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 13.1 (2002): 132-133