Search Results (6)

Especially over the last two and a half decades, Indonesian society has witnessed a deepening Islamisation, the impact of which is being felt in domains such as politics, education, morality, and private life. Linked to this development, a rise in religious intolerance and extremism has been noted. This process is often attributed to influences from transnational movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi-Wahhabism, which in turn is framed as an Arabisation of Islam and society in Indonesia. A pivotal reaction has been the launch and successful reinforcement of the concept of Islam Nusantara, a local Islam that is described as peaceful, moderate, and tolerant. Its unique Indonesian history, in which local culture and Islam have become intertwined, is said to have led to these characteristics. Despite its success, the concept has also met with scepticism. How valid is the binary Arabian Islam versus Islam Nusantara? Is it an authentic form of Islam? This article engages with these issues from a new angle by combining an assessment of Islam Nusantara’s claims to tolerance, its status as an authentic form of Islam, and how these issues relate to it being a local Islam. Full article

This paper revisits Saudi Arabia’s religious statecraft through the lens of Pax Wahhabica, interrogating the transnational diffusion, strategic reconfiguration, and evolving instrumentalisation of Wahhabism as a modality of imperial theopolitics and a conduit of ideological projection. Tracing Wahhabism from its eighteenth-century roots, through its Cold War entrenchment as a bulwark against secular nationalism, to its post-9/11 fragmentation, this study offers a conceptual re-evaluation of Wahhabism not as a fixed theological doctrine but as a malleable constellation of norms and discourses continuously calibrated to state interest. Theoretically anchored in soft power analysis, constructivist norm diffusion, Gramscian hegemony, and Foucauldian governmentality, this paper examines how religious norms are mobilised through affective discourse, institutional socialisation, and securitised governance to advance regime resilience. Through empirical case studies on Bosnia, Indonesia, and Nigeria, it elucidates how Wahhabi norms were localised, hybridised, and, in some instances, weaponised against their progenitors. Finally, this paper examines the domestic reconfiguration and international repositioning of Wahhabism under Muḥammad bin Salmān, arguing that contemporary Saudi theopolitics marks not the abandonment of Wahhabism but its reconversion into a strategically curated, domesticated ideology. Pax Wahhabica, thus, persists—not as an unbroken theological doctrine but as a hybrid ideational empire in which Islam is strategically retooled as an instrument of hegemonic statecraft. Full article

Theological discussions about visits to the Prophet’s grave in Madina are the focus of this paper. The relevant question in this context relates to the idea of a postmortem life of the Prophet and its accessibility for believers after his death. The idea of a spiritual presence of the Prophet in this world is found in the description of religious visits to Madina, namely in the traditional Sunni books of Fiqh (describing the normative rules concerning the Prophet’s grave), as well as in some books of Tafsir. These ideas have been challenged by the Wahhabi movement, in which the idea of becoming connected to the Prophet’s presence is refused and the visit to Madina is seen to be focused on the mosque, not the grave of the Prophet. This reinterpretation is examined in this article on the basis of various textual references. Full article

In his comprehensive work Fayḍ al-wahhāb, ʿAbd Rabbihī ibn Sulaymān al-Qaliyūbī (d. 1968) extensively explores the Prophet Muhammad’s role in theology and argues against interpretations influenced by Wahhābī thought. He emphasizes the prophetic realm, or prophecy and its traces, particularly the means by which believers can establish a connection with it. This article pays special attention to al-Qaliyūbī’s understanding of mediation (tawassul); that is, how the Prophet—by virtue of his elevated status, ordained by God—can serve as a means; similar to how a ritual prayer or any good deed ultimately serves as a means to draw closer to God. For al-Qaliyūbī, following the Prophet means not only regarding him as the founder of the religion, but also incorporating his spirit and character into one’s own life. This article proceeds in four steps: (1) It addresses the systematics of prophecy concerning practical ethics and how this realm can be entered; (2) It introduces the three-layered paradigm of later theology and al-Qaliyūbī’s work; (3) It explores the topic of what constitutes a means (wasīla) and the theological implications of using a means in prayer (tawassul); (4) It zooms in on the aspect of what qualifies a means to be used in an individual prayer. Full article

This article examines the relationship among radical socialism, Islamic balanced reform and Tatar national identity in early twentieth-century Russia. In contrast to previous studies, which either have studied these various intellectual strains individually or have positioned Islamic legal and theological reforms as precursors to the emergence of a secular national identity among Kazan’s Tatars, I will argue that Tatar intellectuals’ positions on theology, socio-economic organization, and national identity were mutually reinforcing. Supporters of nationalism also embraced socialism and Islamic balanced reform because they saw all three ideologies as egalitarian and liberating. Full article

Radicalization is a terminological conflation of the two meanings in the context of extreme beliefs or behaviors adopted by individuals or groups as a justification for the use of violence to achieve the objectives. Since radicalization primarily emphasises on, and departures from, the understanding and cognitive processes, the role of peaceful and moderate education in this case can be effectively utilized to serve as a considerably relevant means to prevent it. In addition, radicalization is also limited by the social, political, and economic contexts of a particular region, and combined with the degree of individual autonomy in the search for identity. Accordingly, the deradicalization efforts actually necessitate the consideration of the sociopolitical culture as the basis for policy makers. It is based on the consideration that the radicalization of Islam, even though strongly characterized by transnational movement, contains local elements leading to the radicalization as occasionally random and ununiformed violence in the Muslim world. The findings suggest some valuable strategies to deconstruct the idea of radicalization that can be implemented in several ways, including building and empowering local characterization of Indonesian education of Muslims in particular and of Southeast Asian in general, and reducing the Wahhabism extreme teachings and such highly irrational and ahistorical Arabization ideas and programs in Indonesian context. Full article