Global COE Program - Kyoto University - In Search of Sustainable Humanosphere in Asia and Africa

【Summary】
This symposium aims to evaluate Islamic thinking and movement in Indonesia from a historical perspective. Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, is now in the process of sweeping democratization and decentralization and we witness a myriad of serious debates over the nature of Islamic thinking and movement under these new settings. It is thus an urgent task for us to try to understand these debates and the social and political struggles they represent so that we may be able to discern the different possible pathways to political stability and social justice.

Since 1980s, two currents of thoughts have influenced Indonesian political and economic discussions: neo-liberalism and Islamism. Neo-liberalism has been aggressively pursued by the United States government, the the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which argue that the privatization of major sectors of the eoconomy and the decentralization of national authority would bring about the most “suitable” regime a developing country like Indonesia will need to attain full development. The Indonesian government took this advise to heart, but, soon after experienced its deadly consequences during the Asian economic of 1997, which, among other things, led to the downfall of the Suharto regime.

Running parallel to the spread of neo-liberal thinking was a deepening commitment to Islam among Indonesian Muslims, many of whom were inspired by the successes of the Iranian revolution. Islamization became one of the most significant changes in Indonesia, and with the political rise of many newly-etablished Islamic political parties, the government’s growing recognition of Islamic laws as part of the laws of the land (the typical example of which is the legalization of Islamic law in Aceh province),, and the suicide bombings in Bali, it has attracted the attention of scholars, policy analysts, military experts, public intellectuals and even NGO activist.

Yet, Indonesian Muslim have also been not treated their religion as a monolith. Indonesian Islamism can, in fact, be divided into two streams. The first is political Islamism that sees no separation between the religion and politics and some of the radicals even advocate the creation of an Islamic state; while the second regards religion as being distinct from politics, vehemently opposes the politicization of Islam, and supports a pluralistic Indonesia. It remains to be seen which current will eventually become dominant Indonesian Islamic thinking, but one thing for sure, the debates that had been sparked by these two currents will definitely play a role in shaping the future of the Indonesian social and political terrain.

It is in the context of these dramatic transformations in Indonesian political thinking that the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Center for Islamic Area Studies at Kyoto University have decided to co-sponsor an international symposium on “Islam for Social Justice and Sustainability: New Perspective on Islamism and Pluralism in Indonesia” with the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. We have invited former Indonesian President Abdurrachman Wahid to keynote the gathering and his reflections will be commented by Prof. Kosugi Yasushi, a Japanese leading expert on Islam (Kyoto University) and Prof. Michael Hsiao, the director of CAPAS from Taiwan.

The keynote speech will be followed by five sessions on Islamism and Pluralism; Islam in Historical Perspective – Views from the Banten Area; The Three Isms in Indonesian Islam: Pluralism, Islamism and Radicalism; Islam from a Long Historical Perspective; and Islam and Public Health in Comparative Perspective.