Islamic Post-Traditionalism: Postcolonial and Postmodern Religious Discourse in Indonesia

ln this article, I take a critical view of the dominance of postcolonial studies by South Asian and Latin American scholars and intellectuals, and present an alternative Southeast Asian strand: A discourse emerging  young Indonesian Muslim intellectuals in Indonesia, known as ‘Islamic Post-Traditionalism’. 

What I try to establish is to what extent this strand of Muslim thought can be considered a contribution to the engagement with postcoloniality and an application of deconstructionist discourse critique developed by postmodern philosophers within the context of rethinking religion, and Islam in particular, in Indonesia. Identifying a vivid interest among Indonesian Muslim intellectuals in the work of pioneering and controversial contemporary Arab-Islamic thinkers such as Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri, and Mohammed Arkoun, the article interrogates the influences exercised by these Arabophone and Francophone Muslim intellectuals on the formation of Indonesia's Islamic Post-Traditionalism and how this is reflected in this discourse. It is illustrated with a précis of the writings of a key exponent of the Islamic Post-Traditionalist discourse and a brief excursion into the new philosophy of religion and Islamic education combining modernist and traditionalist strands of thought by M. Amin Abdullah, a Turkish-educated Indonesian philosopher and former rector of the State Islamic University Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta.

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