In September 1963 Britain ended colonial rule in Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah (North Borneo) by integrating these ethnically distinct states with independent Malaya to form an expanded federation known as Malaysia. The making of Malaysia was an important watershed in the post-war history of Southeast Asia. It marked the formal end of the British Empire in Southeast Asia: Singapore and the Borneo territories of Sarawak and North Borneo (later renamed Sabah) achieved their political independence through merger with Malaya, having been independent since 1957, to constitute the new state of Malaysia. Brunei decided, just before the signing of the Malaysia Agreement, to stay out of the Federation and eventually became a sovereign state on its own. The transfer of sovereignty of the erstwhile British dependencies to the new Federation of Malaysia marked the successful attainment of British policy in post-war Southeast Asia. The British had been able to relinquish their formal empire in Southeast Asia without a major political fall-out in the region, and de-colonization had taken the wind out of the sails of their critics, among them international opinion against imperialism, domestic detractors who complained of the cost, burden and immorality of empire, indigenous nationalists advocating self-determination, as well as anti-imperialist communists. The outcome was indeed a happy one for Britain; its former empire in Southeast Asia had been replaced by a centrally positioned Commonwealth bastion, linking an extensive British strategic and military belt stretching from Aden to New Zealand.

The making of Malaysia, although a relatively small state compared to Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines in Southeast Asia, represented federation-formation on quite an ambitious scale for it entailed the attempted integration of four very different and disconnected territorial entities — in terms of historical development, ethnic make-up and stages of political and economic development — into a single unified state. The parts that came together “lacked an integrating, pre-colonial core” and the only common experience that they shared was that they had all been subjected to “various forms of British rule”. Yet, this was not an attempt at building an expanded nation-state. The Malaysia that came into being in 1963 was a political creation whose only rationale was that it served a convergence of political and economic expediency for the departing colonial power, the Malayan leadership and the ruling party of self-governing Singapore.

In its classical sense syariah means ‘path to water’—hence, allegorically, to life, and this means duty to God. But what that duty is, how it is to be defined, who does the defining and for whom it is being defined is a matter of intense and often divisive debate in Indonesia as elsewhere. Duty, in the context of the real, temporal world, has a myriad reference points. These include the classical fiqh; local Muslim and pre-Muslim practice; the politics of religion; national state codes and texts; philosophies; political commentary; public orthopraxy; and the ever-present weight of history, about which there is no consensus in Indonesia. The syariah is not now one path, if it ever were. Instead, many paths are offered. The essays in this book are likewise offered as examples from one place at one time to illustrate what choices have been made and to try and judge whether those choices are in reality viable routes to attaining the purpose of the journey, which is fidelity to revelation.

The concept of a distinctly Indonesian school of legal thought (mazhab) is necessarily complementary to the definition of syariah; we are talking about a specific syariah that is ‘national’ because it is ‘Indonesian’. Movement towards defining and establishing a national mazhab began with the rise of nationalist aspirations in the 1930s, and became especially focused in the 1940s with the successful achievement of independence and the debates as to what the proper foundation of the new state should be. As it happened, that foundation turned out to be secular principles, not the syariah. However, this did not prevent the parallel discussion of a national, mazhab from continuing and may even, in reaction, have intensified it. By the late 1960s and early 1970s the idea of a national mazhab—a specifically Indonesian syariah—was being debated in sophisticated terms by the late Professor Hazairin. His proposals were resisted by both the (secular) state authority and the religious scholars (‘ulamā’) and went nowhere. The climate of the times was against him.

The process of decolonization that began in Asia in the aftermath of World War II was brought about by a combination of post-bellum political and economic fatigue in the European capitals, a dramatically altered post-war international landscape, and the rise of indigenous nationalisms across the region, in many instances spawned and spurred by the defeat of the European powers at the hands of Japan. The ease with which the European powers capitulated to a non-white, Asian power during the war effectively shattered the image of western superiority in the eyes of the subject peoples and unravelled the pre-war social and political order in the colonies. The ensuing social and economic disruption brought about by occupation left a deep political and psychological impression on the local populace in Asia. While the occupied populations often bore the brunt of Japanese brutality and resisted Japan's own imperial ambitions, the idea of Asian liberation from western imperialism caught the imagination of many nationalist groups in the region. The ties which had bound Europe to its empire in the region had been swept away, and under Japanese sponsorship indigenous nationalist leaders found renewed energy and opportunities to attack and undermine the old colonial system to widen their own bases of support. This was to signal the beginning of the end of the European empires in Asia. When the European powers returned to their erstwhile colonies after the War, hoping to “rediscover the grandeur of an imperial past”, they were faced with a very different reality. The Dutch lost their empire in the East Indies in the wake of a revolutionary movement which started in 1945 and ended five years later with the declaration of an independent state of Indonesia in 1949. The French faced determined opposition from the revolutionary communist Viet Minh forces, and after a protracted struggle had to leave their empire in Indochina in 1954 under rather ignominious circumstances. British decolonization in South Asia was effected in a more peaceful and orderly manner; in 1947, power was transferred to the independent states of India and Pakistan with Sri Lanka and Burma following a year later.

A law school curriculum is a fundamental exercise in all legal systems. It is intended to provide a professional, practical training while also, ideally, acting as a transmitter of wider social, political and ethical values. It has diverse functions, so the emphasis on one or another aspect of the curriculum obviously varies over time. Some of these changes in emphasis are a matter of fashion, and therefore ephemeral, but it is hard to recognize which are passing fads until long after the unfortunate student has graduated. Essentially a curriculum defines law for public administration and private law, and the graduate is bound by the definition(s) current for his or her time.

A curriculum is a way of setting out definitions. On paper it always appears systematic and certain—such and such a subject is stated, the rules are explained and the readings are set. In reality, however, all curricula are ambiguous, because what a student learns may or may not be useful in practice. At the tertiary or university level, competing dogmas (as distinct from rules) are commonly taught, so that the interpretation and significance of a rule often becomes a matter of debate. In fact the very notion of ‘rule’ is itself debatable.

These general comments apply fully to the syariah curricula in Indonesia. To illustrate this I have chosen a rather narrow focus: first, the curriculum produced for national use by the Department of Religion; and second, the curricula used by Indonesia's State Islamic Universities (Universitas Islam Negeri; UIN), State Islamic Institutes (Institut Agama Islam Negeri; IAIN) and State Islamic Colleges (Sekolah Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri; STAIN), which incorporate but also vary the national model. These curricula set out the material that future judges and civil servants must learn. There are, of course, other paths to instruction in syariah, but the advantage of narrowing the scope is to see in some detail just what the contemporary issues are and how they are being addressed.

Founded in 1946, the Department of Religion has been central to Indonesian Islam for the past 60 years. It administers the religious courts (or did so until 2004); supervises and provides curricula for religious education; administers registration of marriage and divorce; drafts and introduces important regulations such as the Compilation of Islamic Law (Kompilasi Hukum Islam; KHI); registers the wealth tax (zakat) and gifts (wakaf); is the location of the Indonesian Council of Ulama (Majelis Ulama Indonesia; MUI) (from 1975), administers the pilgrimage (hajj); and has an active research division. It is all-pervasive in Muslim affairs because, in practice, its procedures are a source of syariah—a ‘bureaucratic syariah’—in the modern state.

One of the most important functions of the department is to organize the annual hajj. I have chosen this as an example of how the department functions because it demonstrates very clearly the importance of the bureaucratic element, that is, of regulated and systematized control of religious duty. This contrasts strongly with the divine imperative laying out the duty of the individual. My focus, therefore, is on what happens to the pilgrim.

There are three preliminary points to bear in mind. First, the hajj is compulsory for Muslims (means and health permitting), so it is vital that it be performed correctly and completely. The emphasis on orthopraxy is absolutely fundamental and the Department of Religion takes its duty of instruction very seriously. Second, the pilgrim is a citizen of Indonesia who is going abroad for a limited and specific purpose. Nevertheless, the formalities of passport, entry, stay and consular protection must be adhered to. Belief and piety on their own are no longer sufficient in the modern world. Finally, the hajj involves large amounts of money. The average pilgrim pays the Department of Religion about Rp 2.6 million (US$2,600) to make the hajj arrangements—probably more than this by now.

Yudi Latif' Indonesian Muslim Intelligentsia and Power is a study of great scope and importance. There is no comparable study of its kind in the extensive literature on Indonesia. Given its considerable scope and its critical historical argument, it is a book that should be essential reading for an understanding of Indonesian society and its current political development.

As a fundamental sociological inquiry, this book defines and discovers its subject. Its focus is on Indonesia' Muslim “intelligentsia” and its argument is that this “stratum” of society — barely recognized as such by other writers — has provided the critical Islamic discourse within the public sphere that enabled Muslims to define themselves and give direction to the Indonesian nation. This offers a new perception of Indonesia' history and it gives credit both to the centrality of ideas and to the role of those key historical figures in Indonesia who fostered this on-going intellectual discourse.

As a work of intellectual history, this book begins in the nineteenth century, setting out the colonial context within which individual Muslim intellectuals sought to obtain an education and create a place for themselves in colonial society. It then carries on into and through the twentieth century with the emergence of an “intelligentsia” and its varied struggle to gain recognition and political authority. As such, the book charts a succession of generations whose popular designations, in each period, give a sense of the historical embeddedness of their intellectual horizons. From kaum moeda, bangsawan pikiran, and pemoeda peladjar to sarjana and cendiakawan, successive generations of Indonesian Muslims have struggled both to take their place in a national setting and to engage with issues of significance for the Muslim world as a whole.

It is particularly pertinent to recognize that this book is itself an engagement with the discourse that it examines. Like those he studies, Dr Latif is an engaged intellectual. The critical analytic concepts that inform this book are drawn from a variety of intellectual sources. Thus, for example, Dr Latif draws upon the ideas of Mannheim, Gramsci, Foucault, and Habermas — to name a few of his sources of inspiration. He refashions and refocuses these ideas for his own analytic purposes and presents a coherent perception of the nation' past that complements classic studies of Indonesia by such writers as Benda, Feith, Legge or McVey.

For more than four years after the proclamation of Independence, Indonesians had to defend their self-proclaimed freedom through revolutionary struggle as the Dutch attempted to reassume the control over the territory. In this critical historical phase, the national euphoria of independence provided the impetus for all political traditions to strive to actualize their own political dream.

This resulted in internal power struggles and clashes of ideologies which were reflected in the short lifespans of the early cabinets. From 19 August 1945 until 20 December 1949, the new nation experienced the rise and fall of nine cabinets each of which lasted less than two years. Despite this internal fragmentation, however, an historical bloc survived temporarily based on a common will to resist the aggression from the outside.

Through revolutionary warfare and negotiations, Indonesia at last achieved its formal and legal sovereignty. The Round Table Conference held at The Hague from 23 August to 2 November 1949 resulted in an agreement to the unconditional and complete transfer of sovereignty by the Netherlands no later than 30 December 1949, of the entire territory of the former Netherlands East Indies, except for West New Guinea, to the republic of the United States of Indonesia (RUSI).

The RUSI was to have the sovereign of the Netherlands as a symbolic head, Sukarno as president, Mohammad Hatta as vice-president and also prime minister (1949–50). It consisted of the original Republic of Indonesia and fifteen Dutch-created political units (states). Dutch investments were to be protected, and the new government was to be responsible for the billion-dollar Netherlands Indies government debt.