John R. Bowen

On the Political Construction of Tradition: Gotong Royong in Indonesia

The idea of “mutual assistance” ( gotong royong ) in Indonesia has been the basis for political discourse concerning the nature of authority, the characteristics of village society, and the legitimacy of demands for labor by the state. This article traces the way in which both changing political ideologies and state-village relations have been mediated by the term gotong royong , and suggests that its multiple meanings have been central to its semantic, political, and economic roles. Local interpretations of national doctrine and reactions to state policy are examined in two cases: East Java and Gayo (Aceh). The wide variety of local strategies is perceived as depending on preexisting political traditions and power relations vis-a-vis the state.

Beyond Migration: Islam as a Transnational Public Space

Recent studies of transnational religious phenomena have emphasised the importance of distinguishing between transnational processes of migration and movement on the one hand, and diasporic forms of consciousness, identity, and cultural creation on the other. While this distinction is useful, it risks directing the study of transnational social phenomena in certain, limited directions. Migration and diaspora insufficiently take into account the possibility of quite distinct self‐understandings about boundaries and legitimacy on the part of both ‘host’ countries and ‘immigrant’ populations. Taking ‘Islam in France’ as an illuminating case in point because each of its two constitutive terms challenges the possibility of self‐defining through migration and diaspora, I argue that transnational Islam creates and implies the existence and legitimacy of a global public space of normative reference and debate, and that this public space cannot be reduced to a dimension of migration or of transnational religious movements. I offer two brief ethnographic examples of this transnational public space, and maintain that even as it develops references to Europe it implies neither a ‘Euro‐Islam’ nor a ‘post‐national’ sense of European membership and citizenship. Rather, current directions of debate and discussion in France are strongly shaped by, first, French efforts to define Islam within national political and cultural boundaries, and, second, efforts by Muslim intellectuals to maintain the transnational legitimacy of Islamic knowledge.

The Forms Culture Takes: A State-of-the-Field Essay on the Anthropology of Southeast Asia

If each world region has its own style of anthropological analysis, then surely Southeast Asia has come to be the place where interpretive approaches to culture have reigned, whether in anthropology, history, or politics. Interpretive anthropologists, drawing largely on Boas and Weber, analyze culture into publicly accessible forms and the interpretations different actors give those forms. Despite recent criticisms by political economists as well as postmodernists, this approach continues to guide much of the current research by anthropologists working in Southeast Asia.

Secularism: Conceptual Genealogy or Political Dilemma?

If we step back and consider the words around which critiques and debates have crystallized in recent years, some have been relatively clear, while others have been constantly in need of disambiguation. Even during the most drawn-out of debates over “nationalism” or “revolution,” and despite the arguments over definitions and typologies, we had the sense that we were all talking about the same thing—that is why the debates could move along, adding new perspectives, disputing whether this or that author had placed enough stress on class position, or industrialization, or ideas.

Islam and the Political Economy of Meaning: Comparative Studies of Muslim Discourse

This book aims to improve understanding of Muslim social and political action by examining a broad spectrum of Muslim discourse, both written and spoken, to see how meaning is formed by context.

Islamic Adaptations to Western Europe and North America The Importance of Contrastive Analyses

The article examines the ways Islamic leaders have adapted to conditions in Britain, France, and the United States by taking one problem—how a Muslim woman can obtain a religious divorce—and identifying contrasts across those three countries. It emphasizes two contrasts among the three countries: the degree of residential concentration of Muslims and the social effects such concentration may have, and the legal legitimacy of religion in civil courts. Muslim leaders have crafted institutions accordingly: in Britain, shariah councils emerging from tight-knit communities and regarded by jurists as relatively benign; in France, Islamic leaders constrained to emphasize the Islamic legitimacy of civil institutions; and in the United States, leaders developing contractual instruments in response to relatively favorable judicial reactions.

Recognising Islam in France after 9/11

French policies regarding Muslim institutions have been developing since the 1980s and reflect long-term patterns of controlling certain religious institutions through supporting them. Current policies are motivated in part by the desire to enhance internal security by making Islamic activities more visible. I argue that a long-term approach to security ought to place as much emphasis on building equal access to religious institutions (as well as to employment and housing) as on police actions regarding potentially violent individuals.

“You May Not Give It Away”: How Social Norms Shape Islamic Law in Contemporary Indonesian Jurisprudence

A recent Indonesian Islamic law compilation presents an apparent anomaly in restricting the right to give away wealth as hiba to one-third of an estate — whereas the trend in Indonesian law reform has been to bring Islamic law closer to local inheritance practices. By means of a narrative analysis of a recent court decision, I identify a discourse of justifying the new restrictions in terms of general religious and social norms of fairness and agreement among heirs. Examination of local debates over law and property in two Sumatran societies, Gayo and Minangkabau, suggests that hiba is regarded as an impediment to Islamization of social life, and as introducing elements of unfairness and discord. Thus the new rule can be explained as having been motivated by local social processes and social norms.

An institutional approach to framing Muslims in Europe

Across Western Europe, public discourse has been suffused by claims about Muslims and Islam. These claims are mainly negative. Across a wide political spectrum, public fi gures denounce Islam for its retrograde values. Some claim that Islam is incompatible with the values of Europe and European states, that Muslims are irreducibly foreign because they will not or cannot abandon preEnlightenment ideas. Framing Islam as a set of values intrinsically incompatible with Europe implies that Muslims must choose between abandoning their religion and remaining outside the boundaries of the true European citizenry. This representation was at the heart, for instance, of the 2004 ban on wearing the Islamic veil in public schools in France. As Joan Scott (2007: 8) argues, “Outlawing the veil . . . was an attempt to enact a particular version of reality, one which insisted on assimilation as the only way for Muslims to become French. ” The notion that Islamic moralities and “modern” Europeanness are mutually exclusive has also played a key role in Dutch debates. The highly infl uential late rightwing populist Pim Fortuyn argued that Islam was a backward religion. Unlike Islam, Fortuyn argued, Judaism and Christianity had been transformed by “the Enlightenment,” during which the essential “Western” values such as individual responsibility, the separation of church and state, and the equality of men and women – among others – had developed. Fortuyn described Islam as a backward culture and a threat to his personal way of life: “I refuse to start all over again with the emancipation of women and gays.” 1

Sanctity and Shariah

Amid the din of tabloid accusations that Britain now enforces, “shari’a law” has been lost the variety of ways in which British Muslim scholars have combined religious legitimacy, quasi-judicial procedures, and social outreach to create new kinds of Islamic institutions. I set out two such institutions here to give a sense of that variety. Together they illustrate the complex ways in which British Islamic institutions can and do articulate positions on registers of spirituality and legalism.