Gender, Islam, and Sexuality in Contemporary Indonesia, by Monika Arnez and Melani Budianta (eds.)

Reviewed by: Islamizing Intimacies: Youth, Sexuality, and Gender in Contemporary Indonesia by Nancy Smith-Hefner Rachel Rinaldo Nancy Smith-Hefner, Islamizing Intimacies: Youth, Sexuality, and Gender in Contemporary Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2019. 262 pp. Nancy Smith-Hefner, Islamizing Intimacies: Youth, Sexuality, and Gender in Contemporary Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2019. 262 pp. The past two decades have brought immense political, social, and cultural changes to Indonesia. Democratization, an Islamic revival, integration into global and regional political institutions, the rise of social media and information technologies, a boom in higher education, continuing high rates of urbanization, and economic growth (and contraction in some sectors)—all of these have transformed the world's fourth largest country at a dizzying rate since the 1990s. Observing that many of the scholarly discussions of Islam and modernity focus on the realm of states and legal institutions, Nancy Smith-Hefner proposes that "For most youth…the debates over Islam and modernity are felt most compellingly with regard to questions of more immediate, quotidian, and intimate provenance, including those of courtship and marriage, relations with one's parents and kin, career and family, and most generally, everyday interactions and patterns of sociality" (18). In her richly detailed new book, Smith-Hefner chronicles how the Islamic revival and other large-scale social changes have reshaped gender, family, and sexuality among young urban Muslims in this Muslim majority country. One of the foremost anthropologists of Indonesia, Smith-Hefner began doing ethnographic fieldwork to explore these issues in the vibrant city of Yogyakarta, Central Java, in 1999, and she continued to return for fieldwork visits over the next 16 years. This gives Islamizing Intimacies: Youth, Sexuality, and Gender in Contemporary Indonesia a unique [End Page 255] longitudinal perspective. Smith-Hefner also draws on her experience studying Indonesia and her wealth of knowledge about Indonesian history to provide critical historical context for her findings. Smith-Hefner is especially interested in educated youth on Java, Indonesia's most populated island. This demographic has been at the forefront of Indonesia's Islamic resurgence. Thus, many of her interviewees are university students and recent graduates, from both Islamic universities as well as secular universities. She carefully explores the family backgrounds and religious worldviews of students in Yogyakarta, showing how the young generation as a whole practices Islam in a very different and more overtly pietistic way compared to their parents and grandparents, and how even among these increasingly pious young people there is an immense diversity of Islamic orientations and outlooks. One of the strengths of Smith-Hefner's analysis is that she is attentive to the fact that while Islam is a very significant influence in these young people's lives, it is not the only one. Another is her emphasis on diversity and pluralism among Muslims, which highlights the heterogeneity of both the religion and Indonesia itself. As she writes, "in their everyday practice, the vast majority of youth express other, often contradictory, concerns and seem responsive to not one but a variety of moral registers" (41). Chapter 1 introduces the book, providing an overview of its main themes and a thoughtful discussion of methods, particularly the use of in-depth interviews. Chapter 2 contextualizes Indonesian youth culture in Indonesia's broader history, and particularly among 20th century religious and political transformations, while Chapter 3 sketches out the different religious and political orientations of contemporary Indonesian youth, including some of the primary organizations and institutions with which many youth are involved. In Chapter 4, Smith-Hefner examines Indonesian "gender currents" (70), defined as the "socially sustained normative frame for understanding and enacting" gendered aspects of social life. Here, she explores the sex and gender ideologies that operate in contemporary Indonesia, with particular emphasis on the influences of Islam, Javanese culture, and the state. At the heart of Islamizing Intimacies is Smith-Hefner's meticulous description of shifts in gender, sexuality, and romance (Chapters 5–7). Importantly, while there has been much concern that the Islamic resurgence in Indonesia represents a "retraditionalization" or "redomestication" of women, she shows how young urban Muslim women are [End Page 256] simultaneously more devout but also more interested in pursuing...

Reviewed by: Sex and Sexualities in Contemporary Indonesia: Sexual Politics, Health, Diversity and Representations eds. by Linda Rae Bennett and Sharyn Graham Davies Annemarie Samuels (bio) Linda Rae Bennett and Sharyn Graham Davies, eds. Sex and Sexualities in Contemporary Indonesia: Sexual Politics, Health, Diversity and Representations. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. 328 pp. In June 2014 I watched waria dancers perform traditional feminine Acehnese dances on stage in Banda Aceh. It was a splendid performance in which the dancers' techniques, dress, and cosmetics betrayed a high degree of professionalism and many hours of training. It was also a courageous performance. Although the audience consisted mainly of sympathetic students, activists, and NGO workers, a raid by the radical Islamist FPI (Front Pembela Islam, Islamic Defenders Front) and the police was a serious risk. Surveillance of sexuality in general and denunciation of LGBTI in particular has increased in Aceh in the past years, especially in the capital where the government openly joins forces with FPI and related groups. Yet the performance for a crowd of activists took place in a hopeful atmosphere where people embraced diversity, and which may be equally characteristic of the past decade's blooming NGO scene and democratization process. While Aceh cannot be considered representative of the rest of the archipelago, the range of developments taking place in the province resonates with the assessment of the edited volume Sex and Sexualities in Contemporary Indonesia: Sexual Politics, Health, Diversity and Representations. As the editors, Linda Bennett and Sharyn Davies, note in their introduction to the volume, in terms of sexual politics, the post-Suharto era is characterized by "the constant vacillation between diverse voices—some progressive, some conservative and many in between" (10). A decade and a half after the fall of Suharto, the editors asked a highly experienced and multidisciplinary group of researchers to take stock of the dynamics of sex and sexualities in Indonesia. The result is a collection of fifteen insightful and often surprising chapters that address a broad range of topics using data from a wide variety of sources and places. The book is divided into four sections: sexual politics, sexual health, sexual diversity, and sexual representations. An encompassing introduction by the editors and a sparkling afterword in the form of a dialogue with two important gay activists/academics, Dédé Oetomo and Tom Boellstorff, provide general reflections on the volume's central issues and point at new directions for research. The volume's strength lies not only in its timeliness and the high quality of the individual chapters, but also in the broad scope of the compilation that makes several significant contributions to the study of sex and sexualities in Indonesia. It does so in three major ways. First of all, this collection of studies and perspectives offers an assessment of current developments in the field of sex and sexualities. By analyzing discourses, public sentiments, health concerns, and limits and possibilities of diversity, among other topics, the chapters together provide a rich view on (mostly) [End Page 91] recent historical developments and the present state of affairs, forming an important addition to earlier scholarly work in this field.1 A major topic of interest in this respect is the rise of Islamic conservatism and the increasing public presence of radical Islamic groups that influence sexual politics. Tracing relations between Islam and gender politics in Indonesia since the period of the New Order regime, Kathryn Robinson (chapter two) points out that both the New Order ideology and the Islamist discourses that have gained ground in the Reformasi era have promoted a patriarchal, heteronormative gender order. Despite Islamic political parties not being successful during elections, radical Islamic groups have pushed conservative agendas by mobilizing public opinion, such as the mass support for the adoption of 2008's anti-pornography bill, the highly mediatized demonstrations against Lady Gaga's 2012 visit, and the growing public agitation and protests against LGBTI Indonesians.2 Interestingly, as Robinson notes, it is exactly the democratic space opened up by Reformasi that has enabled radical Islamist discourses to thrive. Yet, this same space has also enabled progressive women's activists to be heard, most successfully in 2006's adoption of the...

Reviewed by: Islamic Law in Contemporary Indonesia: Ideas and Institutions ed. by R. Michael Feener and Mark E Cammack Kikue Hamayotsu (bio) R. Michael Feener and Mark E. Cammack, eds. Islamic Law in Contemporary Indonesia: Ideas and Institutions. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 325 pp. Thriving Islamic activism—as well as enduring Muslim aspirations and assertions to expand and enforce shari‛a (Islamic law)—across the Muslim world in recent decades has fascinated scholars and students of religion, society, and politics.1 Now, a number of scholars and students across disciplinary boundaries (not only classic religious studies, but also anthropology, history, law, political science, and sociology) focus their analytical attention on various patterns of religious thoughts, legal practices, and enforcement in order to gain a better empirical and theoretical knowledge pertinent to this trend. What do “Islamic law” and other associated institutions (e.g., Islamic courts and judges) look like in Indonesia? How do they differ from those found elsewhere in the Muslim world, such as Egypt, Malaysia, and Pakistan? Who makes and enforces the laws? How—and to what extent—do other non-theological factors, such as locally specific cultural, social, and political conditions, shape its development? Are the same set of laws, rules, principles, and procedures adopted and enforced similarly across the archipelago? How do Islamic laws and courts work in practice in a largely secular, multi-religious state, such as Indonesia? How much power do those Islamic institutions exert on the daily life of Muslim men and women? Despite the mounting interest in the topic, many questions still remain largely unanswered, leaving considerable empirical and theoretical lacuna in the literature. These questions are especially intriguing because Indonesia is not only the largest Muslim-majority nation, but also socially and culturally diverse—and deeply divided religiously. Moreover, the Indonesian state—and its legal institutions in particular—has been essentially secular since independence, with the regime (both autocratic and democratic) largely dominated by secular political elites up to the present day. This edited volume is a welcome contribution by leading experts and observers of Indonesia to help answer those questions. Twelve chapters authored by sixteen scholars draw upon an impressive array of both Indonesian and Arabic primary sources and data, as well as on firsthand empirical research conducted in the archipelago, to cast light on the formation of Islamic law and courts and religious authority not merely as a body of scriptural and doctrinal knowledge, but, more importantly, as it affected modern institutions. As outlined at the outset by the volume’s editors, Michael Feener and Mark Cammack, these scholars explore the major developments of various facets of Islamic law in contemporary Indonesia: Legal thought and theory— chapter 1, by Feener, and chapter 2, by Nelly van Doorn-Harder; [End Page 113] Fatwas (Islamic legal opinions) and fatwa-issuing bodies— chapter 3, by Kees van Dijk, and chapter 4, by Michael Laffan; How courts and other institutions draft and implement laws— chapter 5, by Rifyal Ka‛bah; Substantive laws on divorce and marriage— chapter 6, by Cammack, Helen Donovan, and Tim Heaton, and chapter 7, by Siti Musdah Mulia and Cammack; Administration and operation of Islamic judiciary and courts— chapter 8, by Cammack, and chapter 9, by John Bowen; Introduction and implementation of more comprehensive shari‛a in Aceh— chapter 10, by Moch. Nur Ichwan, and chapter 11, by Tim Lindsey, M. B. Hooker, Ross Clarke, and Jeremy Kingsley; and Islamic higher education— chapter 12, by Azyumardi Azra. All in all, the studies reviewed here identify and elucidate three distinctive and significant developments of Indonesian Islam, and Islamic law and legal institutions in particular. First, there has been a growing tendency to institutionalize, bureaucratize, and centralize the interpretation, adaptation, and enforcement of Islamic law as well as the administration of Islamic institutions during the last few decades, including Islamic law and courts (chapters 5, 6, 8, and 9) and Islamic universities and faculties (chapter 12). The process has occurred in various ways—and to various degrees—according to sectors and localities, as demonstrated by detailed empirical narratives presented in respective chapters. In general, however, the process seems to have been largely attributed to political factors—especially the preference and...

Acknowledgements Contributors List of Figures Conventions and Orthography 1. Introduction - Andrew N. Weintraub Part I: Commercial, educational, government, and religious institutions 2. Negotiating Mass Media Interests and Heterogeneous Muslim Audiences in the Contemporary Social-Political Environment of Indonesia - Ishadi S.K. 3. Multiple Islams, Multiple Modernities: Art Cinema in between Nationhood and Everyday Islam in Bangladesh and Malaysia - Zakir Hossain Raju 4. Upgraded Piety and Pleasure: The New Middle Class and Islam in Indonesian Popular Culture - Ariel Heryanto Part II: Social processes of media production, circulation, and reception 5. Music, Islam, and the Commercial Media in Contemporary Indonesia - R. Anderson Sutton 6. The Internet, Cyber-Religion, and Authority: The Case of the Indonesian Liberal Islam Network - Muhamad Ali 7. Sells, or Does It? Discourses of Sex and Sexuality in Popular Women's Magazines in Contemporary Indonesia - Sarah Krier Part III: Islamic perspectives on film, music, and literature 8. (Un)framing Muslim Sexuality in Dina Zaman's I Am Muslim - Washima Che Dan 9. Sexing Islam: Religion and Contemporary Malaysian Cinema - Noritah Omar 10. Musical Modernity, Islamic Identity, and Arab Aesthetics in Arab-Indonesian Orkes Gambus - Birgit Berg 11. Music as a Medium for Communication, Unity, Education, and Dakwah - Rhoma Irama (translated by Andrew N. Weintraub) Part IV: Representations, values, and meanings 12. Taking Liberties: Independent Filmmakers Representing the Tudung in Malaysia - Gaik Cheng Khoo 13. Holy Matrimony? The Print Politics of Polygamy in Indonesia - Suzanne Brenner 14. Pop, Politics, and Piety: Nasyid Boy Band Music in Muslim Southeast Asia - Bart Barendregt Index

This paper aims to prove the importance of Khaled Abou el-Fadhl's (b. 1963) critique on Salafibism for mainstreaming Islamic moderation in contemporary Indonesia. This research examines Khaled's critique using the approach of ‘ilm uṣūl al-fiqh, a technique that analyzes the nature, secrets, and purposes of Islamic teachings including its laws. The problem examined in this research is the significance of Khaled's critique on Salafibism for mainstreaming Islamic moderation in contemporary Indonesia. This research concludes that from the perspective of ‘ilm uṣūl al-fiqh, Khaled's critique on Salafibism is crucial for mainstreaming Islamic modernization in present-day Indonesia. The significance of the critique lies in three things: (1). Providing the new awareness and energy for Indonesian Islamic scholars to campaign for moderate Islam and rejects puritanical Islam, especially Salafibism. (2). It provides theoretical guidance for the Islamic moderation movement in Indonesia, especially the importance of the balance between literalism and maqāṣid as well as between text and context in understanding the holy book. (3). Creating the practical guidance for the Islamic moderation movement in Indonesia to counter extremism. This research indicates that adopting a moderate approach to Islam holds significant promise for achieving local, national, and global religious harmony. In contrast, the puritanical approach, which hinders such concord, should be abandoned. Keywords: Critique, puritanism, salafibism, Islamic moderation, contemporary Indonesia

Democracy, Corruption and the Politics of Spirits in Contemporary Indonesia (London and New York: Routledge, 2014)
 Nils Bubandt, the author of Democracy, Corruption and the Politics of Spirits in Contemporary Indonesia, discusses three important topics in this book: democracy, corruption, and the politics of spirits in contemporary Indonesian society. In exploring these three things, Bubandt discusses through the lenses of five objects: kyai, bloggers, politicians, sultans, and prophets. Bubandt also discusses the charm of democracy, the paradox of Indonesian democracy, the ‘ghosts’ of politics in democracy such as corruption, elitism, nepotism, and patrimonialism (the ‘meeting’ between the modern political system and traditional political culture rooted in past kingdoms), and secularism. Bubandt's discussion of these interesting themes is framed within the framework of a study of the world of politics and the world of jin/unseen worlds or ‘other realms’.

This special issue on the Crisis of Care is the result of extensive collaborative research, discussions, and interactions among contributors. In 2022, with colleagues from the University of Southampton, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia in Jakarta, and Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, we co-organised a conference entitled ‘Care Dynamics in Contemporary Indonesia’. Ciptaningrat Larastiti was part of a two-year research collaboration between the University of Southampton (United Kingdom) and Atma Jaya Catholic University (Jakarta), titled ‘Care Network in Later Life’. Her research focuses on care for landless older people with a state of dependency in rural Yogyakarta. Elan Lazuardi, having completed her PhD on HIV care, co-organised the conference as the representative of the Department of Anthropology, Universitas Gadjah Mada.

In the last 20 years, the ‘conservative turn’ toward overtly Islamic identity in Indonesia paved the way for raising political Islamism. This political Islamism aspires to the continuing Islamization, implementation of sharia, and even the establishment of a global caliphate. Emerging Islamist forces such as Front Pembela Islam, Jemaah Tarbiyah, and Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia along with the conservative turn, therefore, pose the normative-political challenges to both republican and liberal notions of citizenship. This paper deals with the question of religion and citizenship under the democratic space in contemporary Indonesia. By examining three variants of Islamic citizenship, religion vigilant, pragmatic, and rejectionist citizenship, this paper tries to address the following question: to what extent Islamism challenges the discourse of citizenship in contemporary Indonesia? We argue that while Islamism apparently rises and gains followers, the state and mainstream Muslim organizations (Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah), and their emphasis on Pancasila and commitment to NKRI successfully manage to reconcile Islam and citizenship under democratic space.

This study aims to describe the expression of sharia in contemporary Indonesia especially in the post reform era. In the beginning of reform, sharia appeared as the political actualization indicated with the demand for returning the seven words of the Jakarta Charter to the local government bylaws. Recently, sharia extends its coverage to economic fields, such as accommodation in industry with the emergence of sharia-labeled hotels, halal tourism and the like. This article departs from an argument stating that the extension of the meaning of sharia is inseparable from the interest of actors utilizing its label or brand to show political identity and business interests. This article describes this shift and analyzes the factors that affect this shifting from politics to economics. Drawing from the theoretical perspective of the contemporary sharia, stating that sharia contains a broad spectrum applied to many levels and aspects, this article argues that that sharia no longer has a single normative definition but has encountered meaning development corresponding to the social and historical challenges. This article also shows that sharia expansion into economic fields is now ongoing process in contemporary Indonesia.

Relation between �Nusantara Islam� and Islamic education in contemporary Indonesia is a pivotal issue. It is because of many fundamental reasons, such as, historical, social, political, cultural, religious and educational perspectives. In this context, this article focuses on the relationship and the contribution of Nusantara Islam in Indonesian Islamic educational context from time to time in all aspects. The research in this paper is qualitative with descriptive analytical approach and documentary method. The general objective of this study is to find out what and how the history of Nusantara Islam in the country? What and how the history of Islamic education in Indonesia? How is the relationship between Nusantara Islam and Islamic education in contemporary Indonesia? The results showed that, first and foremost, is the history of Nusantara Islam is a portrait of a very complex history, which extends from the Aceh to Papua and elsewhere in Indonesia. Second, the history of Indonesian Islamic education is the discussion about institution, content of materials and objectives of Islamic-based education from time to time. Third, the relationship between Nusantara Islam and Islamic education in contemporary Indonesia has a strong �bond� with each other. Ultimately, the relationship is so closely linked to the development and progress of the nationhood.

ABSTRACTIslam is increasing its influence in contemporary Indonesia. What impact does this have on women's economic activity? In Indonesia there is a strong expectation that women should work. Working outside of the home, however, frequently poses a challenge for Muslim women, especially wives. The growing influence of Islamist (women's) groups in Indonesia strengthens conservative Islamic values to some extent. Nevertheless, a growing number of Muslim women in Indonesia are working to earn an income to meet their household's needs. As traditional Islamic teaching prescribes that men should be the main breadwinners for their family, and Indonesian Family Law (1974) also stipulates that husbands are the head of the household, economically successful married women have been put into an awkward position. In view of this development, this article explores how Indonesian middle-class Muslim women have been negotiating between their Islamic values and economic necessity. The article shows that the need to generate an income has led to working Muslim women moderating their Islamic values, enabling them to justify extending their responsibilities into the public domain. We argue that working Muslim women are playing a key role in moderating Islamic theological interpretations and perceptions of Islamic womanhood in contemporary Indonesia.

This special issue explores morality agendas in the recent Indonesian context and in doing so, reveals the dynamism of morality debates as they occur in Indonesia and in broader Southeast Asian perspectives. In this Introduction we illustrate how morality (or the perceived lack of morality) acted in part as the impetus for reformasi (reformation), which forced an end in 1998 to the authoritarian New Order era. Subsequently, we discuss how reformasi influenced morality debates in Indonesia by both opening and foreclosing opportunities for tolerance around gender and sexuality. Specifically, we consider the impact of increasing democratisation and how various moral panics have been articulated in the widening space for social and moral critique. The articles in this special issue make a significant contribution to expanding three key themes – morality and boundaries, moral threats, and morality and subjectivity – and shows how these themes intersect with the conceptualisation and functioning of morality in contemporary Indonesia. We then tease out how the five articles in this special issue engage with these themes. Finally, we comment on our observations regarding the increasing visibility of morality debates in Indonesia in the past two decades, and the increasing social currency attributed to morality issues and debates in the public sphere.

Islam and Indonesia's 2019 Presidential Election Thomas Pepinsky (bio) Indonesia's 2019 presidential election pitted incumbent president Joko Widodo (Jokowi) against challenger Prabowo Subianto in a repeat of the 2014 presidential contest. As in 2014, both Jokowi and Prabowo campaigned on nationalist platforms that defended Indonesia's multireligious national ideology of Pancasila and sought to win votes from all Indonesians.1 But even more so than in 2014, the 2019 campaign saw growing differences between Islamist and pluralist camps in Indonesian politics. Jokowi's victory is a reassuring sign for pluralists concerned about rising Islamist forces in Indonesian politics, although the selection of the influential cleric Ma'ruf Amin as his vice president signals that Islam will continue to play an important role in Jokowi's second term in office. Digging deeper into the 2019 presidential election results reveals important trends in religion and politics in Indonesia. The most important of these has been a widening electoral cleavage based on religious identity rather than ideology. This cleavage, however, interacts with other types of political cleavages in this diverse multiethnic democracy. Electoral and demographic data from the most recent election helps reveal the contours of this emerging religious cleavage structure and provides clues about its implications going forward. Before turning to this data, I begin with a brief overview of religion, ideology, and partisanship in contemporary Indonesia. Islamists, Pluralists, and Party Ideology in Contemporary Indonesia One central cleavage in Indonesian politics is between Islamists and non-Islamists. Terminology is important here: by "Islamist" I mean parties, organizations, or movements that explicitly seek to align national politics with Islamic principles.2 Non-Islamists, then, are a broad category that includes religious Muslims who are comfortable with Indonesia's multireligious constitution, Muslims who hold a more liberal or pluralist [End Page 54] political orientation, secular nationalists for whom religion is a private matter, non-Muslims, and others. Accordingly, discussions of the Islamist cleavage vary in their understanding of what its true "other" is: nationalism, pluralism, liberalism, secularism, or something else altogether. In truth, the opposite of Islamism in Indonesia is all these to some degree. Plainly, not all Muslims are Islamists. Indonesia's population is nearly 90% Muslim, yet the Indonesian constitution grants no special rights to Islam over other religions and instead embraces a multireligious ideology known as Pancasila ("Five Principles"), which explicitly endorses the belief in God without using the word "Allah." Given Indonesia's demographics, this is only possible because a substantial number of Muslims do not support Islamism. Instead, since democratization in 1999, the country has seen vibrant contestation over the role of Islam in society as well as in public life, with Muslims on both sides. The largest political parties in Indonesia are either multireligious parties that are holdovers from the authoritarian regime of Suharto (the Golkar Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) or multireligious parties that were formed after democratization as personal vehicles for aspiring presidential candidates (such as the Democratic Party and the Great Indonesia Movement Party). Although Islamist parties exist, they struggle to earn the support that the pluralist or nationalist parties win. Nevertheless, Islamist forces played an essential role in Indonesia's 2019 presidential elections. Both Jokowi and Prabowo ran broadly nationalist campaigns designed to appeal to all voters, at least rhetorically. Each campaign earned endorsements from key Islamist parties: the United Development Party (PPP) endorsed Jokowi, and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the smaller Crescent Star Party (PBB) endorsed Prabowo. And yet, Islamist elites and civil society organizations sided overwhelmingly with Prabowo and against Jokowi, particularly hard-line Islamist groups like the Islamic Defenders Front. As a result, at least in popular understanding, the 2019 election pitted one candidate with a pluralist, multireligious platform and constituency against one endorsed by Islamists. This split between Jokowi and Prabowo, with Islamists lining up primarily behind the latter, mirrors the 2014 election campaign.3 Cognizant of the mobilizing potential of religious identity, Jokowi and his campaign also courted influential conservative Muslims and Islamists in the run-up [End Page 55] to the 2019 election.4 This culminated in the selection of Ma'ruf Amin, chairman of the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) and...

Religion, Politics and Gender in Indonesia: Disputing the Body SONJA VAN WICHELEN New York: Routledge, 2010, xxvi+154p.Democratization and are the two most important developments that are shaping and influencing the socio-political landscape of Post-Suharto Indonesia. As the biggest majority country in the world, Indonesia is considered by many to have undergone a successful transition from authoritarian to democratic governance despite some limitations. A new democratic process has also witnessed the growth of Islam in Indonesia. It is generally understood that contemporary Indonesian Islam in the post-Suharto era has shown a decline in political Islam (as indicated by the weakening of Islamic political parties). However, to borrow a term, Islamization is showing signs of progression (Ota et al. 2010, 5). This is clearly indicated by an increase in the publication of Islamic books, the popularity of veiling, a lively discussion of women's rights, the emergence of a new generation of Islamic preachers, the growing attention accorded to the Islamic banking system, and the commodification of Islam.This book was written in the context of the progressively changing democratization and Islamization, in which Islam has gradually moved to the center stage of Indonesian society and shaped its sphere. Sonja van Wichelen notes how these two important developments, along with globalization (pp. xiii-xv), have enabled vibrant debates on social-cultural issues, Islam, gender, and politics to flourish and subsequently involve various actors with different ideologies. This book originated from a PhD thesis submitted to the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (ASSR), the Netherlands, and builds on the author's criticism of the current state of scholarship on Islam and democracy, which she believes has mainly dealt with a debate on the compatibility of Islam with liberal democracy. Sonja tries to go beyond the classical debate. By using gender politics as a tool of analysis, she investigates how Muslims are making Islam compatible with democracy and negotiating their religiosity in the sphere and within the nation-state (p. xiii). Although media analysis is the main research method used, she has also gathered data through fieldwork and interviews with more than 60 Muslims and women's organization activists collected over three periods (2003, 2004, 2005) adding up to a total of 12 months, mostly in Java (p. xxiii).Media analysis is an important research method in this book. Sonja presents an empirical analysis of debates on Islam and gender, focusing on four cases in post-Suharto Indonesia (all mass-mediated through print and electronic media). These were the female presidency, the manifestation of new veiling practices, the pro-polygamy campaign, and the contestation over sexualities. Discourse analysis encompasses three analytical levels, namely, representation, discursive context, and social practices. These are used in this book to understand and analyze the four cases (p. xxiv). Throughout the six chapters, the book develops the argument that public debates on Islam and gender in contemporary Indonesia only partially concern religion and more often refer to shifting moral conceptions of the masculine and feminine body in its intersections with new class dynamics, national identity and global consumerism (p. xv).While the book presents interesting facts on, and assessments of, the debates on gender and Islam in contemporary Indonesia, it would have been better if the author had also addressed the following points. First, in delineating the context of the study in Chapter 1's democratization Muslim Politics and Democratization, it would have been more useful if the author had clearly and thoroughly mentioned some fundamental socio-political features earlier on in the book. For example, the book did not adequately address the phenomenon of the growing practice of veiling among female high school and university student followers of the Tarbiyah (education) movement as an example of the explicit impact of Tarbiyah movement that emerged on university campuses since 1970s (p. …

The issues of religious proselytization as well as the construction of house of worship are of main contentious topics inciting tensions between religious adherents, particularly between the minority Christians and the majority Muslims in contemporary Indonesia. This article discusses these two inter-religious problems and poses a question to extent that the competition between Muslim and Christians, both in their missionary activities and the building of new house of worship, inflicting inter-religious relation in contemporary Indonesia. Taken some cases as points of discussion, this article further offers that inclusive dialogue and social justice are solutions to minimize—even to prevent—the worsening tension between Muslim and Christians.