Islam, Politics and Identity

Abstract

The chapter, by examining the history of Islam, shows interplay between localism and transnationalism in the local dynamics, which is largely ignored in analyses of the contemporary politics of Islam. Yet the Islamic regulations in contemporary West Sumatra would not be possible without the interaction of local and transnational actors and ideas. The regional governments’ engagement with Islam have an historical perspective. The institutionalising the tenets of Islam dated back to the royal courts of the pre-colonial Islamic kingdoms and the colonial government’s Office for Native Affairs even though it has only become possible to pass regional laws (peraturan daerah, perda) in the post-Suharto era. This chapter argues that the relationship between a global Islam and a local identity was simultaneously accommodating and contested, as indeed it is today. In doing so, the chapter examines a brief historical overview of Islam in West Sumatra from the advent of Islam in the Malay world to its role in the post-Suharto era. The chapter seeks to contextualise the key phases in West Sumatra’s history in the broader history of the archipelago and the Malay world, and to show how key events in West Sumatra and at the national level set the parameters for later debates about Islam and identity in the region.