Transnational Ideologies Research Articles

Transformation and Future Challenges of Islamic Law in Indonesia

This study aims to investigate the transformation of Islamic law starting from pre-entry of Islam to Indonesia, entry of Islam, colonialism, and independence to current reformation in Indonesia, as well as various challenges to the formalization of Islamic law. The method used was a qualitative method with the type of library research namely by researching and reviewing legal materials that include primary legal materials, secondary legal materials, and tertiary legal materials that relevant to the object of this research. The results show that pre-entry of Islam to Indonesia, the applicable law was adat law, then since the entry of Islam into Indonesia, Islamic law has been well accepted and implemented by the community, and even its existence has gained legitimacy from both legal experts and the Dutch government. After Indonesia's independence, especially during the Old Order era, Islamic law did not transform significantly. During the New Order after such party collapsed, Islamic law began to transform significantly. Although since the reform period, Islamic law has transformed significantly, the challenges of Islamic law are serious, both internal and external. The most dominant internal challenges among are not fully codified Islamic law, Indonesian pluralistic condition, politics of the rulers' law, misconceptions of some legal experts about Islamic law, and other. Meanwhile, external challenges include influence of transnational ideologies which give a negative stigma against Islam, the development of Western ideologies that clash with Islamic law and the human rights, and strong influence of the domination of Western law in Indonesia.

Islam and the state: Indonesian mosque administrators’ perceptions of Pancasila, Islamic sharia and transnational ideology

In many cases, mosques have been accused by anti-terror agencies as a potential place to spread transnational Islamic ideologies. This study examines the perceptions of mosque administrators (ta’mīr) about Pancasila, Islamic sharia and transnational ideology. This research took place in South Tambun, a densely populated subdistrict in Bekasi, West Java. Mostly populated by urbanites, it has heterogeneous religious understanding. A quantitative research method with descriptive statistics is used in this study to analyse the results of the survey conducted. Furthermore, a qualitative technique is carried out through a series of interviews conducted with the respondents. Triangulation is carried out to increase the validity and credibility of the findings. The results showed that 40% of mosque administrators surveyed thought that transnational ideologies were not in accordance with the spirit of Pancasila. Meanwhile, the remaining 40% and 20% of respondents, respectively, consider transnational ideologies to be dangerous to social order, and divisive. The qualitative analysis shows that the respondents do not want the implementation of Islamic sharia and an Islamic state within the Indonesian constitutional framework.Contribution: This research can be used by policymakers and anti-terror agents to proportionally and participatively involve mosque administrators to narrow the wiggle room for the spread of transnational ideology.

The Discussion of Ulama and Ideology in The Indonesian Ideological Decade

The ideological decade in Indonesia was marked by the entry of various transnational ideologies. Thus, these various ideologies will be responded to with various responses that are different from each other, including the responses of the ulama as representatives of Indonesian Muslims (still the Dutch East Indies at that time). This article aims to describe various forms of response to several ideologies that developed during the ideological decade and their discourses. This article was written with a qualitative descriptive approach using the literature study method as the data collection method. From the results of the analysis, it can be concluded that the ulama as well as Muslims are fragmented in various responses and the roles shown in their various attitudes, when responding to the entry of various ideas/ideologies at this time. In the life of the community, the estuary of the responses that appear leads to the pros and cons of these ideas/ideologies.

Between Science and Utopia

This article investigates the role of physical and astronomical notions in the formation process of transnational political ideologies. It does so by focusing on the striking example of nineteenth-century early socialist movements, particularly Fourierism. Indeed, Fourier’s bold cosmogony enabled him to connect many fields of knowledge, and soon became a powerful vehicle for his ideas on the international scale. The article likewise analyses the ideological process through which Fourierist astronomical conceptions were adopted by foreign socialists, focusing on examples of Polish thinkers such as Jan Czyński and Stanisław Bratkowski who, in drawing on Fourierist ideas and usage of scientific terms, tried to embed his vocabulary in the ongoing nineteenth-century debates about Polish history and, more generally, the burning issue of the independence of the Polish state. Our comparative analysis highlights the contextual influences which contributed to re-shaping such ideas within a new absorbing context.

Editorial Introduction

Editorial Introduction

An Ambivalent Magic: Undocumented Asian Immigrants and Racialized “Illegality” in the U.S. Imperial Project

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that the Cold War’s militarized and imperialist logic has entangled with racialized migrant “illegality” to shape undocumented Korean immigrants’ (in)voluntary enlistment in the MAVNI program. Drawing on several years of ethnographic research, I examine how young undocumented Koreans were mobilized in service of the US’s imperial project to sustain its global supremacy through the “War on Terror.” In particular, I attend to the way militarized imperialism embedded within U.S. citizenship becomes intimately tied to the transnational ideologies of South Korean militarized citizenship as experienced by the unprivileged descendants of the unending Cold War. The neoliberal practices of the DREAM Act and DACA only reinforced this connection. Focusing on the undocumented-to-military trajectory, this study contributes to interrogate the temporality of the racialized migrant “illegality” of Asian immigrants within the larger historical context of U.S. militarized imperialism in Asia during the unending Cold War.

Islam Transnasional vs Islam Moderat: Upaya NU dan MD dalam Menyuarakan Islam Moderat di Panggung Dunia

Abstract: Transnational ideologies with a "fierce" face such as HTI, Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi have progressed from year to year, especially after the reformation. This is evidenced by their success infiltrated into the bodies of two large Indonesian Islamic organizations known to be very moderate (NU and MD) in the 2006-2007s. In response to this, the 33rd NU conference and the 47th MD conference in 2015 seemed to be evidence of the seriousness of the two organizations to not only improve themselves after being infiltrated but also to make both of them intensified to introduce Indonesian Islamic patterns to the outside. This paper concludes that the face of moderate Islam in Indonesia will be maintained as long as NU and MD remain steadfast as the "bodyguards" of the Republic of Indonesia. More than that, both of them are determined to utter a new Islamic model typical of Indonesia on the world stage, namely Islam Nusantara Berkemajuan. Therefore, the efforts of the transnational movement whose agenda is to replace the foundation of the Indonesian state into a caliphate will end in vain. Keywords: Moderate Islam, Indonesia's Contributions, NU, MD, Transnational Ideology.

Pancasila Dalam Interaksi Kearifan Lokal Dan Ideologi Transnasional

Today, 'transnational ideology' is much assumed as a threat for Indonesian local wisdom. Then, how can local wisdom survive amid the spread of transnational ideology? In essence, current recognized Indonesian religions, even coming from outside Nusantara, are well received because of their interaction with local conditions. These religions open, understand, and accommodate local conditions in order to conform to their teachings. The key point of religious life in Indonesia is the spectrum of its understanding with local wisdom. This paper describes the interaction between local wisdom and transnational ideology in Indonesia and how Pancasila should function in this condition. The first part of this paper describes local wisdom as a cultural product and its habitual manifestations. Second, explanations of transnational ideology and its relations to religions in Indonesia. Third, Pancasila is a reflection of local Indonesian wisdom and a path of interaction with any party, including transnational ideologies that are not yet understood. Fourth, conclusion that explains Pancasila as a form of nation-state presence that provides further understanding for local wisdom towards transnational ideology. This condition may happen as long as the spirit of mutual understanding becomes the basis for every interaction that may come.

Transnational Ideologies, Violent Conflict, and Pashtun Social Identity

Transnational Ideologies, Violent Conflict, and Pashtun Social Identity

Transnational Ideologies, Violent Conflict, and Pashtun Social Identity

The Pashtun borderland has assumed enormous international political significance in the wake of 9/11. However, the Pashtun inhabitants of the area continue to be profoundly impacted by the on-going conflict in the region. The conflict has reconfigured the whole fabric of the socio-cultural life of its inhabitants. While some scholastic attempts have been made to address the socio-dynamics of the conflict, detailed accounts of the impacts of the conflict on Pashtun social identity ‘Pashtunwali’ remain scarce. This study aims to investigate how the violent conflict in the region has changed the Pashtun socio-cultural system of “Pashtunwali” including, for example, Jirga, Melmastia and Hujra. This socio-cultural system has, in the past, played a crucial role in conflict resolution and sustaining peace in society. Field data was gathered in Pakistan's tribal areas and in selected urban areas through semi-structured interviews and participant observation with local and key respondents. The study finds that under the influence of transnational ideologies, militants incorporated religiosity into the secular culture of Pashtunwali which, in turn, has significantly impacted the socio-cultural life of the tribal people.

Transnational imaginaries and the negotiation of sexual rights during the South African transition

ABSTRACTIn this article, we trace the transnational cultural flows that shaped the recognition of sexual rights as human rights during the transition to democracy in South Africa. Through a close reading of Beverley Ditsie and Nicky Newman’s documentary film, Simon & I (2002), we investigate the contested history of postapartheid sexual rights in which local cultural politics overlap and intersect with transnational agents, ideologies, and affect. Ditsie and Newman’s documentary centres on the figure of Simon Nkoli, a prominent gay rights and anti-apartheid activist. The film traces the complexities, contradictions and transnational connections that produce an expanded understanding of rights as indivisible and universal. Focusing on the contesting local and transnational imaginaries in which the sexual rights regime was constituted, we resist discourses suggesting that the constitutional codification of sexual rights in South Africa was inevitable. Far from being inevitable, we argue, the recognition of gay and lesbian rights as human rights was located within the crosshairs of an uncertain and volatile historical moment.

Transnational Ideologies and Religious Local Wisdom

This paper Is about the dynamic of discourse between the so called Transnational ideologies and Religious local wisdom. The reason this discourse is necessary to understand well in relation to religious life in Indonesia is because some transnational ideologies have succeeded in attracting the attention of some Islamic people. This is a paper with an anthropological approach. Thus, the description is based on phenomenological observation. This paper will look at some transnational ideologies offerings that attracted some Islamic historical experiences which had built the grandour of Islamic civilization as the nostalgia to back up their offer. One of the example is the idea of Khilafah which is propagated by the so called Hizbut Tahrir. Another is the Jihad movement which is propagated by for instance ISIS and previously al Qaida. This paper will analyze the reasons why some Islamic people are very interested in these movements while what transnational ideologies offer is actually the solidarity to be Muslims based on the bad situation of the Middle East. However, these transnational movements have gain their supporters in the name of Islamic solidarity based on the historical example of Islamic golden age. Therefore, the ideas offered is constructing new Islamic world order based on Islamic teachings and form in accord with their framework and paradigm. The New Islamic World order will leash the suffer of Islamic people from unjust treatment the so called western domination. In relation to this in Indonesian case, it is important to consider religious local wisdom as a filter to this propagation. It is because religious local wisdom will give deeper understanding to the people how to understand the teaching of their religion based on the context of their life and their local religious heritage without deviating from the essence of religion.

Introduction: Cross-Cultural Reading

Introduction: Cross-Cultural Reading

Translationscapes: On the Legibility of Transnational Ideologies in World Literary Systems

Critiques of world literature studies have highlighted power inequalities which privilege or restrict international prominence of literary texts and figures; this article suggests a specific method for gauging and mapping that process: translationscapes. Translation provides visibility to texts that otherwise remain functionally invisible, and the concept of translationscapes designates the sum total of texts of a given literary set made visible in a foreign language. These sets may be nation-based or organized through other criteria (authorial demographics, genre, time periods, etc.). These literary sets vary between languages due to a variety of factors. Analyzing their evolution and the patterns of divergence between them renders visible transcultural ideologies of world literature. To execute this, research must incorporate specific analyses of authors' oeuvres and individual texts, tracing patterns of their “appearance” in various languages. Concluding that ideologies based on Euro-American valuations of aesthetics and politics remain dominant in determining world literary production, this article argues for further research into translationscapes as a way of combining close reading of texts within larger contexts of systems-level research.

Home-made development in Bolivia

Este artigo investiga como o movimento de bairro da cidade de El Alto, um movimento social chave na Bolívia contemporânea, retratou e construiu ideias de desenvolvimento durante os protestos de outubro de 2003, a chamada “Guerra do Gas”. Sua perspectiva era informada por ideologias transnacionais – como o progresso, a modernização e o desenvolvimento – e a memória coletiva profundamente enraizada da Guerra do Pacífico. Diferentemente de outras experiências nacionalistas, esse movimento que “avança enquanto olha para trás” procurou reestabelecer um equilíbrio de poderes em vez de promover a superioridade do grupo. Essa ênfase na igualdade traz possibilidades de diálogo com o paradigma de desenvolvimento emergente de vivir bien. Este artigo contribui para uma discussão mais geral sobre o conflito entre o desenvolvimento e o vivir bien na América Latina. Em vez de descartar rapidamente este novo paradigma como sendo demasiado normativo e distante das realidades das pessoas pobres, identifica os possíveis encontros entre eles.

Reproductions of Chinese Transnationalism: Ambivalent Identities in Study Abroad

Intersections between transnationalism, the internationalization of higher education, and applied linguistics continue to draw attention, as the proliferation of academic mobility is increasingly influencing students, instructors, and universities globally. As one of the world’s major receiving countries of international postsecondary students, Canada, and its universities, has been similarly impacted. This article presents two informative and contrastive perspectives based on the experiences of two Chinese doctoral students at a large Canadian university. I focus particularly on the students’ national and transnational ideologies, identities, and future outlooks, and how these formative experiences and positionalities shaped their perspectives, goals, and motivations during their study abroad. This research demonstrates how the (transnational) identities of these two students were discursively and iteratively formed based on complex intersections of national and transnational discourses regarding the representations of overseas returnees and the students’ conceptions and co-constructions of the legitimate academic transnational and home. These discursive constructions and enactments in turn had an influential effect on their challenges, desires, and abilities to integrate into local academic discourses and communities.

RELIGIOUS MILITARISM AND ISLAMIST CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION IN TURKEY

AbstractThis article focuses on Islamist conscientious objectors (COs) in Turkey who have resisted both mandatory conscription and the Turkish state's use of Islamic discourses of jihad and martyrdom to legitimize it. Examining military conscript training and the post-1980 coup national school curriculum, the article first outlines the Turkish state's production of a particular interpretation of Islam and its dissemination of it through nationalist and militarist discourses and practices. The article then pursues an ethnographic analysis of Islamist COs’ resistance to conscription through nonviolent civil disobedience based on antiauthoritarian and antinationalist interpretations of Islam. Weaving together their own interpretations of jihad and martyrdom with transnational theories and ideologies, Islamist COs present a powerful critique of Turkish militarism and its religious claims. A focus on Islamist COs potently highlights the diversity of Islamic groups and sensibilities in contemporary Turkey, and the difficulties faced by nationalist projects to discipline religious imaginaries and put them to the service of the modern state.

Reframing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan: new communication and mobilization strategies for the Twitter generation

The USA and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have been waging war against the Taliban in Afghanistan for more than a decade, with territorial gains by coalition forces often proving to be ephemeral. This paper traces the origins and evolution of the current Afghan insurgency and explores the framing of the Taliban movement's discourse on Twitter and other interactive websites. The paper postulates that Taliban activists are utilizing social media to disseminate their views and frame their movement in the phraseology of militant Islamism, traditional Pashtun folklore, anti-imperialism, social justice, and universal human rights. Taliban militants are attempting to align their discursive frames with various transnational ideologies that resonate not only with prospective recruits and supporters in Central and South Asia and the Middle East, but also potentially receptive audiences in the West. Such frame alignments are essential components in the micro-mobilization of movement participants. Taliban activists apparently recognize that there are important symbols, narratives, and channels already in existence that can facilitate the growth of their insurgency, while effectively discrediting coalition forces. This paper examines frame alignments and other insurgent-mobilization communication strategies by conducting a content analysis of recent tweets and blogs written by Taliban cyber-activists.

Islam in the balance: ideational threats in Arab politics

Islam in the Balance: Ideational Threats in Arab Politics is an analysis of how ideas, or political ideology, can threaten states and how states react to ideational threats. It examines the threat perception and policies of two Arab Muslim majority Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in response to the rise and activities of two revolutionary states, established in Iran (1979) and Sudan (1989). Using these comparative case studies, the book provides important insight about the role of religious ideology for the international and domestic politics of the Middle East and, in doing so, advances our understanding of how, why, and when ideology affects threat perception and state policy.Rubin makes clear that transnational ideologies may present a greater and more immediate national security threat than shifts in the military balance of power: first because ideology, or ideational power, triggers threat perception and affects state policy; second because states engage in ideational balancing in response to an ideological threat. The book has significant implications for international relations theory and engages important debates in comparative politics about authoritarianism and Islamic activism. Its findings about how an Islamist regime or state behaves will provide vital insight for policy creation by the US and its Middle East allies should another such regime or state emerge.

Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire by Maia Ramnath (review)

Reviewed by: Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire by Maia Ramnath Gajendra Singh Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire. By Maia Ramnath. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. 332pp. $68.95 (cloth); $31.95 (paper and e-book). Maia Ramnath’s Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire is a historical study of an event and movement often referred to but rarely explored in detail in academic literature. It is one of only two works published in the last thirty years devoted to analyzing the origins and implications of the Ghadar movement (the other being Harish Puri’s Ghadar Movement: Ideology, Origins and Strategy), and it is, for that reason alone, a welcome contribution.1 As Ramnath reminds us, the Ghadar movement emerged among a nascent South Asian diaspora, among several thousand students, mill workers, and farm laborers who had migrated to the Pacific coast of Canada and the United States of America in the first decades of the twentieth century. It straddled a plethora of competing ideologies and creeds: the impacts and interactions of Ghadar with pan-Islamism, Irish republicanism, anarchism, and Bolshevism are detailed in the work. It orchestrated attempts at [End Page 905] armed revolt and military mutiny in India during the First World War, and its members had long careers in secular and religious nationalisms in colonial India in the interwar period. Throughout her work, Ramnath is keen to emphasize not only that Ghadar was a movement of transnational migrants influenced by transnational ideologies, but also that it provides the connective tissue between early anti-imperial movements in India—particularly rural agitation in Punjab and revolutionary terrorism in Bengal—and the more recognizable nationalisms and revolutionary movements of the 1920s and 1930s. It “served as a missing link,” Ramnath asserts, “as connective tissues or switching circuit, capable of linking various elements among the Indian radicals abroad, linking Indian radicals to other networks, and linking pre- to postwar revolutionary movements inside the country. In fact it could be hazarded that the movement’s wider network overlapped at some point, at no more than a degree of separation, with every radical tendency of its time” (pp. 2–3). This is done most successfully in chapters 5, 6, and 7, detailing the long interconnections between the early Communist movements among the South Asian diaspora and forms of pan-Islamic thought. The attempt to highlight the intellectual interconnectedness and malleability of Ghadar ideology leads, however, to a loss of specificity about what made Ghadar unique. This results in a loss of the ordinary members of Ghadar as the subjects of Ramnath’s work. The overwhelming majority of Ghadaris were not student radicals, pan-Islamists, or individuals involved in the various anarchistic movements present in the United States at the time. They tended to come from rural communities of Punjab (from the submontane districts of Sialkot, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, and Ambala), a significant number were pensioned soldiers of the Indian Army, and the overwhelming number were Punjabi Sikhs. As a result, a parallel literature (and eventually leadership) develops in Ghadar in which popular publications in the Gurmukhi script were significantly different from their more intellectualized Urdu or English counterparts (take, for instance, the fact that the Gurmukhi editions of the Ghadar newspaper carried as its masthead the Sikh shabad or hymn “Jo tau prem khelan ka chao / Sir dhar tali gali men aao” or “If you want to play the game of love / Then be willing to sacrifice your head”). Very little is said in Haj to Utopia of the Sikh religious context of Ghadar or of Punjabi traditions of martyrdom that affected the nature of the movement’s violence. In addition, the migrant experience in the early twentieth century could have been explored further: “anti-Asiatic” violence in North America and transpacific networks of migration that enabled ideas and bodies to travel back and forth from [End Page 906] India to California. As Hussein Omar has commented in his review of Haj to Utopia in the magazine Bidoun, Ramnath...