What Is Religious Authority? - Cultivating Islamic Communities in Indonesia

Zusatztext "Alatas’ general insight might be extended to any societal and cultural configuration. This makes his monograph relevant well beyond the boundaries of the study of Javanese or Indonesian Islam, and, in fact, beyond the study of Islam or religion in general. . . . [a] layered, important book" ---Matteo Bortolini, Reading Religion Zusammenfassung An anthropologist's groundbreaking account of how Islamic religious authority is assembled through the unceasing labor of community building on the island of Java This compelling book draws on Ismail Fajrie Alatas's unique insights as an anthropologist to provide a new understanding of Islamic religious authority, showing how religious leaders unite diverse aspects of life and contest differing Muslim perspectives to create distinctly Muslim communities. Taking readers from the eighteenth century to today, Alatas traces the movements of Muslim saints and scholars from Yemen to Indonesia and looks at how they traversed complex cultural settings while opening new channels for the transmission of Islamic teachings. He describes the rise to prominence of Indonesia's leading Sufi master, Habib Luthfi, and his rivalries with competing religious leaders, revealing why some Muslim voices become authoritative while others don't. Alatas examines how Habib Luthfi has used the infrastructures of the Sufi order and the Indonesian state to build a durable religious community, while deploying genealogy and hagiography to present himself as a successor of the Prophet Mu?ammad. Challenging prevailing conceptions of what it means to be Muslim, What Is Religious Authority? demonstrates how the concrete and sustained labors of translation, mobilization, collaboration, and competition are the very dynamics that give Islam its power and diversity.

Product details

• Authors: Ismail Fajrie Alatas
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2021
• EAN: 9780691204307
• ISBN: 978-0-691-20430-7
• No. of pages: 256
• Series: Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Other religions; Islam, Ethnic Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion, RELIGION / Islam / General, Yemen, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Islamic Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Islamic Studies, Religion & politics, Social and cultural anthropology, Middle Eastern history, Asian History, Indonesia, Religion and Politics, Religious groups: social & cultural aspects