Islam

The tradition of writing on these subjects dates from the seventeenth century. It is firmly within the Islamic tradition and consists of translation and commentary on the fundamentals of doctrine, accounts of the life of the Prophet, and, most important, speculative work on the outer limits of the permissible in doctrine—sometimes subsumed under the rubric of "Sufi" texts. This speculative work is the major distinctive feature of Southeast Asian Islam and is often explained as a reaction to or accommodation with preexisting Hindu or Buddhist religious philosophies. Whatever the reason, this way of thinking about religion has persisted into the twenty-first century. The Arabic texts are mediated through the languages of the area (Malay, Indonesian, and cognates) and have become intensely localized.

One example of this distinctive development of Islam is the idea of gnosis originally expressed by Hamzah Fansuri, who taught in the seventeenth century that the believer could be one with God. That idea resonates in the early twenty-first century in Aceh in Sumatra (as well as other places), where something like 15 to 20 percent of state fatwas concern "heresy," in this case gnosis. This is an incredibly high figure, and the texts involved take us back to the seventeenth century. But a reaction to this idea began in the 1850s and continues in the twenty-first century; "purity" of doctrine has become a priority, inspiring a return to the uncontaminated sources, the Koran and the sunna. The literature and philosophy deriving from these sources, especially since the 1920s and 1930s, is minimalist or, some would say, "scripturalist." Its main characteristic is rejection of cultural complexity combined with a (perhaps) excessive respect for literal translations from the original Arabic. While this may be conducive to "purity," it is also impractical in daily life. The tension between culture and purity is ongoing and, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, largely unmediated. Increasingly the proponents from each side are becoming disengaged from each other; there is little communication, let alone attempts at mutual understanding. Each side produces its own literature and each claims its own authenticity.