Islam Liberal in Indonesia: A New Beginning

Goenawan Mohamad will talk about a trend in Moslem political and theological thinking in Indonesia that sets itself against more “fundamentalist” interpretations of the faith. It is a story about young Moslem intellectuals, many of them coming from traditional, rural-based Islamic backgrounds, fluent in Arabic and well-versed in theological and legal debates, who are currently active in promoting what they call “liberal Islam.” They disseminate their ideas via books, syndicated columns, radio talks, circulars, political activism, etc. The talk will also explore the link between their ideas and Indonesian pro-democracy movements before and after the fall of the military-backed Soeharto government.

Goenawan Mohamad, U.C. Regents Professor

“LIBERAL ISLAM IN INDONESIA: A BEGINNING?”

Monday, November 19, 2001, 4:00 p.m., 314 Royce Hall

Goenawan Mohamad will talk about a trend in Moslem political and theological thinking in Indonesia that sets itself against more “fundamentalist” interpretations of the faith. It is a story about young Moslem intellectuals, many of them coming from traditional, rural-based Islamic backgrounds, fluent in Arabic and well-versed in theological and legal debates, who are currently active in promoting what they call “liberal Islam.” They disseminate their ideas via books, syndicated columns, radio talks, circulars, political activism, etc. The talk will also explore the link between their ideas and Indonesian pro-democracy movements before and after the fall of the military-backed Soeharto government.

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U.C. Regents Professor Public Lecture at UCLA

“LIBERAL ISLAM IN INDONESIA: A BEGINNING?”

Recent events have brought the world’s attention to Islam and to the nations whose cultures and ways of life it shapes. Little known to most Westerners, however, is that while the Middle East gave birth to the Islamic tradition, it is Indonesia that today is home to the world’s single largest Muslim population (88% of over 200 million people.) But what sort of impact does Indonesia have on Islam and what role can it play in shaping contemporary Muslim thought?

Goenawan Mohamad, U.C. Regents Professor at UCLA, will address this topic when he delivers his Regents Lecture, “Liberal Islam in Indonesia: A Beginning?” on Monday, November 19, at 4:00 pm, in 314 Royce Hall. The lecture will be sponsored by the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies and International Studies and Overseas Programs (ISOP). Goenawan, prize-winning journalist and founder of Indonesia’s critical newsmagazine, “Tempo”, will talk about the trend in Muslim political and theological thinking in Indonesia that sets itself against more “fundamentalist” interpretations of the faith.

The trend is exemplified by young Muslim intellectuals in Indonesia, many of them coming from traditional, rural-based Islamic backgrounds, fluent in Arabic and well versed in theological and legal debates, who are actively discussing and promoting what they call “liberal Islam” via books, syndicated columns, radio talks, circulars, and political activism.

The talk will also explore the link between their ideas and Indonesian pro-democracy movements before and after the fall of the military-backed Suharto government.

“I am extremely pleased that Goenawan Mohamad is giving this lecture,” said Geoffrey Garrett, vice provost of International Studies and Overseas Programs. “First, it provides an opportunity to the UCLA community to convey its pleasure in having Goenawan as Regents Professor.

“Second, understanding the broader Islamic world is obviously of paramount importance to us today, particularly for a country as large and significant on the global stage as Indonesia.”

Goenawan, whose Regents appointment was initiated through the efforts of the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies, a center at International Studies and Overseas Programs (ISOP), has been actively participating in many of the center’s programs this fall, as well as jointly teaching two courses: Topics in Indonesian Literature, Media and Performance; and Southeast Asian Crossroads (History 9E).

Goenawan was the “conscience of Indonesia for most of the Suharto era” according to Anthony Reid, director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and professor of history at UCLA. In his column “Sidelines” Goenawan observed and commented on the politics of the time, and notes that the young liberal Islamic scholars of today were often active members of the pro-democracy movement in Indonesia prior to the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998.

“These Muslim intellectuals, many of them not yet in their 40s, who decided to call themselves ‘liberal Islam’, began their studies of religion when they studied at Indonesian-style Islamic boarding schools, the traditional ‘pesantrens’,” said Goenawan. “Most of them came from the provinces far away from Jakarta. Only very few of the leading members of the group have ever been to any school in the U.S. or Europe. Older Indonesian Muslim thinkers exert a major influence on them, but paradoxically, it was their lives as students in the ‘pesantrens’ that gave them the first exposure to the plurality of interpretations in Islam.”

Goenawan cited one of the most prominent Muslim intellectuals of the younger generation in Indonesia, Ulil Abshar Abdallah as typical of the process these young Muslim scholars underwent. “‘By closely reading classical works by different Islamic scholars, I learned the importance of “internal dissensions” in Islamic thinking, and this eventually led me to a liberal interpretation of the teaching,’” he quotes Ulil Abshar as saying.

Goenawan received the International Editor of the Year Award from the World Press Review and in 1998, the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists. He was the first recipient of the Professor A. Teeuw Award from the Netherlands in 1992 and received the Louis Lyons Award while a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1997. He has also published several volumes of both essays and poetry, and has written contemporary librettos for the stage.