Thank you for this (as always) thorough book review. Based on it, I ordered the book. I'm interested in how Southeast Asian nations foster polities with various levels of tolerance. I know Muslim-majority nations, like Western Christian-majority nations, historically have demonstrated varying levels of religious tolerance. This work on Indonesia looks like a worthy study. I hope also to find work on tolerance in Malaysia. A friend of mine has been there twice in the past two or three years was struck by what he describes as the rich religious diversity that the country permits.
I don't claim to know much about Indonesian history, but I am dubious of any historical/political science treatment of it that may rest on the assumption that mainstream Islam is a benign partner in the field of "world religions" and not rather a hostile declaration of war on all other societies. This latter rather grim assessment, if applied, would then proceed not by assuming any signs of beneficence and tolerance stem from its source (mainstream Islam) but actually are deviations from it. I don't know where Menchik stands on this, but it's a safe bet, since the Western Mainstream has been predisposed to whitewash Islam for years if not decades, that he comports with that.
As a relevant sideline, the prevailing theory in academe for a century now about the origins of Islam in Indonesia has been that it was a benign and slow percolation of Muslim seafarers who visited and slowly wove themselves peacefully into the fabric of the local culture. This theory seems to be largely the product of a leading scholar, the Dutch Snouck Hurgronje, who also was part of the administration of Indonesia as a Dutch colony (he read the Koran in Arabic and even went on the Hajj disguised as a Muslim). Hurgronje knew about legends from Indonesian oral lore that had recorded and preserved stories of a hostile violent invasion by foreigners in the distant past -- but he discounted these because they were passed on orally, which he deemed unreliable. I believe since his time (early 20th century), anthropologists have learned to respect oral culture as quite reliable -- so it may be they were right about the origins of Islam in Indonesia -- which, incidentally, historically has been the norm: violent invasions followed by Draconian subjugation.
Thank you for this (as always) thorough book review. Based on it, I ordered the book. I'm interested in how Southeast Asian nations foster polities with various levels of tolerance. I know Muslim-majority nations, like Western Christian-majority nations, historically have demonstrated varying levels of religious tolerance. This work on Indonesia looks like a worthy study. I hope also to find work on tolerance in Malaysia. A friend of mine has been there twice in the past two or three years was struck by what he describes as the rich religious diversity that the country permits.
Thanks for reading it! It would be a great study to read a comparison between Malaysia and Indonesia on these questions!
I don't claim to know much about Indonesian history, but I am dubious of any historical/political science treatment of it that may rest on the assumption that mainstream Islam is a benign partner in the field of "world religions" and not rather a hostile declaration of war on all other societies. This latter rather grim assessment, if applied, would then proceed not by assuming any signs of beneficence and tolerance stem from its source (mainstream Islam) but actually are deviations from it. I don't know where Menchik stands on this, but it's a safe bet, since the Western Mainstream has been predisposed to whitewash Islam for years if not decades, that he comports with that.
As a relevant sideline, the prevailing theory in academe for a century now about the origins of Islam in Indonesia has been that it was a benign and slow percolation of Muslim seafarers who visited and slowly wove themselves peacefully into the fabric of the local culture. This theory seems to be largely the product of a leading scholar, the Dutch Snouck Hurgronje, who also was part of the administration of Indonesia as a Dutch colony (he read the Koran in Arabic and even went on the Hajj disguised as a Muslim). Hurgronje knew about legends from Indonesian oral lore that had recorded and preserved stories of a hostile violent invasion by foreigners in the distant past -- but he discounted these because they were passed on orally, which he deemed unreliable. I believe since his time (early 20th century), anthropologists have learned to respect oral culture as quite reliable -- so it may be they were right about the origins of Islam in Indonesia -- which, incidentally, historically has been the norm: violent invasions followed by Draconian subjugation.
Thank you for this - I hadn't heard of Hurgronje and will definitively check him out!