"Islamism and Communism" - A 1925 Treatise in Indonesian

 “As for those who call themselves Muslims but disagree with Communism, I’m willing to say that they are not true Muslims.” -H.M. Misbach

A stylized portrait of Haji Mohamad Misbach (Medan Moeslimin no. 1, 1925, National Library of the Republic of Indonesia)

My Translation of "Islamism and Communism" by H.M. Misbach (PDF)

(Update: HTML version now available on Marxists Internet Archive)

Over much of recent Indonesian history, communism and Islam have been popularly painted as antithetical. But many activists and thinkers have found valuable resonances between the two traditions. In the early and mid-20^th century, massive popular organizations like Sarekat Islam (Merah) rallied members to fight for proletarian revolution as a manifestation of Islamic values. Indonesia’s independence struggle hero and first president, Sukarno, similarly promoted the compatibility of Islamic and communist values.

Here, in this PDF, I’ve translated a treatise from 1925 by an Indonesian thinker, Haji Mohamad Misbach, who similarly sees the goals of Islam and communism as aligned. It is also a polemic against opposing Islamic movements that cooperated with the capitalist structure of the colonial regime. It was published serially in the periodical Medan Moeslimin (MM), which Misbach had founded in 1915. Misbach died of malaria, exiled in Papua, before completing the treatise, however, and in May 1926 readers opening the next edition of MM expecting the next segment instead found his obituary.

In post-1965 Indonesia, this type of political confluence between Islam and communism has become almost unimaginable. After the mass killings of around 500,000 communists at the hands of the Indonesian military and Islamic militias, and over the half-century of anti-communist propaganda since, both communists themselves and communism as a popular ideology have been nearly eradicated from Indonesian soil. Exceptions exist, of course, and in 2014 young Islamic Leftist intellectuals launched an online magazine called Islam Bergerak (Islam that Moves) after Misbach’s other publication of the same name. But this contemporary Islamic Left remains marginal—still far from the days when activists like Misbach were prominent public figures leading labor strikes and mass actions against colonists and capitalists. This treatise reminds us of such a time when Islamic communism was not just thinkable, but the object of popular struggle.

The running epigraph preceding each section of “Islamism and Communism” was the hadith: “Wisdom is the stray thing of the believer; wherever he finds it, he gathers it.” This was seemingly used to counter the inevitable opposition that Marxism and communism were foreign, un-Islamic sciences. It is interesting Misbach use of this hadith mirrors how Western sciences have been narratively integrated throughout the Muslim world over the last century as well.

Misbach’s “Islamism and Communism” has become much less well-known and influential in Indonesian intellectual history than his rival Tjokroaminoto’s 1924 book Islam and Socialism (which was recently shown to consist almost entirely of a direct translation from a 1912 work by the same title by the South Asian Mushir Hosein Kidwai). Unlike Misbach, Tjokroaminoto’s vision for “socialism” consists mostly of advocacy for social cooperation and solidarity among all Muslims (and eventually humanity), rather than a Marxist politics oriented towards changing relationships to the means of production.

A Short Biography of H.M. Misbach

Misbach wrote the treatise from political exile Manokwari, Papua, where he was sent by the Dutch because of his political agitations in Java. Born in Surakarta, in central Java, in 1876, he was named Ahmed. Upon marrying, he changed his name to Darmodiprono, and after going on hajj, to Haji Mohamad Misbach. His father was a trader and religious official for the royal family of Surakarta, and as a child he attended a colonial school as well as a pesantren (Islamic school).

In 1915, Misbach founded Medan Moeslimin, and in 1917, he started another periodical Islam Bergerak (Islam that Moves). In 1918, he started a reformist Islamic association in Surakarta, SATV. He was also a member of the larger reformist organization Muhammadiyah from nearby Yogyakarta. In 1919, he was arrested and jailed for over 5 months after publishing a cartoon in Islam Bergerak insulting Dutch capital and the aligned royal house of Surakarta. He evidently did not stop agitating, as he was arrested again in 1920 and imprisoned for over two years in Pekalongan. After his release, Misbach officially left Muhammadiyah on the grounds that it (like the faction of Sarekat Islam led by Tjokroaminoto) was cooperating with the government. In 1923, he became a propagandist for the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the “red” faction of Sarekat Islam. Later that year, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned again again on accusations of involvement in terrorist and anti-capitalist actions. In 1924, he was arrested for the fourth time in connection to labor strikes and terrorism, and was exiled to Manokwari, Papua. As his ship stopped in port cities en route to Papua, he reported back to MM about the communist movements active in each location. He continued to send writings back for publication until his death, including his final piece, “Islamism and Communism.”

A Brief Summary of “Islamism and Communism”

“Islamism and Communism” was published over six editions of Medan Moeslimin, no. 1-5, 1925. He divides the treatise into two main parts, the first offering a summary of Marxist theory and analysis, and the second, entitled “Islamism’s Explanation of Communism,” giving his integration of Marx’s thought within Islamic world-historiography and ethics. It is unclear whether Misbach intended to add other major sections the treatise or whether he died having nearly completed it.  

In part I (all contained within the first section printed in MM no. 1), he begins with a personal narrative of his exile to Papua and his struggles since arriving. He then positions himself and the text as opposed to two groups. First, he attacks rival Islamic organizations—Muhammadiyah and the branch of Sarekat Islam led by Tjokroaminoto (as apposed to the “Red” branch to which he belonged)—for complicity with capitalism (“the will of the devil”) and for following “only the rules [of Islam] that their base desires admire.” Second, he disputes communist groups that seek to “eradicate Islam.” He argues that, as the first group are “not true Muslims,” neither are this second group “true communists.”

Misbach then explores some of Marx’s main teachings. He defines capitalism as “the science of seeking profit while concentrating ownership in the hands of only a few people.” He explains that capitalism causes labor exploitation, poverty, homelessness, the rise of prisons, and that this in turn breaks the morals and humanity of people. He covers the process of how capitalists, with their technologies of production, come to dominate markets once filled with independent artisans and create a proletariat dependent upon them. He also discusses how overproduction and the profit motive eventually exhaust local markets, which, along with demand for cheap resources, leads to war and imperialism—and poverty is worst in the colonies.

Misbach laments that, along with creating poverty and exploitation, capitalists don’t care about the religion of their laborers, and Muslim factory, harbor, and mine laborers are forced to abandon their prayers and fasts to sustain themselves and their families.

In response to the above problems posed by capitalism, Misbach then turns to the solutions offered by Marx in The Communist Manifesto. He explains that, according to historical materialism, “the emergence of Communism is a seed of capitalism itself that is planted in the hearts of the people, especially the working class.” Through propagation of communism, Misbach adds, the proletariat can see past the delusions of capitalism: “We communists know all of capitalism’s little tricks, so that they can’t be used to manipulate us.”

Part II, “Islamism’s Explanation of Communism,” was printed in five sections (MM no. 2-5). In the first section, Misbach addresses the concept of “religion” (agama), of which he says only one exists—a singular trans-historical tradition of “guidance from God” “towards the path of salvation for humans living in this world until their arrival in the next.” He repeatedly emphasizes religion’s objective of seeking human welfare not just in the afterlife, but in this world as well. He traces humanity from Adam to different historical populations, noting that what seem to be distinct “religions” (Abraham’s, Buddhism, Confucianism, Mosaic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are really just historical instances of this singular guidance, named after its founder or region—except in the case of “Islam,” which indicates the goal of salvation.

The first page of part II, "Islamism's Explanation of Communism" (MM no. 2, 1925, National Library of the Republic of Indonesia)

The second section of part II (MM no. 3) covers the prophet Adam and the fall of Satan. Misbach explains: “Because of the devil, or humans with satanic thoughts”—which he attributes to the desire for prominence and “feudal” power struggles—“the one true religion broke up into factions.” He then covers how God manifests his existence through the wonders of creation (an established Islamic genre), noting that humans are given reason and thought to appreciate those signs. As a result of this attribute of reason, Misbach asserts, humans are also able to achieve progress, starting with the basic use of tools. He explains that successive prophets are sent to guide humans according to the conditions of their respective historical contexts (as well as about the nature of God), and that without such moral guidance, technological progress can result in corruption and destruction.  

The third section of part II (MM no 4.) offers a history of the evolution of forms of domination and oppression that seems to map Marx’s historiography from the Manifesto onto Islamic prophetic history. He associates the idealized communities of Adam and other prophets with a kind of primitive communism. Over time, however, “demonic morals” bred competition, fighting, and possessiveness, leading to people seeking “property rights.” These developments caused factionalism and chauvinism, often accompanied by forms of false worship. This evolved, he writes, into “absolute monarchy,” which bred hatred among the people, and was overthrown and replaced by feudalism. This evolutionary cycle continued with constitutionalism, then representative democracy, which he considers similarly distasteful, as only the powerful are represented, and “the voice of the people is completely absent.”

The fourth and final section of part II (MM no. 5) juxtaposes the previous section’s focus on material history with the ideals of prophetic guidance and the destruction wrought on communities that turned away from God’s guidance. This section is distinct in that it is composed of a succession of Qur’anic quotes and narratives. Throughout, he continues to associate these prophetic ideals with communism and their demonic corruption with the evils of (proto-)capitalism: “These parables mentioned above are meant to remind humans not to fall into acts straying to the ways of Satan and animals, meaning only thinking of one’s own body, far from helping one another. Those who stray only seek their base desires, getting food and profit.”

Although Misbach died before completing the treatise, he concluded the last section with a promise to compare historical monarchies to the monarchs of the Qur’an.

Notes on Translation

My translation was based initially on an edition of the treatise printed in a 2016 anthology of Misbach’s works, but due to its many gaps (noted by the editors as bracketed ellipses), I sought out the microfilm of the original at Indonesia’s National Library. This copy also posed issues, most notably a torn-off corner of a page in the final section. Another issue is that I am less familiar with the old-fashioned, Dunch-inflected, Malay used in the pioneering native-run papers of this era. The footnotes in the 2016 edition were helpful on some of these points, but this has inevitably resulted in some inaccuracies. In cases where I was unsure, or where the translation required some flexibility, I have included the original Indonesian in brackets. I welcome any suggested improvements, and anyone who wants to cross-check my translation with the original can view my pictures of the microfilm here.

Also, in translating Misbach’s quotations from the Qur’an, I have tried to remain faithful to his text rather than simply use an established English-language Qur’an translation. However, his quotations differ greatly from the genre of Qur’an translation that English readers will be familiar with, as he elaborates freely without differentiating between original Qur’anic text and additional commentary—all getting subsumed within what he simply indicates to be a quotation of the Qur’an (as was common in the period). The ayas that he quotes are listed, and the reader is encouraged to cross-check his translations with the Arabic original or English translations.

Again, here is the PDF of my translation.

The Etymology of the Indonesian Word Sanubari (“Conscience”) from the Arabic Ṣanawbar (“Pinecone”)

This is a translation/adaption of a piece originally published in Indonesian at bincangsyariah.com for a general English-reading audience.

The origins of the Indonesian word sanubari (conscience) are quite interesting and roundabout. They also demonstrate the important influence of the Islamic intellectual tradition on Malay-Indonesian literature and the formation of the Indonesian language.

The word sanubari derives from the Arabic ṣanawbar (صنوبر). But oddly, the Indonesian means “conscience” or “heart” in the metaphysical sense, whereas the Arabic simply means “pinecone.” But this large semantic shift can be explained through the history of its usage within the world of Arabic scholarship that spanned from the Middle East to the Indo-Malay archipelago.

The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyā ꜤUlūm al-Dīn), one of Islamic history’s most influential Sufi manuals, was written by the 11-12^th century Persian scholar Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī. It became one of the popular religious texts in the archipelago as the region Islamized in the 15^th century and beyond. It gained especially great importance with the spread of the Sammāniyya Sufi order in the 18^th century, when the Sumatran scholar ꜤAbd al-Ṣamad al-Palimbānī (a deputy of the order) translated much of the text.

In a section of The Revival of The Religious Sciences focused on “the wonders of the heart,” Ghazālī explains that the word “heart” (qalb) has two meanings: one physical (i.e. the bodily organ) and the other spiritual (i.e the conscience, the emotional heart). He describes the physical heart as “اللحم الصنوبري الشكل”, or “pinecone-shaped flesh.” Here, the shape of the heart is compared to that of a pinecone, here being the critical association of “heart” with “pinecone.” But it’s striking that this descriptor is used specifically for the heart-as-organ, rather that the heart-as-conscience—the meaning it takes on later in Indonesian.

A modern edition of Ghazālī's Revival of the Religious Sciences. 

When I first wrote about this etymological observation in a Facebook post last year, I had assumed that Ghazālī was the first and only Arabic scholar to describe the heart with the image of a pinecone. This was based on a quite limited search through BYU’s Arabic language corpus. Ghazālī has a reputation for employing compelling descriptive analogies, so it wouldn’t have been too far-fetched. But I was very wrong!

I was aided by the help of two contemporary Indonesian Islamic scholars with expertise in the works of Ghazālī who commented on my post.

Ulil Abshar Abdalla (from Pati, Central Java) provided me with two other sources that also use the shape of a pinecone to describe the heart, from the works of Ibn Farishta and Shaykh Zada, Ḥanafī scholars from the 15^th and 16^th centuries, respectively. On further inspection, Ibn Farishta seems to have taken the description directly from Ghazālī, as he words this sentence about the heart almost exactly the same. Shaykh Zada is more interesting, as he uses ṣanawbarī (pinecone-like) not as a descriptor of the heart, but seemingly as a synonym for it. He writes of “inside the ṣanawbarī cavity” and “the left side of the ṣanawbarī flesh.” This might show that, by the 16^th century, ṣanawbari had become so commonly associated with the heart that it was even occasionally used as a gloss for it.

But even at this point, I was under the impression that Ghazālī was the original source of this description that these two later scholars had borrowed. But this assumption was also wrong. It was only with the help of another contemporary Ghazālī expert, kyai Muhammad Ma’mun (from Jember, East Java) that I realized how much deeper this history goes. He suggested that, since it is well-known that Ghazālī takes many of his psychological concepts from Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), the great Persian philosopher and doctor who lived a century before Ghazālī, it would be worth checking whether this particular medical description was also Avicennan in origin.

Kyai Ma’mun was right. It turns out that Ghazālī borrowed this pinecone imagery from Ibn Sīnā’s comprehensive medical summa The Canon in Medicine (al-Qānūn fī’l-Ṭibb). But Ibn Sīnā is also known to have drawn much of his medical theory and knowledge from the 2^nd century Greek doctor Galen, and a quick Google search also showed that Galen too had described the heart as pinecone-shaped! As an interesting side-note, apparently it is through medieval artistic representations of the Galenic heart that the Western tradition came to symbolize the heart as ❤️, with the cone-shaped bottom. (What the linked article here fails to mention is that medieval Christian Europe was exposed to ancient Greek medicine mostly through Latin translations of Arabic medical scholarship, especially Ibn Sīnā.)

But of all the writers mentioned above, it is only Ghazālī whose works became prolific in the archipelago. So, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Indonesian word sanubari (conscience) entered Indonesian solely through the spread and study of his Revival of the Religious Sciences. This means that a word that is now widespread in Indonesian literature (it belongs to the language’s poetic register more than to the popular) came into usage mostly due to the widespread study of a single text within the archipelago’s traditional Islamic boarding schools (pesantren).

This is far more extraordinary than the appropriation of most other loan words from Arabic to Malay-Indonesian, like sehat (healthy) from ṣiḥḥa (health). This is a commonly used word in Arabic that is then simply imported into Malay-Indonesian, since many in the archipelago studied Arabic. Normal. But in the case of sanubari, this was only used as a descriptor in a specific situation within the Arabic medical scholarly tradition and still able to enter the lexicon of a language across the Indian Ocean. Quite a testament to the importance of Ghazālī within the Indonesian Islamic tradition.

The odd part is, while Ghazālī used ṣanawbar to describe the physical heart, sanubari in Indonesian now means the metaphysical or emotional heart. Also notable is that, unlike the Arabic and English conception of the heart as the seat of consciousness and emotion, in Indonesian this is associated instead with the liver (hati)! This might make it seem more curious how the meaning of sanubari shifted from the physical to the emotional heart, until we realize that most of the Indonesians reading Ghazālī would have been familiar with the Arabic association of heart with conscience. Ultimately, I’m left thinking that maybe in Indonesian, conspicuously Arabic loan words just tend to have a more spiritual ring to them.

(If any readers happen to know more about descriptions of the heart as pinecone-shaped in the Arabic tradition or about early uses of sanubari in Indonesian, please let me know!)

Shouting at a Gangster: Reflections on Whiteness in Postcolonial Indonesia

"Stop taking advantage of people," I yelled in Indonesian at the gangster leaning against the side of the minibus my friend and I were sitting in." You're the reason I feel so damn uncomfortable in this country!" It was exhilarating to let out the rage that had been building up for so long. He stared into my eyes blankly.

An American friend and I were traveling in North Sumatra, and that night when our bus arrived in the city of Medan, I started angling for the cheapest transportation to our hostel. We started asking people on the street which minibus (angkot) line would take us to our area. One particular young man was eager not only to tell us what color minibus to take, but also to take us to where we could find one. My suspicion aroused, I told him we were grateful enough for just the advice, but he tagged along and refused to leave until the minibus arrived. We got in, confirmed with the driver that his bus would pass our destination, and asked him what the fare was. But before the driver could respond, our unwanted guide blurted out a price (20,000 rupiah for the two of us, around $1.50) that was far higher than the going rate (about 4,000 per passenger). Evidently, he wanted a cut. As the minibus driver would later explain, he had no power to resist the young man, who was a member of one of the city's powerful gangs.

This experience was not abnormal. Just a few days prior, we had been ripped off much worse when we were tricked into paying 100,000 rupiah (around $7) each for a bus ride that should have cost 20,000. But this time, I didn't just sigh in defeat; I went off. I shouted at him for almost a minute about how terrible it felt to be extorted and how—as a white foreigner—I felt like a walking target in his country, because of people like him. We still paid 20,000 rupiah, but I had said my bit, and the driver pulled away.

In the moment, I felt victorious. But over the three years I've had to reflect on that night, it's become harder to see myself as righteous and vindicated in that scenario. There I was, a wealthy white foreigner, shouting at a young man who wanted a few thousand rupiah in return for his help. For me, it wasn't about the money; it was about the principle. But I now cringe wondering whether he had the comfort and privilege to make that same prioritization.

My experiences over two years in Indonesia were constantly colored by my whiteness, in ways that I often didn't immediately comprehend. It gave me immense privileges in a society where white supremacy is an internalized and seldom questioned norm. It also contributed to the anxiety caused by constant reminders that I neither fit in nor belong.

White Imperialism and White Supremacism in Indonesia

I write this post as a personal reflection. I mention below many uncomfortable aspects of being white in Indonesia. I'm not seeking the reader's sympathy, but simply trying to convey to family, friends, and anyone else on the internet who might be curious, what it has felt like for me to spend two years being a privileged Other in someone else's country.

But let's first contextualize my experiences within the larger history of Western political, cultural, and economic domination and exploitation of Indonesia. By the end of the 19th century, the Dutch had successfully subjugated most of territory comprised in the modern state Indonesian. Their rule was especially invasive on the Island of Java (where I've spent around 19 months), where a policy of "cultivation" (cultuurstelsel) commercialized rural economies, extracting cash crops and forced labor from their colonial subjects. The colonial regime spread an ideology of white supremacism, with European-style education engendering an Orientalist worldview and a inferiority complex into the early formations of an Indonesian conciousness.

The Dutch surrendered all claims to authority over its East Indies Colony in 1949, but the ideology underlying their colonial rule didn't disappear. In a newly post-colonial world, many Indonesians continued to look (often uncritically) to the West for progress, education, and entertainment.

Within two decades of Indonesian independence, America managed to pick up the Netherlands' imperial baton in Southeast Asia. Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement and host of the Bandng Conference, proved threatening to the interests of American power and global capitalism. The US first sought to destabilize the regime through support for insurgents, and then later embraced the more successful strategy of wooing the Indonesian military elite, setting the stage for American support of one of the worst atrocities in post-colonial history. It's still unclear (as far as I can tell) whether the CIA was involved in instigating or staging the alleged communist coup in 1965, but the agency played key strategic roles in supporting Suharto's counter-coup and the ensuing anti-communist politicide. This extermination of the communist party (with very rough estimates of about 500,000 victims), carried out under the compliant new Suharto regime, was instrumental in the pacification of the world's 4th most populous country under American imperial power and capitalist domination.

As an American in Indonesia, this history of white empire and capital shaped my daily life. The engineered disparities of the postcolonial global economy are a major part of the reason I had the privilege to travel there. That gangster I yelled at inherited an economy pillaged by Dutch extraction and then ravaged by American global capitalism, and that money I didn't want to give him was similarly a product of centuries of Western economies growing on the backs of coerced black and brown bodies.

I have no pretensions of being a historian or economist, so feel free to look into the linked articles for more on the Indonesia's imperial history. But the legacy of white white supremacy and empire also loomed large over my social interactions, and that's the real topic of this post. No, I was not hated or stereotyped as a colonizer; unfortunately, it was quite the opposite. 

The Ubiquity and Anonymity of White Celebrity

At times, my whiteness conferred almost a celebrity status. Wherever I went (except a few spots frequented by foreigners), my presence as a white foreigner (bule, pronounced "boo-lay") invited stares. Everyone wanted to take a selfie with me. I was idolized. But unlike real celebrities, no one knew who I was. They didn't need to; I was great simply because of my whiteness.

Me talking to students at a high school where I was doing research. 

Getting a photo with (or if not, of) a bule is a popular goal for Indonesians at tourist attractions. In a popular online article entitled "What You Should and Shouldn't Do When Asking to Take a Picture with a Bule," readers are told that they must: (1) know which bule they're going for; (2) bring their camera; (3) ask politely; (4) make small talk before asking; (5) make sure their camera is ready before asking; and (6) get their best pose ready. They are also advised to not: (1) invite a bule who looks busy; (2) take too many pictures; (3) crowd them; or (4) get touchy. The only stone left uncovered in this type of article (of which there are many), is: why the hell someone would want a picture with a random white person anyway?

Alas, in Indonesia, white is beautiful. When an Indonesian marries a white foreigner, they are said to have "improved their offspring" (memperbaiki keturunan), because their future children would have lighter skin. Like in Bollywood and other post-colonial cinemas, Indonesian celebrities are almost all light-skinned, often with mixed Dutch ancestry. Women are praised for paleness or pushed to seek it, and "black" is nearly synonymous with ugly. Eastern Indonesians are the biggest victims of this fetishization of whiteness, as they tend to have far darker skin than natives of Sumatra, Java, or nearby islands. I would shudder when relatively light-skinned Javanese people lamented their "black" (hitam) skin in the presence of Papuans (who's skin tone resembles sub-saharan Africans).

I—being the object/idol of this fetish—was constantly praised for something I had no pride in. People told me I was attractive, noting nothing other than my light skin (and occasionally height, but the same colonial factors are at play there). Now clearly, it's fun for anyone's ego to be praised, but there's a yucky emptiness to it when it's a product of white supremacism.

Beyond physical appearances, being a bule confers a certain coolness and invites people's admiration. Whiteness is both an inherent virtue as well as a sign of other assumed virtues—intelligence, power, progress, education, wealth, etc. As the object of this praise, I felt overwhelmed and yet simultaneously unappreciated; rarely did people acknowledge the traits I truly value in myself, as they were lost in the blinding and amazing light of my spectacular white mediocrity.

The Celebration of White Mediocrity

I have an American friend who spent a year in high school as an exchange student at an Indonesian culinary vocational school. While her classmates were cooking full meals, throughout her enrollment, she never did more than chop a few carrots. Whenever she attempted to carry out the tasks given to other students, her teachers and classmates would insist that she does a wonderful job slicing vegetables, and they would invariably cheer and compliment her when she did so.

Indonesians praise white mediocrity. Any white person studying the language who can muster a terima kasih (thank you) will be told they're "fluent" (wah, sudah lancar!). Indonesians are amazed by white people who can perform basic tasks, like riding a motorbike or eating with one's hands.

This is, of course, infuriatingly patronizing. People treated me like a child, expected me to be debilitatingly incompetent, and were simultaneously amazed by this mediocrity.

People often explained the most basic concepts to me, assuming that as a white person I couldn't possibly understand. Among close friends I started referring to this as "Indosplaining."

Indonesian man to me while Im eating tempe that I ordered: "this food is called TEM-PE," spelling it out nice and slow for me #Indosplaining

— Sawyer Martin French 🦅 (@FrenchSawyer) March 1, 2017

This type of behavior was most common with strangers or people I just met. Friends usually learned how to treat me like a normal person, and those who couldn't didn't become my friends.

But this celebration of white mediocrity has more important consequences than tourists dealing with patronizing comments. White supremacy is alive and well in Indonesian academia, and citation of white last names are often thrown around as if they close a discussion. White men, particularly, are assumed to be learned and authoritative sources. I was frequently asked to speak on panels that I'm sure I would never have been invited to if I were not white. (Once, one of the faculty at my university asked me to join a panel of nationally-respected scholars at a large conference because they had already called the conference 'international' but had no bule speakers. I owed her a favor, so I begrudgingly obliged.)

If white men continue to be seen as authority figures, the natural result will be the continuation of white patriarchal socioeconomic dominance and the persistence of white supremacist worldview among Indonesians. (Jadi, bagi pembaca dari Indonesia, jangan anggap rujukan kepada ilmuwan bernama bule itu sesuatu yang otoritatif pada dirinya!)

Being White: Being Different

The bule is a figure which is almost always either praised or mocked; generalizations about "white people" (orang-orang bule) are frequent, and they often tell either of how advanced and civilized they are or of how socially inept they are in Indonesia. People would frequently tell me (and others) stories about all of the silly things they had seen some bule doing. I was equally bothered by both; the common thread is that bules are supposed to be different.

As a bule in Indonesia, I was visibly different in a way that I could not possibly overcome.

When I first moved to Yogyakarta, I could feel people staring at me wherever I went and I hated it. For a while, when I rode my bike, I would cover up in long sleeves, gloves, pants, shoes, and a face mask, just so that I could roam freely without attracting attention. I stopped doing this eventually, mostly because it was also really hot outside, but it took me much longer to stop trying to fit in. I became obsessed with "assimilating" to Indonesian culture. I wanted to do everything right so that no one would have any reason to stare at me anymore.

Eventually, however, I realized that there is nothing I could possibly do that would make the average Indonesian think I belong there. If I ate with a spoon, someone would comment on how I must be incapable of eating with my hands since I was white; when I ate with my hands, there would be jeers of "wow, a bule can eat with his hands!" Eventually, I realized that I could act like a crazy foreigner or exactly like an average Indonesian, and I would get stared at just the same. It still bothered me, and I still hinged my pride on acting Indonesian enough, but I stopped deluding myself that I could ever actually fit in.

Living as such a spectacle really forced me to overcome some issues I had with social anxiety in crowded settings. It also helped me become a more confident public speaker; when everyone is staring at you on an average day, speaking in front of an audience doesn't seem so different.

Unlike for Malaysians, Chinese, or Arabs, there is no such thing as assimilation for white people in Indonesia. As much as I tried to fit in, I realized that the average Indonesian would always see me as irreconcilably different. Although Indonesia is ethnically and linguistically diverse internally, very few foreigners live in the country, so this attitude towards foreigners makes sense. This fact is one of the biggest reasons I couldn't see myself living in Indonesia in the long term. I love the country, but I could never live as a permanent outsider. (This is nothing like the experiences of refugees or those under social or economic pressures to migrate to the West, for whom return to a place of belonging can be burdensome or impossible, and who face systemic discrimination after arriving.)

Reflections on 'Reflections on Whiteness'

I have attempted to write this blog post tactfully, but there is an inherent flaw in any writing that centers white experiences in a discussion of imperial and racial power dynamics. But alas, I wanted to write on the important issue of the white supremacism in contemporary Indonesia, and my experiences proved to be the only/best vehicle at my disposal through which to do so.

This was one of the hardest blog posts I have written. I have little practice with this type of writing, and my academic habits certainly make for less engaging narrative prose. But more importantly, I'm still not sure whether the takeaway will come off as "I'm so privileged, woe is me," which was obviously not the objective. This piece (hopefully) successfully avoided veering into white guilt or self-pity, while also offering a window into my life in Indonesia. But I imagine different readers might have different takeaways.

So, to any white people (or Indonesians, or anyone else) who might say "I'm sorry you experienced this," or something of the sort: please save your pity. The comfort of the descendants of colonizers in postcolonial societies should be somewhere near last on our list of priorities. On the other hand, destroying white supremacy should be somewhere near the top.

Ramadan between NU and Muhammadiyah: Pluralism and Islamic Education in Public Schools

During Ramadan, the differences between Indonesian Islam's two major factions—NU and Muhammadiyah—become particularly noticeable. 

Sunset (maghrib) prayers at an Indonesian mosque, awaiting the new moon of Ramadan, 2014. (Unknown source.)

Ramadan: the holiest of Islamic months, when Muslims fast from dawn to sunset, when sins are forgiven, and when, in Indonesia, it becomes especially evident whether a particular Muslim belongs to NU or Muhammadiyah. Has she already marked her calendar with the date when Ramadan begins two weeks beforehand? Then she must be Muhammadiyah. Does that mosque hold 20 raka‘at of tarawih?[1] Then it’s clearly NU. Indonesians frequently make these simple categorizations, but relatively rarely are these differences seen as problematic. Most Indonesian Muslims display a significant degree of pluralist tolerance within this Islamic mainstream of NU and Muhammadiyah.

            NU and Muhammadiyah are not easily compared to religious organizations elsewhere. In their role most intimate to the lives of average Muslims, they might best be described as being denominations[2] of Sunni Islam, differentiating Muslims based on belief and practice. But they also function simultaneously as mass movements with registered members organized in branches forwarding specific visions for social change, as bureaucratic civil society organizations that provide most of the country’s non-public education and healthcare, and as quasi-political entities behind informally affiliated political parties, whose parliamentary positioning grants them each special prerogatives in government.[3]

Here, I’m not primarily interested in the high-level social and political dynamics between the two organizations. Instead, I’ll explain how their roles as Sunni “denominations” color the everyday lives of Indonesian Muslims, most notably during Ramadan.

Moon Sighting vs. Astronomical Calculation

            One important difference between NU and Muhammadiyah comes up far before anyone has even started fasting, when they’re still trying to figure out when they’ll start fasting. Since the Islamic calendar is lunar, Ramadan’s position on the Gregorian calendar moves backwards by about 10 or 11 days every year. But because lunar months can vary in legnth, Muslims have historically been unable to say exactly how many days away Ramadan is at any given time. Instead they have relied on sighting the new moon; so the beginning of Ramadan is traditionally announced on the first night of Ramadan itself.

Moon sighting, or imkanur rukyah. (Unknown source.)

NU (short for Nahdlatul Ulama, or “Revival of the Religious Scholars”)[4] is a self-identified “traditionalist” Islamic organization, generally meaning they prefer to follow the opinions of traditional madhahib (legal schools, sing. madhhab), usually the Shafi‘i school in particular. As a result of their conscious loyalty to Islamic tradition, they will only begin to celebrate Ramadan once the new moon has been sighted, though they do make cautious predictions beforehand. Most “NU people” (orang NU, sometimes called Nahdliyin) begin celebrating Ramadan when it is announced by the government—in which the Ministry of Religion happens to be controlled by NU, and therefore uses the moon sighting method.  

Muhammadiyah, on the other hand, bases their version of the Islamic lunar calendar on astronomical calculation, and is therefore able to announce the dates when both Ramadan and Idul Fitri (or Eid al-Fitr, the post-Ramadan holiday, also commonly called Lebaran in Indonesia) will be celebrated months ahead of time. Unlike the “traditionalist” NU, Muhammadiyah is considered (and generally considers itself) as both a “reformist” and “modernist” organization, both labels clearly distancing itself from the “tradition” of NU. As a reform-minded organization, its members seek to correct perceived errors in popular Islamic practice: bid‘ah (religious innovation), tahayul (superstitious about bad luck and omens), and khurafat (superstitions about magic and ghosts). This preaching has been seen as an affront to many in NU circles, and has led some to see Muhammadiyah as puritan and crypto-Salafi.

As a modernist organization, Muhammadiyah teaches that ijtihad (independent reasoning, i.e. deviance from the position of a traditional madhhab) is permissible by qualified scholars, especially in adapting to and taking advantage of modern technology. As a result, Muhammadiyah is able to cast aside moon sighting in favor of astronomical calculations when determining the start of Ramadan.

To generalize, NU is typically said to follow Shafi‘i fiqh (jurisprudence), Ash‘ari kalam  (theology, sometimes referred to simply as tauhid), and the Sufism of al-Ghazali, making it firmly grounded in the tradition stemming from the foundational scholarship of the 3^rd-5^th Islamic centuries. Muhammadiyah, on the other hand, was born in the spirit of the global Islamic reform movement started in Egypt by the progressive modernist scholar Muhammad Abduh and then carried on by the increasingly proto-Salafi Rashid Rida, and within Muhammadiyah today one can find both of these tendencies.

To make another enormous generalization, we might say that NU most closely represents the beliefs and practices of most Javanese (and many other Indonesian) Muslims who have not converted to a Muhammadiyah or other perspective. This is absolutely not to say that the contemporary teachings of NU reflect popular Islamic practice from before the rise of Muhammadiyah in 1912, nor do they reflect even the teachings of NU itself upon its founding in 1927. NU has evolved and participated in the mainstreaming of many ideas that were once considered modernist—like having boys and girls taught in the same classrooms. But except in cases where Muhammadiyah visibly dominates the religious sphere (like Yogyakarta, where I live), an NU style of Islam (relatively traditional, but thoroughly affected by and immersed in the modern world) tends to be the norm, and those who practice NU styles of worship may not even see themselves as "being NU."

Despite the differences in method between NU and Muhammadiyah, this year both started Ramadan on the same date: the night of the 26^th, with fasting starting on the 27^th (in the Islamic calendar, a day begins at sunset, not midnight). But this is not always the case, and it's still yet to be determined whether both groups will celebrate Idul Fitri on the same date as well. Since 1990, Muhammadiyah has declared a different date for Idul Fitri than the government and NU six times, in 1992, 1993, 1994, 2005, 2006, and 2011.

So it’s been six years since there was a difference in Idul Fitri among Indonesian Muslims (although Idul Adha, the other major Islamic holiday, was celebrated on different days in 2015). But why might this be important for Indonesians? First off, Idul Fitri is an especially social holiday: most Indonesians return to their hometowns (mudik) to celebrate. Families that are mixed NU and Muhammadiyah may have to choose whether they will all observe the same day or whether half the family will feast while the other half fasts. There are extra tensions caught up in this debate, as it is haram (forbidden) to fast on any of the three days of Idul Adha.

Mudik: when Indonesians go back to their home towns for Idul Fitri in what's likely the the largest regular mass-human migration ever. (Unknown source.)

Indonesians also typically visit family and friends over these three days, exchange food, and ask each other for forgiveness for anything they may have done over the last year. These visits—called silaturahim, or occasionally halal-bi-halal if it’s an organized event—could be uncomfortable if you show up unannounced (as is usually the case) at the house of someone who’s still fasting.

Despite these differences and the subsequent potential for problems, Indonesians are generally tolerant and understanding towards those who celebrate on different days. In 2006, when Idul Fitri was celebrated on different days, the head of NU for Central Java issued the following statement:

“As for which to follow, it’s up to each person’s individual belief. If you join [in praying and feasting to celebrate Idul Fitri] on Monday, then on that day it is haram [for you] to fast. If you join on Tuesday, then that means it is mandatory [for you] to fast as part of Ramadan. What’s most important, I believe, is how to foster attitudes of understanding and tolerance (toleransi) within the framework of ittifaq fil ikhtilaf (Arabic: unity in diversity), staying one in difference.” 

            I live in Yogyakarta, the center of Muhammadiyah’s influence, which makes these differences especially prominent. As a result, most of my friends are quite accustomed to these differences and share similar sentiments to those above. But I have heard rumors about some NU-dominant areas in rural East Java and on the island of Madura where Muhammadiyah “seems like a whole different religion.”

Evening Tarawih prayers in Medan during Ramadan 2014. (Unknown source.)

Tarawih Prayers: 8 Raka‘at or 20?

Aside from fasting, one of the iconic (though not mandatory) parts of Ramadan is the addition of tarawih prayers at night, in which an imam leads the congregation in a relatively long set of ritual prayers (salat or salah) after the normal night prayers and a short sermon. But there is a difference of opinion between NU and Muhammadiyah about how many raka‘at there are in one night of tarawih.

A raka‘a is the name for the cumulative set of motions and recitations making up one part of a salat, consisting of standing, bowing, standing again, prostrating, sitting on one’s knees, prostrating again, (possibly sitting again,) and then standing again. In normal mandatory prayers a Muslim will complete 2 to 4 raka‘at, depending on the time of day.

During Ramadan, NU people will do 20 raka‘at of tarawih, followed by 3 raka‘at of witr (another non-mandatory night salat). Muhammadiyah, on the other hand, advocates only 8 raka‘at, with witr as well. These differences stem from a dispute over the reports (hadith, Ind: hadits) on the practices of the Prophet and the early community of Islam, with both versions resting on reports beginning from ‘Aisha, one of the wives of the Prophet.

While one might assume that Muhammadiyah’s system would be quicker than NU’s, this is not always the case. Some Muhammadiyah mosques using 8 raka‘at can finish more than an hour later than NU ones using 20, depending on the length of the surat (chapters of the Qur’an) chosen to recite during the standing portion of each raka‘a. Many imams at NU mosques will choose all surat from juz’ amm—the final 30^th of the Qur’an, in which surat are much shorter (some can be recited in 5 seconds) than those elsewhere (some of which would take hours)—or split up longer surat, and recite them quickly. Meanwhile, many imams in Muhammadiyah mosques will select far longer surat (if they happen to have memorized them) and recite them in a more drawn-out, deliberate fashion. But variety is really the only constant here, and there are plenty of Muhammadiyah mosques that finish quickly (like the one in my neighborhood, for example) and some NU mosques that take a very long time.

An Indonesian cartoon I stole from an article that seems to have stolen it from an unknown book. 

Since each individual mosque will usually choose which system to use, individuals going to a mosque for prayers will consider the affiliation of that mosque in a way that is rarely ever necessary throughout the rest of the year. For prayers aside from tarawih, there is little difference between NU and Muhammadiyah affiliated mosques.[5] Aside from the use of the qunut prayer, other practices differentiate typical NU and Muhammadiyah prayer styles, but none of these differences are imposed on the individual worshiper, who is free to raise his hands whenever he wants and utter whatever praises he chooses, even if different from what the imam does.

As a result, Ramadan is a time of abnormal segregation of most NU people from Muhammadiyah mosques, as they would have to stop after 8 raka‘at in these mosques. College students affiliated with NU, who often attend different large mosques every night to take advantage of the free food usually offered at sunset, will generally consider what system is used in deciding which mosque to attend, though it is certainly not of determinate importance to everyone.

While NU people won’t get what they’re looking for at Muhammadiyah mosques, the reverse is not the case; Muhammadiyah people can attend an NU-style mosque and simply leave after the 8^th raka‘a. At the campus mosque of the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University in Yogyakarta, there are always 20 raka‘at held, but a majority of the congregation tends to leave after the 8^th.

Everyday Pluralism

I'd like to not portray Indonesian society as one where all Muslims are card-carrying NU or Muhammadiyah members. Most are loosely affiliated with one or the other according to preference, and implicitly linked with one or the other through their particular style of worship, but religious identity among Indonesian Muslims tends to be more fluid than rigid. Geertz describes conflicts in mosques in rural Java between modernists and traditionalists during his fieldwork in the 1950s. Many of these tensions certainly still exist, but they have become mundane and insignificant for many Indonesian Muslims.

Any particular NU-affiliated college student in Yogyakarta might be perfectly happy to go with their Muhammadiyah friends to a Muhammadiyah mosque, especially if there’s free food involved. There are stories of hardline NU people who will get up and leave in the middle of salat if there’s no time allotted for a qunut (see earlier footnote [5]), but this is relegated to rumor exactly because attitudes like this are so rare. Ramadan is so extraordinary because of just how visible NU-Muhammadiyah differences are as compared to the rest of the year. Many people actually find out the religious affiliations of their friends when Ramadan rolls around and they’re talking about what mosque to go to later that night, or when they’ll celebrate Idul Adha.

I recently interviewed one of the directors (takmir) of a small mosque in urban Yogyakarta. He is personally affiliated with NU, having come from a family of traditionalist Muslims and having graduated from Pesantren Tebuireng, the Jombang boarding school once run by the founder of NU itself. But he sent his two children to Muhammadiyah elementary and middle schools, and the mosque he manages uses only 8 raka‘a. He explained that he is simply adapting to the Muhammadiyah-dominant environment of urban Yogyakarta, and that he has no issues with the differences in practice, explaining that NU and Muhammadiyah “are both equally part of ahl al-sunnah w’al-jama‘ah[6] and both equally moderate… Difference is already so normal for us.” 

Most writings about NU and Muhammadiyah focus on the national politics and relations between the parties, in which differences tend to be clear and lines not so blurry. But on the ground among average Muslims, these differences are not so defined.

The logos of NU (left) and Muhammadiyah (right).

I think of these easy relations between NU and Muhammadiyah people as “everyday pluralism.” But it occurs to me that there’s an interesting set of criteria used when thinking about what counts as pluralism. If a tall person admits that short people deserve rights too, or even if a Redskins fan lets a Chargers fan shop in their hardware store, no one is going to praise them as pluralists. No—we only pull this label out when there’s a history or possibility of conflict or intolerance. In light of Philly-NYC sports animosity, my father, a Giants and Mets fan, might rightly be called a pluralist for marrying an Eagles and Phillies fan and agreeing to let her raise their son that way too. When we recall that Sunni and Shi‘i families in Sana‘a or Baghdad once lived in the same neighborhoods without thinking twice about the sect of their neighbors, we look back on this as a pluralism lost.

But when bygones become bygones, it starts to seem silly to speak of pluralism. It was once of major importance that a US presidential candidate was Catholic, but now it would seem silly to refer to the election of any Christian minority (even a Mormon!) to the office as being notably pluralist.

So then are NU-Muhammadiyah relations worthy of being called “pluralist” according to this nuanced popular usage of the term? There is certainly a history of fierce disagreement between the two groups, and they are still in competition in contemporary Indonesia. But these issues rarely emerge or are even considered important for the average Muslims I know living in Yogyakarta (whereas they might be more important though less prominent in some areas of East Java). But it is in light of these past and potential tensions between the two groups—and of the intolerance and discrimination shown towards other minority Muslim groups, like Shi‘a and Ahmadis—that this widespread acceptance of difference becomes significant.

The Role of Islamic Education in Public Schools

So why have differences between NU and Muhammadiyah becomes so unimportant for most Muslims who live among these differences? I believe that one major factor is mandatory Islamic education classes at Indonesian public schools. In Indonesia, religious education has been provided for all school students since the first curriculum was created after independence, and it soon became mandatory for each student to receive instruction in their own religion (limited to those recognized by the state, currently being Islam, Protestant Christianity, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism). Under the current national curriculums used, Islamic education classes take up 2.25-3 hours per week in elementary school and 1.5-2.25 hours per week in secondary school.

Many have worried that these classes may foster divisions between students of different religions,[7] but little has been written about how these classes affect relations among Muslims themselves. I have spent most of the last year doing research on Islamic education in public high schools in the city of Yogyakarta, interviewing teachers and observing their classrooms, and I believe that these classes contribute greatly to the prominent attitude of pluralism between NU and Muhammadiyah in contemporary Indonesia.

The 3rd grade Islamic education textbook
under the 2006 Curriculum.

Since the curriculum for this Islamic education is written by the government and is provided in public general schools (attended by 51% of all Indonesian high school students), it is theoretically expected to be neutral and free of bias in favor of either NU and Muhammadiyah. While there are certainly teachers who show partiality to their own beliefs within the classroom, the overwhelming result is that NU and Muhammadiyah students are all taught together while differences are glossed over as being largely insignificant. A majority of Muslim students I talk to at public high schools are unaware of whether some of their friends happens to be NU or Muhammadiyah.

When I speak with Islamic education teachers at public high schools about how they navigate the NU-Muhammadiyah divide in the classroom, they consistently speak to an ideal of pluralism (although most don’t use this term, as it has a bad connotation among most religious Indonesians). One teacher, who grew up in an NU family and later empraced Muhammadiyah (a common trajectory), explained:

“When I’m in class, I never talk about NU or Muhammadiyah. We are simply Muslims. Our sources of reference are the same: the Qur’an and the hadith. In all things, if there’s a different practice, go ahead and check, is there dalil [scriptural evidence] for it or not? There’s no need to talk about whether [a particular practice] is NU or not. But is there dalil or not?”

Another teacher affiliated with NU recalled that she tells her students,

“Whoever wants to use this [practice], go ahead. Those who want to use this [other practice], feel free. What’s important is that we carry out [the worship], because all of them have dalil. Those who use this one shouldn’t make fun of those who use that one, and those guys shouldn’t make fun of these guys, because all of it has dalil.”

            There's a recurring strong legitimating emphasis on the availability of dalil, or scriptural evidence, supporting a particular practice. Teachers I interview, whether NU or Muhammadiyah, consistently reinforce that both traditions are based on solid dalil, specifying that this means either verses of the Qur’an or trustworthy reports about the Prophet’s sayings or actions.[8] This pluralism based on methodological legitimacy does not often extend past NU and Muhammadiyah, however; groups like Shi‘a and Ahmadis are widely (though not universally) labeled as deviant (sesat, menyimpang).

Students practice ngaji (reading the Qur'an
at a public high school in rural Yogyakarta.

At private schools run by or affiliated with NU and Muhammadiyah, however, students are unlikely to be taught that both groups’ approaches are equally valid. On the contrary, students are taught explicitly to be an NU- or Muhammadiyah- style Muslim. They take specific classes called “Muhammadiyah-ness” (KeMuhammadiyahan) and “NU-ness” (KeNUan) and classes about the histories of the organizations.

While private Islamic schools may draw religious identity lines around student’s specific denomination, students and teachers in public schools are encouraged to see Islam itself as their basic identity. This system, as expressed by Suhadi et al (2013), illuminates inter-religious differences and possibly contributes to the alienation of Christian students in public schools, but it simultaneously minimizes and trivializes intra-religious differences among (most) Muslims (other than certain minority groups). The processes at work during state-sponsored religious education in Indonesia seem to have played a significant role in the prominent pluralist attitudes among NU and Muhammadiyah Muslims that are so visible during Ramadan.  

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[1] All my Arabic transcriptions here follow conventional Indonesian spellings, rather than conventional English or international ones, with notes on the equivalent whenever this might cause confusion for those accustomed to the latter.

[2] I think “denomination” serves us somewhat well, as these groups are more comparable to the many denominations within Protestant Christianity than they are to anything I’m aware of in Islamic history. These are not simply differences based on madhhab (traditional legal schools); while NU is largely Shafi‘i and Muhammadiyah officially doesn’t follow a madhhab, many NU-affiliated figures and organizations follow other madhahib, and much of Muhammadiyah’s teachings are still in line with traditional Shafi‘i positions. Like denominations, however, they differ based on methodology, social and historical ideology, and symbolic and identity politics.  They also have official membership (though not all followers are members) and central councils that determine official doctrine and practice, alike to denominations but unlike any non-state entities I’m aware of in Islamic history. 

[3] NU and Muhammadiyah play these roles in different ways. Muhammadiyah has far more hospitals than NU does. Muhammadiyah is a more centralized organization, whereas NU might be better described as an association of individual scholars/teachers (kyai) with a mass popular following.

[4] Note: the Arabic letter ض is occasionally rendered into Indonesia with the digraph “dl.”

[5] The one exception is that NU people use a qunut (extra supplementary prayer, or doa) for dawn (fajr, called subuh in Indonsia) prayers, and may not want to attend Muhammadiyah mosques that do not allow the requisite time to complete this. But this affects far less people that differences over tarawih, as far less people go to a mosque for regular dawn prayers than those who attend tarawih. At the mosque in my neighborhood, as few as 7 or 8 people might attend a normal group prayer outside of Ramadan, whereas the mosque is filled to capacity with at least 100 on Ramadan nights.

[6] Literally: “the people of the Tradition [of the Prophet] and of the majority.” This term is often used to signify Sunni Islam as a whole, but is also sometimes used exclusively by NU people to talk about their own tradition. They would see aswaja, as they abbreviate the term, as being limited to those Muslims who follow one of the four Sunni legal schools.

[7] See: Suhadi, Muhammad Yusuf, Marthen Tahun, Budi Asyhari, Sudarto. “The Politics of Religious Education: The 2013 Curriculum, and the Public Space of the School.” (Yogyakarta: CRCS, 2013).

[8] What is lost in this, and in history, however, is the fact that NU traditionally does not limit its acceptable dalil to Qur’an and hadith, but includes the opinions of legal scholars recorded in kitab kuning (yellow texts), even if the proscription is not found in any verse or report. But, as mentioned above, traditionalism in Indonesia has absorbed many attributes of modernism, including the insistence on finding dalil for oneself in the scriptures rather than relying on the guidance of the great scholars of the past.