Nasr M. Arif and Abbas Panakkal (eds.). Southeast Asian Islam: Integration and Indigenisation. London and New York: Routledge, 2024. xi + 305 pp. ISBN 9781032699257.

Abstract

During the 1940s, as Indonesia’s independence struggle gained momentum, several idealistic scholars tied to Sukarno’s evolving project of national authentication and cultural rejuvenation began exploring creative new ways of observing and analyzing their shared Islamic heritage. During the decades that followed, within the work of leading intellectuals like Sanusi Pané, Hamka, Sartono Kartodirdjo, and Kuntowijoyo, subsequently followed by Malaysians in the mold of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Syed Hussein Alatas, Kassim Ahmed, and Zainal Abidin bin Abdul Wahid, a series of methodologically innovative studies emerged dedicated to the examination of Southeast Asian Islam using an indigenous lens. While colonial-era scholarship had ‘othered’ Southeast Asian Islam, continually emphasizing  its non-conformance to a perceived Middle Eastern Islamic orthodoxy, these new studies stressed its inherent uniqueness and Islamic authenticity. Although initially met with skepticism, both within Western academia and among Islamic reformers committed to essentialized notions of Arabized Islamicity, a broader cohort of Southeast Asianists have begun to embrace this emic mode of inquiry over recent decades. This volume, assembled by editors Nasr M. Arif and Abbas Panakkal, sits firmly within that trend characterized by diverse scholarship — both established and insurgent — local and global, it explores issues of integration and indigenization within a series of carefully crafted, sympathetically rendered depictions of Southeast Asia as a repository of a continually evolving understanding of Islam that is of no less significance or legitimacy than iterations of that faith found elsewhere.