Category: Research

I am delighted to report that I have been awarded a Fulbright grant to return to Indonesia in 2027, where I will work with colleagues at the Fakultas Ilmu Sosial Ilmu Politik of Universitas Islam Negeri - Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta, on a large database project, "Documenting and Analyzing the Biographies of National Legislators in Indonesia." If BRIN approves my research permit application and my visa application process goes smoothly, I hope to start in Indonesia in January 2027 and work through November 2027. While I will be hosted by UIN-Syarif Hidayatullah in Ciputat, I also hope to see many friends and colleagues in Indonesia while I am there. Here is the research proposal as submitted to BRIN: Research Background and Aims: Indonesia has a strong and proud democratic tradition dating…

Delegates at the inaugural congress of Alkhairaat meet in Palu in 1956. Photo credit: Rustam Arsyad, courtesy of Abdul Basith Arsyad I am delighted to say that at the end of this month, colleagues at INSITE Middle East will host a manuscript workshop for my long-languishing project Mainline Islam: Islamic Associational Life in Indonesia. This book looks at the mass Islamic organizations in Indonesia over the last century, both documenting organizations from the outer islands that have been overlooked or misunderstood, and putting all the groups across the archipelago in comparative perspective with each other and with analogues around the Muslim world. This answers important questions in Indonesian studies and Islamic studies, including: Why is Indonesian Islam organized in this way? How have these organizations changed over the last century?…

This post was originally from May 25, 2018. This week, my article about " Reinforcing Charisma in the Bureaucratisation of Indonesian Islamic Organisations" has been published in the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs. Here's the abstract: Many studies of Islam in Indonesia have focused on the mass Islamic organisations that form the backbone of civil society and Indonesian religious life. However, studies of these organisations have not appreciated the central place of charisma amid their bureaucratic features. This article looks at the case of Alkhairaat, a mass Islamic organisation headquartered in Central Sulawesi but spread throughout eastern Indonesia, as a bureaucracy built to reinforce and perpetuate the charisma of its founder, Sayyid Idrus bin Salim al-Jufri. The case of Alkhairaat demonstrates how mass Islamic organisations in Indonesia bureaucratise Islam but…