Indonesia's Islamic Revolution

Abstract

Islam in Indonesia before the Revolution Indonesia today is the world's fourth most populous country and the country with more Muslims than any other. As of the 2010 census, Muslims made up roughly 87 percent of Indonesia's population, 1 and national leaders estimated a similar percentage of Muslims around the time of independence. 2 Muslims have been present in the archipelago for centuries, and Islamic sultanates were established on Sumatra as early as the thirteenth century of the common era, 3 but the early twentieth century was a time of particularly important and particularly rapid change for the Muslim community. In part, this was because they were all under the colonialism of the Netherlands and then (briefly) Japan, tying together thousands of islands in a way they had not been politically united before. In other ways, the religious changes in Indonesia in the decades before the Indonesian revolution were the result of transnational forces within Islam, leading to theological reform and modernization, new ways of organizing the Muslim community, and new ideas about the future of that community. This chapter introduces Islam in Indonesia and the upheaval of the early twentieth century to readers who do not have a solid grounding in the transformations that were taking place. This provides context against which to recognize some continuities and major changes that took place during the revolution. The basis for the changes of the early twentieth century were the long-standing institutions of Islamic life in the archipelago: scholars and schools. Change came first in the different approaches 1 Badan Pusat Statistik, "Penduduk Menurut Wilayah dan Agama yang Dianut," http:// sp2010.bps.go.id/index.php/site/tabel?tid=321&wid=0 (accessed July 21, 2017). Yearly surveys in between decennial censuses in Indonesia do not provide detailed statistics on religion.

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