Social Problems of Islam in Modern Indonesia in Muslim Academic Periodicals

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyse the modern Muslim intellectual tradition in Indonesia in the context of analysing the social problems of Islam. The novelty of the study lies in a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the main trends and directions in the development of Muslim social thought in modern Indonesia. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles proposed in intellectual and social history, which allows us to perceive Muslim intellectuals involved in the study of the social problems of the Ummah as an imagined community, and their ideas as invented traditions. The article analyses 1) the theoretical and methodological foundations of modern Indonesian sociology of Islam, 2) national specifics and regional features of the development of Islam in Indonesia in modern Muslim thought, 3) the problems of transformation and contradictions of the radicalization of Islam through the prism of understanding and interpreting this dimension of the modern social history of Islam. It is assumed that Muslim intellectuals make a significant contribution to the consolidation of modern identity by analysing both the social characteristics and characteristics of the Ummah, as well as the threats faced by the Indonesian model of Islam in a secular society in the context of the actualization of the ideas of radical Islam. The author's main conclusions include several points: 1) professional Muslim intellectuals make a major contribution to the development of modern Muslim sociology, 2) specialised journals published by Islamic universities play a leading role in the production and relaying of social knowledge based on Islam, 3) modern Muslim intellectual tradition is the subject to fragmentation, but, in general, the scientific tradition of the Ummah actualizes moderate trends in Islamic Sociology, based on the principles of interdisciplinarity.