In this Book
- Hamka’s Great Story: A Master Writer’s Vision of Islam for Modern Indonesia
- Book
- 2016
- Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
- Series: New Perspectives in Se Asian Studies
summary
Hamka’s Great Story presents Indonesia through the eyes of an impassioned, popular thinker who believed that Indonesians and Muslims everywhere should embrace the thrilling promises of modern life, and navigate its dangers, with Islam as their compass.
Hamka (Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah) was born when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony and came of age as the nation itself was emerging through tumultuous periods of Japanese occupation, revolution, and early independence. He became a prominent author and controversial public figure. In his lifetime of prodigious writing, Hamka advanced Islam as a liberating, enlightened, and hopeful body of beliefs around which the new nation could form and prosper. He embraced science, human agency, social justice, and democracy, arguing that these modern concepts comported with Islam’s true teachings. Hamka unfolded this big idea—his Great Story—decade by decade in a vast outpouring of writing that included novels and poems and chatty newspaper columns, biographies, memoirs, and histories, and lengthy studies of theology including a thirty-volume commentary on the Holy Qur’an. In introducing this influential figure and his ideas to a wider audience, this sweeping biography also illustrates a profound global process: how public debates about religion are shaping national societies in the postcolonial world.
Hamka (Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah) was born when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony and came of age as the nation itself was emerging through tumultuous periods of Japanese occupation, revolution, and early independence. He became a prominent author and controversial public figure. In his lifetime of prodigious writing, Hamka advanced Islam as a liberating, enlightened, and hopeful body of beliefs around which the new nation could form and prosper. He embraced science, human agency, social justice, and democracy, arguing that these modern concepts comported with Islam’s true teachings. Hamka unfolded this big idea—his Great Story—decade by decade in a vast outpouring of writing that included novels and poems and chatty newspaper columns, biographies, memoirs, and histories, and lengthy studies of theology including a thirty-volume commentary on the Holy Qur’an. In introducing this influential figure and his ideas to a wider audience, this sweeping biography also illustrates a profound global process: how public debates about religion are shaping national societies in the postcolonial world.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Illustrations
- pp. ix-x
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xvii-xviii
- 1. Society’s Compass
- pp. 12-40
- 2. Father and Son
- pp. 41-72
- 3. Hamka-san and Bung Haji
- pp. 73-95
- 4. Islam for Indonesia
- pp. 96-125
- 5. Culture Wars
- pp. 126-152
- 6. The New Order
- pp. 153-192
- Conclusion
- pp. 193-198
- Bibliography
- pp. 257-270
Additional Information
ISBN
9780299308438
Related ISBN(s)
9780299308407
MARC Record
OCLC
952338911
Pages
308
Launched on MUSE
2016-06-30
Language
English
Open Access
No