NBR Analysis: Volume 18

Introduction: Civic Platforms or Radical Springboards?

51 Introduction: Civic Platforms or Radical Springboards? Robert W. Hefner Robert W. Hefner is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Program on Islam and Civil Society at the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University. His most recent work is the edited volume Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (Princeton University Press, 2007). He can be reached at . [This page intentionally left blank.] 53 hefner T he essays by Ann Marie Murphy and Bridget Welsh in this issue are products of the third year of a project by The National Bureau of Asian Research on Islamic education and professional associations in Southeast Asia. The first two years of the project (2004–06) were dedicated to examining the varieties and socio-political impact of Islamic education in five Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines.1 The research encountered three broad trends: first, Islamic education is booming across the region; second, the dominant doctrinal and theological currents in Islamic education are not politically radical but instead are moderate or moderately conservative; and, third, the primary influence on the reshaping of Islamic education has been not politics but rather the desire of parents, students, and educators that Islamic schooling should provide practical and vocational education as well as religious instruction. Although Cambodia’s Islamic schools have come under the influence of Saudi-influenced Salafiyyah reformism, and although a few dozen radical institutions can be found among Indonesia’s 47,000 Islamic schools, the trends in Islamic education across the region are broadly pragmatic and modernizing in orientation. Building on the first two years of research, the project’s third year (2006–07) focused on the relationship between Islamic education and professional associations in Southeast Asia’s two large Muslim-majority countries: Malaysia (60% Muslim) and Indonesia (87.8% Muslim). The project focused on these countries because of their considerable influence in Southeast Asia and the broader Muslim world. There was also, however, a comparative policy and analytic background to the research aims of the project’s third year. In Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine in the 1990s, the growing influence of Islamist groupings with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in professional associations raised questions as to whether these associations—long regarded as critical segments in civil society—constitute a force for democratization or, alternately, have become sites for Islamist challenges to Middle Eastern regimes. The two options are, of course, by no means mutually exclusive. Some analysts have suggested that Islamist participation in professional associations tends to have a moderating effect on Islamist political aspirations; others, however, cite examples like Palestine’s Hamas to suggest there is no 1 For discussions of this research, see Robert W. Hefner, ed., Making Modern Muslims: The Politics of Islamic Education in Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming 2008); and Azyumardi Azra, Dina Afrianty, and Robert W. Hefner, “Madrasa and Pesantren: Nationalist Ideals and Islamic Education in Indonesia,” in Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education, eds. Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 172–98. nbr analysis 54 single political-cultural outcome.2 All sides in this discussion agree, however, that the movement of individuals with ties to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood has been one of the more important developments in state-society relations over the past twenty years.3 Against this scholarly and policy background, we set out to take the pulse of Muslim professional associations in these two Muslim-majority countries.4 Our aim was to examine more closely how Islamic professional associations shape their membership’s attitudes and behavior, not least of all as regards attitudes toward non-Muslims and the place of Islamic law (sharia) in public life. Over the past quarter century in both countries, a new Muslim middle class has emerged and become a major force in society and politics. Two of the more striking characteristics of this new class are a heightened enthusiasm for higher education and professional careers and, no less significant, a heightened commitment to Islamic observance. The two characteristics come together in the social life of professional associations. Muslims and Professional Associations The project focused on what can be called the “commanding heights” of religious and professional association in fields where Muslims are well represented. Our aim was to assess the social profile of the main professional organizations and to examine their...