Islamization and the Changing Ethical Imagination in Java

The continuing Islamization of Javanese society ranks as among the most complex and politically consequential in the world. For one thing, there are today some 100 million ethnic Javanese, 97 percent of whom are Muslim. Thus, Islamic resurgence among Javanese is of global significance. A relatively recent influx of Islamic-studies scholars as well as Muslim Indonesian scholars greatly influenced discussions of Javanese Islamization. The pre-eminent historian of Indonesia and Java, Merle Ricklefs, recognized those new perspectives and outlooks and turned his attention to the varieties and history of Islam in Indonesia. This is volume three, and the weightiest, of his trilogy tracing Javanese Islamization from the fourteenth century to the present.