Islam and Popular Culture in Indonesia and Malaysia by Andrew N. Weintraub (review)

Currently, Islamic popular culture practices can be found almost everywhere across the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and among Muslim communities in Europe and the United States. In Egypt, Pakistan, Morocco, and Lebanon, Muslim heavy metal and hip hop fans and artists have created a thriving underground music scene. Satellite music video channels in Arabian countries have, since 2000, started to broadcast a new style of religious music video that combines lyrics in praise of God and the Prophet with Western-style instrumental music and a set of high-quality, commercially appealing images and storylines in contemporary settings. Meanwhile, in the United States, Islamic poet performances by Brother Dash and stand-up comedy by Shazia Mirza are enjoying critical acclaim among many, and are even considered halal by the Great Ayatollah of Iraq. These instances and others, like halal song, Islamic film or “clean cinema” (no bed scenes, kissing, or other images considered shameful), Islamic boy bands, Islamically correct reality TV shows, and Islamic tourism prove that Islamic revivalism and the subsequent piety movements are not incompatible with contemporary popular culture. This new trend of commercial Islamic music video emphasizes the dignity and humanity of Islam and its harmonious integration with a comfortable middle-class, modern lifestyle.

This edited volume offers a wide range of Islamic popular cultural practices in two neighbouring countries—Indonesia and Malaysia—that are often overlooked in media discourses about Islam. The book illuminates not only the way in which Islam and popular culture intersect in the two countries, but also how that interplay causes both protest and praise. In his introduction, Andrew N. Weintraub exemplifies this by pointing out that even though for some Islamic groups popular music is thought to corrupt people by the perceived sexualized performance of women’s bodies or the perceived negative effects on youth, popular music is also increasingly being used to promote Islamic ideas and values. Weintraub explains some ways to understand the meaning of “popular” in relation to Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia. He suggests that, in general, the notion of “popular Islam” refers to large numbers of people practicing Islam in daily life, and also refers to how the majority of Muslims celebrate local ideas, beliefs, values, and practices. However, Weintraub stresses that in this volume the writings on “popular Islam” focus much more on “Islamic popular culture,” which refers to mass production, mass mediation, urban setting, and globalism and cosmopolitanism, rather than “traditional popular Islam.”

This excellent book is divided into four parts. The first part—“Commercial, Educational, Government, and Religious Institutions”—deals with institutions involved in the practices of Islamic popular culture. The second—“Social Processes of Media Production, Circulation, and Reception”—focuses on how Islamic popular practices in Indonesia are being produced, circulated, and perceived. The contributors in the third part—“Islamic Perspectives on Film, Music, and Literature”—write about how popular culture practitioners (filmmakers, authors, and musicians) employ their respective skills to communicate religious messages, or how they use Islam to challenge stereotypes within society and to promote universal messages such as humanity and gender equality. The fourth part—“Representations, Values, and Meanings”—tackles the representations of Islamic symbols and practices in the media and how they also represent social and cultural transformations within Indonesian and Malaysian societies.

Even though all the articles in the book are very interesting to read, their categorization is confusing in some cases. For example, it is unclear why Ariel Heryanto’s article was included in the first part, as his writing is more about a few examples of Islamic popular culture in Indonesia, how the public perceives these examples, and how significant this is for wider issues of Islam, rather than about specific institutions. R. Anderson Sutton’s and Sarah E. Krier’s articles could also be placed in the first part, since in their writings commercial institutions play a prominent role in redefining Islamic expressions in the public sphere. It might...