Islam, Nationalism and Democracy

Since Indonesia’s democratization in 1998, and especially since the strong showing of Islamic parties in the 2004 elections, scholars of Indonesia have renewed their attention to the 1940s and 50s—the country’s first experiment with democracy—and to Islamic politics in particular. Two impressive new biographies in 2012 have not only furthered that work significantly, but have also filled major gaps in the scholarship. Audrey Kahin, the long-time editor of the journal Indonesia and well-known historian of West Sumatra at Cornell, published her biography of Mohammad Natsir (1908–1993), the father of Islamic politics in Indonesia. This is the first biography of him in English, something several scholars have called for in the two decades since Natsir’s passing. Kahin is able to draw on several lengthy interviews with Natsir, as well as personal papers from the family, interviews with a broad swathe of Islamic leaders from the 1950s, and exhaustive knowledge of the

Biography · Democracy · Democratization · Islam · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Theology · Asian Studies and History · Cultural and Religious Practices in Indonesia · Islamic Studies and Radicalism · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religious Studies