Muslims, the New Age and Marginal Religions in Indonesia: Changing Meanings of Religious Pluralism
Author(s)
Howell, Julia
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2005
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The author examines the changing meanings of religious pluralism in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, Indonesia. She demonstrates the paradoxical viability of three new organizations - Salamullah, the Brahma Kumaris and the Anand Ashram - that challenge normative conceptions of 'religion' embodied in national law since the 1960s but nonetheless attract substantial numbers of cosmopolitan Indonesians, including religiously well-educated Muslims. The high modern construction of 'religions' that underpins existing law is being reworked in the actual religious practice of cosmopolitan Indonesians. With their ...
View more >The author examines the changing meanings of religious pluralism in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, Indonesia. She demonstrates the paradoxical viability of three new organizations - Salamullah, the Brahma Kumaris and the Anand Ashram - that challenge normative conceptions of 'religion' embodied in national law since the 1960s but nonetheless attract substantial numbers of cosmopolitan Indonesians, including religiously well-educated Muslims. The high modern construction of 'religions' that underpins existing law is being reworked in the actual religious practice of cosmopolitan Indonesians. With their patronage they are expanding the sphere of internal dialogue within Indonesia's Muslim community, effecting a new permeability in the boundaries of the nation's official religions, and contributing to the emergence of an arena of unregulated 'spiritual' groups that now exists alongside the highly regulated, rigidly denominational religious market structured by the New Order Government (1966-1998).
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View more >The author examines the changing meanings of religious pluralism in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, Indonesia. She demonstrates the paradoxical viability of three new organizations - Salamullah, the Brahma Kumaris and the Anand Ashram - that challenge normative conceptions of 'religion' embodied in national law since the 1960s but nonetheless attract substantial numbers of cosmopolitan Indonesians, including religiously well-educated Muslims. The high modern construction of 'religions' that underpins existing law is being reworked in the actual religious practice of cosmopolitan Indonesians. With their patronage they are expanding the sphere of internal dialogue within Indonesia's Muslim community, effecting a new permeability in the boundaries of the nation's official religions, and contributing to the emergence of an arena of unregulated 'spiritual' groups that now exists alongside the highly regulated, rigidly denominational religious market structured by the New Order Government (1966-1998).
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Journal Title
Social Compass
Volume
52
Issue
4
Publisher URI
Copyright Statement
© 2005 Sage Publications. Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. First published in Social Compass. This journal is available online: http://scp.sagepub.com/content/vol52/issue4/
Subject
Sociology
Religion and Religious Studies