ARABIA ASIA TRANSREGIONAL STUDIES ROUNDTABLE
Organized by the Muhammad Alagil Distinguished Chair in Arabia Asia Studies at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
29 Aug @ 21.30 SGT
The second Arabia Asia Transregional Studies Roundtable hosted a book discussion:
What is Religious Authority? Cultivating Islamic Communities in Indonesia. By Ismail Fajrie Alatas, Princeton University Press 2021.
The Roundtable Series meets to discuss challenges and solutions in research and publishing on all aspects of Arabia Asia relations. While the potentiallly large spatial and temporal dimensions of such relations pose challenges in framing research and narrating findings, we now have a number of methodologically innovative books and projects creatively building this field with all manner of empirical materials. And there is more to be done!
The second roundtable discussed the book, What is Religious Authority? Cultivating Islamic Communities in Indonesia, by Ismail Alatas. His book redirects anthropological and historical questions on Islam as a locally embedded yet universal reality into Muslim authority and community. Pursuing prominent Bā ʿAlawis in Indonesia, Alatas explicates how religious authority and community are cultivated and how such processes serve as the sites for realization of the Prophetic traditions while remaining irreducibly local in concrete contexts.
