Democratization and the Diffusion of Shari'a Law: Comparative Insights from Indonesia

The democratization of politics has been accompanied by a rise of Islamic laws in many Muslim-majority countries. Despite a growing interest in the phenomenon, the Islamization of politics in democratizing Muslim-majority countries is rarely understood as a process that unfolds across space and time. Based on an original dataset established during years of field research in Indonesia, this article analyzes the spread of shari’a regulations across the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy since 1998. The article shows that shari’a regulations in Indonesia diffused unevenly across space and time. Explanations put forward in the literature on the diffusion of morality policies in other countries such as geographic proximity, institutions, intergovernmental relations and economic conditions did not explain the patterns in the diffusion of shari’a regulations in Indonesia well. Instead, shari’a regulations in Indonesia were most likely to spread across jurisdictions where local Islamist groups situated outside the party system had an established presence. In short, the Islamization of politics was highly contingent on local conditions. Future research will need to pay more attention to local Islamist activists and networks situated outside formal politics as potential causes for the diffusion of shari’a law in democratizing Muslim-majority countries

Incubators for Extremists? Radicalism and Moderation in Indonesia's Islamic Education System

Islamic schools and universities in Indonesia have been accused of producing militant Islamist extremists. The Bali bombers, for example, attended ‘hard-line’ (garis keras) schools and a recent spate of book-bombs targeting champions of Islamic moderation were sent by a student at the State Islamic University. But is this perception actually correct? This paper looks at the struggle between moderate and extremist ideas in Indonesia’s madrasahs and Islamic tertiary institutions and its implications for Australian policy. It asks whether Islamic thought in Southeast Asia is becoming more or less radical; whether education in Islamic societies should be reformed to counter extremist ideas; and if so, how