Mahmood Kooria
Leiden University Institute for History,
the Netherlands
Rabu 10 Sept 2014
09.00 s/d. 11.30 WIB
Ruang Inculs D.101
Fakultas Ilmu Budaya
Universitas Gadjah Mada
Abstract
In the late nineteenth century, both India and Indonesia were witnessing anti-colonial struggles, which were identified by some Muslim traditional scholars (ulama) as a collective jihad against Christian rulers. Certain ulama from Malabar (southwest India) incited their audience to holy-war (jihad), by drawing from examples of colonial attacks in various parts of the world. For one of them, what the Dutch were inflicting on their large Muslim subject populations through oppression, conversion, and ‘Western’ education was unjustifiable in any sense, and thus, the Muslims were religiously obligated to fight against such ‘Christian rulers’ as the Dutch and the British. One Malabari monograph entitled Tanbih al-muluk specifically ‘imagines’ the historical events pertaining to the Dutch involvement in Java. I would place this jihadi text against the background of much lengthier historical connections between Java and Malabar in terms of legal, mystical and jihadi networks and ideas, in order to inquire how both regions developed a different Islamic culture outside the so-called ‘heartlands of Islam’.
