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Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru

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Kyai Haji Abdullah Gymnastiar, known affectionately by Indonesians as "Aa Gym" (elder brother Gym), rose to fame via nationally televised sermons, best-selling books, and corporate training seminars. In Rebranding Islam James B. Hoesterey draws on two years' study of this charismatic leader and his message of Sufi ideas blended with Western pop psychology and management theory to examine new trends in the religious and economic desires of an aspiring middle class, the political predicaments bridging self and state, and the broader themes of religious authority, economic globalization, and the end(s) of political Islam. 

At Gymnastiar's Islamic school, television studios, and MQ Training complex, Hoesterey observed this charismatic preacher developing a training regimen called Manajemen Qolbu into Indonesia's leading self-help program via nationally televised sermons, best-selling books, and corporate training seminars. Hoesterey's analysis explains how Gymnastiar articulated and mobilized Islamic idioms of ethics and affect as a way to offer self-help solutions for Indonesia's moral, economic, and political problems. Hoesterey then shows how, after Aa Gym's fall, the former celebrity guru was eclipsed by other television preachers in what is the ever-changing mosaic of Islam in Indonesia. Although Rebranding Islam tells the story of one man, it is also an anthropology of Islamic psychology.

This book is part of the Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center series at Stanford University Press.

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James Hoesterey

Islam, Politics and Youth in Malaysia: The Pop-Islamist Reinvention of PAS

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Providing an ethnographic account of the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) and its Youth Wing (Dewan Pemuda PAS), this book analyses the genesis and role of Islamic movements in terms of their engagement in mainstream politics. It explores the party’s changing approach towards popular culture and critically investigates whether the narrative of a post-Islamist turn can be applied to the PAS Youth.

The book shows that in contrast to the assumption that Islamic marketization and post-Islamism are reinforcing each other, the PAS Youth has strategically appropriated and integrated Islamic consumerism to pursue a decidedly Islamist – or ‘pop-Islamist’ – political agenda. The media-savvy PAS Youth elites, which are at the forefront of implementing new outreach strategies for the party, categorically oppose tendencies of political moderation among the senior party. Instead, they are most passionately calling for the establishment of a Syariah-based Islamic order for state and society, although these renewed calls are increasingly expressed through modern channels such as Facebook, YouTube, rock music, celebrity advertising, branded commodities and other market-driven forms of social movement mobilization.

A timely and significant contribution to the literature on Islam and politics in Malaysia and beyond, this book sheds new light on widespread assumptions or even hopes of "post-Islamism." It is of interest to students and scholars of Political Religion and Southeast Asian Politics.

Contents
  1. Introduction
  2. Conceptual Framework: Islamism, Post-Islamism or Pop-Islamism?
  3. The Politics of Islam in Malaysia
  4. The Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) and its youth wing
  5. The Pop-Islamist reinvention of PAS: Anthropological observations
  6. Conclusions

Dominik Müller was a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC in 2013. His anthropological research focuses on Muslim politics and popular culture in Southeast Asia. Müller is now a postdoctoral fellow at Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany.

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Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series
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Dominik Müller
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978-0415844758

Dominik Müller

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room C331
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Visiting Scholar
MullerDominik.jpg PhD

Dominik Müller joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) from February until May 2013 from the Department of Anthropology at Goethe-University Frankfurt where he serves as a postdoctoral research associate.

His research interests encompass Islam and popular culture in contemporary Southeast Asia, Malaysian domestic politics, and socio-legal change in the Malay world.

During his time at the Shorenstein APARC, Müller will conduct research on the religious bureaucracy of Malaysia. His research project at Stanford is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Müller obtained his PhD summa cum laude in 2012 in cultural anthropology from the Cluster of Excellence the “Formation of Normative Orders” at Frankfurt University. He previously studied anthropology, philosophy, and law in Frankfurt and at Leiden University. His dissertation on Islam, Politics, and Youth in Malaysia received the Frobenius Society’s Research Award 2012 and will be published in 2013.

Muslim Politics and Popular Culture in Malaysia: PAS, Hudud, and Rock 'n' Roll

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Malaysia’s 13th general election is imminent and the opposition coalition (Pakatan Rakyat) is fragile. Inside the coalition, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and the secularist Democratic Action Party have little in common. PAS itself is split along generational lines and ideologically divided between reform-oriented pragmatists and hard-line Islamists. The youth wing of PAS is increasingly vocal in accusing the party of having abandoned key principles in the “Islamic struggle.” Based on anthropological fieldwork, Dominik Müller will review how PAS Youth members are contesting the party’s future in both political and cultural terms.

In Muslim politics in Malaysia, does increasing recourse to popular culture augur an incipient “post-Islamist” turn? Young Muslim activists in PAS are using YouTube and Facebook, commercial brands, celebrity personalities, and rock music to disseminate their call to “purify the struggle” for an Islamic state or “caliphate.” Do these “secular” media dilute if not drown out the politico-religious message? Or, given their popular appeal, do they render it all the more convincing? And with what implications for Islam and politics—in Malaysia and, analogously, elsewhere in the Muslim world?

Dominik Müller obtained his doctorate summa cum laude in 2012 from Frankfurt University, where he works as a research associate in the Department of Anthropology. His dissertation on Islam, politics, and youth in Malaysia will be published in 2013. His research project at Stanford, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), examines patterns of socio-legal change in the Malay world.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Dominik Müller Visiting Scholar APARC Speaker Stanford University
Seminars

Indonesia Is No Model for Muslim Democracy

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Since the resignation of Indonesia’s authoritarian president Suharto in 1998, the country has made great strides in consolidating a democratic government. But it is by no means a model of tolerance. The rights of religious minorities are routinely trampled. Regulations against blasphemy and proselytizing are routinely used to prosecute minorities including atheists, Ahmadiyah, Bahais, Christians, and Shias. As of 2012 Indonesia had over 280 religiously motivated regulations restricting minority rights. 

Hard-line groups such as the Islam Defenders Front use narrow interpretations of local and national legislation as a key tool to suppress minorities. In 2006 two ministers in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's cabinet jointly decreed stricter legal requirements for building a house of worship. The decree is enforced only on religious minorities, often when Islamists pressure local officials to refuse to authorize the construction of Christian churches or to harass those worshiping in “illegal” churches. More than 430 such churches have been closed since. Violent attacks on religious minorities have become more frequent—from 216 cases in 2010, to 244 in 2011, to 264 in 2012. What explains this record of intimidation? Can it be stopped, and if so, how?

Andreas Harsono is widely published. He co-wrote In Religion's Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia (Human Rights Watch, 2013). His commentaries appeared in 2012 in outlets ranging from The New York Times to The Myanmar Times. Other writings include My “Religion” Is Journalism (2010), a collection of his Indonesian-language essays. In 2003 he helped establish the Pantau Foundation, which trains Indonesian journalists and defends media freedom. In 1999 he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship on Journalism at Harvard. He co-founded the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Bangkok,1998), the Institute for the Study of the Free Flow of Information (Jakarta, 1995), and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (Jakarta, 1994). Earlier in his career he edited Pantau, a monthly Indonesian magazine on journalism and the media. Still earlier he worked as a reporter for The Nation (Bangkok) and The Star (Kuala Lumpur). He describes himself as a “journalist-cum-activist”—an identity richly illustrated by his career.

Related Resources

Indonesia: Religious Minorities Targets of Rising Violence (HRW, press release)

Indonesia: Rising Violence Against Religious Minorities (HRW, slideshow)

In Religion’s Name: Abuses Against Religious Minorities in Indonesia (HRW, report)

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Andreas Harsono Indonesia Researcher Speaker Human Rights Watch
Seminars
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