Religion and colonialism: Islamic knowledge in South Sulawesi and Kelantan, 1905--1945

This dissertation seeks to understand the way in which Islam operated within colonial context by examining the production and transmission of Islamic knowledge reflected in sermons, edicts, speeches, and curriculum in South Sulawesi and Kelantan during the late colonial times (1905-1945). The policies implemented by the Dutch, the British, and the Japanese administrators toward the majority Muslim populations in South Sulawesi and Kelantan differed in their impact due to the variation in the local contexts. It argues that colonial administrators influenced but did not determine the homogenizing and pluralizing process of transmission and interpreting Islam during the first half of the twentieth century. It explores the continues yet fluid modes of transmission, the multifaceted relationship between power and knowledge, the religiously-valued yet historically-influenced composition of Islamic knowledge. It also argues that what came to be defined as Islamic knowledge could only be understood in relation to non-religious contexts. It demonstrates the dynamic interplay between the religious and socio-historical aspects of knowledge production and transmission. It shows that the field of religious production was filled with religious communicators, the message, the audience, the medium, and the environment. It maintains that power exists and is distributed in various and changing individuals and institutions. Although the Dutch, the British, and the Japanese had their own notions of modernity, they shared a belief in its newness and practicality. It is because of this power that, on the one hand, the religiosity of Islamic knowledge was reinforced, and on the other, was redefined.;This study demonstrates the limits of the social construction of knowledge with emphasizes arbitrariness on the one hand and on the other hand theological claims which stress fixity. Islamic knowledge can be understood as both persistent and changing depending on different actors, texts, and contexts. Islamic knowledge is also characterized by both compromise and tension between the exoteric and esoteric dimensions. It is an intellectual and social product shaped by the persistent power of belief in the sacred and the changing power of the profane, or by human subjectivities and historical realities.