Hefner, Menchik Speak at Workshop on Islam in Indonesia
Robert Hefner, Professor of Anthropology and International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, and Jeremy Menchik, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School, spoke at a March 8, 2019 workshop at Northwestern University on “Islamist Movements in Indonesia and Turkey: Mobilization, Islamization, and Legitimacy.”
Hefner gave a talk entitled “A ‘Conservative’ But Still Agonistic Turn: Islamization and Democratization in Contemporary Indonesia,” and Menchik presented a paper entitled “The Politics of the Fatwa.”
From the abstract of Menchik’s paper:
Fatwas from Islamic organizations are prominent elements of public debates in democratic Indonesia, as well as the broader Muslim world. Yet scholars lack a clear theoretical explanation for the power of fatwas in politics. This paper draws on original archival material to explicate the authority of the fatwas from the Indonesian Council of Ulama (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI), which over the past twenty years has become one of the country’s most influential actors. The paper distinguishes three periods in the growth and transformation of MUI’s authority; starting with charismatic authority and expert authority, MUI later gained regulatory authority, and now uses agenda setting, lobbying, mass mobilization, and the threat of violence. By examining how the power of MUI’s fatwas increased as the organization accrued more forms of authority, this periodization demonstrates that explaining the political power of the fatwa requires understanding the modern organizational authority of Islamic actors.
Robert Hefner has directed 19 research projects and organized 18 international conferences, and authored or edited nineteen books. He is former president of the Association for Asian Studies. At CURA, he directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991; coordinated interdisciplinary research and public policy programs on religion, pluralism, and world affairs; and is currently involved in two research projects: “The New Western Plurality and Civic Coexistence: Muslims, Catholics, and Secularists in North America and Western Europe”; and “Sharia Transitions: Islamic Law and Ethical Plurality in the Contemporary World.” You can read more about him here.
Jeremy Menchik’s research interests include comparative politics, religion and politics, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. His first book, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explains the meaning of tolerance to the world’s largest Islamic organizations and was the winner of the 2017 International Studies Association award for the best book on religion and international relations. He has received numerous awards and fellowships for teaching and research, and his work has appeared in the academic journals Comparative Studies in Society and History, Comparative Politics, International Studies Review, Politics and Religion, and South East Asia Research as well as in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.