Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia (SOASRoutledge Studies on the Middle East) by Michael Francis Laffan

Author:Michael Francis Laffan [Laffan, Michael Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2003-09-01T18:30:00+00:00

Al-Imam (1906–08): The First Channel of Cairene Discourse in the Bilād Al-Jāwa

Let there arise from you an umma, inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right and forbidding evil.

(Qur’ān 3: 104)

As in West Asia and the Middle East, the success of modern mass-movements in Southeast Asia depended on the existence of an active indigenous press and a body of literate subscribers. Once this was achieved with the birth of al-Imam Cairene reformism could make its real debut below the winds. Wider attention was first drawn to al-Imam in Roff’s The Origins of Malay nationalism (1967). And, although re-examined by Abu Bakar Hamzah (1991) and Milner (1995), the presentation by al-Imam of a new idealized community as drawn from specifically Cairene discourse remains under-emphasized, at least in English sources. More recently, Abdul Aziz Mat Ton (2000) has devoted a study to the political aspects of al-Imam’s programme, reproducing many valuable sections of the journal. But while he makes many important observations, Abdul Aziz pays little attention to the precise Cairene milieu from which much of its ideology was derived, and has overdrawn the relationships between the Wahhābīya and the thought of al-Afghānī and ʿAbduh. Further he has overemphasized the aspect of anti-colonialism and underplayed the very ardent self-critique in al-Imam’s pages.

An imām is, as in the case of Aḥmad Khaṭīb, a (prayer) leader or guide. The editors of this journal clearly believed that they were sent to guide the Muslim community below the winds and referred to their audience as ‘those led’ (al-maʾmūm, see vol. 1, no. 1, 23 July 1906). However it was not just reformist leadership that was disseminated by this journal. In their attempts to raise the level of the Malay bangsa, the editors also promulgated an Arabized language of homeland (watan) and community (umat). This was derived from their reading of the Cairene press and applied to the models proposed by competitor organs such as the Utusan Melayu (Malay Messenger, see Milner 1995: 89–113).

Singapore was an appropriate site for the introduction of modern Cairene discourse for a number of interconnected reasons. Most crucially we may recall that it was the major staging point for the Ḥajj. Moreover, the strong commercial links associated with the shipping of pilgrims interacted with the political and economic links of the British Empire. Cairo and Singapore respectively marked the Western and Eastern termini of Britain’s dominance of the Indian Ocean. British dominance not only facilitated communications, but a relatively relaxed attitude to the indigenous presses allowed new organs to flourish where they might have been stifled by conservative Malay rajas or Dutch officials.

Singapore was also a meeting point for the ecumenes of Islam, and many Indian and Hadrami entrepreneurs had long settled there with local Malay wives and families. As their familial and commercial networks similarly stretched across the Indian Ocean and intersected with colonial networks, they also served as one more key in the transmission of Cairene ideologies. It is worth recalling that the first students to venture to

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