Destabilising Male Domination: Building Community-Based Authority among Indonesian FemaleUlama

The concept of “ulama” in the Indonesian context usually refers to Muslim scholars who have mastered Islamic knowledge and acquired the religious authority to issue fatwas based on Islamic jurisprudence. In Indonesia, the formulation of fatwas is still undertaken almost exclusively by male ulama. This is despite the fact that a number of issues they discuss and the fatwas they produce are closely related to the lives and experiences of Muslim women. In response to this situation, female ulama cadre programs have been set up by non-governmental organisations concerned with women’s empowerment.Against the background of these recently instituted female ulama cadre programs, this paper examines the ways in which female ulama establish community-based authority. Two major questions provide the basis for this research. First, how do male ulama respond to and support female ulamas’ claims to religious authority? Second, to what extent does community-based female authority interact with or challenge Indonesia’s male-dominated religious authority? To answer these questions, I interviewed female ulama cadres of the organisation Rahima from different cohorts of the female ulama cadre programs and from different social backgrounds. The research shed light on the extent to which female ulama may in the future exercise fatwa-issuing, that is, juristic, authority in Indonesia.