Reconsidering “Unity and Diversity” in the Islamic World:

This article is to lay the methodological foundation for comparative studies of various parts of the Islamic world. First, it proposes to deconstruct Middle East/Arab-centric view of Islam. The central position of the Middle East, and the Arab peninsula in particular, in the Islamic World can be explained by the historical origins of Islam in the peninsula; the centrality of the two holy cities in religious terms; the reading of Koranic verses, which are revealed to the Arab Prophet and imbued with references to the landscape; the Ottoman Empire being the last Islamic Empire representing the Islamic polity; and the dissemination of ideas about Islamic reform dating from the late nineteenth century onwards and whose influence stretched from Arab countries to various parts of the Islamic world from Java in the East to Morocco in the West. While these may constitute valid reasons for Muslims to see the Middle East, or the Arabian Peninsula, at the center of the Islamic World, and probably to see Islam there as superior to their own, these are not good reasons for researchers to consider this the place of “true Islam, ” while other Islamic areas, which are peripheral in relation to the Arabic Peninsula, are seen as having more particular or degenerated forms of Islam. This latter view has often been expressed in studies on Islam in Indonesia and in other Southeast Asian countries. It must be added that while this proposal theoretically encompasses all parts of the Islamic world, for practical reasons all concrete examples are drawn from the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Secondly, this article presents concepts which can make comparison among different areas of the Islamic world possible, without giving false centricity to any of these areas. The first of these concepts is Islamization/localization. Here, Islamization and localization, namely the Islamization of an area and the incorporation of its indigenous elements into the Islamic institutions of that area, thus making Islam local in a sense, are seen as complementary dynamic processes which occur in every part of the Islamic world. By giving up the concept of Islamization as a one-directional process in which one area may be more Islamic, whether quantitavely and qualitatively, this concept explains how the “universal” resides in the “particularities” of each area. This Islamization/localization process usually takes effect by a mechanism whereby the Islamic principles are institutionalized through Islamic law and firmly established in the local context. However, this process may not necessarily occur without resistance, and may not necessarily continue without reversion. The reverse process can be referred to as de-Islamization/exteriorization. This process de-Islamizes the area while making Islam something exterior to the area. It is generally ascribed to colonization, secularization and Westernization. At the same time, colonization may be accompanied by counter-Islamization, as could be seen in Southeast Asia, and there may thus not be a simple causal relation between colonization and de-Islamization. The third pair consists of re-Islamization/contemporarization. Re-Islamization is a process of re-Islamizing an area. However, it is not the re-institutionalization of the old Islam, or of the institutions which were de-Islamized earlier. In the Islamization of the first stage, accommodating mechanisms are at play to incorporate indigenous elements. However, indigenous elements are not a major issues to which Islam, in contemporary times, needs to respond. Instead, the major contemporary issues are social, economic and political. Rather than making Islam indigenous, as was the case in the process of Islamization, re-Islamization makes Islam contemporary. We must not forget, however, that contemporary issues,