“Mecca...

“Mecca,” says Snouck Hurgronje, “has been well said to have more influence on the religious life of these islands than on Turkey, India, or Bukhara.”[^2] How deeply attached to their old customs and traditions even the modern educated Indonesians are is well illustrated by the statement of a prominent Indonesian lady who, while addressing the members of the British Women Association, remarked “that the Indonesians were indeed proud of their old customs and traditions and wished to preserve them in spite of their Islamic religion adopted about seven centuries ago.”[^3] The Indonesian national movement is of recent origin.

Before the beginning of the fourteenth/twentieth century, there had been isolated and sporadic outbursts of armed resistance to the rapacious exploitation of the Indonesians by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British, such as those of Dipa Nagara, in the province of Djocjkarta,[^4] Tenku Umar,[^5] Imam Bondjol,[^6] etc. The first organized political movement started in the first decade of this century.

There were many factors responsible for the development of Indonesian nationalism and political consciousness which materially affected the course of the Indonesians’ struggle as also the political structure of Indonesia after it had been won. Of the modern Islamic reform movements in other countries that of Muham­mad Abduh in Egypt had a very deep influence on Indonesian thought and way of life.

The Dutch tried to prevent the inflow of books and newspapers published in Egypt and other Arab countries, as they were afraid of the “dangerous pan-Islamic ideas” which these writings contained. In spite of their vigilance the Egyptian periodicals al-Manar , al-Urwat al-Wuthqa , al-Muyyad , al-Siyasah , al-Liwa , and al-Adl were smuggled into Indonesia and were widely read. Scholars like Imam Bondjol, H. Jalal al-Din Tayyib, Mukhtar Lutfi, H. H.

Amarullah brought back with them modern Islamic ideas current in Islamic lands and particularly those introduced by Muhammad Abduh and Jamal al-Din Afghani in Cairo. Indian modernist writings were equally welcome and widely read.[^7] The main aim of the Indonesian Muslims who were caught up in the current of modern reformist movements in Islamic countries was to purify Indonesian Muslim society from the indigenous unorthodox practices.