Islam in the Public Sphere

Islam in the Public Sphere:

Negotiating Identity, Lifestyle and
Democracy in Indonesia1
Noorhaidi Hasan
Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta

Abstract: It is important for present and future research to

incorporate historical and contextual accounts of shifting
notions and practices of public life and social exchange, that
there is a single ideal form of the public sphere for all contexts
and times. In other words, the idea of the public is culturally
embedded. Islam in the public sphere refers to the highly diverse
invocations of Islam as ideas and practices that religious
scholars, self-ascribed religious authorities, secular intellectu-
als, mothers, students, workers, consumers, and many others
make in civic debate and public life. In this public capacity,
Islam plays a considerable role in configuring the politics and
social life of large parts of Indonesian state. This role is thus not
only a template for ideas and practices but is also a way of
envisioning alternative political realities and, increasingly, a
way of acting on both global and national stages, thereby
reconfiguring the established boundaries of civil and social life.
Keywords: Identity, public sphere, Islamism, post-Islamism.

I. Introduction
The fact that Islam is becoming more publicly visible and articulate
as Muslims experience modernization and globalization is one of

1
Paper is presented at the International Seminar on “Islam in the
Public Sphere: Between Utopia and Fact” held by Graduate Faculty of
IAIN Sultan Thaha Saifuddin Jambi, 13 October 2012.

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Noorhaidi Hasan

the most remarkable developments currently occurring in the

Muslim world. Over the past decades, Islam has demonstrated its
vitality as a system of symbolic and collective identity that informs
the social and political dynamics of Muslims throughout the world.
In tandem with their rising religious awareness and desire to
demonstrate their religious self in the public sphere, Islam has
increasingly moved to the centre and become part of political
expressions, legal transactions, economic activities, and socio-
cultural practice. As we have seen in Indonesia, the most populous
Muslim country in the world, the growing influence of Islam in the
public sphere of the Muslim world corresponds with the accentuation
of religious symbols and the proliferation of Islamic institutions
and new life-styles.
Magnificent mosques have been constructed, with new
architectural styles—and they are full of congregations attending
collective daily and Friday prayers and Quranic reading sessions
(pengajian). More and more people are performing the hajj pilgrimage
to Mecca, some of whom travel on expensive tour packages offering
five-star services. Typical Muslim fashions, such as jilbab (headscarf)
for women and baju koko (Muslim shirts) for men have emerged
with trendy, colourful styles, and begun to dominate the cultural
landscape of every corner of the country. Special makeup and skin
products with the halal label are widely advertised and sold both in
traditional markets and in the Muslim section of luxury goods
department stores. Complementing the more traditional ‘Islamic’
qashida music, nashid has gone to the top of the national popular
music charts. This form of religious singing praises God and the
Prophet Muhammad, using styles that vary from pop music, using
drums and electric guitars, to reggae.
‘Islamic’ print media, such as magazines, bulletins, pamphlets,
books, and novels, has achieved prominence. Radio and television
channels compete to broadcast da‘wa (Islamic proselytizing) prog-
rammes, including Islamic soap opera. New da‘wa genres, such as
cyber da‘wa and cellular da‘wa, offer instant religious messages

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 Islam in the Public Sphere

through SMS and web-based services, bringing Islam into everyday

life and offering personal convenience, accessibility and immediacy.2
The so-called integrated and quality Islamic schools have expanded
to provide a full-time, boarding-school system. Side-by-side with
institutions for collecting increasingly large sums of religious alms
and donations, Islamic financial institutions, including Islamic Shari‘a
banks, Islamic insurance (Takaful), Islamic people’s credit unions
(Bank Perkreditan Rakyat Syari‘ah), and house of funds and finances
(Bait al-Mal wa al-Tamwil), have flourished across the country,
reaching remote areas and isolated rural villages.3
Across the Muslim countries, an Islamic pop culture has likewise
developed, where Islam has become part of an extensive consumer
culture which serves as an important identity marker as much as a
sign of social status and political affiliation. It has even gradually
emerged as a symbol of elitism, associated with the road to success.
Its strength lies in the fact that it has developed into a sort of network
that enables large numbers of people from different social
backgrounds to share and make new contacts, both real and virtual.
Through this network, the Islamic revival messages ring clearly,
influencing multiple social and political fields and encouraging a
collective identity. Purchasing a cheap pamphlet from a street vendor
on proper Islamic dress for women, watching an Islamic soap opera,
veiling, attending study circles with popular preachers, or making
the pilgrimage to Mecca link an individual, indirectly perhaps, to a
larger social group and in a general sense to the umma (global Muslim
community). The network, in turn, provides credible paths for
upward mobility and a market for commercial products.

2
Greg Fealy “Consuming Islam: Commodified Religion and
Aspirational Pietism in Contemporary Indonesia,” in Greg Fealy and Sally
White, eds., Expressing Islam, Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia
(Singapore: ISEAS, 2008), pp. 15-39.
3
Minako Sakai, “Community Development through Islamic
Microfinance: Serving the Financial Needs of the Poor in a Viable Way,”
in Greg Fealy and Sally White, eds., Expressing Islam, Religious Life and
Politics in Indonesia (Singapore: ISEAS, 2008), pp. 267-285.

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Noorhaidi Hasan

This paper examines the transformation of the Muslim world

towards the creation of new ‘Islamic’ public spaces and markets in
which the emerging middle classes, intellectuals, professional
groups, and Muslim youth are offered a wealth of opportunities to
seek visibility and legitimacy in the public sphere. It discusses the
way Islam is carving out a public space of its own, in conformity
with the requirements of Muslim faith and embodying new Islamic
language styles, corporeal rituals as well as spatial and bodily
practices. Interestingly, this outgrowth of religious symbols is
keeping pace with the fast-flowing current of social change and
globalization. To be sure, globalization has contributed to the
creation of a homogenized culture, towards a synchronization of
taste, consumption, and lifestyle. In a more positive tone,
globalization has also deepened the penetrative forces of modern
values such as democracy, tolerance, and human rights. Taken
together, this process leads to the formation of public Islam and the
emergence of a nascent post-Islamist trend in the Muslim world.

II. Public Islam

Public Islam is a process that envisions the emergence of an “Islamic”
public sphere which enables a large segment of diverse Muslims to
make their voices heard in civic debate and public life, thus
facilitating modern and distinctively open senses of political and
religious identity.4 The concept of public Islam develops in relation
to earlier debates on public religion sparked by sociologist Jose
Casanova, who is the first to note the revival of religion in the
public life of the modern world. He challenges the secularization
thesis, proposing that religions have undergone a process of
“repoliticisation” and “deprivatisation”, contributing to the growth
of civil society by playing a concrete role in directing the transition
from authoritarianism to democracy, and in the intervening public

4
Armando Salvatore and Dale Eickelman, “Public Islam and the
Common Good,” in Armando Salvatore and Dale F. Eickleman (eds.), Public
Islam and the Common Good (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. xi-xxv.

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 Islam in the Public Sphere

debate. Despite its focus on Spain, Poland, Brazil and the United
States, this observation is certainly not confined to Catholicism and
Protestantism. Its horizons can indeed be widened to include parts
of the world with other religious traditions, such as Islam, Judaism,
and Hinduism.5
As Casanova argues, religions in the globalizing era have
entered the public sphere and the arena of political contestation to
participate in the very struggles to define and set the modern
boundaries between the private and public sphere. 6 It is the era
when the wall of secularization separating between the secular and
religious realms—which entails the privatization of religion—breaks
down and faces a serious challenge. The appearance of religions in
the public spaces of the globalizing era has facilitated a new
institutionalization of processes of practical rationalization. By
entering the sphere of public communication religions are induced
to a ‘reflexive rationalization’ of the lifeworld, which entails a recon-
figuration of the private-public dichotomy and of its boundaries.7
The burgeoning of public Islam has to do with the impact of
economic restructuration as well as commodification. Constraints
of international market rationalities, advertising and the diffusion
of standardized models of consumption have mediated these
processes, whereby a sense of abstraction that corresponds to both
normative Habermasian and functional meanings is made manifest.
Being embedded in a combination between public display and public
discourse, Islam plays a significant role in channelling social change,
securing social order and promoting grass-roots democratisation
in Muslim societies. As Salvatore has said, public Islam is a function
in ordering and rationalising that are expressed in Islamic terms
but cohere into a unified normative principle. 8 It is related to
vigorous competition among Muslims for religious interpretations

5
Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994).
6
Casanova, Public Religions, p. 6.
7
Casanova, Public Religions, pp. 228-229.

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Noorhaidi Hasan

and institutions that control them that increases as a consequence

of the opening of public space. As part of the process of democrat-
isation, this competition is characterized by ethical debates in light
of the normative principle of public communication.
A sense of freedom, openness and creativity which is embodied
in public Islam allows debate over the truths of the Muslim creed,
either through ordinary daily practice or deliberate campaigns.
Hence religion is rendered into a plural reality with multiple
meanings. According to Bayat, so long such a freedom is guaranteed
one can envision a nascent democratic Islam that accommodates
aspects of pluralism, multiculturalism and human rights in a Muslim
country. 9 The existence of oppositional forces against authori-
tarianism, which develop from mass education, the mass media,
and mass politics, is indeed essential to the transformation of the
Muslim public sphere and the making of public Islam.10
The concept of public Islam highlights the importance of a pre-
(socio-political)condition that enables Islam to correspond with
democratic process occurring in the Muslim world. It suggests
irrelevance of debates about the compatibility between Islam and
democracy which have abounded among scholars all over the world.
In his provocative contribution to these debates, Lewis, for instance,
suggested that Muslims have an entirely different understanding
of religion if compared to that of liberal Christianity. Islam is
regarded by many Muslims as a model for personal ethics as well
as public order as reflected in a popular phrase, Islam huwa din wa’l
dawla (Islam is religion and state altogether). This understanding,
he continued to argue, is related to their unique cultural tendency

8
Armando Salvatore, “The Genesis and Evolution of ‘Islamic
Publicness’ under Global Constraints,” Journal of Arabic, Islamic and Middle
Eastern Studies 3, 1 (1996): 51-70.
9
Asef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic. Social Movements and the Post-
Islamist Turn (Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 187-189.
10
Peter van Der Veer, “Secrecy and Publicity in the South Asian Public
Arena,” in Armando Salvatore and Dale Eickelman, eds., Public Islam and
the Common Good (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), p. 48-49.

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 Islam in the Public Sphere

toward religious authoritarianism.11 Other scholars criticized Lewis’

pessimistic view by insisting that the notion of democracy has been
accepted by the majority of Muslims in recent decades although
they differed as to its precise meaning. Esposito and Piscatori, for
instance, referred to the fact that the Qur’an has introduced the
well-established concept of shura (consultation) to be the foundation
for Muslims to build their interpretation of democracy. What is
central to the Islamic state according to this concept is consultative
government as embodied in the need of rulers to consult and to
rule on the basis of consensus.12 Despite the fact that the majority of
Muslims would also accept that the divine will is supreme and, in
theory, that God’s law is immutable and cannot be altered by human
desire, other scholars insisted that some form of popular
participation required in Muslim politics provides the foundation
for democracy in the Muslim world.13
Beyond this kind of debates over the compatibility between
Islam and democracy, what is more important is indeed to examine
the conditions that enable Islamic values to develop hand in hand
with democracy. The importance of public Islam lies herein as an
open arena where the debates over meanings take place to facilitate
the burgeoning of democracy. Democracy is never a simple process.
It necessitates the sustained responsibility of individuals, groups
and the state to promote the fundamental values, notions, and
principles which are essential for democracy. As Almond and Verba
have put it, there is a strong correlation between the successful
democratization of a country and the democratic culture and
structure of polity. From their point of view, democratic culture is
an amalgamation of freedom and participation on the one hand,
and norms and attitudes on the other. It is rooted in a civic culture

11
Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1988), 2-10.
12
John L. Esposito and James Piscatori, “Democratization and Islam”,
The Middle East Journal 45, 3 (1991): 427-40.
13
See, for instance, Abdou Filaly-Ansary, “Muslims and Democracy”,
Journal of Democracy 10, 3 (1999): 18-32.

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Noorhaidi Hasan

that features high levels of social trust, civicness, mutual cooperation

and responsibility.14
Moreover, democracy requires a social imagery in which a
public ethos of respect for reason and pluralism plays a pivotal role
in the exercise of pluralist citizenship. Such an image of society should
be capable of driving all the impulses of public discourse towards a
social energy that contributes to the growth of civil society. It entails
cultural as well as political expression, from education, architecture,
the arts, media, to institutions of governance, religion and indeed
of the sciences. Only then will the rule of law and citizenship have
a widely accepted democratic legitimacy. In Sajoo’s opinion, a vital
feature of this legitimacy is “the capacity of a society to accommodate
the ’competing affiliations‘ of cultural, religious and political identity,
in which individuals and communities are not reduced to single
ethnic, religious, sexual, ideological or other social markers.”15 The
existence and acceptance of multiple and overlapping affiliations is
a key element in the recognition of the civic sharing and empathy
that finds expression in common citizenship. This recognition will
act to ensure that those affiliations are not in conflict with each
other, and do not jeopardize social cohesion.

III. The Challenge of Islamist Militancy

The proliferation of the seeds of public Islam should face a serious
challenge when the Muslim world has seen the rising tide of
Islamism, largely defined as the political discourse and activism
that aspire for the establishment of an Islamic order. Various
strategies have been taken by Islamists to achieve this end, including
through proselytizing (da’wa) and education (tarbiyya). In the wide
spectrum of Islamist camp there are the radicals who are keen to

14
Gabriel A Almond and S. Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes
And Democracy In Five Nations (London: Sage, 1989), pp. 340-345.
15
Amyn B. Sajoo, “Citizenship and Its Discontents: Public Religion,
Civic Identities,” in Bryan Turner (ed.), Religious Diversity and Civil Society,
A Comparative Analysis (Oxford: Bardwell Press, 2008), p. 36.

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 Islam in the Public Sphere

defy the secular democratic system through their endeavours to

govern the public and private life strictly in accordance with Islamic
precepts. Accordingly, various kinds of Islamic revolutionary actions
have evolved out of this context in the radicals’ attempts to topple
the existing regimes deemed responsible for the domination of the
secular democratic system in Muslim countries.
In Indonesia, for instance, militant Islamist groups such as the
Front Pembela Islam (Defenders of Islam Front, FPI), the Laskar
Jihad (Holy War Force, LJ), the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia
(Indonesian Holy Warriors Council, MMI), the Jemaah Islamiyah
(Islamic Community, JI), and the Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia
(Indonesian Islamic Party of Liberation) came to the fore and
achieved notoriety by taking to the streets to demand the compre-
hensive implementation of the shari‘a (Islamic law), raiding cafes,
discotheques, casinos, brothels, and other reputed dens of iniquity,
and, most importantly, calling for jihad in the Moluccas and other
Indonesian trouble spots. They sought to impose a totalitarian world
order by disseminating religious doctrines and activism that
espoused norms, symbols, and rhetoric imbued with animosity. The
challenge posed by these groups intensified when bombs exploded
in a nightclub at Legian, Bali, on October 2002. This bombing was
followed by explosions at the Marriot Hotel in Jakarta in 2003,
outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in 2004, again in Bali in
late 2005, and most recently at Jakarta’s Marriot and Ritz-Carlton
hotels.
Articulated by Islamist political forces working through a variety
of communicative channels, including direct contact, mosque and
neighbourhood based communal activity, print media and the
internet, militant Islamist ideology is primarily concerned with the
establishment of an Islamic state or the implementation of Islamic
laws and moral codes. This totalitarian ideal has been pursued not
only through militant campaigns and violent actions demanding the
imposition of the shari’a, but also through a strategy to shape the
narrative of confrontation with the Other. The West in this context

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Noorhaidi Hasan

is perceived as the main enemy of Islam. Islamists believe that the

West seeks to undermine Islam and subjugate the umma in diverse
ways, not merely through armed war but also through the war of
ideas (ghazw al-fikr) as well as cultural, economic, social and political
invasion. Muslim backwardness, its marginal political position,
economic crisis and military dependency are deemed to be the results
of Western imperialism in the Muslim world.16
In the eyes of Islamists the shari’a constitutes the highest law
and the single source of all legislation. They define the shari’a as
containing all God’s rules derived from the Qur’an and Sunna, which
provide a comprehensive and universal guide and solution for every
problem facing humankind. Their sense of urgency is perhaps
heightened by the recent and protracted economic, political and
social crises that have afflicted Muslim society. True and faithful
Muslims therefore have no choice but to abide by the shari‘a.
Democracy is thus deemed an anathema to Islam, and perceived as
a Western ideology dangerous to Muslims. It is even described as
the main strategy of the West to undermine Islam and the umma.
Democracy refutes the principle of God’s absolute sovereignty,
according to Islamists, and this constitutes an insuperable obstacle
to Islam’s reconciliation with democracy.
From Islamists’ point of view, sovereignty belongs solely to
God; He is the holder of absolute authority to which all creatures
must submit. Muslims are therefore prohibited from submitting to
the will of the majority of the people, since the majority of them are
in error. It follows that a powerful and honourable ruler who
upholds the laws of God and His messenger must be appointed to
guide the Muslim umma. The mechanism for this is for the ahl al-hall
wa’l-‘aqd, defined as “a group of religious scholars and political
leaders who act under the guidance of God and His messenger,” to
appoint ul al-amr, the legitimate ruler whose authority comes in the
form of vice-regency, or power delegated by God. Loyalty to the

16
Salwa Ismail, Rethingking Islamist Politics; Culture, the State and
Islamism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003).

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 Islam in the Public Sphere

ul al-amr is therefore a necessary part of loyalty to God and His

messenger. Militant Islamists have also stridently rejected democracy
since it gives equal opportunity to all religious, social and cultural
groups to participate in politics. Non-Muslims are categorized as
ahl al-dhimm, those under the protection of a Muslim ruler, and as
such do not have equal political rights. They should follow all rules
and provisions in the regulations implemented by the Muslim ruler,
based on the shari’a.
The question is then how the future of public Islam and the
status of democracy can be developed in the situation when militant
Islamist discourse continue to influence public opinion especially
concerning the position of the shari’a in the state system. As indicated
before, public Islam is conseptualized more as a process in which a
competition is taking place among various forces in the society
concerning the role of Islam in the state matter. As part of the
democratization process, this competition is characterized by ethical
debates in light of the normative principle of public communication.
Seen from this perspective, the campaign for the shari’a should first
of all be understood as part of the competition dynamic. The militant
Islamists’ proposal to posit the shari’a as the solution to solve various
contemporary problems facing the umma as an impact of the
implementation of the secular system is obviously related to their
discontentment with the existing political system whose imple-
mentation is deemed to have failed to bring justice and prosperity
for the people. In this context the issue of the shari’a acts as a system
that one can use to evaluate everything else. This liberative formu-
lation of the shari’a implementation in the state system has ironically
been undermined by the strict identification made by the militant
Islamists between Islam and the shari’a-bound system, and thus rules
out any possible future for democracy.
What is intriguing to note in this context is that the liberative
formulation of the shari’a can only thrive if the state guarantees
multiculturalism as a common platform for public debates and
discourse to achieve common good. In its emphasis on common

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Noorhaidi Hasan

good and justice, public Islam recalls earlier debates on democracy

that requires a noncoercive culture of civility that encourages citizens
to respect the rights of others as well as cherish their own. This
public culture depends on mediating institutions in which citizens
develop habits of free speech, participation, and toleration. No
single group can dominate the public sphere simply because of its
position as the majority. Every opinion can be expressed freely and
subject to open debates that underline public reasoning. Readiness
to listen to opinions of others is crucial in these debates. In other
words, public Islam can act as a significant counterweight to the
otherwise overwhelming influence of the militant Islamists that used
the opening of political opportunity as a result of democracy to
insist their totalitarian agenda of implementing the shari’a.
By recognizing the importance of free speech and participation,
public Islam allows competition to continue to take place among
various civil society forces whose perspectives differ on the role of
religion in politics. It refuses to ignore the rights of certain groups,
including militant Islamists, to take part in the competition as long
as they respect the principle of toleration and the equality of citizens
irrespective of religion, the foundations of multiculturalism. The
presence of militant Islamists, together with other civil society forces,
to some extents can act as a significant counterwight to control the
totalitarian leaning of the existing political power. But the main
problem of their involvement in the competition lies in their inability
to recognize difference and develop tolerant attitutes to the others.
In other words, public Islam is best depicted as a process of unending
competition among various civil society forces in the Muslim world
to define the role of Islam in its relation to the state power. It is not
an ideal situation when pro-democracy Muslim groups succeeded
in taking control over the public sphere by defeating their militant
rivals. It is also not the situation when militant Islamists succeeded
in realizing their agenda to call for a return to the traditional political
way of ruling. Obviously, however, this process, if managed
properly, will strengthen the on-going democratization taking place

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 Islam in the Public Sphere

in the Muslim world.

IV. Post-Islamism
In tandem with the burgeoning of democracy, the pattern of Islamic
activism has shifted from collective activism that is revolutionary
in character, towards an individual activism which accepts the
imperatives of modern life. If the first is shaped by ideologies, what
Bayat defines as ‘post-Islamism’ distances itself from political
nuances and collective militancy, whilst still ensuring harmonization
and parallelism between Islam and modernity.17 Post-Islamism is
conceptualized by Bayat as a “conscious attempt to strategize the
rationale and modalities of transcending Islamism in social, political,
and intellectual domains.” Representing “an endeavour to fuse
religiosity and rights, faith and freedom, Islam and liberty”, it
renders religion into a plural reality with multiple meanings and
accommodates aspects of democratization, pluralism, multicul-
turalism and human rights. Bayat further argues that “post-Islamism
serves primarily as theoretical construct to signify change,
difference, and the root of change. The advent of post-Islamism
does not necessarily mean the historical end of Islamism. What it
means is the birth, out of the Islamist experience, of a qualitatively
different discourse and practice”.18
Post-Islamism is embedded in the process of cultural transaction
that reflects how global cultures are assimilated in the locality. In
today’s society it seems difficult to separate the process of social,
cultural and political change from the development of global
dynamics. Undeniably, the advancement of information and commu-
nication technology has significantly affected everyday lives in
almost all parts of the world with several significant repercussions.
Globalization has not only changed the way people relate to space,
but also contributed to the creation of a homogenized culture,

17
Asef Bayat, “What is Post-Islamism,” ISIM Review 16: 5 (2005); see
also his Making Islam Democratic, pp. 10-11.
18
Bayat, “What is Post-Islamism”; Bayat, Making Islam, pp. 10-11.

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Noorhaidi Hasan

towards a synchronization of taste, consumption, and lifestyle.19 In

a more positive tone, globalization has also deepened the penetrative
forces of modern values such as democracy, tolerance, and human
rights.
In parallel with the rapid process of globalization the Muslim
world has in fact seen major transformations. These include a greater
sense of autonomy for both men and women, and the emergence of
a public sphere in which politics and religion are subtly intertwined.
Mass education and mass communications have facilitated an
awareness in Muslims of the need to reconfigure the nature of
religious thought and action, create new forms of public space, and
encourage debate over meaning. Within this context Islam has
become the subject of dialogue and civil debate. Open contests over
the use of the symbolic language of Islam and its meanings have
increasingly shaped this new sense of public space that is discursive,
performative, and participative. In such engagements, publicly
shared ideas of community, identity and leadership take new
shapes.20
One noticeable effect of these developments is the proliferation
of forms of piety which appear as congruent with the principles of
individual freedom and democracy, and are removed from their
traditional religious moorings. Islam in presented in a way that is
sophisticated, fresh and hybrid, in order to make it an appealing
alternative to urban, capitalist cultures. This has given rise to a sense
of personalized Muslimhood, which conceals a clear shift from the
earlier emphasis of Islamism on Islamist polity to one on personal
19
Arjun Appadurai, “The Production of Locality,” in Richard Fardon
(ed.)Counterworks: Managing the Diversity ofKnowledge (London: Routledge,
1995), pp. 208-229; see also Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy,
Society, and Culture, vol. II, The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
20
See, for instance, Armando Salvatore, “The Genesis and Evolution
of ‘Islamic Publicness’ under Global Constraints,” Journal of Arabic, Islamic
and Middle Eastern Studies 3, 1 (1996): 51-70; Dale Eickelman and James
Piscatory, Muslim Politics (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1996)
Dale Eickelman “Islam and the Language of Modernity,” Daedalus 129
(2000): 119-135.

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 Islam in the Public Sphere

piety.21 The model of Muslimhood presents both a challenge, and

an opportunity to rethink the established boundaries between the
private and the public. Now individuals can choose from anex-
panded range of options among a wider assortment of religious
representations, both traditional and the secular, manufactured,
packaged, and retailed by specialized service agencies. This free
choice in turn offers individuals the opportunity to patch religious
fragments together into a subjectively meaningful whole, and
transform them into powerful symbols able to be enacted in public.22
In the same tone Göle has argued that post-Islamist identities
have enabled Muslims to experience the ‘banalization process.’
Actors from diverse backgrounds are involved in shaping the face
of Islam in the public space and entering into the modern urban
space with little hesitance. By using global communication networks
they participate in public debates, track patterns of consumption
and study the rules of the market, while at the same time embracing
individualistic, professional and consumerist values.23 This statement
does not mean that Islam no longer functions as a source of guidance
in Muslim life. Although its traditional function of stirring collective
actions in society has faded, it serves as an inspiration imbued in
the social and cultural imagination of the community, whereby
society has transformed itself to accommodate modernization and
globalization. It is as if we are seeing a synthesis between the wave
of Islamism on one hand, while on the other we observe the growth
of modern and secular education, and of free market values and
democratic idioms in the Muslim World.
Post-Islamism can be seen as an alternative which gains ground

21
Jenny B. White, “The End of Islamism? Turkey’s Muslimhood
Model,” in Robert W. Hefner (ed.), Remaking Muslim Politics (Princeton,
NJ.: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 87-111.
22
Jose Casanova,Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 36-37.
23
Nilufer Göle, “Islamic Visibilities and Public Sphere,” in Nilufer
Göle and Ludwig Ammann (Eds.), Islam in Public Turkey, Iran, and Europe
(Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press, 2006), pp. 3-43.

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Noorhaidi Hasan

amidst the failure of the project that attempts to position Islam as a

political ideology and thereby changing the political landscape of
Muslim states. The experiences of many Muslim states confirm that
the project has instead stigmatized Islam and transformed it into
an enemy of modern civilization. As an alternative to religious
radicalism, post-Islamism offers Muslims a way to actualize religious
beliefs and values while still following the path of modernity,
democracy and globalization, without plunging into violence and
joining a cycle of militancy. Democratic values, which form the
foundations of practical Islam and the politics of contemporary
Muslim society, suggest that being a democratic Muslim is no longer
an oxymoron.24

V. Concluding Remark
The militant Islamists’ discourse of emphasizing the need for a change
in the political structure as a means to implement the shari’a in a
comprehensive manner has gradually shifted toward the application
of the shari’a from below in tandem with the efflorescence of Islamic
popular culture. Trendy, colourful jilbab (headscarf) for women and
baju koko (Muslim shirts) for men has achieved prominence as a symbol
facilitating the interest of the Muslim middle class to demonstrate
their religious identity as well as social status. They have involved
in Islamic teaching sessions at five-star hotels and mass ritual
programmes such as dhikr akbar (remembrance of God) organized at
grand mosques in metropolitan cities such as Jakarta and Surabaya.
Coupled with the expansion of new da‘wa genres, such as cyber
da‘wa and cellular da‘wa, the growth of Islamic popular culture has
offered Muslims alternatives to actualize their religious beliefs and
practices. Hence irrelevance of the militant Islamists’ repudiation
of the state democratic system claimed to have blocked the Islamist
dream of making Islam victorious.

24
Vali Nasr, “The Rise of ‘Muslim Democracy’.” Journal of Democracy
16, 2 (2005): 13-27.

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 Islam in the Public Sphere

No doubt, the on-going democratic consolidation occurring in

various parts of the Muslim world has reduced the room to
maneuver that had been available to the militant Islamist groups.
Broader spaces available for Muslims to express their interests and
participate in politics have not only delegitimized the Islamist
campaign for the establishment of an Islamic state, but also
moderated their vision about the ideal position of the umma vis-a-
vis the state. Moussalli argues that there is a correlation between
democracy and moderation in the radical Islamist discourse, the
development of which originated in a reaction to the political,
economic and international conditions of the Muslim world. He
further argues that the radical violent Islamist discourse is only
relevant when it is faced with an isolation from society under condi-
tions of social disunity, corruption, exploitations and undemocratic
regimes. The discourse automatically moderates when the state
provides sufficient spaces and freedom for Islamists to participate
in dealing with public issues and concerns.25
At the same time, in line with the expansion of the social and
cultural basis for moderate Islam, a new Muslim middle class has
emerged to take part in the ongoing transformation process. Instead
of questioning the legitimacy of the existing system, they are
involved in strengthening the philosophical basis of democracy by
incorporating the universal values of Islam into it. They are keen to
debunk the gap between Islam and modernity by utilizing Islamic
symbols as a moral legitimacy for their increasingly consumptive
lifestyle. Through a process of adaptation and appropriation, Islamic
symbols appear to be one of the sources for the middle class’ attempt
to construct novel narratives of themselves and their places in the
world. In this way Islam has gradually transformed to be a symbol
of modernism and elitism and even become part of a modern
lifestyle. Simultaneously, Islamic symbols are commodified in

25
Ahmad S. Moussalli, Moderate and Radical Islamic Fundamentalism:
The Quest for Modernity, Legitimacy and the Islamic State (Gainesville, FL.:
University of Florida Press, 1999), pp. 104-105.

Innovatio, Vol. XI, No. 1, Januari-Juni 2012 17

Noorhaidi Hasan

conformity with the middle class’ needs to conduct practices of

distinctions. In coherence with market interests and global trends,
commodified Islam has offered alternatives for the middle class to
interpret the meanings of becoming Muslim, modern and globalized
at the same time. As an inevitable consequence of this process the
modern values of democracy, toleration, and human rights have
thrived and converged with Muslims’ religious expressions in public
spaces.

18 Innovatio, Vol. XI, No. 1, Januari-Juni 2012

 Islam in the Public Sphere

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