In its classical sense syariah means ‘path to water’—hence, allegorically, to life, and this means duty to God. But what that duty is, how it is to be defined, who does the defining and for whom it is being defined is a matter of intense and often divisive debate in Indonesia as elsewhere. Duty, in the context of the real, temporal world, has a myriad reference points. These include the classical fiqh; local Muslim and pre-Muslim practice; the politics of religion; national state codes and texts; philosophies; political commentary; public orthopraxy; and the ever-present weight of history, about which there is no consensus in Indonesia. The syariah is not now one path, if it ever were. Instead, many paths are offered. The essays in this book are likewise offered as examples from one place at one time to illustrate what choices have been made and to try and judge whether those choices are in reality viable routes to attaining the purpose of the journey, which is fidelity to revelation.

The concept of a distinctly Indonesian school of legal thought (mazhab) is necessarily complementary to the definition of syariah; we are talking about a specific syariah that is ‘national’ because it is ‘Indonesian’. Movement towards defining and establishing a national mazhab began with the rise of nationalist aspirations in the 1930s, and became especially focused in the 1940s with the successful achievement of independence and the debates as to what the proper foundation of the new state should be. As it happened, that foundation turned out to be secular principles, not the syariah. However, this did not prevent the parallel discussion of a national, mazhab from continuing and may even, in reaction, have intensified it. By the late 1960s and early 1970s the idea of a national mazhab—a specifically Indonesian syariah—was being debated in sophisticated terms by the late Professor Hazairin. His proposals were resisted by both the (secular) state authority and the religious scholars (‘ulamā’) and went nowhere. The climate of the times was against him.