Islam in Indonesia: an overview

The advent of Islam in Indonesia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was one factor in the development of a new type of religiosity. Islam, ipso facto, bases its spirituality on models exemplified by Sufi teachings, and the arrival of Islam in Indonesia therefore played a role in the rise and dissemination of Sufism amongst the Indonesian people. Many scholars have pointed out that the type of Islam that came to Indonesia was Sufistic. Consequently, it can be said that Sufism or Islamic mysticism has gradually become an inextricable part of Indonesian tradition since the beginning of the Islamisation of the country. The phenomenon of the dissemination of Islam through Sufism, particularly from the thirteenth century onwards, concurred with the general state of the Muslim world at that time. Indeed, some scholars have asserted that Sufism has profoundly influenced the Muslim world ever since the teachings of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111).

In any examination of the history of the presence and proliferation of Islam in the Indonesian archipelago, one of the most striking factors is the existence of the pesantren (Islamic boarding schools). This institution has played a significant role in the dissemination of Islam across the archipelago, particularly on the north coast of Java. Some key elements are always present in the pesantren teaching-learning process, most notably the instruction given by the kiai (religious leaders) and the ustadh (teachers), the santri (disciples) and the kitab kuning (classical Islamic books).

The link between kiai and the pesantren and literature, especially poetry, is a long-standing one. Singir or syiiran (from the Arabic word shi‘r, meaning poem) is considered a genre typical of the pesantren (Wieringa 2006; Hamidi & Abta 2005). In recent times, especially since the 1980s, there has been a marked increase in the number of men of letters who have come from a pesantren background. They include D. Zawawi Imron (b. 1945), Emha Ainun Nadjib (b. 1953), Jamal D. Rahman (b. 1967), A. Mustofa Bisri (b. 1944), Abidah el Khalieqy (b. 1965) and Acep Zamzam Noor (b. 1960).

Short biographies of A. Mustofa Bisri and Emha Ainun Nadjib

A. Mustofa Bisri was born on 10 August 1944 in Lasem, Rembang, Central Java.