The voice of the 'Ulamǎ': Fatwas and religious authority in Indonesia

Abstract

In this article I deal with the concept of religious authority in Indonesia by means of studying a number of fatwas and comparable documents. Through the medium of the fatwas, the 'ulamǎ' express their opinion from the point of view of Islamic Law about all kinds of topical issues submitted to them by believers, and for this reason a fatwa forms an important expression of religious authority. In the first part of the article I describe some important developments in the Indonesian institution of fatwa-giving in the last hundred years; in this part I deal in detail with two fatwas, one from the end of the nineteenth century and the other from the 1930s, and discuss a so-called Instruction (amanat) from 1999. Each of these three documents can be regarded as showing elementary characteristics pertinent to religious authority. Commenting upon the materials presented in this first part, in the second part of the article I reflect on a number of topics which emerge from fatwas and fatwa-like documents and which are relevant to religious authority. I deal consecutively with the holders, the centres, the sources, the language, and the effectiveness of religious authority. The article ends with a few concluding remarks.