This book provides a comprehensive survey of Qur’an translation in Indonesia – the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world with a highly diverse, multilingual society. Delving into the linguistic and political dimensions of this field, the contributors – many of whom are Indonesian scholars – employ a wide range of historical, socio-cultural, linguistic and exegetical approaches to offer fresh insights. In their contributions, the negotiation of authority between state and of non-state actors is shown to be a constant theme, from the pre-print era through to the colonial and postcolonial periods. Religious organizations, traditional institutions of scholarship and Wahhabi-Salafi groups struggle over the meaning of the Qur’an while the Ministry of Religious Affairs publishes its own Qur’an translations into many of the country’s languages. The contributors also explore the influential role of the Ahmadiyya movement in shaping Qur’an translation in Indonesia. Moreover, they examine the specific challenges that translators face when rendering the Qur’an in languages with structures, histories and cultural contexts that are vastly different from Arabic. Opening up the work of Indonesian scholars to a wider audience, this book will appeal to anyone interested in Qur’anic studies and Islam in the Southeast Asia region.

Muslim Qur'anic interpretation today is beset by tensions. Tensions between localising and globalising forces; tensions between hierarchical and egalitarian social ideals; and tensions between the quest for new approaches and the claim for authority raised by defenders of exegetical traditions. It is this complex web of power structures, local as well as global, that this book seeks to elucidate. This book provides a fresh perspective on present-day Qur'anic interpretations by analysing the historical, social and political dimensions in which they take place, the ways in which they are performed and the media through which they are transmitted. Besides discussing the persistence of exegetical traditions and the emergence of new paradigms, it examines the structural conditions in which these processes occur. Languages, nation states, global human rights discourses and intra-Islamic divisions all shape the nature of interpretive endeavours and frequently fuel conflicts over the correct understanding of the Qur'an. This book contains more than twenty detailed case studies of recent Qur'anic interpretations, based on translated texts that cover a variety of languages, regions, media, genres, approaches, authors and target groups. They are integrated into the chapters, bring their arguments to life and stimulate fundamental reflections on the authority of the text and the authority of its interpreters.

This book takes a comprehensive look at the ways in which Muslims interpret the Qur'an today and at the themes and structural conditions that shape their engagement with their sacred scripture. Muslim Qur'anic interpretation Today includes boldly innovative approaches as well as staunchly traditional ones. They are represented and performed in all types of media and target a wide variety of audiences. The book aims at making sense of these diverse phenomena by combining an analytical overview of the field with detailed case studies of exegetical texts and media from the 2000s and 2010s. The first part offers a comprehensive introductory survey of the field of contemporary Muslim Qur'anic interpretation. It provides a fresh perspective on present-day discourses by emphasising the historical, social, and political dimensions in which they take place. The second part presents samples from recent exegetical works that exemplify larger themes such as media, interpretive methods, and the diversity of the global Muslim community. Commentaries on the texts and their authors help to contextualise the samples and highlight core themes and features of contemporary exegetical debates. Taken together, the two parts of the book can be read as a spotlight on Muslim Qur'anic interpretation in a specific period of time, a time of great challenges and tremendous social transformations, some of them obvious and some of them rarely noted.

In the course of the 20th century, hardly a region in the world has escaped the triumph of global consumerism. Muslim societies are no exception. Globalized brands are pervasive, and the landscapes of consumption are changing at a breathtaking pace. Yet Muslim consumers are not passive victims of the homogenizing forces of globalization. They actively appropriate and adapt the new commodities and spaces of consumption to their own needs and integrate them into their culture. Simultaneously, this culture is reshaped and reinvented to comply with the mechanisms of conspicuous consumption. It is these processes that this volume seeks to address from an interdisciplinary perspective. The papers in this anthology present innovative approaches to a wide range of issues that have, so far, barely received scholarly attention. The topics range from the changing spaces of consumption to Islamic branding, from the marketing of religious music to the consumption patterns of Muslim minority groups. This anthology uses consumption as a prism through which to view, and better understand, the enormous transformations that Muslim societies-Middle Eastern, South-East Asian, as well as diasporic ones-have undergone in the past few decades.