Mark Woodward

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at Arizona State University

Muslim Violent Extremism (MVE) and Far-Right Extremism (FRE) are two sides of the same coin. Despite profound ideological differences they share sociological and psychological features. This article relies on anthropological, linguistic, psychological and psychoanalytic theory to explain the ways in which, despite irreconcilable semantics, they sha...

The legend of Siti Jenar is among the most widely known and controversial tales in Javanese Islamic literature. While the details vary enormously, the core of the story is the same. Siti Jenar was a 15th-16th century Javanese Muslim saint (wali) who passed beyond religion, as it is usually defined. He comes to know that there is ultimately only one...

This paper offers a critique of post-modernist anthropology. It proposes model dependent realism as an epistemological alternative≥

Anthony Reid has presented a rich and compelling cultural-historical analysis of the origins of religious tolerance and pluralism in Indonesia. 1 He attributes Indonesian pluralism to a combination of cultural and economic factors. Culturally there is a tendency toward a variety of syncretism in which new religions absorb and transform elements of...

A kinder, more gentle FPI? The historically hardline defenders of Islam plan to enter the political mainstream by softening their rhetoric and abandoning hate speech Mark Woodward Sorbi Lubis, one of the leaders of the Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front, FPI), is known for encouraging violence against minority Muslim groups including Ahma...

The chapter discusses Islam in both Thailand and Burma.

This article points to some of the ethical shortcomings of global capitalism in historical and contemporary contexts. Comparison of late eighteenth/early nineteenth century capitalist enterprises including the British and Dutch East India Companies and contemporary investment banking houses including Goldman Sachs indicates that ethical problems in...

This is a comprehensive handbook which for the first time provides a general yet detailed discussion of contemporary Islam and various aspects of Muslim lives. It offers a much needed tool for an introduction to the world of contemporary Muslim life and debate, and a link of continuity between the Muslim world and Muslims living and born in the Wes...

This article discusses the world's most oppressed people, the Muslim Rohingya of Burma (Myanmar) through the lens of "state symbologies and critical juncture". It further argues the amalgamation of Burmese-Buddhist ethno-nationalism and anti-Muslim hate speech have become elements of Burma's state symbology and components. Colonialism established c...

This article discusses the world’s most oppressed people, the Muslim Rohingya of Burma (Myanmar) through the lens of “state symbologies and critical juncture”. It further argues the amalgamation of Burmese-Buddhist ethno-nationalism and anti-Muslim hate speech have become elements of Burma’s state symbology and components. Colonialism established c...

There have been Muslims in what is now the United States since tens of thousands were brought as slaves in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Very few maintained their Muslim identities because the harsh conditions of slavery. Revitalization movements relying on Muslim symbolism emerged in the early 20th century. They were primarily concerned with...

Salafism is a revivalist current in Sunni Islam rooted in the teachings of the fourteenth century Hanbalite jurist Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah and the eighteenth century Arabian reformer Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. Salafis condemn Sufism (Islamic Mysticism) and most forms of popular Muslim piety, including music, as shirk (polytheism) and unbe...

Relationships between Islam and local cultures, post-coloniality, the construction of National Islams and nationalisms are extraordinarily complex. They pose complex academic, theological and political problems. This paper considers examples from the province of West Java in post-colonial Indonesia. It will be concerned with the ways in which eleme...

This paper describes two modes of civic religious pluralism in Bali. The first is adaptive pluralism in which elements of Islam were incorporated into pre-modern Balinese states. Analysis focuses on the way in which Gusti Ayu Made Rai, an eighteenth-century Balinese princess became Raden Ayu Siti Khotijah, one Indonesia's few widely recognized fema...

This article seeks to describe the way in which Gusti Ayu Made Rai, an eighteenth-century Balinese princess from Badung became Raden Ayu Siti Khotijah, one Indonesia’s few widely recognized female Muslim saints. In so doing I develop an alternative reading of the dynamics of the history of religion in Bali, countering the common view that it is a s...

This paper presents a semantic and symbolic analysis of the concept and presentation of the concept of Islam Nusantara and the ways in which it evokes meaning and emotion to counter trans-national violent extremist movements including al-Qaeda and ISIS, based on Salafi-Wahhabi ideologies. It is based on a frame based content analysis of religious a...

Adopting Arabic clothing styles and in other ways mimicking Saudi Arabian cultural practice is one of the defining characteristics of the Indonesian tarbiyah (Islamic education) movement and the more general influence of Saudi Arabian Wahhabism and other forms of Middle Eastern style Salafism that has emerged in Indonesia since the early 1980s. Thi...

Tariqah Naqshabandi Bayanullah (TNB) is a local branch of the global Naqshabandi order centered in Padamara, East Lombok, Indonesia. It has branches in cities on other Indonesian islands: Surabaya in East Java, and Makassar, Pare Pare, and Gowa in Sulawesi and on Sumbawa. This report is based on interviews with the Syekh (Syiril Fakraʾ, the current...

In the young state of Indonesia, old local authorities like sultanates have reasserted themselves. This reemergence of localized authority does not necessarily conflict with nation building. Survey research among adult samples (N = 399) in the neighbouring sultanates of Yogyakarta and Surakarta found that social representations of history were impl...

This article argues that in practice, concepts of magico-spiritual power (Javanese: kesekten; Indonesian: kesaktian) are linked with sexuality, particularly female sexuality, in some segments of contemporary Central and East Javanese Muslim society. Few scholars have turned attention to the interconnectedness of these seemingly contradictory topics...

This article concerns Indonesian reactions to alleged plans by the Saudi Arabian government to demolish the Prophet Muhammad's tomb.

This paper examines the concept of (public) sin as well as efforts to counteract sin from the perspective of Islam. The understanding that hisba, the prohibition of vice and enjoining of virtues, are a responsibility of both the state and the community is common in historical and contemporary Muslim societies. Where the state cannot or does not pro...

Co-authors are Mariani Yahya, Inayah Rohmaniyah, Diana Coleman, Ali Amin and Chris Lundry

Deconstructs the common assumption that Sufism is peaceful and Salafism is violent.

We propose a multi-scale text mining methodology and develop a visual intelligence platform for tracking the diffusion of online social movements. The algorithms utilize large amounts of text collected from a wide variety of organizations' media outlets to discover their hotly debated topics, and their discriminative perspectives voiced by opposing...

We propose a multi-scale text mining methodology and develop a visual intelligence platform for tracking the diffusion of online social movements. The algorithms utilize large amounts of text collected from a wide variety of organizations' media outlets to discover their hotly debated topics, and their discriminative perspectives voiced by opposing...

While Islamist forms of terrorism have received a great deal of attention from scholars, insider accounts by indigenous scholars are still under-represented. This Special Issue of the Asian Journal of Social Psychology brings together three articles on religious terrorism and sacred violence in Indonesia, the world's most populous Islamic state. Th...

This paper is concerned with two faces of Hadhrami dakwah in post-New Order Indonesia. One is that of Habib Syech bin Abulkadir Assegaf (Habib Syech) who promotes traditional Sufi piety and opposes religious and political violence. The other is that of Al-Habib Muhammad Rizieq bin Hussein Syihab (Habib Rizieq), one of the founders of Front Pembela...

Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS, The Justice and Prosperity Party) is the largest Islamist political party in Indonesia. It has roots in the religious and political and religious teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood and promotes what Oliver Roy calls "deculturized religion." The party can be understood as the political component of a larger social mo...

This paper concerns the social and ritual construction of social identities at Pondok Pesantren Madrasah Wathoniyah Islamiyah (PPMWI), a theologically Wahhabi oriented pesantren (traditional Islamic school) in Central Java, Indonesia. We focus on the inter-play of religious and secular symbols in the school’s graduation ceremonies (wisuda) for seco...

Robert Heine-Geldern’s “Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia” is the most influential study of religion, the state and political authority in the region ever written. In just fifteen pages he established a paradigm that has guided the work of generations of scholars for more than 60 years. He was concerned primarily with the ways in...

This chapter concerns the slametan, a ritual meal at which Arabic prayers are recited and food is offered to the Prophet Muhammad, saints, and ancestors, who are implored to shower blessings on the community.

Healing is an integral component of Local Islams the world over.1 While some healing techniques, including reciting passages from the Qur’an and belief in the healing power of the barakah (blessing) of saints and descendants of the Prophet Muhammad are universal or at least nearly so, others are unique to particular cultures. This chapter concerns...

This exchange of letters, or from a Yogyakarta perspective, diplomatic notes, between Indonesia’s first President Soekarno and Sultan Hamengkubuwana IX set the tone for relationships between the Sultanate of Yogyakarta and the Republic of Indonesia. President Soekarno’s note was sent two days after he and Vice President Mohammad Hatta declared Indo...

This chapter explores the interplay of kebudayaan and agama in Yogyakarta at the end of the New Order and the ways in which Sultan Hamengkubuwana X used the kraton as a stage for cultural/religious/political drama that figured significantly in the process of Reformasi that led to the democratic transformation of 1998.

In this paper, we utilize feature extraction and model-fitting techniques to process the rhetoric found in the web sites of 23 Indonesian Islamic religious organizations to profile their ideology and activity patterns along a hypothesized radical/counter-radical scale, and present an end-to-end system that is able to help researchers to visualize t...

Since the late 1970s, technological developments, especially in communications and transportation, have contributed to growth of new modes of social interaction and, at the same time, to the strengthening of social bonds in geographically dispersed social groups and communities in Yogyakarta. Increased educational opportunities and especially the d...

The ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a well established part of Indonesian religio-political discourse. Anti-Zionism if not outright anti-Semitism is foundational; Israel has few friends in Indonesia. Various media reactions to the 2008–2009 Gaza attacks are placed within wider ethnographic and linguistic contexts to explore...

:In 1965 the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was the second largest communist party in Asia. Indonesian politics was predicated on a precarious balance of nationalist (PNI), Muslim (Masyumi) and communist (PKI) political parties, the military, and the country's charismatic president, Sukarno (Feith 2006; Lev 1967). In the wake of an abortive coup...

This chapter examines the place of the fasting month of Ramadan in Islamic discourse,religious practice and experience in Yogyakarta.

1. Religion, Culture and Nationality 2. The Javanese Dukun: Healing and Moral Authority 3. The Slametan: Textual Knowledge and Ritual Performance in Yogyakarta 4. Order and Meaning in the Yogyakarta Kraton 5. The Garebeg Malud: Veneration of the Prophet as Imperial Ritual 6. The Fast of Ramadan in Yogyakarta 7. The Kraton Revolution: Religion, Cult...

The paper refutes the linkage of Muslim education in Indonesia with radicalization, and addresses the commonly held, if incorrect, perception that theological conservatism has a causal relationship with violent extremism. Rather than a causal agent for extremism, Muslim education in Indonesia tends to operate as a protective mechanism against radic...

In his classic article Order in the Atoni House, Clark Cunningham described the ways in which the Atoni of Timor construct dwelling space as a representation of social and cosmological order.

This paper concerns the ways in which tropes of the Crusades are used in contemporary Indonesian Islamic discourse. It is based on the analysis of contemporary textual materials and on ethnographic research conducted between 1978 and 2009. It is argued that tropes of the Crusades and now linked to an Islamist discourse that is Anti-Western and Anti...

In this study, we aim to obtain “natural groupings” of 151 local non-government organizations and institutions mentioned in a news archive of 77,000 articles spanning a decade (May 1999 to Jan 2010) from Indonesia. One of our goals is to enhance our understanding of counter-radical movements in critical locations in the Muslim world. We present inf...

Examining onsets of political instability in countries worldwide from 1955 to 2003, we develop a model that distinguishes countries that experienced instability from those that remained stable with a two-year lead time and over 80% accuracy. Intriguingly, the model uses few variables and a simple specification. The model is accurate in forecasting...

This paper concerns the practice of, and discourse concerning child marriage and polygamy in contemporary Indonesia and the religious, social, and political contexts in which they are located. It focuses on the tale of Pujiono Cahyo Widayanto, who is more commonly knoum as Sheikh Puji, and his child bride Umi Hani Lutfiana Ulfa that has reverberate...

This paper explores challenges and opportunities for Religious and Islamic Studies in the opening years of the twenty first century. It is especially concerned with relationships between the Indonesian, North American and Global contexts in which the two disciplines are located and the ways in which scholarly discourse can be enriched by trans-nati...

We present a tool, BlogTrackers, which helps sociologists to track and analyze blogs of particular interests by designing and integrating unique features. We present an overview of BlogTrackers, illustrate its functions of various components of BlogTrackers, and outline future work for expansion in meeting the growing needs of sociologists.

The Indonesian democratic transition of the late 1990s led to the formation of numerous political parties many of which are religious. Only the Islamic parties are politically significant. It is possible to distinguish two basic types of religious parties. Some are based on explicitly religious principles; others are nominally secular but are led b...

This is an important and unfortunately timely book. Kull chronicles the life and thought of one of Indonesia's most influential and creative Muslim thinkers; Nurcholish Madjid, or Cak Nur as he was affectionately known, who, as Indonesians often put it "returned to the mercy of God" in August of 2005. Madjid was an influential and controversial the...

During the nineteenth century the art of photography in the Netherlands Indies, now Indonesia, was mainly in European hands. Gradually, members of other ethnic groups moved into the field. Among indigenous ethnic groups, the pioneer was the Javanese Kassian Cephas (1845-1912). From the early 1870s Kassian Cephas was photographer to the court of the...

SAIS Review 21.2 (2001) 29-37 Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country and among the world's newest and most fragile democracies. Democratic transitions are difficult in part because they require changes in political culture as well as in political institutions. In societies where concepts of authority and leadership are rooted in deep...

This is the first English-language book on Nahdlatul Ulama Indonesia's largest Islamic organisation & also one of its least studied. This book seeks to explain key aspects of its behaviour & ideology & its relationship with the state & other internal power structures along with attitudes to change & modernisation & adds scholarship to area.

I n social and political discourse in contemporary Indonesia, the use of hadīth texts serves social and political as well as more narrowly religious ends. Among the purposes of the translation and exegesis of Arabic texts are the definition of an ideal Islamic society and indications of the ways Indonesia falls short of this ideal. In a narrow sens...

Essentially a critique of Geertz's Religion of Java, which claimed that Islam has never really taken hold in Java except among a small community of merchants. Argues that Islam is the predominant force in the religious beliefs and rites of central Javanese, and that it shapes the character of social interaction and daily life in all segments of Jav...

Le " slametan " est un repas rituel ou l'on recite des prieres en arabe et ou l'on offre de la nourriture au Prophete, aux saints et aux ancetres pour obtenir leur benediction. Interpretation de ce rituel en contraste avec celle de C. Geertz, " The Religion of Java " (1960)

Javanese traditional medicine is based on Sufi Muslim notions of personhood, knowledge and magical power. This world view motivates two conflicting modalities of medical practice: one based on the magic powers of curers (dukun), the others on the religiously validated powers of Sufi saints. The association of magical and bio-medical knowledge allow...

This chapter examines the way in which the Yogyakarta Kraton celebrates one of the most important Muslim holy days, Mawlid al-Nabi, which commemorates the birth of the prophet Muhammad. The central component of the Mawlid is the recitation of texts expressing respect and love for the Prophet Muhammad and his family.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985.