"A foundational scholarly resource and critically needed textbook for Arabic-oriented Islam in Southeast Asia" --Journal of Asian Studies, February 2003

"Engaging -- an exploration of the complex and varied ways in which Southeast Asian religious thinkers took or received ideas and reworked them, in which theological debates and exegetical issues are made interesting and accessible." --dannyreviews.com

"Southeast Asia is home to the world's largest community of ethnically related Muslims, sharing in the various forms of Malay, a common language. Yet only recently has it been recognised as one of the great geographical zones of Islam in its own right, rather than as a region peripheral to the so-called heartlands of the Muslim world. It shares in, and contributes on equal terms to, the traditions of social structure, learning and spirituality that make up the Islamic communion....
Riddell offers a picture of the fruits of [Islamic] intellectual activity as it responded to the foundation texts of Islam, and the religious ideals, ideas and literary forms inspired by them that gave birth to counterparts in the vernacular--principally Malay--of the Malay peninsula, Sumatra, Java and other regions of the archipelago. He shows how complex and various these responses were, and how the participation of Southeast Asians in the universal 'church' of Islam was complex, individual, dynamic and constantly developing. His account includes a generous treatment of the modern period and shows how Southeast Asians are at the cutting edge of Muslim efforts to respond to globalisation and the challenges of the contemporary world." --Professor Emeritus A. H. Johns, Australian National University

This highly informative and insightful study opens numerous windows into the history of Islamic religious thought in the Malay-Indonesian world from the thirteenth to the late twentieth century. The author begins by addressing theological issues relevant to the wider Islamic world then examines Malay-Indonesian Islamic thought in the pre-twentieth century period and Islamic religious thought in Southeast Asia in the modern era.

For sale only in the U.S., its dependencies, Canada, and Mexico.

Peter G. Riddell, who has taught at universities in Australia, Indonesia, and Britain, is now senior lecturer in Islamic Studies at the London Bible College Postgraduate School of Theology, Brunel University.