CONCLUSION

Sermons and edicts are different but complementary genres in the transmission of Islamic knowledge. Through these genres, the complexity and diversity of what is considered ‘Islamic knowledge’ have been revealed.

The most contingent category of religious knowledge is the one related to social and political issues, which mostly appear in public speeches rather than in the mosques and collections of edicts. The social issues are those such as progress, science and the status of women. The political issues of the time are colonialism and nationalism. South Sulawesi provides more data on views on Dutch policies than does Kelantan on the British Adviser. The term ‘kafif has become more salient in South Sulawesi than in Kelantan because of their different kinds of relationship. The Japanese occupation shaped Muslim discourse regarding Islamic unity, the new age, and the worldly matter. In general, however, what issues are discussed and to what extent depends very much on how the preachers linked the text with the context.

Despite the different degree of persistence and change in the different categories of religious knowledge, it is undeniable that text and context are crucial. Muslims pay attention to the way the text is treated, translated, interpreted, and applied in local contexts. Contextualization is the process of making the text relevant to particular time and space by different agents, not only the so-called reformist, but also the conserva­tive (Islam kolot). I agree with Abdulkader Tayob, who has studied sermons in South Africa. He argued that sermons must be studied in relation to the historical context and the discursive tradition employed, and go beyond the written word and the speech and the gestures of the preachers and the teachers.^[1557] However, such a historical study of Islamic discourse needs to delineate the dynamics of what is textual and what is contextual, and what is persistent and what is changing. This chapter is an attempt to posit sermons and edicts within the binary dimensions of text and context, and persistence and change.