INTRODUCTION

The present chapter will examine the sermon (khutbahs) and edict (fatwas), and the extent to which colonial contexts shaped their charac­teristics and development in colonial Indonesia, particularly South Sulawesi, and Malaya, particularly Kelantan.

As preachers, the ulama conceive of their sermons and edicts as religious spaces and symbols despite preaching about socio-political and other secular issues. Faith precedes knowledge, and so the preachers try to link the ever-changing local and global issues to the fixity of religious texts. The preachers would interpret social reality in light of the Qur’an and the Prophet’s tradition (Hadith) as their sacred and complete textual guidance. When this notion of ‘returning to the Qur’an and the Hadith’ is analysed more closely, however, one finds great variation among the groups. Most preachers are unaware of the importance in considering the context or the contingent elements that shape a belief and interpretation.

Sermons and edicts need to be situated within power/knowledge relations. For the religious establishment, the sermons and edicts function as an instrument of power for the strengthening of the Muslim collective identity, the preservation of religious authority, and the protection of Islamic knowledge from what they regard as heterodoxy and heresy. At the same time, the sermon in particular serves as a medium of resistance and contention. Because some of the colonial authorities were well aware of the importance of sermons and religious edicts, they rarely interfered with them. Although the colonial regimes did not exercise direct control on the content of the sermon and edict, they created new circumstances which forced the preachers to adapt. An important consequence of this indirect colonial interference was that sermons and edicts became a site of power contestation among different groups.

II.