SPREADING GENDER EGALITARIAN ISLAM IN INDONESIA

Abstract

This narrative draws on conversations between Kyai Husein Muhammad and Margot Badran reconstructed by the latter upon careful review of recorded discussions that began in the Netherlands at the Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden in 2003 and continued in Jakarta in 2004. Kyai Husein, as he is usually called, is religious scholar and self-identified Islamic feminist. In recounting his life trajectory Kyai Husein reveals a journey from Islamic modernism to Islamic feminism in Indonesia. His story demonstrates how Islamic feminism is practiced as it is being constructed. It shows the rise and spread of Islamic feminism in the hinterland dispelling the notion that egalitarian Islam cannot flourish in a rural environment. Kyai Husein points out that Islamic feminists and Islamic radicalists (to use his word) are both concerned with women and gender but in diametrically opposed ways. The narrative published below captures conversations that occurred nearly a decade and a half ago and thus must be read as part of the historical record and a prelude to the present.