Spirituality and Islam
Many Muslim societies have long histories of mystical, devotional, and esoteric traditions such as Sufism, which are today commonly referred to as “spiritual” traditions. Yet spirituality within Islamic traditions has an uncertain and marginalized status in many contemporary Muslim societies as a result of local, national, and global political struggles over Islam. In Indonesia, where Sufism has had a major historical influence for much of the twentieth century, there has been a strong trend toward scripturalist Islamic modernism. Yet along with Indonesia’s Islamic revival since the 1990s has come a revival of Sufism, particularly among the urban upper middle class. This chapter explores the Sufist revival as a manifestation of spirituality in Indonesia, examining the recent history of Sufism and the evolving relationship between Sufism and other ways of being Muslim, as well as surveying recent scholarship on the social and political contours of the embrace of Sufism by educated urbanites.