Islamic Reform and Young People in the Malay Archipelago in the Early 20th Century

Abstract

Islamic renewal was a movement in the Muslim world in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. This movement and teaching began with the assumption that the Muslim world experienced a "collapse" along with the increasingly vigorous expansion of European colonialism into Muslim countries. At the end of the 18th century, Napoleon Bonaparte expanded into Egypt, which shocked the Muslim community in that country. In this context emerged the idea of Islamic renewal, which sometimes mixed or had aspects similar to Wahhabism, which was considered capable of solving problems in the Muslim world. The Malay Archipelago is a region that cannot be separated from the wave of Islamic renewal in the early 20th century. Islamic students in this region were influenced by many Islamic reforms while studying in Hejaz and Cairo. After they returned to the Malay Archipelago, they became influential clerics who spread the idea of Islamic renewal and opposed the teachings of indigenous groups and traditionalist scholars. These Islamic reformers came to be known as 'Young People'. The rise of the Young People is standard in the Malay Islands, especially Sumatra (Dutch Indies) and the Malay Peninsula (British Malaya). This article observes the emergence of the Youth and Islamic reform in the Malay Archipelago in the early 20th century. This article examines how the Youth and Islamic reformers interacted with colonial authorities, indigenous peoples, and traditionalist clerics. The method used in this study is qualitative, in which the author conducts an in-depth analysis of primary sources and elaborates on the historical context that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. In this article, the author argues that the rise of Islamic renewal and the Youth cannot be separated from the emerging socio-economic structure in the Malay Archipelago.