An anthropologist’s groundbreaking account of how
Islamic religious authority is assembled through the unceasing labor
of community building on the island of Java
This compelling book draws on Ismail Fajrie
Alatas’s unique insights as an anthropologist
to provide a new understanding of Islamic
religious authority, showing how religious
leaders unite diverse aspects of life and con­
test differing Muslim perspectives to create
distinctly Muslim communities.
Taking readers from the eighteenth cen­
tury to today, Alatas traces the movements
of Muslim saints and scholars from Yemen
to Indonesia and looks at how they traversed
complex cultural settings while opening new
channels for the transmission of Islamic
teachings. He describes the rise to promi­
nence of Indonesia’s leading Sufi master,
Habib Luthfi, and his rivalries with competing
religious leaders, revealing why some Mus­
lim voices become authoritative while others
don’t. Alatas examines how Habib Luthfi has
used the infrastructures of the Sufi order and
the Indonesian state to build a durable reli­
gious community, while deploying genealogy
and hagiography to present himself as a suc­
cessor of the Prophet Muḥammad.
Challenging prevailing conceptions
of what it means to be Muslim, What Is
Religious Authority?  demonstrates how the
concrete and sustained labors of translation,
mobilization, collaboration, and competi­
tion are the very dynamics that give Islam its
power and diversity.
Cover art: Prince Selarasa paying respect to
Sèh Nur Sayid. From the Serat Selarasa ©
The British Library Board (MSS Jav 28, f. 8r)
To receive emails about new books in your area of
interest, sign up at press.princeton.edu
Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics
press.princeton.edu
alatas
“An extraordinary accomplishment.
Alatas possesses a singular vision, in­
formed by the historian’s deep sense
of the past and the ethnographer’s
nuanced insight into the present. He
has accomplished a rare feat, doing
justice to both the universal claims of
What Is Religious Authority?
prophecy and the thoroughly human
struggle to realize them.”
—Webb Keane, author of Ethical
Life: Its Natural and Social Histories
“A pleasure to read. Alatas places Java
in a web of relations that connects
the Islamized Indian Ocean, bringing
Java to the forefront while telling a
much broader history.”
—Chiara Formichi, author of Islam
and Asia: A History
“This pathbreaking book develops
a unique analytical approach to
understanding the ongoing processes
through which Muslim communi­
ties are established by authoritative
persons acting within broader
political and cultural contexts. What
Is Religious Authority? is destined to
become a classic.”
—Magnus Marsden, author of
Trading Worlds: Afghan Merchants
across Modern Frontiers
What Is Religious Authority?
Ismail Fajrie Alatas is assistant professor of
Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York
University. Twitter and Instagram @ifalatas
Cultivating Islamic Communities
in Indonesia
R E L IG ION | A N T H ROP OL O G Y
ismail fajrie alatas