Author Description

"Professor M. B. Hooker looks at how modern Indonesian Islamic thinking has responded to changes in social and cultural practices in this timely book. In particular he examines how authorities have ruled on such basic issues as purity and representation of doctrine, religious obligations, status and capacity of women, Islam and medical science, and offences against religion." "Hooker's research has been drawn from around 2000 fatawa - formal opinion on points of law or dogma - collected from Indonesia between 1920 and 1990. The authority of the fatwa is independent of the state and is uncontaminated by European intellectual imperialism. It thus gives us a pure response to difficult issues from within Islamic thought, and is essential to how we understand Islam at this particular place and time."--BOOK JACKET.