Knowledge Transmission in the Indian Ocean: The Case of al-Manar in the Malay-Indonesian World, 1900- 1950

The objectives of this paper are to examine the impact of al-Manar  Journal established by Muhammad Rashid Rida in Cairo in 1898 on the religio-political and social structures of Muslim communities in the Malay-Indonesian world. Taking into account that al-Manar’s primary aims were to examine the corruption of Islamic political institutions, underline the danger of European colonialism in the Muslim world, and promote the idea that Islam is compatible with modernity and reason. Part I of this paper highlights the intellectual background of al-Manar and its editor-in-chief, Muhammad Rashid Rida (d. 1935). Part II discusses the mission of al-Manar as a reformist journal that worked towards the promotion of social, religious and economic reforms in the Muslim world. Part III focuses on the channels that transmitted al-Manar’s reformist ideas via the Indian Ocean to the Malay-Indonesian world. Part VI gives a descriptive analysis of its impact on the religio-political and social structures of Malay-Indonesian Muslim communities. In conclusion, the paper argues that the circulation of al-Manar in the Malay-Indonesian world had affected the socio-political and intellectual structures of local communities. It also paved the way for the establishment of revivalist movements that rejected the heritage of taqlad (imitation) of Islamic traditional schools of thought and acknowledged the validity of ijtihad to meet the new demands of modernity.