Back to the Future
This
article in
The New York Times tells the tale of Islamic radicalism in Indonesia. Yes, Indonesia, the home of syncretism, of Islam tempered and tamed by Hindu-Buddhist mythos, indigenous traditions like
adat and Javanese cosmogony. The fact is any "good Muslim" would not have any truck with Hindu-Buddhist religious concepts or Javanese theories of kingship and mysticism.
Islam in Indonesia is going through its Reformation. But it's not one that Americans will be happy with. The Reformation in Europe was accompanied by image-smashing in Zurich and Geneva, slaughter in Germany and The Inquisition. The relaxed beliefs of the Catholic hierarchy that accepted a
de facto paganism among the illiterate mass of Europeans gave way to a galvanized Christianity, and the old beliefs and ways retreated before the evangelism of Christianity, old and new. You see the same thing in Indonesia, the secular elite is absorbing and participating in the transnational corporate culture, while the masses are abandoning their traditional practices for the transnational ideology of Islam, purified of infidel excess.
Welcome to the future. You've got your "Islamic Reformation."