Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Berliner Institut für empirische Integrations- und Migrationsforschung (BIM)

 

Foto: privat
 
Saskia Schäfer, political scientist and recently appointed at BIM (Humboldt University), presents her new book. It is entitled „Mobilizing Mainstream Islam: The Politics of Orthodoxy in Indonesia in Comparative Perspective“ (Cornell University Press, January 2026). Schäfer analyses how political competition in post-Suharto Indonesia is driving religious homogenisation and exclusion. Followed by discussion and get-together.

Wednesday, 22 October 2025
Time: 5:30–7:30 p.m.
Location: Humboldt University, Main Building, Room 2249a

>More Info: https://sidit.berlin/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/BOOK-PRESENTATION-2.png

About the Book

Mobilizing Mainstream Islam explains the rise and changing shape of religious nationalism in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto in 1998. In the 2000s, a time of electoral democratization, Indonesia's religious and political landscape experienced significant competition and reshuffling as religious and political elites formed an alliance to challenge Indonesia's official policies of tolerance and religious pluralism. As Saskia Schäfer argues, state and religious authorities have in the post-Suharto era constructed a homogenized, bureaucratized form of Islam—which she terms "Mainstream Islam"—that deliberately marginalizes people framed as minorities, such as Ahmadiyya, Shia Muslims and LGBTQI-identifying people, through securitization and theological delegitimization. She shows how the discourses of human rights have only sharpened the contours of these identities within the national imaginary.
 
>More: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501785252/mobilizing-mainstream-islam/#bookTabs=1