Page 189 - Transformasi Masyarakat Indonesia dan Historiografi Indonesia Modern

Djoko Suryo

Muslim intellectuals from the sixteenth century up to the con-
temporary period in the aim to understand the continuity and
change of their position in the process of the transformation of
the Indonesian society from the past to the present. Therefore,
the emergence of the Muslim intellectuals in this paper will be
classify into three main phases of political, social and cultural
transformation. The first is the emergence of the Muslim intel-
lectual in the era of the Muslim Kingdom in the fifteenth cen-
tury to the eighteenth century, the second is the Muslim intel-
lectual in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the
third is the Muslim intellectuals in the contemporary period
which covered from the 1945 up to the present. The term of
Muslim intellectual here will be cover to those who belong to
the Ulama or Kyahi (Muslim scholars), Muslim thinkers, Mus-
lim activist, religious leaders, and others, included the fifteenth
and sixteenth century Saints (Wali the Nine) in Java.
To draw the role of the Muslim intellectuals in the three
phases of historical process, there are three arguments should
be forwarded in this paper. First, as the “children of their age”
Muslim intellectuals emerged and represented their society in
their age to provide an understanding, interpreting, and re-
sponding to their social, cultural and political problems by their
thinking and critical ideas. Second, every period has its own
problems and challenges, in accordance with their historical
process, structure and necessity. Third, there are a shift of the
Muslim intellectuals position from the era of the Muslim State
to age of the Colonial State and the Nation State in Indonesia.
Fourth, therefore, there are a continuity and change of the role
of the Muslim intellectual from the past to the present.

2. The Muslim Thinkers in the Era of Muslim State in
sixteenth to the eighteenth century: the Creator of the
Malay and Javanese World

Undeniably, that the 90 % of the contemporary Indonesian

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