M. Syafi'i Anwar Explained

M. Syafi'i Anwar is an Indonesian historian and journalist. He is a senior research fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation as well as the executive director of the International Center For Islam and Pluralism.^{[1] [2]}

Anwar was instrumental to the founding of the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals, having participation in the 1990 meeting with B. J. Habibie that led to the organization's establishment.^[3] Anwar has defended the IAMI as a middle-class organization, stating that the Indonesian middle-class of the 1980s and 1990s was culturally self-confident and lacked the inferiority complex toward the modern world, supported by non-Muslims and Javanists, that had been imprinted on Muslims during the colonial era.^[4]

Notes and References

1. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/events-calendar/islam-and-democracy-two-expressions-of-islam-in-contemporary-indonesia/(year)/2011/(month)/10 Islam and Democracy: Two Expressions of Islam in Contemporary Indonesia
2. http://ash.harvard.edu/event/islam-and-democracy-two-expressions-islam-contemporary-indonesia Islam and Democracy: Two Expressions of Islam in Contemporary Indonesia
3. Robert W. Hefner and Patricia Horvatich, Islam in an Era of Nation-States: Politics and Religious Renewal in Muslim Southeast Asia, pg. 96. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997.
4. R. William Liddle, The Islamic Turn in Indonesia: A Political Explanation. Taken from Religion, Globalization and Political Culture in the Third World, pg. 117. Ed. Jeff Haynes. London: Macmillan Publishers, 1999.