Islamic bureaucracies: new frontiers for public religion

This synthesising piece presents the major findings emerging from the collection, all of which deepen knowledge of Islamic bureaucracies in Turkey and Indonesia, and by extension, provide models for understanding Islamic bureaucracies throughout the world. Major findings cohere around four key themes. The first is agency: Islamic bureaucracies can indeed be understood as vehicles for coercion, but the meanings they hold for Muslims extend well beyond this. Contributions also upgrade knowledge about an effect commonly associated with Islamic bureaucracies: homogenisation (theme two), complicating simplistic notions of growing orthodoxy by observing the shifts in social relations and public spheres engendered by Islamic bureaucracies. The third theme is education: the Indonesian case shows that integrating Islamic education into the national education repertoire draws Muslim populations more fully into the life of the state. At the same time, this move simultaneously inflames divisions within these populations. Finally, the collection’s discussions of transnational outreach reveal that the Islamic bureaucracies of both Indonesia and Turkey invest in global projects of Islamic outreach. Yet the stark contrasts in the goals and modalities of their respective projects are reminders that Islamic bureaucratic action is far from uniform; but is shaped by distinctive national histories and political contexts.