Bringing Rationality Back: Harun Nasution and the Burden of Muslim Thought in Twentieth-Century Southeast Asia

Abstract:Debates over the purported decline of Muslim intellectual life and scholarship have been featured in the writings of modern Muslim reformers for over two centuries. This article examines the writings of the Indonesian Islamic scholar Harun Nasution (1919–1998), focusing on his interest in the role of rationalism among Muslims in twentieth-century Southeast Asia. I argue that in response to a perceived decline in Muslim intellectual life and discourse, Nasution sought to promote the recovery of what he termed “dynamic Islamic rationality.” In his works, Nasution depicted “dynamic Islamic rationality” as a type of rationalism that reconsiders the scope of revelation, rehabilitates received approaches to Islamic interpretive traditions, and promotes a reformed theology responsive to the modern context of twentieth-century Southeast Asia.