Controversies and Polemics Involving the Sufi Orders in Twentieth-Century Indonesia

The controversies and polemics that will be discussed in this chapter all took place in the context of the larger ongoing process of Islamic reform, the struggle against local custom and other alleged bid`a in belief and practice. This does not mean, however, that Sufis and reformists at any one time constituted two opposed blocks. In many of the cases under review, we shall find Sufi shaykhs pitted not against anti-Sufi reformists but against other Sufis; some of the fiercest debates, as we shall see below, in fact were internal to one of the orders, the Naqshbandiyya.