Muslims and Matriarchs: Cultural Resilience in Minangkabau Through Jihad and Colonialism

Jeffrey Hadler

The Minangkabau, a Muslim people of West Sumatra, Indonesia, are noted for their religious piety and matrilineal culture, but their homeland has also seen a sustained and sometimes violent debate between Muslim reformists and preservers of indigenous culture. Efforts by neo-Wahhabi reformists to replace the matriarchate with a society modelled on that of the Prophet Muhammad led to a bloody civil war in the early nineteenth century.

The conflict ended with an uneasy truce that sought to balance Islamic law and local custom. In the aftermath, highland West Sumatra fell under Dutch administration, and colonial officials enforced a peace that endured for well over a century but did little to resolve underlying issues. These events ultimately strengthened the matriarchate, and its survival testifies to the fortitude of local traditions, the unexpected flexibility of reformist Islam, and the ultimate weakness of colonialism.

Muslims and Matriarchs is an interpretative expose of Minangkabau social, cultural, and intellectual history. The chapters cover topics as diverse as the shapes of houses, structures of the family, education, and natural disasters, but each chapter draws readers into much larger social and cultural issues. The result is a deeply revealing assessment of the internal dynamics of a society that has produced a disproportionate number of political and business leaders in Indonesia.

«The text can be seen as a dialogue with the divergent types of studies on Minangkabau written by foreign and local-born scholars as well as by Minangkabau literati. Hardly any important topic is left out and hardly any significant and related event is left untouched. Muslims and Matriarchs is one of the most thought-provoking books ever written on Minangkabau, and perhaps also on Indonesia as a whole. It is certainly one of the best written in the last two decades.»
Taufik Abdullah, Indonesia Academy of Sciences

«Both elegantly written and meticulously research, Muslims and Matriarchs presents a rich and compelling political history of a fascinating society as it negotiates the dynamics of Islamic reform, Dutch colonialism, and Indonesian nationalism.»
Michael G. Peletz, Emory University

«Jeffrey Hadler draws upon several caches of unused sources, including handwritten essays by young educated Minangkabau, to provide greater historical depth to our understanding of the relationship between culture, region and nation in modern Indonesia.»
Barbara Watson Andaya, University of Hawai'i

«Muslims and Matriarchs is deeply and creatively researched, well written, and tells a complex story that is also a compelling argument. Jeffrey Hadler's scholarship is authoritative.»
James Rush, Arizona State University

Jeffrey HADLER is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

publication year: 2009
232 pages
ISBN: 978-9971-69-484-5  Paperback  US$30.00 S$38.00

Our edition is available in East and Southeast Asia.

Winner of the 2011 Benda Prize