Islamic particularity and academic freedom: Public institutions and doctrinal difference in contemporary Indonesia

The Indonesian population includes Muslims dedicated to contrasting pious projects and doctrinal positions, yet the nation’s Ministry of Religion manages a number of aspects of Islamic life while purporting to more or less transcend such differences. How ought the state’s Islamic bureaucracy position in relation to doctrinal difference? In this case study, a graduate research program in a university under the Ministry of Religion (MORA) defended the autonomy of its researchers against a challenge by scholars from outside the university who claimed that the doctoral research of Jalaluddin Rakhmat (2021) offended doctrinal positions of the Sunni majority in favour of Shiite sources and doctrine. The dispute shows how questions concerning academic method become disputes about the public interest, and further, its resolution attests to the emergence of free inquiry as an Islamic value in the environment of the Ministry’s universities. Academics cited the example of earlier generations of scholars as supporting precedent for an Islamic principle of free inquiry.