This page provides online resources
to assist users in carrying out web-based research on Indonesia and East Timor. Suggestions for additional links are always
welcome!
Edited by Elizabeth Coville (ecoville@gmail.com)
What's Up on the Web:
A fortnightly update on items of special interest to researchers on Indonesia
and East Timor
and accessible through links on this page.
# 25 - "Struggle for the Soul
of Islam" documentary
Posted on
April 20, 2007
Apologies for not alerting you ahead of time to the PBS special aired last
night (Thursday, April 19) as part of "America
at a Crossroads," a series framed in terms of the (American) post-9/11
era. The segment entitled "Struggle
for the Soul of Islam: Inside Indonesia" is one-hour long and is available
for purchase through PBS
here.
In order to contextualize it, the piece in the New York Times Week in Review
on Sunday, April 15 by co-producer Calvin Sims, entitled "Indonesia:
Gambling that Tolerance with Trump Fear" (and reprinted in various online
places) is helpful. So is Scott Simon's
NPR interview with Sims and series host Robert MacNeil.
It was also reviewed in the Arts section of the New York Times on April 19 by
Mark Bowden under the title "In
Indonesian Tug of War, Radical Islam Thrives on Democracy and Despair"
While these contextualize the documentary in terms of what the film-makers
wanted to do, anyone using it for teaching will want to better locate this
film in terms of the basic history, politics and anthropology of religion in
Indonesia. If I were doing this, I'd work around the dozen or so interviewees
who appear on the film by clicking on
In
the film. Then I'd decide what readings to assign in order to fill in the
gaps and round out the picture.
I think this is the kind of program that will elicit inquiries from friends
and colleagues outside of Indonesian studies. If anyone sees any good
commentaries about this documentary by academics working on Indonesia, I'll
post links here in this column. Or, better yet, write one yourself. Send them
to me at ecoville@gmail.com
@ 2000 Antara Kita. Southeast Asian Studies
Program, Yamada House, Ohio University, Athens, OH
45701-2979, USA.
This site was last updated on
April 20,
2007
This page was last updated
on February