Lecture | Book Launch
Book Launch: Theologies of Remembering — Modernity, Ambiguity and Transcendence in Islamic Indonesia by Verena Meyer
- Date
- Tuesday 6 October 2026
- Time
- Explanation
- The discussion will be followed by drinks
- Address
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 0.18
Theologies of Remembering examines how Indonesia's two largest Muslim groups, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah—self-identifying as respectively traditionalist and modernist—actively engage memory as a framework for theological thought and practice. By reimagining their pasts to respond to new contexts, they articulate what it means to be a traditionalist or a modernist in the present and imagine possibilities for the future. Verena Meyer draws on interviews with group members, Islamic intellectual and narrative traditions, and critical theory to show that processes of remembering facilitate manifestations of the divine that destabilize binaries between the historical and transhistorical as well as linear understandings of temporality. Observing how constructions of the past are called into the service of sometimes conflicting demands, she argues against the pervasive idea that Islamic modernities have lost their tolerance for ambiguity and paradox. Tensions among incommensurable memories are generative for articulating elusive theological insights and complex positionalities among both traditionalists and modernists, prompting us to rethink these familiar distinctions in modern identity politics.
Participants
Gabrielle van den Berg, Introduction
Nira Wickramasinghe, Chair
Shahzad Bashir (Dean, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations, Aga Khan University), Discussant
Patricia Spyer (Honorary Professor of Anthropology & Sociology, Geneva Graduate Institute), Discussant
Nathal Dessing, Discussant