Getting from Montreal to Makassar is not a picnic. During the thirty-six hours my partner and I spend in transit, we debate whether it is more important to teach public health or philosophy in Indonesia, because this is the reason for our three-week trip to the capital of the Indonesian province of Sulawesi. We both teach at McGill University: my partner is a medical doctor, specializing in public health; I’m a historian of philosophy, working, among other things, on Muslim and Jewish thought. The classes we give at Alauddin State Islamic University—one of fourteen academic institutions in Indonesia that make up the public system of Islamic higher education under the auspices of the ministry of religious affairs—are part of a McGill-based Indonesia Social Equity Project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Nobody denies the usefulness of teaching medicine and public health, especially in a developing country. But why does CIDA send a philosopher instead of a second ...

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FOOTNOTES:

• [1] See Richard C. Martin and Mark Woodward, Defenders of Reason in Islam—Mutazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol (Oxford: One World, 1998).
• [2] Robert Hefner, Civil Islam—Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, 2000).
• [3] See the interview with Bashir by Farish A. Noor on Aljazeera International, August 21, 2006.
• [4] For a good account of modern Indonesian history, see Adrian Vickers, A History of Modern Indonesia (Cambridge, 2005).
• [5] See the evidence quoted by Robert Hefner showing that 60 percent of Indonesian Muslims voted for non-Islamic or secular parties in the 1999 elections. “Muslim Democrats and Islamist Violence in Post-Soeharto Indonesia,” in Hefner (ed.), Remaking Muslim Politics (Princeton, 2005).
• [6] “Islamic Roots of Modern Pluralism” in Studia Islamika 1,1 (1994).
• [7] See Faisal Ismail, Islam and Pancasila (Jakarta: Departemen Agama, 2001).