Folklor Indonesia: Ilmu Gosip, Dongéng, dan Lain Lain [Indonesian Folklore: The Study of Gossip, Folktales, and Other Things]. By James Danandjaja. Jakarta: Pustaka Grafitipers, 1986. Pp. xii, 238. Bibliography, Index. [In Indonesian.]

authenticity of the Indonesian Islamic experience, and on the larger Muslim and world context in which Indonesians have their being, is evident. So is the relatively untraditional Islamic background from which many of the writers come — something they share with rather similar Muslim intellectuals in such diverse places as Egypt, Iran and Nigeria. The author of the present work, M. Amien Rais, born in the mid-1940s (like most of his fellows), and educated at the State Islamic Religious Institute in Yogyakarta and Gajah Mada University, went to the United States in the early 1970s, studying at Notre Dame University and then at the University of Chicago, where he took a PhD in Political Science in 1981. He now teaches political philosophy at Gajah Mada University, lecturing also at the Islamic University of Indonesia, at Muhammadiyah University in Yogyakarta, and a number of other institutions. The book is a collection of occasional pieces — delivered as lectures or seminar papers to university and similar audiences, published as articles in books or popular Islamic journals, or given as interviews. It has many of the shortcomings of such miscellaneous collections, but is given some focus by the author's concern with two principal (and for him linked) issues: the confrontation between contemporary Islamic thought (in and outside Indonesia) and other systems of belief, social organization and world order; and the proper relationship between Islamic ideas and institutions and the State. Though the latter theme is explored mainly in a number of "theoretical" pieces, which look only sideways at the authoritarian and largely hostile regime in Indonesia, the dilemma of the Islamic nationalist committed to state-sponsored development emerges clearly enough. How does one remain a good and socially critical Muslim without running foul of a government that uses both repression and ideological suasion to keep committed Muslims in line? The overall tone is detached and rational rather than revolutionary; Rais is not among those who will go to the barricades. But his voice, and that of other Muslim intellectuals in this series, is a significant one in contemporary Islamic discourse in Indonesia.