Hamka's Great Story

James R. Rush is an associate professor of history at Arizona State University, USA. He is the author of Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprise in Colonial Indonesia, 1860–1910, The Last Tree: Reclaiming the Environment in Tropical Asia, and numerous biographical essays about contemporary Asian activists, humanitarians, and public intellectuals in The Ramon Magsaysay Awards book series and website.

“Through Hamka’s lens, Rush has opened up to foreign scholars and students of Indonesia how many Indonesians view the world.”—Asian Studies Review“An important contribution to the study of—and also a celebration of the importance of—one of the greatest thinkers in Indonesia's modern history. The book includes a deep examination of Hamka's writings, and incorporates Rush's interviews with Hamka's close associates. It serves as a critique of scholars who fail to see the heterogeneity of the modernist Islamic movement in Indonesia.”—Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia"This is an insightful biography of Hamka, whose life was devoted to the implementation of a reformist vision of Islam for modern Indonesia. The book emphasizes the public rather than the private man although there are also revealing glimpses into his personal affairs. It is a strong point of Rush’s narrative that he does not feel the need to spell out the obvious and lets the reader fill aspects of the argument for himself or herself." — Anthropos, 113 (2018)