Indonesian Islamic Fiction in the 21st Century: Representations of the Other in the Works of Forum Lingkar Pena

Book excerpt: THIS BOOK examines a selection of fictional works by writers belonging to the Indonesian association of writers, Forum Lingkar Pena (Pen Circle Forum; hereafter referred to as FLP). Figures from 2010 suggest that this organisation had around 5,000 members across 93 Indonesian branches and ten overseas branches. Writers recruited and trained by FLP have produced approximately nine hundred published works. Their works are often categorised as Islamic or religious literature (sastra religi). This label-ling of FLP’s literary output as Islamic literature has arisen principally be-cause of the publicly expressed aims and beliefs of key FLP figures which include such notions as sastra dakwah (literature for religious propaga-tion). In order to contextualise the emergence of FLP in the final years of the twentieth century and to locate this organisation within wider Indo-nesian literary developments, it is necessary to take account of cultural debates that came to the fore with the profound social and political changes which accompanied the end of the New Order regime in 1998.