Waubonsee Community College

Rebranding Islam, piety, prosperity, and a self-help guru, James Bourk Hoesterey

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

individual biography

illustrationsmaps

index present

non fiction

Rebranding Islam

bibliography

906936203

James Bourk Hoesterey

Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

piety, prosperity, and a self-help guru

Kyai Haji Abdullah Gymnastiar, known affectionately by Indonesians as "Aa Gym" (elder brother Gym), rose to fame via nationally televised sermons, best-selling books, and corporate training seminars. In Rebranding Islam James B. Hoesterey draws on two years' study of this charismatic leader and his message of Sufi ideas blended with Western pop psychology and management theory to examine new trends in the religious and economic desires of an aspiring middle class, the political predicaments bridging self and state, and the broader themes of religious authority, economic globalization, and the end(s) of political Islam. At Gymnastiar's Islamic school, television studios, and MQ Training complex, Hoesterey observed this charismatic preacher developing a training regimen called Manajemen Qolbu into Indonesia's leading self-help program via nationally televised sermons, best-selling books, and corporate training seminars. Hoesterey's analysis explains how Gymnastiar articulated and mobilized Islamic idioms of ethics and affect as a way to offer self-help solutions for Indonesia's moral, economic, and political problems. Hoesterey then shows how, after Aa Gym's fall, the former celebrity guru was eclipsed by other television preachers in what is the ever-changing mosaic of Islam in Indonesia. Although Rebranding Islam tells the story of one man, it is also an anthropology of Islamic psychology. -- Provided by publisher

Introduction : authority, subjectivity, and the cultural politics of public piety -- Branding Islam : autobiography, authenticity, and religious authority -- Enchanting science : popular psychology as religious wisdom -- Ethical entrepreneurs : Islamic ethics and the spirit of capitalism -- Prophetic cosmopolitanism : the Prophet Muhammad as psycho-civic exemplar -- Shaming the state : pornography and the moral psychology of statecraft -- Sincerity and scandal : the moral and market logics of religious authority -- Conclusion : figuring Islam : popular culture and the cutting edge of public piety