The Living Scripture In The Archipelago: Tafsir Traditions and Quranic Interpretation in the Indonesian Muslim Scholarly Discourse

Abstract

Indonesia, as the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, has cultivated a rich and distinctive tradition of Quranic interpretation that reflects both its unique socio-cultural landscape and its sustained engagement with broader currents of Islamic intellectual history. This study examines the trajectory of tafsir scholarship in Indonesia, tracing how indigenous exegetical practices developed from early Nusantara manuscripts through the colonial and national independence periods to the complex hermeneutical debates of the present era. Grounded in the history of Islamic thought and the sociology of religious knowledge, this research employs a qualitative-descriptive approach drawing on primary tafsir texts and an extensive body of secondary scholarly literature. The analysis identifies three defining characteristics of Indonesian tafsir, namely its persistent engagement with local cultural and linguistic contexts; a methodological shift from classical-textual toward thematic and socially oriented interpretations; and the growing appropriation of modern hermeneutics among Indonesian Muslim scholars. These developments illuminate how the Quranic text functions as a living, contextually responsive tradition in one of the world's most pluralistic Muslim societies, and they offer significant implications for advancing Islamic hermeneutical scholarship beyond the Arab-centric paradigm.