Publication

This paper contends that while Indonesia and Turkey are formally secular states, both allocate a surprisingly high proportion of the state budget to administering Islam. In response, the author analyzes the bodies the two countries established to govern Islam, particularly Turkey’s Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) and Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA). He finds that while these institutions were created with the intention of fostering religious views compatible with modernization and development, they have instead become vehicles through which conservative religious groups have sought to extend their influence on the state.