ON a visit to the National Museum Library in Jakarta, Takashi Shiraishi found an article titled Islamism and Communism in the daily newspaper Medan Moeslimin. This article written by Hadji Mohammad Misbach led Shiraishi to doubt the Indonesian people’s movement at the start of the 20th century.

For 10 years since December 1977, Shiraishi dug for documents on the Dutch East Indies colonial government, including issues on the Sarekat Islam and O