QUITE a few Western scholars have been attracted to studying the Islamic community in Indonesia. But none has done it so intensively as Merle C. Ricklefs, history professor from Cornell University. He has been studying the subject for almost four decades, almost without a break. Lately, he compared the Islam that developed in Kediri with that in Solo.

Ricklefs is fluent in Bahasa Indonesia. Indeed, studying aspects of Indonesia seems to be hi