Azyumardi Azra is a senior Professor of Islamic History and Culture at the Faculty of Adab and Humanities, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) of Jakarta. He is an outstanding historian, a progressive educator and an Islamic intellectual who has earned high esteem for his advocacy of a centrist, moderate understanding of Islam. He has rendered great service to the development of Islamic studies in Indonesia and to the formation of a harmonious society. His intellectual and practical activities have contributed greatly
to cross-cultural understanding in international society.
Azyumardi Azra was born in a suburb of Padang in western Sumatra in 1955. He studied at Colombia
University, U.S.A., and received an MA in Middle Eastern Studies, and a Ph.D. in history. He
conducted prosopographical research to reveal networks (masters and disciples or intellectual
lineages) of Ulama (Islamic scholars) between the Middle East and Malay/Indonesian world in the
17th and 18th centuries, based on contemporary documentations and data in Arabic.
He wrote The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia (2004). In this book, he revealed that Islamic
Reformism and neo-Sufism, which flourished from the 19th century, had in fact, originally begun
much earlier, and produced evidence to demonstrate that they had been formed through
communication and interaction between the two regions. The publication has enhanced studies of
modern Islamic thought and comparative studies of ideological propagation, revealed the long history
of East-West cultural exchanges and opened up new research fields. Besides this book, he is the sole
author of more than 10 books, and co-author and editor of a great many more books and academic
papers.
He became Rector of Syarif Hidayatullah State Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN), Jakarta, in
1998, and conducted drastic institutional reform in order to modernize Islamic education. He was
instrumental in adding five new faculties and graduate schools (Psychology, Economics/Business,
Science/Engineering, Medicine/Health and Sociology/Politics), and in promoting the Institute to
university status, as Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN), Jakarta, serving as its first Rector
(2002-2006). He chaired the International Association of Historians of Asia from 2010 to 2012, and
also played various important roles in international academic and research institutions. Currently, he is the editor-in-chief of the Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies, Studia Islamika, which is published by Center for the Study of Islam and Society or Pusat Pengkajian Islam dan Masyarakat (PPIM) UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.
Azyumardi Azra has expressed his centrist and moderate position, based on his profound understanding
of Islamic teachings, through newspapers, journals, TV and other media channels. Through these he
has consistently advocated the five founding principles of Indonesia (Pancasila) and cultural
pluralism, and promoted dialogue between different religions. His contribution to the development of
social harmony has been immense. He was an important member of the Indonesian National
Research Council and also the Indonesian Academy, of Sciences, and in 2005, was awarded one of
the highest honours of Indonesia,‘the Bintang Mahaputra Utama’.
In 2010, he was awarded as the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE), an honorable title from the Britih Empire. Accordingly, he became the first non-British person who may use the title 'Sir' before his name.
For his strong initiative in promoting international academic exchange and cross-cultural and
cross-religious dialogue, and his outstanding contribution to mutual understanding between the
Islamic world and the non-Islamic world, he received the Academic Prize of
the Fukuoka Prize 2014 form the Fukuoka City, Japan.
