

work on Front Pembela Islam, Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, Salafis, Traditionalists). More recent studies of the conservative turn in the region have noted the differences in the religious orientation, modes of activism, and agendas of the different actors in the country (e.g. Important subject of inquiry for many observers of Islam in the region.

The Islamic conservative turn in Southeast Asia has been an Finally, the article concludes that the dynamics of Indonesian post-Islamists and their contestation are not only helping to strengthen the praxis of democracy in the post-reform era, but they are also diverting public attention from the temptation of radicalism and violence in the name of religion. the dynamics of Muslim intellectual movements, post-Islamist women’s activism and piety movements, Islamic visibility in pop culture, and discourses of Post-Islamist contestation in the remaking of the Indonesian Islamic public sphere is examined in the third section. Next, I explain the topography of Islamic movements in contemporary Indonesia. Post-Islamism and Islamic public sphere as categories of analysis to examine the dynamics of Islam in Indonesia. In the first section, I present a brief review of the notion of I argue that the public sphere is not only an arena of contestation between Islamists and secularists, but also among the proponents of social movements that mobilize Islam as a source of legitimacy. The analysis successfully determines that Islam is presented on a few levels in the studied texts, and concludes that two important ingredients underscore the narrative construction of both novels: Islam and the love story.The following essay examines post-Islamism in post-reform Indonesia by focusing on contestation in the remaking of the Islamic public sphere. The analysis aims to determine how Islam is represented and to draw conclusions on aspects of narrative construction in the respective novels. To ascertain whether these novels actually carry Islamic themes as suggested by their cover and if so, how is Islam represented in these novels, this study analyses two popular Islamic novels: Ayat ayat cinta (2004) by Habiburrahman El-Shirazy and Syahadat cinta (2006) by Taufiqurrahman Al-Azizy.

More significantly, these novels have been a popular and commercial success with record sales figures stimulating more such novels and giving rise to the phenomenon of popular Islamic novels. In the last few years, the general book market in Indonesia has seen a flood of Islamic novels commonly identified by the Islamic text on the book cover.
