Indonesia's state-owned mosques are important sites for observing changes in religious life that have taken place since the demise of the Suharto regime. During the New Order period, ideological and political factors restricted access to mosques owned and managed by provincial and regency governments. In contemporary West Java, access to such mosques has been broadened, and they now display a diversity of religious programs and practices. Drawing on recent fieldwork, this article makes a case study of the intercession ritual known as manakiban which has recently emerged in government-owned mosques of West Java. It identifies two dominant factors behind the new inclusiveness: a desire for visibility and public legitimacy on the part of some members of the Sufi order that promotes the ritual, and secondly, a broadening of access to state-owned mosques as a result of more inclusive participation in the electoral process. The article contributes to knowledge of the politicisation of religion in contemporary Indonesia, and suggests new possibilities for understanding the meanings of public Islamic infrastructure.

When national governments support homogenising religious programs within plural populations, scholars are called to pay close attention to the subsequent interactions between state power and religious projects/actors. This article responds to this need by providing a sub-national perspective on Indonesian Council of Islamic Scholars (MUI), a national body seen by some as a state-supported homogenising project. Based on fieldwork in the Indonesian cities of Tasikmalaya and Malang, the article describes the ideological diversity that exists between the central MUI and its regional branches. In the regions, the MUI is supported financially by regional governments, and in this way, its branches are shaped by local political conditions rather than by allegiance to ideological programs promoted from the centre. The authors observe the openness of the Tasikmalaya MUI to a wide range of Islamic movements, and contrast this with the ideological homogeneity of Malang's MUI, where the regional government is intent on restricting Islamic programs that threaten religious and social diversity. The contrasting religio-political positionings of the regional MUI signal the ideological heterogeneity to be found within the Indonesian Islamic Scholars' Council and shed light on the importance of sub-national factors in shaping Indonesia's institutional responses to religious diversity.Many nation-states with populations in which Muslims form the majority also display very high levels of ethnic and religious pluralism. This complexity has created a common political dilemma in countries such as Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, Malaysia, Syria, Iran, Indonesia and others: to what extent should the state give effect to Muslim norms in social, legal and political life? Muslim activists in all these countries Julian Millie is ARC Future Fellow in the Anthropology Program