This thesis studies the response of the traditionalist Muslim groups of Minangkabau, Indonesia, to the modernist movement of the early decades of this century. In their effort to lay the foundations of a rational and progressive Muslim society and rediscovery the true ethics of Islam, the modernists had called for fresh ijtihad. The traditionalists rejected the possibility, or necessity, of new ijtihad and insisted that Islam had been perfectly articulated in the authoritative works of the scholars, especially those of the four schools of law, and that every Muslim must simply adhere to them. The traditionalists argued that the methods of the modernists' not only endangered the authority of the four schools, they threatened to undermine the age-old notion of a harmonious balance between Islam and adat, the two ideological foundations of Minangkabau society. To the traditionalists, therefore, the struggle against the modernists was at once a defense of the classical schools of law and of the harmony of Islam and adat in Minangkabau.

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