A nation state as religious actor: The Indonesian Ministry of Religion (Kementerian Agama) and the quest for an authoritative interpretation of the Qur'an

印度尼西亚宗教部通过出版《古兰经》的官方译本和同样官方的《古兰经》评注，积极参与该国的穆斯林宗教讨论。这些作品起源于20世纪60年代，此后经过多次修改，以反映不断变化的政治环境。翻译和评论都是由大型学者委员会制作和修订的，这使得印度尼西亚成为第一个出版权威性训诂著作的穆斯林国家，这些著作不再是个别学者的著作。宗教部翻译的《古兰经》覆盖面极广，在市场上占主导地位。沙特阿拉伯免费分发的《古兰经》印刷本也遵循这一翻译，尽管略有修改，反映了教义上的差异。该项目通过分析印度尼西亚宗教部出版的《古兰经》译本和评注，旨在促进更好地理解民族国家在《古兰经》穆斯林注释领域取得解释优势的努力。最近的研究越来越多地承认这样一个事实，即民族国家及其机构不仅限于控制宗教机构的预算、结构和工作人员，而且还旨在直接影响伊斯兰宗教话语;本项目想要阐明的正是这种影响。基于一个官方的集体制作的古兰经翻译的案例研究，该项目希望阐明一个穆斯林占多数的国家，尽管其自我概念是宗教中立的，但积极参与宗教话语的过程;它还密切关注这种参与产生的内容。通过关注那些不能再归因于个别学者，而必须被视为机构集体行动的产物的作品，它有助于更好地理解在现代民族国家的背景下，宗教权威是在不断变化的环境中构建的。与此同时，该项目希望在内容和方法上为20世纪和21世纪的穆斯林古兰经翻译研究做出贡献，通过使用印度尼西亚的案例来分析解经决策机制。它试图确定这些决定在哪些地方变得明显，为什么会这样，以及它们对文本的理解有什么影响。这反过来又使我们能够了解宗教部是否或在哪里倾向于特定的解释、思想或观点，而将其他人边缘化，以及与此相反，它在多大程度上努力保持表面上的平衡、协调或中立立场。

The Indonesian Ministry of Religion is an active participant in the country's Muslim religious discourse by means of publishing an official translation of the Quran and an equally official Quranic commentary. These works originated in the 1960s and have since been revised repeatedly in ways that reflect the changing political circumstances. Both the translation and the commentary were produced and revised by large committees of scholars which makes Indonesia the first Muslim country to publish authoritative exegetical works that are no longer discernible as the writings of individual scholars. The Quran translation by the Ministry of Religion has an extremely broad reach and dominates the market. The printed copies of the Quran that are distributed for free by Saudi Arabia also follow this translation, albeit with slight modifications that reflect dogmatic differences. This project, by analysing the Quran translations and commentaries published by the Indonesian Ministry of Religion, aims at contributing to a better understanding of nation states' quest for gaining interpretive predominance in the field of Muslim exegesis of the Quran. Recent research has increasingly acknowledged the fact that nation states and their institutions do not limit themselves to controlling the budgets, structures and staff of religious institutions, but also aim at directly influencing Islamic religious discourses; it is this influence that the project wants to elucidate. Based on a case study of an official, collectively produced Quran translation, the project wants to shed light on the process through which a Muslim-majority state, despite its self-conception as religiously neutral, actively participates in religious discourse; it furthermore looks closely at the contents that this participation produces. By focussing on works that cannot be ascribed to individual scholars any longer, but must rather be seen as products of institutional collective action, it helps to better understand the changing circumstances under which religious authority is constructed in the context of modern nation states. At the same time, the project wants to contribute, both with respect to content and methodology, to the study of Muslim Quran translations in the 20th and 21st centuries, by using the Indonesian case in order to analyse mechanisms of exegetical decision-making. It seeks to determine at which places these decisions become obvious, why this is the case and what impact they have on the understanding of the text. This, in turn, enables us to find out whether, or where, the Ministry of Religion favours specific interpretations, currents of thought or opinions while marginalising others and to what extent, in contrast, it strove to maintain an ostensibly balanced, harmonising or neutral position.