The developments discussed in this volume appear to have marginalized liberal and progressive Muslim discourses, which in the 1980s and 1990s had been favoured by the regime and had received much sympathetic coverage in the press. The New Order's Ministers of Religious Affairs, notably Munawir Syadzali (1982–92), strongly endorsed liberal religious thought and made efforts to develop the State Institutes of Islamic Studies (IAIN) into centres of Muslim intellectualism. The Muhammadiyah, and especially the NU in the Abdurrahman Wahid years (1984–99) provided young thinkers and activists to some extent with a protective umbrella (although there has always much criticism of unconventional thinkers in these organizations). That degree of institutional support for liberal and progressive thought and action no longer exists, whereas other Muslim discourses, including some that were suppressed under the New Order, have gained greater prominence and official endorsement.

The same is also true of the audience leading Muslim intellectuals have. During the final decade and a half of the New Order, a significant segment of the educated and increasingly affluent Muslim middle class felt attracted to the liberal Muslim intellectualism of Nurcholish Madjid and his friends, as an alternative to the puritan or politicized and Shariah-oriented discourse of mainstream reformist preachers. Other alternatives emerged, however, that appeared to be even more attractive to an upwardly mobile middle class public, such as the hugely popular preacher Aa Gym with his message of tolerance and self-help through pop psychology (Watson 2005). The upheavals and inter-religious violence of the years of transition further increased the demand for such messages and cures for the soul. Many of those who were dismayed with the upsurge of Islamism flocked to gurus offering Sufi teachings and spiritual therapy. Courses on mysticism, collective meditation sessions (dzikir berjama'ah) and mental training courses, rather than seminars on Muslim intellectualism, are currently the middle class’ preferred alternative to political Islam (Howell 2001 and 2007; Rudnyckyj 2009).