Blogger Indonesia of the Week (9): Nadirsyah Hosen

When I started to be actively updating my blog on daily basis few months back, I start complaining about blogger Indonesia. I wrote a brief note about the facts that not many indonesian intellectuals are eager to have a blog; to share their precious thought with other bloggers around the world; and to blog in English. Rather, they tend to discuss things in mailing list with their counterparts.

Now, I’ve found some heavy-weight Indonesian intellectuals (still not so many, though) start having and archiving their sophisticated thought in their blogs and ofcourse, in English. one of those is my close friend (virtual-wise) Dr. Nadirsyah Hosen. from his surename, you will know that he’s the favorite son of Prof. Dr. KH. Ibrahim Hosen, rector, founder of IIQ (institut ilmu al-quran – quranic science institute) based in Jakarta formerly PTIQ (perguruan tinggi ilmu al-quran)and former directorial board of MUI (indonesia ulama council)

He’s not only a person with so many degrees (two Masters of Art & Honors and Master of laws and comparative law and two Ph.ds in Islamic studies and Law and now is pursuing post-doctoral in Quensland, Australia and a lecturer at the same university); but also a person with prolific hi-fi writings: a rarity from indonesian intelligentsia point of view.

His heavy-weight writings in many international journals makes him stands out among the rest. not many indonesian intellectuals write so prolifically in global recognized and established journals like he does. and because of the rare phenomenon in indonesia, you need only one piece of writing appeared in world journal plus one Ph.D degree in order to make you alleviated into Professor in one of indonesian state universities. Nadirsyah got many of those!

Writing a piece in a journal is not an easy task. It needs a painstaking effort, passion and tenacity: you need to do a good research in order to be able to have an in-depth analysis on the subject. Unlike writing column in newspapers or magazines which only need between 700 to 1000 words and can be done within a span of hours, in journal you need to write around 7,000 words with many quotation from many sources. Therefore, journal is the highest form of writing. Yet, the journal piece and its writer got less appreciation than it should duly deserve.

Therefore, it’s appropriate to say to Nadir, that publishing and popularizing journal kind of writing in his blog which has appeared in international journals will be one step in the right direction to introduce it to the broader audience. I know, many journal publishers has certain conditions and a bit fussy about copyright and redistribution and if it’s the case, at least we can enjoy the excerpts of his published journals.

Journal is not very popular in Indonesia for many reasons: the lack of reading habit of Indonesians; their fun-loving attitudes and the expensiveness of print materials all contribute to the un-conducive environment. the emergence of an Indonesian journal writer in the community of blogger indonesia like him should be highly welcomed and appreciated.

I wish, the other indonesian intellectuals with the same calibre like him will follow suit to make Blogger Indonesia more colourful; accounted for by outside world and become the main source of outside world whenever they need the precise and more unbiased unformation on anything to do with Indonesia.

I think, you dont need more introduction from me about him. Once you visit his blog, you’ll be wiser to make your own judgement yourself.

This entry was posted on September 6, 2007 at September 6, 2007 and is filed under Blogger Indonesia, Blogger of Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.