Before going further into a description of adat rituals in Cirebon, it is worthwhile to take a brief look at the nature of adat and how they relate to the Cirebonese context. This is important because the relation between adat and Islam is an interesting subject of analytical discourse.

The word adat is derived from Arabic ‘adat (plural form of ‘adah) meaning custom, or habit and is considered as synonymous with ‘urf, something which is commonly known or accepted. It generally refers to the result of long-standing convention, either deliberately adopted or the result of unconscious adaptation to circumstances, that has been followed where practical considerations have been uppermost.^[1] By this definition, even an animal is said to have its own adat.^[2] The early Sunni scholars considered some ‘urf as the roots of the fiqh, but in Wahhabi Arabia, ‘urf, if contrary to the rigid code held by the rulers, is stigmatised as a taghut, the mistaken conduct of the ungodly Jahiliya way.^[3] Since the nineteenth century, especially due to the influence of Van Vollenhoven, ter Haar and Snouck Hurgronje adat has been used by colonial government in Indonesia as a legal term designating a prescriptive right, which was given currency as an independent legal entity apart from the canon law of Islam (syari'ah).^[4] Local adat was encoded into units of jural management, whereby legal pluralism in colonial Indonesia was introduced.^[5] Under this scheme, based on a classification of adat systems as cultural  geographic units, the Dutch divided Indonesia into at least nineteen adat law areas.^[6] So called adat law rather than syari'ah, was then imposed wherever possible in an attempt to divorce the indigenous people from Islam. Adat law, however, was applied inconsistently as at the same time, under the 1854 Constitution (article 75, para 3), the application of adat rules which were in conflict with generally recognised principles of justice in European terms was strictly forbidden.^[7]

Meanwhile, the ensuing discourse on South-East Asian Muslim societies concerning the relation between Islam and adat has become unclear. Adat is sometimes described as either mingling, suggesting an unstructured mixing, or as conflicting, suggesting the reification and existence of two separate bodies of knowledge and practice. Either view, according to Ellen, is a profoundly misleading over-simplification.^[8]

In Cirebon, the word adat is generally used precisely to refer to custom, habit or any form of ordinary behaviour commonly adhered to by many people (barang apa bae kang wis biasa dilakoni deng wong akeh). To illustrate this meaning, the following expressions may be helpful:

Commenting to someone who complains about the demanding and frequent crying child, one says:

Many other examples can be put forward but the point is that adat, from the Cirebonese perspective, is no more than custom. While like in other parts of Java there is no such a thing as desa adat, neither is there an adat official, nor is there, at least in contemporary Cirebon, any jural implication of such so-called adat. Rather, adat is conceived as a natural phenomenon whose occurrence commonly and inherently contributes to human conduct, to the way of doing things such as religious duties or social behaviour. Some adat may be genuinely of local creation while other adat may be of foreign origin. Some is ritualised and other adat is loosely technical. Most people are hardly aware of when adat came into being or where it came from. From their religious view point, some adat is good and other adat is bad; some matches precisely with the syari'ah set forth in fiqh, other adat matches the ethical spirit emanating from Islam. Still other adat just parallels Islam, while some other adat may stand in opposition to Islam. The sepikulan-segendongan principle in the Javanese rules of inheritance whereby a male sibling gets twice that of a female is an example of adat belonging to the first.^[12] Many forms of feasts may be the example of the second, the use of local clothing to cover ‘awrat at prayer is an example for the third, whereas such activities as cock-fighting, betting and gambling at the lebaran festival are examples of the fourth. Given that adat may either be good or bad, its treatment, whether one wishes to keep it or avoid it, is subject to an  individual's own ethical consideration be they of Islamic, Christian, or any other origin.

The quotation from the hadith at the begining of this Chapter comes from Pak Soleh (44 years), the thoughtful trader already acknowledged in the preceding chapter, the one who enunciated the broader and narrower meaning of ibadat.^[13] He claimed that the hadith is one of the scriptural bases that guides him whether to accept or reject certain adat. In relation to a number of ritual and ceremonial activities belonging to adat, it is the true believers, represented by ulama and pious figures, who attest to a practice's Islamic validity. He asserted, that such activities as the commemoration of Islamic holy days and many forms of slametan have gained support from, and have become part of the favourable work of many ulama, pious figures and kyai. It is enough to say that these activities, according to Pak Soleh, have become good Muslims’ adat (wis dadi adate wong Islam kang bagus) and have a certain Islamic significance. It is thus, unnecessary and, sometimes even difficult, to set a clear boundary between adat and syari'ah. To clarify the relationship between the two, Pak Soleh gave the following illustration:

Pak Soleh's approach to adat vis-a-vis syari'ah undeniably represents the position of many traditionalist Muslim villagers. Unfortunately, this position stands against the main stream of Indologie scholarship put forward by Snouck Hurgronje and others who, under the guise of scholarship, exploited adat and Islam as a means to enable the colonial government to exercise easier political control. In dealing with Islam in South-East Asia, Hurgronje and others have successfully enjoyed esteem for arguing for the necessary separation and opposition between adat and syari'ah (Islam).^[15] Virtually, the reliability of this colonial scholarship is now under siege from the current trend of more objective research.

Based on a strong denial of the significance of Islam in Dutch colonial policy and in the interest of preventing the emergence of a national integrity in the colonial state, ethnic divisions were fostered. In the meantime, the European colonial cultures, especially British and Dutch, misunderstood and distorted Islam from the very start when they made systematic descriptions of it. Ironically, it is this confusion and distortion which provided the framework for the scholarship of Islam in South-East Asia that followed.^[16]

Leaving aside this issue for a while, it might be useful to echo Hooker's assertion that Islam, being the youngest of the world's monotheistic religions, in its own view, is intended to complete the great Judeo-Christian traditions. Also in its own view, Islam prescribes a complete scheme for the temporal and spiritual worlds and thereby it does not separate religion from daily life, something that the secular West can hardly comprehend.^[17] Yet, to understand the local manifestations of great traditions such as Islam, it is not enough to simply focus on ethnographic  particularities alone, especially the ethnography of colonial vintage which, according to Ellen, has failed to make valuable contribution in analysing Muslim belief and practice other than as a part of a cultural assemblage.^[18] It is true, as Ellen holds, that an initial recognition of distinctive Muslim culture within the totality of Islamic tradition is a prerequisite before one starts to grapple with an understanding of the local expression of the Islamic faith. Muslims all over the world live within diverse cultural niches whose expressions of identity bear the colour of their diversity, one of which is in the form of various adat. With these convictions, I shall start my discussions of adat to include the following items.