Table of Contents
Since the 1970s, studies of Islam in Indonesia have portrayed a dualistic process of Islamic development: its waning influence over political life and its waxing influence over non-political life. Passive reaction to and submissive acceptance of a series of government measures which can be interpreted as attempts to decrease the political power of Islamic groups [1] have been interpreted by outside observers as examples of the political retreat of Islam. On the other hand, several developments in non-political domains have shown the increasing commitment of Indonesians to Islam: participation in daily prayers, Friday prayers (Jumatan) and the fast in the fasting month has increased and more Indonesians have made the pilgrimage to Mecca (Johns,1987:224); publications and public discussion about Islam have flourished (Tamara,1986:5-8); and Islamic activities such as the public celebration of Muslim holidays, the payment of zakat alms and the Quranic recital have been carried out in what would have been an unthinkable fashion years earlier in rural Java (Hefner,1987a:545-6). This state is called Islamic revivalism (Horikoshi,1976:15), revitalisation (Hefner,1987a:550), renaissance (Tamara,1986), or reIslamisation (Nakamura,1993:181).
The widening influence of Islam in non-political fields can be interpreted as an adaptive reaction to political pressure from the government (McVey,1983:218). Facing the situation in which their political activities have been limited one by one by the government, Islamic organisations have changed their orientation from the political to the non-political domain. The emphasis put on the term dakwah or Islamic missionary activities by these organisations and Muslim intellectuals after the 1970s (Boland,1982:191-193; McVey,1983:218) reflects this shifting focus. An Islamic organisation, Muhammadiyah, in a manual, 'Outline of the struggle of Muhammadiyah' (Khittah Perjuangan Muhammadiyah), clarifies its orientation as follows:
Muhammadiyah will not carry out its struggle in the field of practical politics (politik praktis). Muhammadiyah is not and will not be a political party. Basically, Muhammadiyah will not enter political organisations. [2] ... [This decision is] due to consciousness that the struggle in the field of [civil] society (dalam bidang masyarakat) is an extremely important and honourable work, no less important than that in the political field (Muhammadiyah,1968:202). [3]
The goal of dakwah is thought to be attained by promoting educational activities and intensifying religious education in all levels of school, organising small groups like neighbourhood groups as units of dakwah (gerakan Jamaah), intensifying the celebration of pengajian (religious learning courses) in villages, training young Muslims as cadres of dakwah, maximising the use of film, television and radio as media of dakwah, and promoting social activities such as founding hospitals and orphanages (Muhammadiyah,1978:316-332). Although Muhammadiyah is one of the two largest Islamic organisations in Indonesia, its re-orientation to non-political domains represents a new direction for the Islamic movement. Now, the primary goal of the umat Islam (Muslim community) is viewed not from the paradigm before 1965, that is, to establish an Islamic state, but to Islamise Indonesians, in other words, to invite non-Muslims to Islam and to guide Muslims to make their religiosity perfect (Muhammadiyah,1967:186).
In parallel with this national development, Islamic development in Kolojonggo and in kelurahan Sumber also gives an impression that the revitalisation, revivalism or renaissance of Islam in non-political domains has taken place during the last three decades. Islamic leaders in Sumber felt easier describing this change in numeric terms, comparing the present with the early 1970s: the number of masjid has increased from 3 to 23, so that 18 hamlets out of the total 19 hamlets in Sumber have at least one masjid of their own; participants from all over the kecamatan then hardly filled half of a playing ground for the collective prayer after the fasting month (Salat Idul Fitri) whereas two playing grounds of the same size are now too small to accommodate participants solely from Sumber; previously the amount of zakat from all hamlets in Sumber reached around 100 kg. of rice, whereas now, a hamlet can collect 300-500 kg.; previously a kelurahan could not sacrifice a sheep for Idul Adha whereas now, a hamlet can sacrifice an ox; and previously almost nothing was donated by villagers for religious purposes, whereas almost two million Rupiah can now be collected on the occasion of Salat Idul Fitri.
The figures from Kolojonggo are consistent with this pattern. A masjid was built in 1988, zakat and other alms collection have increased, an ox was sacrificed in 1994, pengajian is held at least once every two weeks and there has been a steady growth in the number of participants in the fast. According to the Islamic leaders in their forties or older, all of these changes would have been unimaginable in their youth.
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the process of Islamic development in Kolojonggo. Among various possible ways to look at this process, the focus will be put on how the core group of Islamic activists has been crystallised, in that traditionally Kolojonggo and Sumber did not have an organised group of their own to promote religious life among Muslim villagers. This situation was different from many other Javanese villages where the religious institution of pesantren with its leader, a kiyai, has played a crucial role in determining the course of religious development. [4] Due to the lack of traditionally established pesantren and kiyai, Islamic development was not possible in Kolojonggo until the formation of a social force to transform individualised efforts to promote Islamic activities into collective action.
At that time [before independence], people were not so brave about reciting sahadat [5]. When they recited it, they thought they had to sacrifice something, that is, a throat of a chicken, for sahadat was regarded as a magical spell (rapal).
Why do Muslims face the west when they pray ? This is because Syeh Abu Bakar lived to the west of Java and, in order to commemorate him, people started to pray facing the west.
These two quotations are from two village elders in Kolojonggo. Although short, these give us a clue to understand the situation of Islam in the colonial period. First of all, these show the degree of Islamic knowledge that was available to the villagers of that time. The recital of the sahadat, which is the most central doctrine of Islam and should be carried out several times a day, was equated with a spell having magical power. This equation is understandable, if seen in the context of the popular belief system of that time. [6] In this system, Arabic occupied a special position, so that the utterance of an Arabic phrase was believed to bring extraordinary power, when accompanied by other proper conditions. As the sahadat is in Arabic and many villagers did not know its exact position in Islam, they thought of it as a magical spell.
Misunderstanding of this sort was not only confined to the recital of the sahadat but was widespread in every field of Islamic teaching, so that many villagers did not have a clear concept of what is commanded, recommended or prohibited in Islam. Nor did they have any interest in knowing whether a certain concept or practice was based on Islamic teaching, especially on the Quran and Hadith. They interpreted and accepted Islamic ideas and practices as those had been passed on to them from the previous generation.
The era of ignorance (jaman bodho) under Dutch colonialism, as it is often designated by village elders, did not mean that no one was exposed to Islamic teachings. There was a man called kaum who had higher religious knowledge than ordinary villagers. The kaum should have been capable of reading Arabic script and memorising some Arabic prayers to guide rites of passage and a ritual called kendhuri (collective meal). In many cases, the kaum in each hamlet had a langgar (small prayer house) where skill in reading Arabic was taught to village children and a few religious occasions were collectively celebrated. In spite of this ability, the kaum was not someone who would be a cornerstone for later Islamic development. First of all, he was oriented more to and involved more in 'tradition' rather than 'Islam', both of which he supported. As a villager put it, his role was much closer to burning incense and making offerings than to sponsoring Islamic activities such as the fast, daily prayer, Jumatan and so on. Moreover, he could not understand Arabic nor was accustomed to the written tradition of Islam, which made it difficult for him to be severed from the way Islam had been interpreted and transmitted. Therefore, the germ which would bring later Islamic development was located in a different group of villagers, that is, the newly educated youth in the Dutch colonial period.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw an increasing intervention by the Colonial government in village affairs under the Ethical Policy, which aimed to acculturate indigenous villagers to the Western mode of thought. Efforts were made to expose them to Western ideas, based on the belief that these would bring about a Netherlands Empire consisting of two geographically distant but spiritually close parts (Vredenbregt,1962:101). One of the key measures to achieve this goal was to educate village children in Western-style schools. At first, only the children of village officials were given seats in these schools, which were later extended to all children in rural areas. Although the actual beneficiaries of the widening educational opportunity were mainly the children of village officials and large landholders, due to high educational cost and parents' indifference to education, this new policy was able to produce a few villagers who received an education in Western-style schools.
Formal education was not the sole factor that created a group of youth who were sensitive to their religious duties and had a different perspective from their predecessors from which to look at Islam. The creation of this group was made possible by the foundation of an Islamic reformist organisation, Muhammadiyah, in the city of Yogyakarta and its devotion to education. Before the 1930s when there was no primary school and after the 1930s when there was no secondary school in Sumber, some village children went to the city and enrolled in a school founded by Muhammadiyah. When the encounter was made between village children and the Muhammadiyah school, their education became a basis for a different understanding of Islam from traditionally practised one. [7]
Muhammadiyah has been one of the most popular and influential Islamic organisations in 20th century Indonesia. Founded by Ahmad Dahlan who was an Islamic court official [8] , it aimed to purify faith contaminated by non-Islamic ideas and traditions, a trend of which can be labelled as reformism. [9] For this purpose, reformist Muslims rejected blind submission to the authority of ulama and kiyai (established scholars), and advocated a return to the Quran and Hadith and the re-establishment of human equality. They supported the concept of ijtihad [10] as a way to refute blind submission to ulama. To them, the gate of ijtihad was not shut once and for all, as had been considered since the second and third centuries of Islam (Gibb,1953:97), but was still open. The advocacy of ijtihad by the reformist Muslims prompted a transformation in the nature of religious knowledge and in the way of its reproduction. While Islamic education meant, among the circle of the ulama and kiyai, 'the teaching of fixed and memorisable statements and formulas which could be adequately learned without any process of thinking as such' (Hodgson,1974 vol.2:438) [11] , the reformist Muslims put priority on the understanding of the scriptures. To them, the memorisation of the scriptures was a praiseworthy and recommended work, but not a prerequisite for Muslims to make an attempt to understand the scriptures. Even those who did not know written Arabic should try to understand the scriptures translated into vernacular language. This changing focus of the reformist Muslims facilitated the shift of religious knowledge from that which is mnemonically 'possessed' to material that can be consulted in books (Eickelman,1978:511), and precipitated the change in the basis of religious leadership from a long apprenticeship under an established man of learning to a claim of a strong Islamic commitment and of a capability to interpret what Islam 'really' is (ibid.:511-12).
The presence of Muhammadiyah, apart from a few villagers who entered the primary or secondary school founded by it, started to be felt in the late 1920s when two youths from the city carried out their missionary activities in a hamlet near Kolojonggo. To attract children's attention, they brought a bike which two men could ride at one time and taught free gymnastics and other acrobatic motions. Then they asked children to attend a religious gathering to learn how to read Arabic script and to listen to Islamic stories from the Quran and Hadith. Although these activities were irregular and did not last long enough to create a group to continue their work, their visits gave the children the chance to gain contact with reformist Islam which was different from what was practised in their village. Their visits represented the first contact between Muhammadiyah and the villagers in Sumber, which has continued ever since.
In the early 1930s, a branch of Muhammadiyah (cabang) was founded in kecamatan Gamol by a small number of Islamic activists, all of whom received an education in the Muhammadiyah school. It was the first organisation of those who were sympathetic to reformist Islam, combining the reformist activists scattered around each village into one place. According to a villager who belonged to the founding members, this cabang was the only place at that time where his ideas on Islam met with sympathy from others and he could be assured that he was not alone. In this respect, this cabang promoted consciousness of the sameness and the comradeship among the precursors of reformist Islam.
The first phase by which the reformist activists spread their ideas to other villagers in Sumber was characterised by peace. No confrontations or debates between reformism-oriented villagers and those supporting traditionally practised Islam took place. One of the factors which might have contributed to this peaceful introduction of reformism was the method of missionary activities (dakwah) employed by the reformist villagers. In dealing with various practices which were embedded in traditionally practised Islam but could not be approved of by reformism such as making offerings, worshipping other supernatural beings than Allah, negligence of ritual prayers and so on, they did not resort to force or vehemence. Instead, they retained an accommodational view that these practices would change gradually as villagers' understanding of reformist Islam deepened. According to Pak Seno who is known as the first reformist villager in Sumber, this attitude was not a compromise of reformist Islam with non-reformist Islamic practices but an actualisation of what Islam and Muhammadiyah taught. To support his argument, he quoted a passage from the Hadith saying 'those who command others to do good, do it in a gentle way', while he emphasised the most important way of conducting dakwah in Muhammadiyah was tolerance. Everyone is responsible for their own religious behaviour and what one can do for others is indirect guidance rather than direct actions, as he put it:
The role of religious leaders is the same as that of people selling medicine in the street or in the market. What we can do is just to give suggestions, inviting others to religious activities, so that they may receive anugerah (a gift from Allah). We cannot enforce anything on others, since, if a person's heart is locked by Allah, we cannot achieve anything even with forceful measures.
Another factor contributing to the peaceful introduction of reformist Islam was the absence of a local religious figure (kiyai) who had authoritative power to influence the way Islam was interpreted and practised. In other parts of Java where the kiyai had established authority, the introduction of reformist Islam had been influenced by his position to evaluate it. Given that one of the basic tenets of reformist Islam is to attack blind submission toward the established kiyai, however, the adoption of reformist Islam might not be done without strong resistance from the kiyai and subsequently from the masses under his influence. In Madura, for example, religious behaviour of reformist Muslims was considered to be heretical from the initial stage of the introduction of reformism. This situation has persisted until recently to the extent that a local kiyai urged his audience not to attend the funeral of a sympathiser of reformist Islam (Jordaan,1985:48-55). [12]
The accommodational attitude of reformist villagers concerning dakwah and the absence of an established kiyai in Sumber made it possible for reformist Islam to be introduced peacefully into Sumber and to co-exist side by side with traditionally practised Islam. This peaceful introduction, however, had a disadvantage for the development of reformist Islam. With the lack of open confrontations between traditionally practised Islam and reformist Islam, the chances that the distinctions between these two streams could be highlighted and the 'Islam-ness' of both could be questioned, criticised or legitimised were given only to a small group of villagers who had close personal contact with the reformist activists. To those living beyond this boundary, the distinctiveness of reformist Islam was not well understood. To most of them, Islam was still what they practised and learned from their predecessors.