In Kolojonggo, the religious demarcation which has been consolidated in the religious domain is on the point of expanding to non-religious domains. The dichotomy of Muslims and Christians, which is sometimes referred to by the terms of kita (we) and wong liya or tiang sanes (other persons), is used as a framework for Muslims to interpret certain events in everyday life and to guide their behaviour. The comparison of two elections in 1978 and 1993 exemplifies the increasing importance of this dichotomy and the ways it works in the domain of secular life.

The hamlet headmanship (kadus) is directly connected to material benefit. The successful candidate receives approximately one and a quarter hectares of sawah, the size of which will make him or her one of the largest landowners in Kolojonggo. Apart from this material benefit, the headmanship guarantees high status in hamlet life. The kadus will be invited to all private and public occasions in hamlet life, will be given a chance to speak on these occasions and will be consulted whenever a problem occurs. In this respect, the kadus is at the center of all hamlet affairs.

The sudden death of the kadus in 1978 activated villagers in Kolojonggo. Free election, which was promised at that time, attracted many male villagers into competing for the headmanship. When the application period was closed, ten male villagers had registered their names as candidates. All applicants were aged between twenty-five and thirty-five and had jobs in the agricultural or construction sectors. Considering that the position of kadus was one of the most preferred ones among villagers and competition was keen due to the abundance of candidates, it was natural that all possible resources were mobilised for the campaign.

All ten candidates worked hard to form their faction. The kin group was the most trustworthy resource of each candidate, as was revealed by the fact that no immediate kinsmen competed for the headmanship. ^[24] Apart from this, they used other personal relations to expand their faction. In some cases, verbal contracts were made between a candidate and his supporters about the benefits that the former would give to the latter after winning the election. Some borrowed money from others and used it as a bond between themselves and the creditor. Ascetic practices were another resource to which most candidates resorted. Many performed these by themselves while some visited the dhukun to get advice.

One of the interesting points in the campaign was that religion did not play a major role in building a faction. In many cases, the Christian candidates associated with the Muslim villagers and vice versa. The present Christian kadus who won the 1978 election, for example, had Muslims as his main opinion leaders, one of whom is now the most active supporter of Islamic activities. The fact that Christians did not resort to religion to create their faction was understandable since the Christian community had five candidates. In a situation where more than three-quarters of voters were Muslims, to use the religious element as a part of their campaign strategy might lose potential support of Muslims. As a result, it was the Muslim candidates who would be advantaged if religion became one of the key issues in the election. However, this was not the case and Muslim-Christian dichotomy was not highlighted throughout the campaign period. ^[25] The result of the election also shows that the religious identity of a candidate was not an important variable in deciding the voting pattern of villagers. The winner and the runner-up received about 90 and 70 votes from the total of about 250 voters while the other eight candidates got less than 20 respectively. This meant that the Christian candidates received more than two-thirds of the total votes since both the winner and runner-up were Christians and the other Christian candidates also received some votes.

Karang Taruna is the youth organisation founded by the government. Although its presidency is not a paid position, it is in demand among the youth: it is the only official organisation encompassing the young generation; and its president is invited to all official hamlet meetings, bringing high status to its holder. ^[26] In addition, many villagers’ desire to hold a position in an organisation also explains its popularity.

In 1993, the president of Karang Taruna expressed his intention not to run for another three years' term. From the outset, there appeared two strong candidates for the presidentship, Ferdi and Sulis, both of whom had similar personal backgrounds: they were university students; belonged to the same age group; and had a position on the executive of Karang Taruna, Ferdi as a treasurer and Sulis as a vice-president. They had a good reputation among adult villagers and they actively participated in religious activities. Ferdi was one of the opinion leaders of the anak masjid whereas Sulis was an organiser of a Bible Study Group.

Several weeks before the election day, it was decided in the general meeting of Karang Taruna that the president would be selected not by direct vote from among its members but by an electoral board consisting of several hamlet leaders. As the candidates running for the presidency would also be selected at the board meeting, no candidates could be made official and no public campaign was possible before that time. In this situation, the most important factor for someone to be selected as a president was one's previous relations with the board members. The religious identity of the candidates was one of the crucial elements in forging such relations since the contact between the youth and middle aged board members was made most frequently at religious meetings.

Ferdi was quite aware of the fact that religion would be crucial in the coming election process. As time went on, his evaluation proved to be true. One rumour was that Pak Adi, who was not a member of the electoral board but had an excellent ability to convince others, openly sought support for Sulis from the Christian board members. Unfortunately, Ferdi had no trickster in his side. In terms of numbers, the composition of the electoral board was not disadvantageous to him since it would consist of five Christians and six Muslims. However, what made him worried was the fact that all five Christian members were active in the church while three of six Muslim members did not frequently visit the masjid.

Deciding that the situation was not favourable to him, Ferdi, in company with his close friends, began to consider alternatives to giving the presidency to a Christian. At last, they found two options: first, to make the outgoing president remain in that post for another three years and second, to nominate a third person as president. Ferdi met the outgoing president but the latter reiterated his intention to resign. This forced him to accept the second option but it was not easy for him to find a proper person. According to Ferdi, the candidate had to be a Muslim, had to have a higher qualification than Sulis and had to be able to satisfy both Muslim and Christian board members. His choice was Pak Hartono, who was a primary school teacher and retained good relations with the board members. In order to make Pak Hartono a candidate, however, Ferdi had to overcome an obstacle: Pak Hartono was not a member of Karang Taruna due to his marital status ^[27] and as a corollary, he could not be a candidate for its president. This problem which did not appear easy to overcome did not pose a serious challenge to Ferdi. He discovered a way to change the conventional rule for membership to Karang Taruna:the manual of Karang Taruna issued by the government stipulated that everyone under the age of forty was eligible for membership. When this rule became known to other youth, no one could oppose the nomination of Pak Hartono as a candidate. After solving the problem, Ferdi visited Pak Hartono on the day before the election and gained agreement from the latter to be a candidate. As part of his plan, he asked the outgoing president, who would be included on the electoral board, to nominate Pak Hartono as a candidate.

The general meeting for the election was convened in the house of the kadus. Before it started, Ferdi passed the government version of membership rules to everyone attending. Apart from this, he made a short remark just before the electoral board meeting that he had had many difficulties working with a president of the same age and expected a more mature president for the next term of Karang Taruna.

The electoral board met in an isolated room. As one board member was not present that night, a senior female of Karang Taruna substituted for him. With this replacement, the board was composed of four Christians and seven Muslims. When the chairman of the board, the kadus, asked for nominations from others, the Christian RW ^[28] head nominated Sulis while the Muslim RW head put forward the name of Ferdi. With the nomination of the third person, there were three nominees. Each of them, then, briefly talked about the reasons for nominating. The next session was to hear the opinions of other board members one by one. All Christian members except for the kadus who reserved his opinion backed Sulis, five Muslims supported Ferdi and two Muslim members, the third candidate. This result placed the kadus in deep trouble. Although Ferdi had more supporters, this numeric dominance was not enough for him to be selected. They needed some kind of consensus but the kadus knew that the Christian members would not give up their preference easily. The moment of silence which fell over the room was broken when the outgoing president of Karang Taruna put forward the name of Pak Hartono. He repeated Ferdi's speech before the beginning of the election that a mature person was required for the presidency and emphasised that Pak Hartono was qualified to be a member of Karang Taruna. The kadus swiftly sought the opinions of the others. No objection was heard. Finally, he asked the opinion of the two RW heads. As they showed their consent, the kadus made it clear that Pak Hartono was selected as a president.

After they came out of the room, the kadus announced the result of the board meeting, adding that everyone should accept this decision although they had different opinions. In contrast with the previous progress of the meeting which had gone as expected by Ferdi, it finished unexpectedly. When the kadus asked Pak Hartono to give a speech of acceptance, no one answered. He had already gone home.

The different electoral processes in the two elections illustrate the increasing significance of religious identity in non-religious domains. The election of Karang Taruna implies that one's religious identity is now viewed as a factor that should be considered in selecting a person for an organisation with which both Muslims and Christians are associated. Although Ferdi did not mention it publicly, the main reason why he made efforts to prevent Sulis from being elected as a president was because Sulis was a Christian. ^[29]

Public discourse in the umat Islam also emphasises Muslim identity as a factor to guide one's behaviour in non-religious life. For example, Muslims are now prompted to visit their sick neighbours, to participate in funeral procedures, to help the family of the deceased and to give economic assistance to their neighbours, primarily because they are Muslims. Pak Giran expressed this idea in a Jumatan as follows:

The next week, Pak Giran's ideas were re-emphasised by two speakers in the Jumatan and in the routine pengajian. One of them, Pak Tugi, pointed out the difficulty in coordinating the activities to assist Muslim villagers and proposed a more systematic plan to take care of their well-being: to select a representative from each RT who would be in charge of monitoring the conditions of Muslim villagers in each RT and of reporting it to the masjid council (takmir masjid), which would later mobilise the umat Islam to take certain measures. ^[31] Pak Tugi's proposal was not put into practice for the three months of my stay in Kolojonggo after his speech had been delivered. However, his ideas seemed to be sympathetically received by others and became a basis for them to mobilise a gotong-royong to improve a house belonging to Bu Nangun.

In a takmir masjid meeting where the gotong-royong to help Bu Nangun became an item on the agenda, a youth argued for repairing Bu Nangun's house as follows: her house was on the verge of collapse and rain leaked into her house but her cousin who owned the land where her house was erected did not pay any attention to it. He then emphasised the devotion of Bu Nangun to Islamic activities and called for assistance from the umat Islam. In his speech, he did not identify her cousin but everyone knew who he was. There even was someone who commented, probably half in a joke, that the working party should not expect to be served snacks and drinks since Bu Nangun was too poor to buy them; the story suggested that her cousin would not prepare food for them. ^[32] Unfortunately, the bad guy in this discussion, the cousin of Bu Nangun, was not in a position to represent himself and excuse his negligence to his aunt. He was the Christian kadus. Therefore, the statement by the youth, by emphasising the misery of Bu Nangun and the neglect of her by her kinsman, indirectly highlighted the religious significance of the gotong-royong. This was not only to help a member of the umat Islam but to embrace a Muslim abandoned by her Christian kinsman. In other words, this was a chance to show that religious solidarity could be stronger than kinship ties.

In two subsequent tahlilan, funds to purchase building materials were collected ^[33] and the date of the gotong-royong was fixed for Friday afternoon after the Jumatan. Around thirty villagers gathered at the backyard of the kadus' house and renovated Bu Nangun's house for two days. As Bu Nangun talked of the mobilisation of gotong-royong to her cousin the day before its initiation, the working party was fortunate enough to be served with tea, snacks and meals. Although a few Christian families lived not far away from the kadus’ house, the kadus was the only Christian who participated in the labour process throughout two day's gotong-royong. This signified the acknowledgment of other Christians that it was the gotong-royong organised by Muslims and they had no obligation to participate in it.

Every group in the hamlet, whether it be a family, a neighbourhood, an administrative unit (RT, RW or hamlet) or a voluntary association (religious groups or art groups), is entitled to make a plea for gotong-royong. However, two different logics are applied to it. First, the invitation to gotong-royong for private purposes is governed by the rule of reciprocity. When one asks assistance of others, he or she is expected to reciprocate others' requests for labour in the future, although the reciprocity is not strictly balanced. Second, where a communal body mobilises gotong-royong to improve roads, ditches, guard posts, masjid and so on, the invitation is strictly limited to those who will benefit from these works. In this sense, a clear division between the private and the communal has been observed in the pattern of mobilising gotong-royong.

Seen from this logic, to mobilise Muslims in order to improve the structure of the masjid is acceptable while to ask labour from Muslims for the purpose of improving a private house is not. This is because the benefit gained from this work is not shared by all participants nor will it be reciprocated in the future. Therefore, Bu Nangun's house could be improved by gotong-royong only when initiated by the kadus since she had not previously been involved in any network of gotong-royong. If initiated by the kadus, others would come with the idea that they reciprocated the labour of the kadus and their labour would be reciprocated by him in the future. In this context, gotong-royong initiated by Muslim villagers to improve Bu Nangun's house deviated from the usual logic.

However, one condition can transform this abnormality into normality. If the benefit of this labour is conceptualised as falling on Muslims as a group, the communal labour outside the boundary of the masjid can be reconciled with the logic of gotong-royong. This conceptual change was what happened in the plea to initiate gotong-royong to renovate Bu Nangun's house. The participants believed that the benefit of this labour would be ultimately shared by themselves as Muslims. As a hamlet can initiate gotong-royong for the benefit of the whole community, so can Muslims initiate it for the benefit of Muslims. In brief, this example signals that religious identity is significant not only in the religious domain and that the daily life of a Muslim, which was previously perceived to be outside the boundary of religion, is becoming a concern of Muslims as a group.

Islamic development in Kolojonggo has been accompanied by the construction of a clear line demarcating the Muslim community from its Christian counterpart. As this demarcation is consolidated, it does not remain in one's conceptual scheme but begins to be utilised as a factor to guide one's actions both in the religious and the non-religious domains of life. The fact that one belongs to the umat Islam can now be used as a rationale for rejecting a certain candidate in an election and for giving assistance to fellow villagers.

This situation in Kolojonggo seems to be what is expected by the motto of 'agreement in difference' (setuju dalam perbedaan) popularised by Muslim intellectuals in the 1970s as the right guideline for regulating relations between followers of different religions. It defines the prerequisite to bring harmonious relations between followers of different religions as a certainty (keyakinan) of one's religious belief, not as a relativistic approach that sees every religion based on the same essence (hakekah) (Badan Penelitian dan Pengembangan Agama, 1983/1984:25-6). Only when one is convinced of the rightness of one's own religion and a clear consciousness of one's religious identity, is one thought able to proceed to the second part of this motto, that is, 'agreement' with followers of different religions.

It is not certain, however, how far this idea can be actualised in real life. The case of Kolojonggo shows that the transition from one part of the motto, 'difference', to the other part, 'agreement', is neither an easy nor an automatic process. Although no open conflicts have been found between Muslims and Christians, friction and antagonisms have built up as Islamic identity has been consolidated and Muslims become more conscious of the differences between themselves and Christians. The relations between Muslims and Christians in Kolojonggo where religious difference has become increasingly important in everyday life will be examined in the next chapter.