The pesantren in Jombang are well developed in comparison to those in other cities. It is thus understandable that Indonesian Muslims call Jombang the city of santri. This development is related to the efforts of the kiai to spread Islam. These efforts were initially begun by individual kiai who extended pesantren education through familial connections. Thus the increase in the number of pesantren in Jombang is in many respects a result of the expansion of the kiai families. It is common for a son of a kiai to establish another pesantren after he is mature and has his own family. This pattern of expansion usually occurs when the kiai has many children. As the leadership of most pesantren is inherited, with the leadership being passed down from father to son, the availability of many children has enabled the kiai to extend the pesantren through the establishment (by their children) of other pesantren in nearby villages or other cities.
Despite the familial connections between many pesantren in Jombang, the authority of individual pesantren kiai is autonomous in that each has unfettered rights in terms of the management of his pesantren. He is not influenced by other kiai. Such independence is more in evidence when we consider the political affiliation of various pesantren. Since 1977, for example, the Pesantren Darul Ulum has had a different political orientation from that of the Pesantren Bahrul Ulum, despite the fact that both have close familial connections.
Each kiai has certain santri and a section of society as his followers. This leads to a situation where Muslims in Jombang are socially fragmented. There are various groups in society, each following the leadership of their kiai. However, these groupings, in many respects are not acknowledged, since in people's daily lives there are few situations of open conflict. Nevertheless, the existence of such groupings becomes apparent if one compares the present situation to that of the 1950s, when the conflicts in society were obvious. Each group tried to humiliate each other, so that people called this conflictual situation in the 1950s zaman poyok-poyokan, a period of humiliation (Pranowo, 1991).
There are two interesting points concerning the leadership of the kiai and the grouping of Muslim society in Jombang. The first concerns the institution of kiaiship which acts as a ‘small kingdom’, independent of others in terms of the connection with its community and its structural existence in relation to NU. The followers of, or sympathisers with, such a ‘kingdom’ are not only derived from the local area but also from other districts of Jombang. There is no spatial limitation concerning the influence of a local kiai since he can attract followers from other areas which might be within the sphere of influence of another kiai. By the same token, it is very likely that some people living in the same district as a kiai would be followers of other kiai living in other districts. I need to stress this point because in Jombang there are a large number of kiai [10]. One result of this is that individuals in Jombang often move beyond their district boundaries. This situation is promoted by NU, especially its tarekat groups, which often hold ritual activities attended by thousands of members from different parts of Jombang. In this situation people from other districts are introduced to the local kiai leadership, which makes it possible for them to come under this local kiai's influence.
The same holds true in the tarekat world. In Jombang, there are at least four tarekat movements, each with its own followers. Although there is no open conflict between members of these tarekat, the allegiance of the members would be definitely given to their respective leaders, the murshid. Members always regard their tarekat as the best. Their allegiance has been strengthened through ritual practices led by the murshid which assist the establishment of an emotional relationship. The relationship between tarekat members and their murshid is stronger than that between the pesantren kiai and their followers (see the case of Kiai Musta‘in's joining Golkar).
The emergence of local authority and its strong influence among its followers was encouraged after the internal conflict which occurred in NU early in the 1970s and in the second half of the 1980s. The phrase kiai saya (my kiai) is commonly uttered to show allegiance toward certain kiai and indifference toward others. This fact, on the other hand, shows us that in present-day Jombang no one kiai has influence which extends throughout the entire society. The emerging local powers of the pesantren kiai, independent of each other, could lay the seeds of social tension or even conflict if each of them directs its followers in different directions. A kiai in Jombang told me that there is no one kiai who has the power to unify these local authorities, so that tension often occurs when they take different political stands. This statement indicates that familial connectedness notwithstanding, the relationship between the pesantren kiai in regard to politics is rather fragile. NU, to which most are affiliated, only coordinates the pesantren. It is incapable of directing the kiai politics.
From the fact that NU has two (informal) affiliated institutions, the pesantren and the tarekat, we can infer that within NU there exist various sub-cultures, each of which is different from the other in many respects. The world of the santri in the pesantren, for example, may be different from that of tarekat followers. Although all of these institutions remain under the umbrella of NU, their performance as expressed through the attitude and behaviour of their followers, especially with respect to politics, continues to indicate differences. This situation means that the NU's strength in practice lies in its sub-institutions. In other words, the strength of NU leadership has been established and centred on the kiai leadership in these two institutions.
Thus I would venture to say that the situation in regard to the kiai-followers relationship in Jombang might be different from other regions in Java where the role of the pesantren and the tarekat is less dominant. In Jombang, the allegiance of the NU members is given to the pesantren and the tarekat rather than to NU itself. Popular emotional attachment toward NU has for a long time been built through the pesantren and tarekat. It is the kiai, as leaders of the pesantren and tarekat with close ties to local society, who have established an ideological commitment among their followers and related them to NU as an organisation. Accordingly, it is the kiai who run the pesantren or lead the tarekat, not NU, who have mass followers identified as NU members. We can understand from this perspective that NU in Jombang as an organisation of kiai does not have a monopoly on power. In certain cases it may even be powerless, since the existing power is spread among kiai running the pesantren or heading the tarekat. The equilibrium of this structure can easily be disturbed by social tension or even conflict, when the different attitudes of the kiai of pesantren or the kiai of tarekat cannot be reconciled.
This perspective is significant if we want to understand the social tension occurring at the grassroots level in Jombang. Such tension, which usually does not impinge on the ideological domain, actually constitutes an expression of the tension existing among the kiai. NU as an organisation would be powerless to induce societal action unless the kiai gave their approval. In the case of deciding the day of the ‘idu'l-fitr festival, for example, Muslims in Jombang would not follow any decision made by NU unless their kiai were in accord. Accordingly, if there is any contradiction between a decision made by NU[11] and that of local kiai, the Islamic society in Jombang would turn to the kiai.
I need to emphasise and give further detail of the existing power dispersion, especially in the tarekat. In contrast to tarekat kiai, the pesantren kiai does not delegate his power to his assistants, so that he is not threatened by the power of others. His assistants in many respects lack direct relations with the society. The assistant's position in a pesantren differs from that of khalifa in the tarekat. The kiai's assistant's position in the pesantren is a formal structural position in the management of the pesantren, which may include teaching, while the position of the khalifa involves serving the followers’ spiritual needs, moulding their unity under the leadership of the murshid and promoting emotional attachment toward the leaders of the tarekat in general. Furthermore the relationship between the pesantren kiai and society is less formal and looser than that of tarekat kiai. The assistant in the pesantren does not have an intense relationship with the society. The khalifa, on the other hand, devote themselves to the tarekat and assist the murshid in running any istighatha (religious ritual in the tarekat) and building emotional unity among the followers. It is the khalifa who actually have direct relationships with members since, with dozens of places for ritual practice established in Jombang, where istighatha is held once a week, the murshid cannot attend all sessions. He needs the khalifa to fulfill his duty in conducting the istighatha. The establishment of one's membership in the tarekat is thus dependent on the efforts of the khalifa through their public practice of istighatha; and the internal conflicts that occur in the tarekat in Jombang are very much fostered by the attitudes of these khalifa.
Within the existing structure, the centralisation of a murshid's leadership in a tarekat is not provided with adequate power, since the charismatic authority accrued by his being the leader is, among other things, determined by the khalifa's assessment of his legitimacy. The situation means that the murshid, as the sole leader[12], distributes his charismatic authority to his khalifa. Although the khalifa are actually only the conductors of tarekat rituals and do not occupy a position which determines the legitimacy of the tarekat as the murshid does, they still have power. Their religious authority to conduct istighatha, which is given by the murshid, can be the means of opposing the charismatic power of the murshid himself.
Compared to that of the pesantren kiai, the relationship between the tarekat kiai and their followers is stronger. The emotional attachment, imbued with religious colour, is more clearly expressed. The murshid in the tarekat, being seen as a spiritual guide who can bring the society or those individuals involved in the tarekat closer to Allah, is very decisive in establishing this relationship. The ideology of murshidship is institutionalised through the process of ‘indoctrination’. The murshid or his assistants, the khalifa, usually give brief talks before any istighatha is held, emphasising the importance of obedience to the murshid and the need to follow in the murshid steps. The guru or the murshid is not only regarded as a means for society to approach Allah, but he is also deemed to be a kind of ‘doctor’[13] who can cure social diseases. That is why the influence of the murshid in the tarekat is so strong, enabling the mursyi and his khalifa to build a cohesive community, held together by strong emotions.
Due to this emotion, it is understandable if religious gatherings held by the tarekat, not to mention the gathering to commemorate the haul (a yearly religious commemoration for the death) of the previous murshid, are always attended by a huge number of followers. A tarekat kiai [14] told me one day that the haul for Kiai Wahab Chasbullah, one of the NU founders, was usually attended by an insignificant number of people, despite the fact that Kiai Wahab was a great kiai. One of his sons contacted this kiai, asking him to encourage the Jombang population to come to the next haul. Due to the kiai invitation, the haul was attended by thousands of people, the majority of them tarekat members.
Nevertheless, there are some interesting points to explore in terms of the close relationship between the murshid and his followers and the kiai and Muslim society in general. The split of the Tarekat Qadiriyah Wa Naqsyabandiyah into two groups[15] has great significance for our understanding and reviewing of conceptual frameworks which relate to the limitation of charismatic authority, as modeled by Weber, or to the fragility of the norms inducing social action. The charismatic authority, as applied through the leadership of a murshid [16] in the tarekat, has some boundaries which determine the areas or circumstances for its legitimate application. The holder of charismatic authority is usually deemed as powerful. However, such authority in certain situations can be powerless when its entrenched usage is overstepped. At this point the followers have “a possible basis for a challenge to the leader's legitimacy and sometimes a motive for his replacement” (Hill, 1987:154).
For the tarekat followers, these boundaries are fairly normative although blurred. It is loosely formulated in the concept of memperjuangkan Islam (to struggle for Islam). According to this concept, tacit evaluation is made by any tarekat member or society in general of a tarekat kiai. The exaggerated respect, or even ‘kissing the hand’ to gain baraka from a kiai, afforded by a member of a tarekat, would cease if the kiai was devoid of this memperjuangkan Islam attitude. Possession of this quality is sustained by the leadership structure of the tarekat itself. The tarekat followers in Jombang are grouped according to different istighatha headed by the khalifa. The khalifa, through conducting weekly local istighatha have cemented good relationships with their tarekat members, an intimacy which might be stronger than that which marks members' closeness to their murshid. Any deviation by a khalifa would hence affect the followers' attitude towards their murshid [17].
From the above discussion it is evident that the decline of legitimacy of the murshid in the tarekat derives mostly from his overstepping the boundary; and the khalifa [18], because of their closeness to the members, have responded to the murshid's excesses by challenging his leadership. So it is very likely that the exodus of the followers of Kiai Musta‘in, which will be discussed in Chapter V, was motivated by some of his khalifa, whose political perspective was different from Kiai Musta‘in's. By the same token, the continuous allegiance of some followers in the tarekat led by Kiai Musta‘in was because some of his khalifa were very loyal to him. The political defection of Kiai Musta‘in, in the view of this loyal group of followers, did not have any connection with the tarekat, since their loyalty to him did not necessarily mean that they had to follow his political steps. Such a structural perspective holds only for our understanding of the leadership in the tarekat movement.