Religious and local orders on Java. Islam, re-emergence of tradition and everyday life on Java, Indonesia

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Susanne Schröter

The research project focused on so-called traditional Muslims in the Indonesian Sultanate of Yogyakarta and their attempts to position local traditions against an increasingly popular cultural and political Islamism. Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in numerical terms, but its political leadership has repeatedly managed to assert itself against demands for the implementation of an Islamic state since independence, despite considerable difficulties, and to assert the post-colonial state as multicultural and multireligious. As in other Muslim countries, this goal was made possible by an authoritarian centralist elite and an autocratic ruler for over 32 years. Since the fall of the dictator Suharto in 1998 and the subsequent democratization and decentralization, the country has repeatedly become the scene of religiously charged violence between Christians and Muslims. Salafist and jihadist organizations formed and carried out attacks against Christians and foreign institutions. The most devastating attack was the one on two discotheques on the island of Bali in 2002, in which mostly Australian tourists died. Although the state security apparatus took action against Islamist terrorists following harsh criticism from abroad, Islamist militias remained unchallenged and violent attacks on religious minorities or traditional Muslims who refuse to accept the general purification and fundamentalization of Islam continue to occur.

So-called traditional Muslims therefore feel compelled to formulate their own point of view explicitly and to underpin it with high-profile activities. In the meantime, one can speak of a revitalization of traditional mystically oriented Islam. This can be observed particularly well on the island of Java, one of the mystical centers of the island state. The research project dealt with the activities, discourses and framework conditions of this revitalization movement in the Javanese sultanate of Yogyakarta. In Yogyakarta, the local sultan acts as the guardian of a syncretic Islam and has so far managed to integrate different parts of the Yogyakarta population. The traditionalists refer to him in their actions and their justification. As they see him as the guarantor of traditional Islam and a bulwark against Islamist modernization, they seek to underpin and strengthen his authority with the help of special ceremonies.

As part of her ethnological field research, Dr. Susanne Rodemeier made contact with traditionalists, spoke to them about their political and spiritual beliefs and took part in various ceremonies, such as the annual Mubeng Beteng, which takes place at New Year and involves walking around the palace barefoot and silently at midnight in a march lasting around an hour. Islamists had denounced the ritual as blasphemy and threatened potential participants. Nevertheless, Dr. Rodemeier found that the ritual was more lively than ever and was celebrated by a section of the population as a welcome opportunity to express their opposition to purified Islamism.

According to the results of the research, it was clear that a fierce controversy had broken out over the traditional normative order in the entire sultanate. The center of this order was the palace (kraton) of Yogyakarta and the head of the palace – in personal union raja, sultan and governor, i.e. mystical, religious and political head. Since democratization, his authority has been questioned by increasingly influential Islamists. They turned against all mysticism and thus also against mystical Islam in its Javanese form, which in their eyes constituted heresy.

Interestingly, Islamists and traditionalists used similar figures of thought to support their arguments, referring to the same events but interpreting them differently. One of these was an eruption of the Merapi volcano in October 2010. Traditionalists saw the natural disaster as evidence of the devastating consequences of the neglect of local spiritual traditions that had enraged the volcano and called for the strengthening of the mystical powers of the palace. Others saw in the same event a hint from Allah to lead the apostate believers back to the right path. The person of the sultan thus became the focus of controversy. There was only agreement on his political responsibility as governor, and it was precisely an intervention by the government in Jakarta that brought the two factions back together. A proposal was made from the capital to hold democratic gubernatorial elections in Yogyakarta as well. This proposal met with unanimous rejection and all groups backed the Sultan and the autocratic-spiritual system. This was expressed not least in the aforementioned New Year ritual, to which the population of various Muslim camps was mobilized. The ritual thus regained its power as an integrative state-founding ritual.

Publications in this project include: Rodemeier, Susanne (2009): ‘Tender Signal of a Turning Point: Current Arab Influence on Java”, Southeast Asia4: 52-55; Rodemeier, Susanne (2010): ‘In the tension between particularity and universality. Young researchers benefit from the interdisciplinarity of the Cluster of Excellence: ‘The Formation of Normative Orders'”, Current Researchand Rodemeier, Susanne (2014): “Mubeng Beteng: A contested ritual of circumambulation in Yogyakarta”, in: Gottowik, Volker (ed.): Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia: The Magic of Modernity, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 133-153.