Indonesians and Their Arab World

Guided Mobility among Labor Migrants and Mecca Pilgrims

Mirjam Lücking

• Publisher: Southeast Asia Program Publications
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781501753138
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Indonesians and Their Arab World explores the ways contemporary Indonesians understand their relationship to the Arab world. Despite being home to the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia exists on the periphery of an Islamic world centered around the Arabian Peninsula. Mirjam Lücking approaches the problem of interpreting the current conservative turn in Indonesian Islam by considering the ways personal relationships, public discourse, and matters of religious self-understanding guide two groups of Indonesians who actually travel to the Arabian Peninsula—labor migrants and Mecca pilgrims—in becoming physically mobile and making their mobility meaningful. This concept, which Lücking calls "guided mobility, " reveals that changes in Indonesian Islamic traditions are grounded in domestic social constellations and calls claims of outward Arab influence in Indonesia into question. With three levels of comparison (urban and rural areas, Madura and Central Java, and migrants and pilgrims), this ethnographic case study foregrounds how different regional and socioeconomic contexts determine Indonesians' various engagements with the Arab world.

1

Indonesia and the Arab World, Then and Now

Ambivalent notions lie at the heart of the relationship between Indonesia and the Arab world. The ambivalences are historically grown and inspired by recent events. Mona Abaza argues that “for the Southeast Asian world, the Middle East has been the object of much anxiety, hatred and fear and, paradoxically, an increasing curiosity since the dramatic events of 9/11” (Abaza 2007, 419). Contemporary observations of increasing conservatism, or what is called a “conservative turn” in Indonesian Islamic traditions, are often associated with connections to the Middle East. The encounter with the Arab world has been and continues to be constitutive and inspirational for Indonesian people. However, the historical experiences show that local social structures have always had a guiding function in the way Indonesians perceive the Arab world, be it through colonial control or the transregional ties of local religious networks.

Above all, a glimpse into the historical interactions between Indonesia and the Middle East shows that today’s complexities are rooted in historical experiences. On the one hand, Middle Eastern Muslims have been honored as the “earlier” Muslims in light of the Middle East’s role as a historical birthplace where the Prophet Muhammad received the revelation of the Qur’an (Bowen 2008, 34; van Bruinessen 2013c, 47; Burhani 2010; Chaplin 2014, 223; see also Kahn 2015). Concomitantly, Arabic language as the language of the revelation and Arabic culture and customs inherent in the words and deeds (the sunna) of the Prophet are recognized as central and prestigious in Islamic practices (von der Mehden 1993, 4). On the other hand, Arabness has been denounced as harsh, violent, and radical, especially in reaction to the Wahhabi conquest of Mecca in 1926 and in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 (see Abaza 2007). After 9/11, there has been what Lewis (2004) calls a “crisis of Islam,” in which Muslims face accusations that claim an inherent violence of Islam. In Indonesia, some Muslims respond to this “crisis of Islam,” by differentiating between religion and culture, and by arguing that reasons for radicalism are rooted in culture and not in the religion of Islam.

As outlined in the introduction of this book, in this regard the Arab world must be understood as an imagined center that goes beyond geographic borders, being intrinsic in Muslims’ religious practices and at the same time representing an image of the Other. This means that Indonesians see aspects of Arabness as part of their own religiosity and heritage while they also look at the Arab world as a place that is different and distant from indigenous lifeworlds. Such representations are not congruent with Arab peoples’ self-perception, nor do they reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Arab world (see introduction). They are guiding images for defining Indonesian selves in differentiation from Arab Others.

In line with considerations about guided mobility, this chapter focuses on the question of how Indonesians have been guided in their encounters with Arab Others over time. But I will first give a brief introduction into Islamic conceptions of travel and the Turnerian idea of a ritual community.

Sacred and Structured Journeys

Following Arnold van Gennep’s theory on rites de passage and its further development by Victor Turner, pilgrimage aims at transformation, contemplation, spiritual renewal, and change of the pilgrims’ social status. The Turnerian differentiation of the ritual process describes a preparatory stage that is marked by structure, a medium stage that is marked by the absence of structure (antistructure) with the experience of a community of equals, and a stage of restructuring after the rituals. Individuals experience liminality, a transitional state between the different stages of a ritual, and communitas, the community of equals during the ritual stage of antistructure.

With a methodological approach that focuses on the pre- and postpilgrimage and migration structuring, I am more interested in the reestablishment of structure. Yet the research participants’ representations of liminality and communitas are relevant for this restructuring. Migrants’ and pilgrims’ accounts show that liminality and communitas matter—not only in terms of actual experiences but also in their representation and relation to historical metanarratives. The idea of unity or communitas also corresponds with Islamic doctrines about travel and pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage in Islam means the hajj to Mecca and Medina, which is one of the five pillars of Islam and obligatory for those who are physically, financially, and spiritually capable of going on the journey. In addition to the Holy Mosque (al-masǧid al-ḥarām) with the Ka’aba in Mecca and the Prophets’ Mosque in Medina (al-masǧid an-nabawī), a hadith by al-Bukhari names Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem as a third pilgrimage destination.¹ Apart from pilgrimage to Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, Muslims practice ziarah, which means visiting holy shrines. Along with the Islamic concept of rihla, travel in search of knowledge, pilgrimage and ziarah are related to the hijrah, exodus from un-Islamic regions to Islamic ones (Eickelman and Piscatori 1990, 5). Thus the Islamic concept of mobility carries a transformative notion and social change. In fact, the idea of an Islamic communitas, the ummah, is linked to the story of exodus in Islam and the end of ǧāhilīya, which defines the pre-Islamic time of ignorance, ethnic division, and war.² The unification of Arab tribes and the claim of universal rights regardless of ethnic and religious affiliation was regarded as a great achievement (Laffan 2003, 120). However, soon after the death of the prophet Muhammad, the ummah split into competing confessions and sects, among others into Sunni and Shi’a, two competing parties in the question about the rightful successor to the prophet Muhammad. Ever since, the idea of one global ummah, the unity of all Muslims, has been something that many Muslims have longed for, and many pilgrims claim that the hajj provides a taste of the satisfaction of this longing. The historical overview of encounters between Indonesia and the Arab world shows how the communitas that Muslims experience in Mecca informs a metanarrative among believers. It is rooted in historical accounts of the Prophet Muhammad’s revolutionary restructuring of society and is reproduced over time. Throughout history, the unity of all Muslims has repeatedly emerged as an important political demand. These are some of the crucial theological conceptions and historical experiences that have guided Indonesians and Arabs in their encounters and in mental mappings of centers and peripheries. The research at hand takes these underlying factors into consideration when it follows the line of anthropological hajj research that has revealed the multifarious social meanings and aspects of “lived religion” in the context of the hajj (see Buitelaar 2015).

Centers and Peripheries of the Muslim World

Indonesia, along with sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia, is commonly perceived as the periphery of the Muslim world, while the Middle East, especially the Arabian Peninsula, is located at its center (Woodward 2011, 64). John Bowen argues that Indonesia faces struggles in bringing together Islamic and local values:

Indonesia offers a critical case in our efforts to reorient how we understand Islam. As the largest Muslim society, and at the same time the most distant, in space and in ways of life, from the Arabian heartland (or even from the broader Arabian-Persian-Turkish one), Indonesia is a site of particularly marked struggle to bring together norms and values derived from Islam, from local cultures, and from international public life. (Bowen 2003, 19)

In line with this observation lies the perception of Islamic purity and authenticity related to its roots in the “center” and modifications and syncretism located at the “periphery.” These hierarchizations between center and periphery are prevalent among both Muslims and non-Muslims in academia and in everyday mappings of the world. The Arabian Peninsula, especially the Hejaz with the holy sites in Mecca and Medina, are the reference point toward which Muslims from all over the world orient themselves physically five times a day during the ritual prayer, in their sleeping position, and in burial. The pilgrimage to Mecca is the ultimate emphasis of the region’s centrality and the connection that believers maintain to the Holy Land (Metcalf 1990, 100). Other important centers of the Sunni Muslim world are likewise located in the Arab world, such as old and prestigious Islamic universities, like Umm Al-Qurra University in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.³

Mona Abaza has argued that the idea of the so-called “Islamic periphery,” in differentiation from the “center,” implies that “the dissemination of knowledge, religious and secular, has been a one-way relationship,” in which the Middle East “seems to play a hegemonic role as a donor of authentic culture and religious supremacy exemplified in a domineering orthodox discourse while Southeast Asians remain cast as its syncretistic recipients” (Abaza 2007, 427). Abaza criticizes that Middle Eastern Muslims, as well as Western scientists, do not attribute to Southeast Asian Muslims a creative potential (Abaza 2007, 421). However, besides empirical evidence that in some cases there has been mutual exchange between Arabs and Indonesians (see Abaza 2011; Azra 2004), the persistent perception is epitomized by the image of a one-way relationship. While many Muslims in Southeast Asia highly value Arabic language and Arabic intellectual production, hardly any note is taken of Southeast Asian Muslim scholarship in the Middle East, and the “Islamic centers perpetuate an Arabic-centric vision towards the peripheries” (Abaza 2007, 427). As a result of the ideas of “center” and “periphery,” many scientists attribute binary oppositions to the regions. Abaza observes that the Middle East is associated with orthodoxy, the harsh and arid climate of the desert, with high culture, textual and scriptural knowledge, ulama, and with Azhar-Wahhabi-Saudi trained scholars with Arab habitus, dress and lifestyle and the primacy of Arabic language. Southeast Asia, in contrast, is associated with heterodoxy, rainy weather, monsoon, prolific soil, popular Islam, laxity, local and oral traditions (adat), syncretism, Sufi culture (perceived as low culture), prayers in local language (Bahasa Indonesia), and the perception of Arabic language as magical (Abaza 2007, 428). However, as Abaza argues, these dualisms can be found within every Muslim society and are the subject of controversy in domestic negotiations between competing Muslim groups. As an example, in Indonesia these binary oppositions are adduced as distinction criteria between the so-called abangan Muslims, nominal Muslims with a strong element of Sufi tradition, and the santri, more orthodox ones (ibid. 428).⁴

This exemplifies that boundaries between center and periphery, or authenticity and deviations, apply to different levels and are prevalent in domestic as well as international contestations between different Islamic traditions. Regarding points of orientation in Indonesians’ engagement with the Arab world, there are several historical examples of a multiplicity of centers and reference points, which are not at all only located outside Indonesia but often combine elements from outside and inside Indonesia.

A prominent example of this is the legend of the nine saints, the Wali Songo, who are seen as bearers of Islam and who came from various cultural backgrounds. In missionary activities, the Wali Songo combined their religious and cultural backgrounds from India, Persia, China, and the Hadhramaut in today’s Yemen with the Hindu-Buddhist heritage of precolonial Mandala states. These states were in trade relationships with Arab, Chinese, and Portuguese traders from the fourteenth century onward (Azra 2004; Chaudhuri 2007; Reid 1988).⁵ In addition to trade, systematic Islamization apparently came not only through the Wali Songo but also from other religious leaders and merchants from Bengal, Coromandel, Gujarat, and from Persians and Kurds (van Bruinessen 1987, 43; von der Mehden 1993, 1).

Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy

The influence of diverse Islamic traditions from different parts of the world and differing incorporations into indigenous lifeworlds in the archipelago gave rise to various streams of Islam. As Abaza (2007) has argued, both orthodoxy and heterodoxy characterized Indonesian ways of being Muslim. These differing Islamic traditions have coexisted in the archipelago since the first encounters with Islam and neither can be regarded as more original to Indonesia than the other. Nevertheless, the influence of Arab traders is described as a rather orthodox, scriptural tradition of Islam known as santri Islam, the scholarly Islam, or Islam pesisir, the Islam of the coastal regions with trade centers. Sometimes this form of Islam is referred to as Islam Arab, taking into consideration its roots in the Arabic tradition of Islam, even though it was “filtered through India” (von der Mehden 1993, 2). The different character of Islamization in coastal regions and inland is considered a major distinction criterion between Islamic streams in Indonesia in this period.⁶ The mystic Sufi tradition of Islam that was apparently more prevalent inland is associated with the above-mentioned Wali Songo, who are honored as initiators of a distinctive Javanese version of Islam. Today their heritage is promoted by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization, as the authentic Indonesian Islamic tradition in the discourse on Islam Nusantara, the Islam of the archipelago (see below). However, as much as the Wali Songo are associated with local authenticity, they are perceived and honored as foreigners.

The Arabness and the Javaneseness of the Wali Songo

Accounts of the origin of the Wali Songo vary. While some sources stress their descent from the Prophet Muhammad himself, others suggest that only one of the nine wali, namely Maulana Maghribi (born 1419 CE), also known as Sunan Giri, was actually an Arab (Laffan 2011, 8). However, as his name suggests, he was not from the Arabian “heartland” of Islam but from the Maghrib (North Africa). Besides Arabia, the origins of the wali, some of whom were born in Java, have been traced to India, Persia, and China. The location of Southeast Asia on the trading routes between Arabia, India and China explains the influence of Chinese Muslims as there was an established Muslim presence in Canton from the ninth century onward (Laffan 2003, 12). Some Javanese narratives about Maulana Maghribi and the other wali suggest that they relied on trade links with China. Zheng He (1371–1433), a Ming admiral, stands out as a potentially influential religious scholar in the tradition of the Hanafi school of thought, who is sometimes considered to have been the driving force of Islamization in Java, potentially predating the mission of the Wali Songo (Laffan 2011, 8).⁷ While some of my research participants emphasized the Asian nature of Islam in Southeast Asia, others lamented the Sinicization of the history of the Islamization of Indonesia and stressed the Arabness of the Wali Songo. This indicates that references to the past are filtered in contestations over the originality of contemporary religious worldviews and practices in which Arabness, as well as Asianness and, moreover, Javanesesness, are prominent labels, guiding people in their lifestyle choices.

Regardless of the actual origin of the Wali Songo and their role as “Arab adventurers or as handlers of Chinese business” (Laffan 2011, 9), they are certainly considered to be the founding fathers of Islam Jawa, Javanese Islam, especially because of their use of extant cultural traditions, such as the wayang shadow puppet play and the gamelan percussion orchestra, to transmit their message (Woodward 2011, 180). They are perceived as malleable, syncretistic, adopting Hindu and Buddhist cultural elemen...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Note on Orthography, Transliteration, Translation, and Dates
• Map of the Indonesian archipelago
• Introduction: Whose Arab World Is It?
• 1. Indonesia and the Arab World, Then and Now
• 2. The Beaten Tracks and Embedded Returns of Migrants and Pilgrims
• 3. Arab Others Abroad and at Home
• 4. Alternative Routes in Madura and Translational Moments in Java
• Conclusion: Continuity through Guided Mobility
• Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations
• Notes
• References
• Index