Islamisation and Its Opponents in Java

Front matter

Islamisation and Its Opponents in Java c. 1930 to the Present

M.C. Ricklefs

A Political, Social, Cultural and Religious History, c. 1930 to the Present

Part I The Troubled Path To Deeper Islamisation, To C. 1998

Islamisation in Java to c. 1930 Creating the Mystic Synthesis Polarising Javanese society

Under colonial rule: Javanese society and

Islam in the 1930s Social parameters: The census of 1930 The impact of the Great Depression Javanese life and culture in kraton and countryside Islam in Java: Reform, local traditions and mysticism Abangan and santri Polarised on the precipice

War and Revolution, 1942-9: The hardening of boundaries

The Japanese occupation

‘The Revolution

Abangan-santri violence

‘The first freedom experiment: Aliran politics and Communist opposition to Islamisation, 1950—66 ‘The santri-abangan balance viii Contents

Aliran in politics and culture, and the elections of 86 1955-7 ‘The violent conflicts of 1963-6 106

Chapter 5 The totalitarian experiment (I): Kebatinan, Christian 116 and government competition and the end of aliran politics 1966—80s

Soeharto's spirituality 118

Abangan folk arts and cults in the early New 125 Order

Kebatinan under the early New Order 132

Christianisation and other conversions away from 138 Islam

Government competition 150

The death of aliran politics and Islamisation from 162 below

Modernists' laments at national level 170

Grass-roots purification movements in Surakarta 175 in the 1970s

Modernist-led Islamisation 185

Deepening Islamisation by the early 1980s 193

Early New Order ironies 197

The New Order as an historicist state 200

Chapter 6 The totalitarian experiment (II): Grass-roots 204 Islamisation and advancing Islamism, c. 1980s—98

A changing, Islamising society 206

Regime demands for ideological conformity 221

Reconciliation between NU and the New Order 225 regime

The arts under the later New Order 232

Revivalism, Islamism and the later Soeharto regime 237

Java Islamised? 254

PART II COMING TO FRUITION, c. 1998 TO THE PRESENT Chapter 7 The political and social settings 259

Introduction 259

‘The political setting: The second freedom 261 experiment

‘The santri-abangan balance 268

Contents

Chapter 8

Chapter 9 Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Appendix Glossary

An Islamising society Politics and government MUI and the state Women Popular culture Business Superstitions and ‘science’

‘The role of educational institutions

Large-scale Modernist and Traditionalist movements on the defensive

Older cultural styles on the defensive Defending abangan, kebatinan and related ideas and practices Older arts and performance styles in a more Islamic society

‘The protagonists and new totalitarians: Smaller Islamist and Dakwahist movements

The remaining opposition: Seeking a neutral public space PART III THE SIGNIFICANCE

The Islamisation of the Javanese in three contexts In the history of religion In the contemporary Islamic world In the search for the better life: Freedom vs justice Concluding observations

Research methodology and case studies

Key analytical terms

Acknowledgments

461 462 467 479 495

500 508 514 517 520 552

List of Tables

Ne

Indigenous employment in Surabaya, 1930

Cost of living index, Netherlands Indies, 1929-39 Population, payment of zakat fitrah and estimate of santri percentage of the population, mid-1950s

1955 national election outcomes for the ‘big four’ parties in Central and East Java

Hajj departures from Javanese-speaking areas, 1950-8

1957 provincial election outcomes for the ‘big four parties in Central Java and Yogyakarta compared with 1955 outcome 1957 provincial election outcomes for the ‘big four parties in East Java compared with 1955 outcome

Religious affiliations in Surakarta, 1974-5

Major religious affiliations in Surakarta as percentages of total population, 1974-5

Muslim and Christian religious affiliations as percentages of total population, 1971 and 1980

Christian population in Surakarta as percentage of total population, 1977-90,

Number of mosques in East Java and mosque density, 1973-90

Percentage of valid votes won by major parties in Central and East Java, 1971

Hajj departures from Central Java, 1969-74

Literacy in Central and East Java as percentages of

total population, 1995

Literacy in Central and East Java and Yogyakarta as percentages of total population, 2003

Percentage of valid votes won by major parties in Central and East Java and Yogyakarta, 1999

Self-identification as santri, abangan or other, as rounded percentages, 2006 survey

26 31 83 84

86 100

133 134

167 207

List of Tables

23 24

Frequency of observation of the five daily prayers, as rounded percentages, 2006 and 2010 surveys

Frequency of fasting during Ramadan, as rounded percentages, 2006 and 2010 surveys

Frequency of observation of the five daily prayers and fasting during Ramadan, as rounded percentages, 2007 telephone survey, Kediri

Self-identification as santri, abangan or other, as rounded percentages, 2007 telephone survey, Kediri

Electoral preferences of NU followers for major parties, 2009 Reasons given for supporting political parties in Jekulo,

2004 parliamentary election

Christian population in Yogyakarta, 2001—6, as percentage of total population xi

279 352

List of Maps

Map1 Indonesian archipelago 549 Map2 Java: Western portion 550 Map3 Java: Eastern portion 551

List of Illustrations

Front cover

Back cover

Frontispiece

Illustration 1 Illustration 2

Illustration 3 Illustration 4 Illustration 5

Illustration 6 Illustration 7 Illustration 8 Illustration 9 Illustration 10 Illustration 11 Illustration 12 Illustration 13

Illustration 14 Illustration 15 Illustration 16 Illustration 17

Illustration 18 Illustration 19

(left) The Great Mosque of Yogyakarta, originally built in the 1770s

(right) The Great Mosque of Surabaya, opened in 2000

A quiet moment at the holy grave of Shaykh Jumadilkubra, Troloyo, East Java, 2008

Gajah, a north coast Javanese village, in 1973

Kyai Wali, a Javanese kris with its scabbard Depiction of the wayang character Bima (Werkudara)

Depiction of a Yogyakarta horse-dance (jaranan) Horse-dance (jaranan) from Ponorogo

Depiction of a Yogyakarta slawatan performance in observation of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad

Topeng (masked dance) performance

Sacred bedhaya dance in the Yogyakarta kraton Tebuireng pesantren, Jombang

Performance stage at the village Tutup Ngisor MTA headquarters, Surakarta

Assalaam pesantren, Surakarta

Ust. H. Wahyuddin

Audiotapes of sermons by Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Ba'asyir

Entrance to pesantren Al-Mukmin, Ngruki PDIP election rally, Surakarta

Abdurrahman Wahid, Ciganjur

Interior of the Great Mosque (Masjid Al-Akbar) of Surabaya

PPP election rally, Kudus

PKNU election banner in Kediri xiii

126 177 179 181 181

183 263 265 274

278 280 xiv

Illustration 20 Illustration 21 Illustration 22 Illustration 23 Illustration 24 Illustration 25 Illustration 26

Illustration 27 Illustration 28 Illustration 29

Illustration 30

Illustration 31

Illustration 32 Illustration 33

Illustration 34

Illustration 35

Illustration 36 Illustration 37 Illustration 38 Illustration 39 Illustration 40

Illustration 41 Illustration 42 Illustration 43 Illustration 44

List of Illustrations

Qur'an study as trendy

Reprinted versions of Suluk Gatholoco, 2005—7 Muhammadiyah University, Yogyakarta

Sign for a rural branch of LDII

Bersih desa (village cleansing) at Manggis village Villagers gathered at the bersih desa, Manggis village Ky. H. Mustofa Bisri (Gus Mus) with his painting ‘dhikr with Inul

Ky. H. Salman Dahlawi

Ky. H. Muslim Imampura (Mbah Lim)

Published advice by senior &yais of Kediri for

NU followers to vote for Megawati Sukarnoputri and Hasyim Muzadi

Cover of the JIL volume The face of Liberal Islam in Indonesia, 2002

Yogyakarta kraton celebration of the end of the fasting month, Garebeg Puasa

Mount Merapi

Larung sesaji (throwing of offerings) at Mount Kelud, Kediri, by Hindu officiants

Hindu statue (Durga Mahisasuramardini) discovered in Kediri, with offerings

Soetiyono Tjokroharsoyo’s one-man anti-Islamic shirt protest

Wayang wong performance in the Yogyakarta kraton Ust. Abu Bakar Basyir

Blumbang village

Ir Joko Widodo (Jokowi), Mayor of Surakarta Ust. Drs Ahmad Sukina of MTA and the collection of surrendered jimats

PKS election banner in Kediri

Dr Hidayat Nur Wahid

Villagers at the sacred tree of Sempu

A volume produced for the 2004 election campaign emphasising the Islamic piety of

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

347 348 354

376 379

395 413 418 425 427

431 432 453 475

Abbreviations

Angkatan Bersenjata Republic Indonesia, Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia

Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

Badan Kongres Kebatinan Seluruh Indonesia, All-Indonesia Kebatinan Congress Body

Barisan Tani Indonesia, Indonesian Peasants' Front

Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta

died

Dewan Da'wah Islamiyah Indonesia, Indonesian Islamic Mission Council

Dutch florins, guilders

Front Demokrasi Rakyat, People's Democratic Front

Front Pembela Islam, Islamic Defenders Front

Front Pemuda Islam Surakarta, Surakarta Islamic Youth Front Haji, a man who has completed the pilgrimage to Mecca hectare(s)

Hajjah, a woman who has completed the pilgrimage to Mecca Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia

Institut Agama Islam Negeri, State Institute for Islamic Studies Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim se-Indonesia, All-Indonesia Union of Muslim Intellectuals

Indonesian Rupiah

Jemaah Islamiyah, Islamic Congregation (terrorist group) Jaringan Islam Liberal, Liberal Islamic Network

Jakarta Globe

Jakarta Post

Jawa Pos

kilometre

Kompas

Kompas Online

Kedaulatan Rakyat xvi List of Abbreviations

Ky. Kyai

LDII | Lembaga Dakwah Islam Indonesia, Indonesian Islamic Proselytisation Institute

LIPIA Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Islam dan Bahasa Arab, Institute for Islamic Sciences and the Arab language

MIO Media Indonesia Online

MmK Memo Kediri

MPR Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat, People’s Consultative

Assembly (Jakarta), akin to an upper house of parliament

MMI Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, Indonesian Holy Warriors’

Council

MTA Majelis Tafsir al-Qur’an, The Qur’anic Interpretation Council

MUI Majelis Ulama Indonesia, Indonesian Islamic Scholars’ Council

NU Nahdlatul Ulama

Ny. Nyai

P4 Pedoman Pengbayatan dan Pengamalan Pancasila, Guidelines for the Instilling and Implementation of Pancasila

PAN Partai Amanat Nasional, National Mandate Party

PBI Persatuan Bangsa Indonesia, Union of the Indonesian Race

PDI Partai Demokrasi Indonesia, Indonesian Democracy Party

PDIP Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, Indonesian Democracy Party of Struggle

PKB Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, National Awakening Party

PKI Partai Komunis Indonesia, Indonesian Communist Party

PKNU Partai Kebangkitan Nasional Ulama, Ulamas' National Awakening Party

PKS Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, Prosperous Justice Party

Png. Pangeran, prince

PNI Partai Nasional Indonesia, Indonesian Nationalist Party

PPP Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, United Development Party PRD Partai Rakyat Demokratik, People’s Democratic Party r. reigned

RK Radar Kediri RS Radar Solo

SI Studia Islamika

SOBSI Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia, All-Indonesia Workers' Organisation Central [union]

SP Suara Pembaruan

STAIN Sekolah Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri, State College of Islamic Studies

List of Abbreviations

TBG Tijdschrift van bet Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen

Tempol Tempo Interaktif

UIN Universitas Islam Negeri, State Islamic University

Ust. Ustadz, master, teacher

VKI Verbandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal, Land- en Volkenkunde

Preface

This is the final volume in a series concerning the history of the Islamisation of the Javanese people. Beliefs — or disbeliefs — about the supernatural are important in any society, so this series seeks to address questions that are not about the Javanese alone. The first of these books was Mystic synthesis in Java: A history of Islamisation from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth centuries (2006) and the second Polarising Javanese society: Islamic and other visions c. 1830-1930 (2007); both of these are summarised briefly in the first chapter here. These two and the present book focus in large part on the connection between what people believe and what they do. Much is about religion and politics, about the relationship between two forms of authority, knowledge and power and those who wield them. Pursuing the broader issues, I have drawn comparisons with other societies and times in these books, and the final chapter in this volume considers some broad, I think universal, topics.

There is something of a writing tradition that regards the Javanese as mystically exotic, as somehow not quite like anybody else. Colonial-era literature is full of such mythologising and stereotyping. In those days, the Dutch sometimes called the Javanese ‘the gentlest people of the earth’ and some modern writers have succumbed to a similar temptation to romanticise them, to see Javanese as the people of an ageless land of ‘magic and mystics’ (the title of a 1974 book by the traveller Nina Epton). The Javanese have just seemed so ‘Eastern’. An absurd consequence of this was the title of a film released in 1969 about the eruption of Mount Krakatau in 1883, called ‘Krakatoa: East of Java’. Krakatau is actually west of Java, but evidently only ‘east’ was exotic enough.

I recognise that it is still possible to romanticise Java. One evening in 2006 I was talking with the idiosyncratic kyai Mbah Lim at his religious school near Klaten. With the sun going down and rain gathering, a breeze blew up across the rice fields and came through the open front area of the house where we were sitting, with frog and other evening noises rising — a reminder of how beguiling the Javanese countryside can be at the end of a hot day.

xviii

Preface xix

But this is not a book about romance or exoticism, and the Javanese experience is no less a part of the universal human experience than anybody else's. As one of Salman Rushdie's characters puts it, "Ihe curse of the human race is not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike’.

It may be worth briefly reminding ourselves of the scale of significance of this Javanese story. The ethnic Javanese total about 100 million people — about 40 per cent of Indonesia's total population approaching 250 million? Indonesia is the fourth largest nation in the world, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation and its third largest democracy. The island of Java hosts not only the national capital Jakarta and the vast conurbation that surrounds it — with all of the political, cultural, social and economic significance that brings? — but also several other important cities of Indonesia. In the Javanese-speaking heartland of Central and East Java are found Surabaya, Semarang, Malang and the venerable cultural centres of Surakarta and Yogyakarta. Outside those cities, from the coasts to the mountain ranges, are found small towns and smaller villages where millions of Javanese seek to improve their lives and those of their neighbours, loved ones and descendants. The political, social, cultural and religious transformations that we are about to chart are no small-scale matters.

I hope that by the time you have reached the end of this rather large book, you will be persuaded that the history presented here tells us some important things about how human societies change, in particular about the interaction between religion and politics and the links between what people believe and what, as a consequence, they do.

M.C. Ricklefs Singapore, 2012

1 Salman Rushdie, The enchantress of Florence: A novel (London: Vintage Books, 2009), p. 392.

? Based on estimates in the online CIA World Factbook, at https://www.cia.gov/ library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html.

3 Jakarta and West Java are the subject of a forthcoming study by my colleague Chaider Saleh Bamualim, tentatively entitled Is/amisation and resistance in West Java: A study of religion, politics and social change since c. 1965.

Transcription and orthography

In the period covered in this book, the writing of Javanese in its own script died out and was almost completely replaced by a romanised form which does not distinguish between different sounds for e (as Javanese script did). Because of this and in order to be consistent throughout this book, the scholarly transcription system normally used for Javanese has not been used, so no distinctions are drawn among the pronunciations /o/, /é/ or /è/. In Javanese, vowels are pronounced as in English except for a, which is pronounced rather like English o when it is found in penultimate and final syllables without final consonants. In Indonesian, vowels are pronounced as in English. In both Javanese and Indonesian, consonants are generally (ignoring some subtleties) pronounced as they are in English (with g as a hard consonant), with the following exceptions. In both languages, c is pronounced like English ch as in ‘chair’. In Indonesian, sy is pronounced like English sh. Stress in both Indonesian and Javanese words is generally on the penultimate syllable. Plurals of Indonesian or Javanese words have been formed here by adding the English form s or es.

For place names, contemporary Indonesian usage is employed. For example, Kediri is found rather than the correctly Javanese form Kedhiri (Kédhiri) and Ponorogo rather than Panaraga (or the older form Pranaraga).

Consistency in transliterating Javanese personal names became a problem after they came to be written in the Western alphabet. Javanese individuals often varied in their own choice of transcriptions. I have attempted to follow personal preferences where they are known. Colonial-era spellings are sometimes used, particularly for personal names, including in post-colonial times. For example, President Soehartos name was usually spelled in this old-fashioned way. In such cases, dj is pronounced like English J, # is pronounced like English ch, 7 is pronounced like English y, and oe is pronounced like English 4. Thus, one finds here Tjokroaminoto rather than the ‘correct’ transcription Cakraaminata. Soeharto’s name is pronounced “Suharto (which, were we to use the scholarly transcription system for Javanese script, would be spelled Suharta). One can have some sympathy, if

Transcription and Orthography xxi little professional respect, for the hapless Australian television correspondent in Jakarta who insisted on reporting about ‘President So-é-harto’.

Arabic is transcribed with a simplified version of the system found in the third edition of Encyclopaedia of Islam. Diacritics are used as little as possible. The ayn is indicated by ‘(being one of the most difficult sounds for non-native speakers to pronounce: a sort of a sound made in the pharynx), while the hamza glottal stop is indicated with . Words in Old Javanese and Sanskrit follow currently accepted systems of transliteration. In Sanskrit words, Sis pronounced like English s/.

PARTI

THE TROUBLED PATH TO DEEPER ISLAMISATION, TO c. 1998