Islam and the Limits of the State

Front matter

Islam and the Limits of the State

Reconfigurations of Practice, Community and Authority in Contemporary Aceh

Islam and the Limits of the State

Preface

During the past decade, the Indonesian province of Aceh has experienced dramatic political, socio-economic, and cultural transformations. Tightly interwoven with this atmosphere of change is an ongoing debate about the role and meaning of Islam in Acehnese society. The state, both as an actor and as an arena for contestation, has taken an increasingly central stage in this debate. This volume deals with relationships between the state and lived realities in Acehnese society. Its central premise, informing the ways in which individual contributions have been assembled and edited, is that the state is both a formative and a limited force with regard to religious and social transformation. It is formative, in the sense that it has actively engaged in the formulation and enforcement of Islamic rules and regulations. The state is limited, in the sense that a large part of religious life and experience in Aceh takes place outside the limits of the state, and because the boundaries between ‘state’ and ‘society’ are contingent and subject to continuous re-negotiation. As a result, diverse local actors have affected state Shari‘a as much as state Shari‘a has affected them.

Central in this regard has been the gradual implementation of an Islamic legal system. A new ‘special autonomy’ law passed in 1999 made provisions for Aceh's provincial government to exercise control over aspects of religious life that were previously beyond the domain of state law. This allowed for the creation of a state Shari‘a system in which new government institutions and legislation were created to regulate such issues as Islamic creed, religious symbolism, and public behaviour. However, the impact of Shari‘a on contemporary society in Aceh cannot be reduced to laws and policies. In addition to developing concrete measures (which vary greatly in terms of range and effectiveness), state agents have engaged in an advanced discourse of ‘state Islam’ directed at improving local governance, public behaviour, ‘bad’ or socially disruptive practices, and social deviance. At the same time, the implementation of Shari‘a, or aspects of it, has been the subject of passionate resistance. Efforts to advance an official standard of Islamic morality across the province have led to diverse outcomes dependent on local contexts. Absolutely crucial in this respect is that Shari‘a implementation in Aceh, both as an idea and as a functioning legal system, has been part of a complex political environment, marked by a fragile peace and the consequences of a cataclysmic natural disaster.

The complex political situation in which state Shari‘a was introduced was the result of decades of armed conflict. In 1976, Hasan di Tiro, an Acehnese diplomat, businessman, and grandson of a famous religious teacher from Pidie

VIII PREFACE district (on the Acehnese North coast) founded the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka/ GAM), an organization of armed insurgents fighting for a separate Acehnese state. Driven by a combination of ethno-nationalist ideology and control over natural resources (including large guantities of oil and gas), the Aceh conflict caused more than 28,000 deaths. Besides these casualties (most of which were innocent civilians), people in Aceh, especially those living in rural areas, were subjected to widespread acts of intimidation, displacement and torture, committed both by the Indonesian military and by GAM. On 26 December 2004, shortly after a period of martial law had seemed to dash all hopes to end the conflict, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake and resulting tidal wave—commonly known as the ‘Indian Ocean tsunami'—destroyed much of the provincial capital Banda Aceh and Aceh's West coast, claiming an estimated 170,000 lives across the province (and ten thousands more in other parts of Asia). The disaster accelerated developments in what had been a halting peace process as both sides agreed to a ceasefire. At the same time, domestic as well as foreign relief workers in one of the largest humanitarian interventions in human history acted as informal observers of the truce. In August 2005, a peace treaty was signed in Helsinki, following on negotiations between the Indonesian government and the GAM leadership in exile. As a consequence, GAM was formally disbanded, disarmed—transforming into a political party, Partai Aceh (pa), which took control of Aceh’s provincial government by winning local elections in April 2009. At present, the political situation is stable but fragile, with tensions rising especially around election times.

Aceh’s Islamic legal system was thus established in contexts of dramatic political and social upheaval. At the same time, Shari‘a implementation has to be understood in relation to the deeper and complex history of Islam in Aceh. Aceh has long been regarded as a place where Islam has a pronounced role in society. Its long traditions of Islamic religious scholarship and the prominence of religious leadership have made Aceh an important field for the study of Muslim societies for over a century. In contrast to Java and many other parts of the Indonesian archipelago where, until recently, works of international scholarship have tended to downplay the role of Islam in society, scholars working on Aceh have tended to place considerable emphasis on the social and political roles of Islam. This tradition of scholarship has produced important work covering areas ranging from epigraphy to ethnography, providing a rich background for understanding the historical contexts for contemporary developments. At the same time, the dominant historical and political narrative of Islam in Aceh, and the associated focus on politics and normative Islam, continues to be a source of stereotypes. Images of ‘fanatical’ Acehnese are fed by a history of violent conflicts, going back to the Acehnese resistance against

PREFACE IX

Dutch colonial domination in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Such stereotypes have worked to disguise regional differences, local variations, and significant cultural change.

The role of Shari'a and its representation in scholarly and non-scholarly reports is a case in point. Often, the ‘rebellious nature’ of Aceh is stated as a causal factor in a seemingly self-evident, unidirectional, or unambiguous process of state-directed ‘Islamization. This volume challenges such simplistic views of Acehnese exceptionalism as it focuses on the question of how the implementation of Islamic law and its pronounced agenda of state-directed social change has both influenced, and been shaped by, the complex cultural contexts of a society undergoing dramatic social transformations in the postdisaster, post-conflict period. Together, the chapters in this volume show that, rather than the ‘simple’ result of a pre-ordained cultural identity, Shari‘a law both draws upon, and opens up, a number of complex questions and debates around issues of Acehnese ethnic and political identity, including local contestations about the rights, duties, and moral responsibilities of everyone— ethnically Acehnese or not—who claims to be part of this place and its history.

One side effect of post-tsunami reconstruction and the peace building process was a revival of multi-disciplinary academic research about Aceh. Over the past decade, Indonesian and international researchers flocked to the province in unprecedented numbers to study social and political developments there. At the same time, foreign donors worked together with local universities in projects of academic capacity building. While many of the authors—and all of the editors—have been a part of this development in one way or another, one aspect should be particularly emphasized here. During the conflict, and especially since the 1990s, conducting fieldwork in Aceh was difficult. Thus, while the recent history and politics of Aceh have been relatively well analyzed, grounded ethnographic studies have been extremely rare up until the ending of the conflict. This also explains, at least partly, why the dominant narrative of Acehnese history and society has long been characterized by a focus on formal politics (including the relations between Aceh and Jakarta), the views and experiences of political and religious leaders, and conflict. In contrast, little attention has been given to the ways in which different segments of Acehnese society have dealt with, and tried to influence, the religious norms and regulations established by formal institutions. This volume is part of a much larger effort to address this imbalance.

Many recent publications about Aceh have focused on political institutions, the humanitarian effort, and state-civil society relations. Together they have produced a more complex picture of Aceh than the one that is usually presented in (international and domestic) media. The unprecedented openness

X PREFACE of Aceh has also facilitated the work of a new generation of scholars working on diverse aspects of Islam and society. Exciting new lines of investigation have been directed at the complex ways in which Islamic belief and practice are configured within the everyday experiences of Muslims as they navigate the diverse transformations of society. This volume brings together an international group of researchers who have recently conducted extensive fieldwork on various aspects of Muslim religious life in Aceh, and among different social groups. This work presents insight into diverse expressions and interpretations of Islam all across the province that can help us to better understand the range and extent of ways in which Islam both informs and reflects dynamics of political and cultural change in contemporary Aceh.

Most ofthe chapters are adaptations of papers presented at the international conference “Islam in Contemporary Aceh: Reconfigurations of Ritual, Doctrine, Community and Authority” which was held in Leiden in September 201. They help us to understand how diverse expressions and interpretations of Islam in relation to the current state Shari‘a project have come to inform and reflect broader dynamics of political and cultural change across the province. Given Aceh’s iconic position in the history of Islam in Indonesia, and taking into account the broader field of the anthropology of Muslim societies, this volume aims to contribute to discussions about patterns of continuity and change in the fields of lived experience, the officialization of religious thought and practice, and the role of Shari‘a and the state in contemporary Muslim societies. It starts out with an overview of the process of Shari‘a implementation, and a further elaboration of the central theme of the volume. Subsequent chapters focus on such issues as gender relations, the role of civil society, the drafting of religious laws, leadership dynamics, public morality, punishment, public space, the remaking of everyday life in post-conflict, post-tsunami contexts, and changing ideas about community and individuality. As such, we hope that this book will invite further debate, and help propel and sustain the flowering of Aceh scholarship into a wider field of academic and non-academic discussion.

The editors are grateful to all those whose work and generous support made the 201 conference possible. In particular, we would like to thank Lucis (Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society), who funded the event and the Leiden University faculty who participated, including Léon Buskens, Kees van Dijk and Nico Kaptein. Our discussions there were also significantly enriched by the contributions of Arskal Salim and Daniel Birchok. We are grateful to Jaap Fokkema of vu University Amsterdam, who produced the Aceh administrative map printed here. We would also like to acknowledge all of the encouragement and assistance of Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar, Teddi Dols and Kathy van Vliet at Brill in helping us bring this book to publication, as well as

PREFACE XI the editorial assistance of Hongyan Li and Wajihah Hamid at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute, and an anonymous reviewer for his/her helpful comments.

Strait of Malacca

Indian Ocean 3 ee Singkil

Glossary and Abbreviations

The terms appearing below in italics are from Indonesian/Malay, except where otherwise specifically noted as Arabic (Ar.), Acehnese (Ac.), or Javanese (Jv.).

ABRI adat (Ar) akhirat (Ar) aurat (Ar) azan (Ar) balai

BRR bupati CEDAW dakwah (Ar. dawa)

(Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia) The Indonesian Armed Forces

Local custom

Afterlife

Parts of the body to be covered as required by Islam

Call to prayer

Simple wooden structure used for community gatherings and for religious study

(Badan Rehabilitasi dan Rekonstruksi) Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency

District head

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

Islamic religious propagation

Darul Islam (D1) Armed insurrection against the Indonesian Republic to establish an dayah (Ac.) dhikr (Ar) DPRA

DSI

fatwa (Ar) fikih (Ar. fiqh) GAM geuchik (Ac.) hadith (Ar.) hajj (Ar) hikmah (Ar.) HMI

HRW

HTI

HUDA

Islamic state

Acehnese traditionalist religious school

Sufi ritual ‘remembrance’ of God

(Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Aceh) Aceh Provincial Legislative Assembly

(Dinas Syariat Islam) Aceh’s State Shari‘a Agency

Legal opinion issued by a Muslim jurist

Islamic jurisprudence

(Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) Free Aceh Movement

Village head

Report of the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad

Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca

Wisdom, often with religious connotations

Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam) Islamic Students’ Association Human Rights Watch

Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia) The Indonesian national organization of the trans-national movement Hizb ut-Tahrir

Himpunan Ulama Dayah Aceh) An association of traditionalist ulama in Aceh

GLOSSARY AND ABBREVIATIONS XIII hudud (Ar.) Stipulated Quranic punishments for particular offenses against Islamic law

IAIN (Institut Agama Islam Negeri) State Islamic Studies Institute

ibadat (Ar.) Ritual practice; worship

ICAIOS International Center for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies (Banda Aceh)

ICG International Crisis Group

ICMI (Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia) Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals

ijtihad (Ar.) Independent jurisprudential reasoning in Islamic law

ilmu (Ar.) Literally ‘knowledge, referring in different contexts to religious learning, modern science, or esoteric/magical knowledge iman (Ar) Faith imeum meunasah (Ac.) Village-level religious leader

Jihad (Ar) Literally ‘struggle, used popularly in the sense of ‘holy war’

Jilbab Muslim women's headscarf

JMSPS (Jaringan Masyarakat Sipil Peduli Syariah) An Islamic NGO in Aceh JPUK (Jaringan Perempuan Untuk Kebijakan) A women’s NGO in Aceh kabupaten District

kafir (Ar) Unbeliever, infidel

kecamatan Sub-district

KAMMI (Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Muslim Indonesia) Indonesian Union for

Muslim Student Action kampung (Ac.gampong) Village, or neighbourhood kenduri Religious meal, or celebration

khalwat (Ar) Inappropriate association between marriageable men and women

khamar (Ar) Wine, or intoxicating drink

Kiai (Jv.) Title for the leader of a pesantren

(Hari) Kiamat (Ar.) Judgment Day

kitab kuning Literally ‘yellow books, referring to the religious texts used in traditional institutions of Islamic learning in Southeast Asia (pesantren, dayah, etc.)

KOHATI (Korps HMI-Wati) Women’s wing of the Islamic Students’ Association (HMI)

KPU (Komisi Pemilihan Umum) Election Commission

KTP (Kartu Tanda Penduduk) Indonesian state-issued identity card

LOGA Law on the Governing of Aceh madrasah (Ar.) A‘modern-style’ Islamic religious school in Indonesia Mahkamah Syariah Shari'a Court maisir (Ar) Gambling

XIV majelis taklim

Majelis Ulama merantau meunasah (Ac.) MISPI

MPU

MUDA

GLOSSARY AND ABBREVIATIONS

An assembly for purposes of Islamic learning, often used today for public preaching events

Council of Ulama

Long-term sojourn away from home for purposes of work or education

Traditional village institution, used for basic Islamic education, prayer and other communal functions

Mitra Sejati Perempuan Indonesia) A prominent women’s NGO in Aceh

Majelis Permusyawaratan Ulama) Aceh's provincial-level Ulama Council

Majelis Ulama Daerah Aceh) A provincial-level assocation of ulama

Muhammadiyah Indonesian modernist Islamic mass organization

MUNA Majelis Ulama Nanggroe Aceh) A provincial-level assocation of ulama

MUI Majelis Ulama Indonesia) Indonesian National Ulama Council

New Order The authoritarian developmentalist state under Suharto (1965-1998)

NGO Non-Governmental Organization

NU (Nadhlatul Ulama) Indonesian traditionalist Islamic mass organization

Nyai (Jv.) Wife or daughter of pesantren leader (Java)

PA Partai Aceh) Aceh Party

pemuda ‘Youth’

Perda Peraturan Daerah) Regional level regulations

Perti Persatuan Tarbijah Islamijah) Islamic Educational Movement pesantren (Jv.) PKS

PII

PNS

PPP

PUSA

ganun (Ar.)

Qanun Jinayat rajam (Ar) razia Reformasi RPUK

RTA

Islamic boarding school

Partai Keadilan Sejahtera) Prosperity and Justice Party

Pelajar Islam Indonesia, a national association of Muslim students Pegawai Negeri Sipil) Civil servant

Partai Persatuan Pembangunan) United Development Party Persatuan Ulama Seluruh Aceh) All Aceh Union of Ulama

Term used for regional regulations, including Islamic legislation in contemporary Aceh

Aceh’s Islamic criminal law code

Punishment of death by stoning

‘Raid’ by the police or wH

The post-New Order period of ‘Reform’ in Indonesia

(Relawan Perempuan untuk Kemanusiaan) Women’s Volunteers for Humanity

Rabitah Taliban Aceh, an organization of students and alumni of traditional Islamic boarding schools (dayah) in Aceh

GLOSSARY AND ABBREVIATIONS XV santri dayah (Ac.)

Satpol PP SIRA sosialisasi

Shari‘a

syiar (Ar. shiar) tarekat (Ar.) Teuku (Ac.) Teungku (Ac.) ulama (Ar)

Students from Aceh’s traditional Islamic schools (Satuan Polisi Pamong Praja) Civilian police force (Sentral Informasi Referendum Aceh) Aceh Referendum Information Center Term commonly used in connection with projects for the public promotion of state Shari'a Literally ‘path’ or ‘way; commonly translated as ‘Islamic law’ ‘Symbolism’ of Islam Sufi order Title used by the traditional Acehnese landed nobility (uleebalang) Title used for Acehnese ulama Islamic religious scholar; in Indonesia, this plural form is also used for an individual scholar (Ar. alim)

uleebalang (Ac.) The traditional Acehnese landed nobility umat (Ar. umma) Islamic community

UNIFEM

wali nanggroe WH

YICM

zina (Ar)

United Nations Development Fund for Women Symbolic ‘head of state’

(Wilayatul Hisbah) Aceh’s ‘Shari‘a police’

Yayasan Insan Cita Madani, an Acehnese NGO Fornication, or adultery

List of Maps

1 Administrative map of Aceh XI 2 The Acehnese diaspora in the world 215

List of Contributors

R. Michael Feener

is Research Leader of the Religion and Globalization Research Cluster at the Asia Research Institute and Associate Professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore. Previously he taught at Reed College and the University of California, Riverside. He has also held visiting professor positions and research fellowships at Harvard, Kyoto University, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), the University of Copenhagen, The Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art (Honolulu), and the International Institute for Asian Studies (11As) in Leiden, the Netherlands. His research focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of Islam in Southeast Asia. His previous books on Aceh include Shari'a and Social Engineering: The Implementation of Islamic Law in Contemporary Aceh, Indonesia (Oxford University Press, 2013); and two volumes co-edited with Patrick Daly & Anthony Reid: From the Ground Up: Perspectives on Post-Tsunami and Post-Conflict Aceh (1SEAS Press, 2012); and Mapping the Acehnese Past (KITLV Press, 2011).

Annemarie Samuels

is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam. She received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Leiden University in 2012 for a dissertation about the remaking of everyday life after the tsunami in Aceh. She is currently revising her dissertation for publication and working on a new ethnographic research project that focuses on HIV/AIDS, morality and care in Aceh. Her publications on Aceh include: “Narratives of Uncertainty: The Affective Force of Child-Trafficking Rumors in Postdisaster Aceh,” American Anthropologist (2015), “‘Aceh Thanks the World’: The Possibilities of the Gift in a Post-disaster Society,” Anthropology Today (2013), and “Moving from Great Love: Gendered Mobilities in a Post-Tsunami Relocation Neighborhood in Aceh, Indonesia,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2012).

David Kloos is a researcher at KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden, The Netherlands. He obtained his PhD at vu University Amsterdam (2013) on the basis of an historical and anthropological study of religious practice and authority in Aceh, which is currently being revised for publication. His current research project, “Female Islamic Leadership and Visual Rhetoric in Southeast Asia,’ explores the ways in which female religious authorities in Malaysia and Indonesia make use of visual

XVIII LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS images to communicate with their audience. Publications on Aceh include: “A Crazy State? Violence, Psychiatry, and Colonialism in Aceh, Indonesia, ca. 1910— 1942,” Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde (2014) and “In the Name of Syariah? Vigilante Violence, Territoriality, and Moral Authority in Aceh, Indonesia,’ Indonesia (2014).

Kristina Großmann

is Assistant Professor at the Chair of Comparative Development and Cultural Studies—Southeast Asia at the University of Passau, Germany. Her main research interests are: theories of action, gender studies, processes of modernization, Islam, peace and conflict studies as well as social and political ecology in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia. Her recent publications include the book Gender, Islam, Aktivismus: Handlungsrdéume muslimischer Aktivistinnen nach dem Tsunami in Aceh | Gender, Islam, Activism: Scopes of Acting of Muslim Activists in Aceh after the Tsunami] (Berlin: Regiospectra, 2013); Handbuch Indonesien [Handbook Indonesia], co-edited with Gunnar Stange and Rolf Jordan (Angermiinde: Horlemann, 2015); and the chapter: “Contested Unity in Diversity: Indonesia’—Muslim Women and Violent Political Protest, in the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. (Brill online, 2014; general editor: Suad Joseph).

Dina Afrianty

is a lecturer and researcher at the State Islamic University in Jakarta, Indonesia. She is currently working for The Asia Foundation in the Civil Society Strengthening Program and for the Legal Reform Component of Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Justice. Dina Afrianty is a research fellow at the Center for Social Difference at Columbia University and an associate of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, University of Melbourne. She is an Endeavor Post- Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Eka Srimulyani is Professor at the State Islamic University (UIN) Ar-Raniry, and was trained in Islamic Studies at Leiden University and Asia-Pacific Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Between 2010 and 2012 she was a research fellow at 114s within the framework of a KNAW postdoctoral fellowship. She is also a senior researcher at The International Centre for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies (ICAIOS). Her research focuses on (Muslim) women and education. She published a book titled Women from Traditional Islamic Educational Institutions in Indonesia: Negotiating Public Spaces (Amsterdam University Press, 2012) and several articles and book chapters including: “Muslim Women and Education

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS XIX in Indonesia: The Pondok Pesantren Experience,” Asia Pacific Journal of Education (2007); “Pesantren Seblak of Jombang East Java: Women’s Educational Leadership,’ Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs (2008); “Negotiating Public Space: Three Nyai Generations in a Jombang Pesantren,” in: Indonesian Islam in a New Era: How Women Negotiate their Muslim Identities, edited by Susan Blackburn, Bianca Smith and Siti Syamsiyatun, Monash Asia Institute (2008); and “Gender in Contemporary Acehnese Dayah: Moving Beyond Docile Agency?” in: Gender and Power in Indonesian Islam: Leaders, Feminists, Sufis and Pesantren Selves, edited by Bianca J. Smith and Mark Woodward, Routledge (2014).

Reza Idria

is a lecturer at the State Islamic University (UIN) Ar-Raniry, Banda Aceh. He obtained his Ma in Islamic Studies from Leiden University, the Netherlands (2010). Currently, he is a PhD student in Social Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Gsas), Harvard University, usa. He is co-founder of Komunitas Tikar Pandan and research fellow at the International Centre for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies (1cA10S) in Banda Aceh.

Benjamin Otto studied Criminology at vu University Amsterdam. In 2009 he lived in Banda Aceh fora period of six months to conduct research for his Ma thesis. Previously he lived in Bandung and Yogyakarta where he learned Indonesian and worked as an intern for Lembaga Bantuan Hukum. Currently he works as a detective at the Amsterdam Police Department.

Jan Michiel Otto

is Professor of law and governance in developing countries at Leiden University, where he heads the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance, and Development. He is lead author and editor of Sharia incorporated: A Comparative Overview of the Legal Systems of Twelve Muslim Countries in Past and Present (2010). Prof. Otto has been trained in law and development administration and spent long periods of fieldwork in Egypt and Indonesia. Recently he co-authored and co-edited Searching for Justice in Post-Gaddafi Libya: A Socio- Legal Exploration of People’s Concerns and Institutional Responses at Home and From Abroad (2013).

XX LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Antje Missbach

studied Southeast Asian Studies and Anthropology at the Humboldt University in Berlin. In 2010 she obtained her PhD from the Australian National University in Canberra for a thesis about the long-distance politics of the Acehnese diaspora. She has taught at universities in Berlin and Heidelberg before becoming a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Currently she is a lecturer at the Department of Anthropology at Monash University in Melbourne. Her research has been supported by the Australian Research Council, Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung, and the German-Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Her main research areas center on transit migration, diaspora politics as well as border and mobility studies.

Chapter 1

R. Michael Feener

Aceh has experienced dramatic social change over the past decade, with devastating natural disaster followed by unprecedentedly ambitious projects of reconstruction and development! The shock of this unforeseen tragedy redefined priorities, transformed conversations about the future of Acehnese society, and accelerated ongoing negotiations to bring an end to armed conflict in the region. The peace agreement was formally concluded in July 2005 at Helsinki, bringing to an end decades of violent struggle between the Indonesian central government and the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka/GAM). These developments contributed to the establishment of a level of stability that allowed for attention to be refocused on issues of social order under a civilian administration—which in turn set the stage for a reworking of the earlier special autonomy measures that provided for the state implementation of Islamic law. It also greatly facilitated the work of international development agencies and NGOs to carry out massive projects of reconstruction in Aceh. Consequently, enormous amounts of money flowed in, allowing a range of international NGOs to field-test their latest theories of linking disaster relief and recovery with longer-term, future-oriented development projects.

Under the popular motto of “Building Back Better,” reconstruction in Aceh looked beyond purely physical rebuilding to include also a broad range of programs aimed at the improvement of economic and social conditions. This ambitious constellation of projects aimed not only to manage the reconstruction of homes and physical infrastructure in disaster-affected areas, but also to construct and implement new models of quality assurance, transparency, good governance, and gender equity in post-tsunami Aceh. Well beyond the

1 Research for this chapter was undertaken partially with the support of the Singapore Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund (MoE AcRF # R-110-000-029-750). I would like to thank Mahdi Abdullah Syihab for his invaluable assistance in collecting some of the primary materials consulted for this study, as well as Prasenjit Duara, Ben Arps, Julius Bautista, Philip Fountain, Arif Jamal, Jeremy Kingsley, Deepa Nair, Liang Yongjia, Yijiang Zhong, Annemarie Samuels, David Kloos, and all the participants at the Leiden workshop for their critical comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

specific projects of the state, international development organizations, and NGOs, Acehnese public discourse became saturated with ideals and idioms of ‘improvement’ during the post-tsunami/post-conflict period. In fields ranging from physical infrastructure to Islamic law, there developed an expansive vision of ‘total reconstruction’ that would remake Aceh literally from the ground up.? Combined with the euphoric discourses surrounding the dawn of a new peace, in a region long plagued by violent conflict, reconstruction projects fostered the emergence of possibilities for creating a ‘new Aceh’ that would transform the lives of a people who had suffered so much war and devastation.

As Annemarie Samuels (2012) has demonstrated, the higher-level policy discussions of reconstruction and economic development were elaborated within more diffuse projects of the ‘remaking of everyday life’ In her contribution to this volume, she turns attention to the diverse narratives of ‘improvement’ that have been developed and deployed by individuals in Aceh to help them explain and understand the tragedy. These processes involved some significant reconfigurations of local understandings of Islam, including its place within the personal experience of individuals in relation to broader aspects of social life. These diverse experiences and interpretations of Islam in contemporary Aceh continue to draw on a rich and complex constellation of traditions, growing out of the region’s historical religious and cultural legacies. This volume aims to open a set of windows on to these developments through studies highlighting the diversity of ways in which Muslims in Aceh have worked to negotiate these dramatic social transformations. The importance here lies not only in a richer empirical picture of recent developments there, but also in helping to develop a more nuanced critical perspective on relations between Islamic doctrine and practice, official government institutions, civil society organizations, and the experiences of individual Muslims in local communities. This move to provide a more diverse and complex matrix of understandings and experiences within which to contextualize the provincial government's project of Shari‘a social engineering is what we intend here by the idea of looking at Islam ‘beyond the limits of the state.’

The contributors to this volume pursue this idea through a series of ethnographic explorations of cases ranging from NGOs and diaspora politics to female ulama and punk rockers. In order to provide some broader contexts for these discussions, this introductory essay will begin with an historical overview

2 For more on the processes of reconstruction, see Daly, Feener, and Reid (2012).

3 The overview of Aceh's state Shari‘a system presented on the pages that follow uses material drawn from my recent monograph on the subject (Feener 2013). More extensive discussions of particular points and full citations to primary source material can be found there.

of Islam in Aceh, with a focus on those aspects that have significantly informed the contemporary cases presented in the chapters that follow.“

Aceh’s Historical Legacies as an ‘Abode of Islam’

The northern tip of Sumatra has been home to some of the earliest Muslim port polities in the Indonesian Archipelago. From the late thirteenth century, their courts patronized Islamic scholars and Sufis from across the Islamic world; and they brought with them diverse models of belief and practice that have left a continuing imprint on the subsequent development of Islam in Aceh. In the seventeenth century, the court of Aceh’s sultans was the site of pronounced competition between different forms of Sufism, as their proponents competed for royal favour. With the waning of the sultanate’s power and control over its once extensive domains in the eighteenth century, new forms of Islam made inroads, resulting in further reconfigurations—particularly with regard to the development of Sufi orders beyond the circles of the court. During the nineteenth century, local Muslim leaders drawing on aspects of these traditions of Sufism emerged to mobilize resistance to the incursion of the Dutch. The Dutch launched their first invasion of Aceh in 1873, in response to which the Acehnese waged a long war of anti-colonial resistance cast in terms of a jihad in the defence of Islam against invading infidels. Calls for these campaigns of resistance drew on the traditions of activist Sufism that had taken root in the region over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—including the Sumatran scholar ‘Abd al-Samad al-Palimbani (al-Jawi)’s treatise on jihad.5 Over the late nineteenth century, these ideas of Islamic mysticism and militant mobilization came to be expressed through a new genre of ‘holy war’ texts in Acehnese verse, generally referred to as Hikayat Prang Sabi.®