joll, c. m. (2012). local & global islams in sea - historical and anthropological perspectives....

Local and Global Islams in Southeast Asia 219

Chapter 9

Local and Global Islams inSoutheast Asia: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives

Christopher M. Joll

Introduction

The marginalisation of Islam in Southeast Asian studies is a trend bemoaned by historians and anthropologists. Michael Laffan (2003a: 9) argues that this situation is connected to the conceptions of centre and periphery: Islam is peripheral to Southeast Asia and Southeast Asia peripheral to Islam. Robert Hefner (1997: 8) refers to studies of Southeast Asian Muslim societies suffering a dual marginalisation by anthropologists and religious historians. The former conceive Islam as an intrusive cultural force or an ill-fitting, and improperly worn, outer garment. This has led to anthropologists privileging the local over the global, with only occasional references being made to Islam. Neglect by historians permits accusations of the peripheral nature of Islam in Southeast Asia, where Islamic faith and practice are more ‘diluted’ than in its Middle Eastern centre. More than eloquent evaluations of the trends this chapter seeks to address, these assessments anticipate how I propose to achieve them. The discussion begins with an analysis of how historians have characterised Southeast Asia as peripheral to the Muslim world whose symbolic centre is located the Middle East. After briefly considering the importance of the Indian Ocean trade in Islam’s initial Southeast Asian expansion, I

220 Social Science and Knowledge in a Globalising World

highlight the role played by advances in transport and communication in strengthening this connection. I note that these developments occurred at the same time as the rise of modernist and reformist movements. The second half of the chapter deals with how anthropologists have conceptualised local and global Islams in Southeast Asia. I summarise how the proposals forwarded by Robert Redfield, Clifford Geertz and Ernest Gellner have been responded to by the anthropology of Islam. These preface my presentation of how this discourse has conceived Muslim diversity, the nature of Southeast Asian adat (custom) and the ethnographic significance of globally normative ‘ibadat (obedient submission), texts and traditions.

Historical Perspectives

A number of claims and counterclaims have been made about the concepts of centre and periphery in the Muslim world. Anthony Johns (1995) argues that the resemblance of the name of Southeast Asia’s first sultan (Malik al-Saleh of Pasai) to that of the famous Ayyubid ruler al-Malik al-Salih (d. 1249) at the very least indicates an awareness of events in the Middle East. According to Laffan (2003a: 16), the significance of newly converted rajas speaking of dar al-Islam (abode of Islam), and adopting titles such as sultan and caliph, is that they were conscious of being incorporated into the wider Muslim world which (before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) possessed no clear political centre. As I note below, the timing of Islam’s expansion into Southeast Asia has been linked by some commentators to the sacking by Mongol forces of the important Islamic centre of Baghdad in 1258. There is a growing scholarly consensus that Southeast Asia was connected to – not separated from – the Middle East via the Indian Ocean. Not only was the Indian Ocean the vector through which Islam impacted on Southeast Asia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but the region’s continued connection to the Middle East ensured that religious developments in the centre influenced Islamic practices in Southeast Asia. Below I provide an outline of the principal processes and personalities involved in both Islam’s initial expansion to Southeast Asia and the region’s ongoing religious rejuvenation by religious developments in the Middle East.


Islam’s initial entry into Southeast Asia prominently featured members of ‘creole’ Arab (mainly Hadhrami) and Indian communities along the Indian Ocean trade routes between the Middle East and China. Southeast Asians residing in city states such as Pasai in northern Sumatra also played important roles in its subsequent spread to other parts of port city states (see Riddell, 2001: 41–43, 56–59). Boats travelling between Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern emporiums had begun transporting pilgrims as well as produce from earliest times. The hardships of the journey meant would-be haji (male pilgrim) and hajah (female pilgrim) spent extended periods in the Hijaz (Mecca and Medina), meaning they not only returned possessing status and spiritual power but also religious knowledge. Such pilgrims exerted considerable influence on the nature of the local Islams upon their return. The connection between the Southeast Asian periphery and the Middle Eastern centre increased following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and introduction of modern steamers in the decades that followed. These developments reduced the previously demanding journey to the Middle East to a two-week trip. By the 1890s small sailing vessels transporting independent pilgrims had disappeared from the Indian Ocean. Despite Dutch restrictions in the form of passports and haji exams, and the Ottoman authorities applying stricter sanitary sanctions on pilgrims, by the late nineteenth century the number of Southeast Asia pilgrims had increased dramatically. Laffan (2003a: 36, 49) claims that by 1894 the Javanese were the largest single group present every year at Mount ‘Arafat. It is ironic that it was European control of rail and sea links that led to the increased local impact of significant religious developments in Islam’s Middle Eastern centre. In addition to increasing the number of Southeast Asians who travelled to the Middle East, steam travel also increased immigration to Southeast Asia. In 1870, for example, 13,000 Hadhramis resettled to Southeast Asia (Ibid.: 36). Not only did the number of pilgrims increase in this period but larger numbers of Southeast Asian Muslims also travelled to the Middle East primarily for education. Marriages of Southeast Asian students to Arabs in the Hijaz produced locally-born children who emerged as important mediators between Arab and Jawi strands of the Islamic discourse (Ibid.: 69; Roff, 1967: 32ff). For example, Shaykh Wan Ahmad bin Muhammad Zain Mustafa al-Fatani (the relative of Sheikh Daud bin Abdullah al-Fatani) became one of the leading scholars at Masjid


al-Haram, and one of the few non-Arab ‘alim (legal scholar) appointed by the Sharif of Mecca to represent the Shafiite madhhab (school of jurisprudence). A prolific author, Shaykh Wan Ahmad penned up to 160 original and annotated works dealing with Islamic sciences, medicine, history and politics, in both Malay and Arabic. His prominence is testified to by the famous Dutch adviser on Islam in the East Indies, Snouck Hurgronje, who acknowledged him as ‘a savant of merit’ (Mohammad Redzuan, 1998: 147). Just as steamers predated present haj tourism facilitated by air travel, Jawi printing presses preceded the entry of a range of Islamic ideas through the internet. The Ottoman press known as al-Matba’a al-Miriyya al-Ka’ina was established in Mecca in 1884. This was placed under the direction of Shaykh Wan Ahmad, which further increased his influence.1 Further, Shaykh Wan Ahmad became one of a number of Hijaz-based scholars to respond to religious questions asked by Southeast Asia Muslims. The Egyptian modernist journal al-Manar (The Lighthouse), which from 1898 was edited by Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935), inspired the Jawi publication al-Imam (The Leader/The Guide) which was published in Singapore between 1906 and 1908.2 That the goal of al-Imam was the dissemination of the reformist goals of al-Manar in the Malay world is confirmed by many of its articles being (sometimes elaborate) Malay translations of al-Manar. Al-Imam was the most widely read journal in the Malay world before the Second World War, with a circulation of 5,000 at its height. After al-Imam’s demise in 1908, al-Munir (The Illuminating) was published in Padang, West Sumatra, for five years from 1911 under the editorship of Haji Abdullah Ahmad (1878–1933). Al-Munir also had a wide circulation and was influential among the Malay Muslim intelligentsia (see Azra, 1999). Al-Ikhwan, published from 1926, was another journal which bore strong resemblance to Al-Imam (Mohammad Redzuan, 2005). The 1920s was a tumultuous decade in the Muslim world. The demise

1 Mohammad Redzuan Othman also notes a number of other Malay printing presses to have emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Al-Maktaba al-Fataniyya was established by Shaykh Wan Ahmad in Qashashiyah; Matba’a al-Taraqqi al-Majidiyya and al-Matba’a al-Shayqiyya were located in Jeddah.

2 Al-Iman was financed by a Singaporean limited company, Al-Imam Printing Company, whose S$20,000 capital was provided by the reformists Shaykh Mohd Salim al-Khalali, Sayyid Shaykh al-Hadi, Sayyid Hassan bin Shahab and Sayyid Muhammad bin Aqil.


of the Ottoman caliphate and the successful conquest of Mecca and Medina by Wahhabi forces in 1924 had an impact on the entire Islamic world – including Southeast Asia. The Wahhabiyya movement was born out of an alliance in the late eighteenth century between Muhammad Ibn Saud (d. 1765) and the Hanbalite scholar Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1787).3 Their 1924 victory had been preceded by a series of victories in the early nineteenth century in which they captured Mecca (1803) and Medina (1805) before their defeat in 1818 by an Egyptian viceroy sent by the Ottoman caliph. Southeast Asia traditionalists (kaum tua) residing in Mecca in 1924 were deeply disturbed by Wahhabi actions. Not only were there many Jawi fatalities but traditionalist practices were forcibly suppressed, such as visitation (ziarah) to tombs in Mecca and Medina which also served as the gathering place for Sufi orders. While Southeast Asian reformists (kaum muda) hailed the eradication of such illegitimate innovation (bid’ah), these actions resulted in large numbers of Jawi returning en masse. In January 1926 a meeting in Surabaya of twelve ulama led by Hasyim Ashari (1875–1947) and Abdul Wahab Chasbullah led to the formation of Nahdlatul Ulama (Awakening of the Ulama), which sought to provide domestic support for a Javanese delegation to Mecca to express their concerns. As is well known, Nahdlatul Ulama is one of the largest independent Muslim organisations in the world, which was established 14 years after the modernist Muhammadiyah movement by Kiai Haji Ahmad Dahlan, in 1912. While Nahdlatul Ulama responded to reformist activism, Muhammadiyah sought to propagate Muhammad Abdul’s agenda to modernise Islam. The establishment of modernist madrasas and universities were considered to be crucial to both the development of a modern and progressive Islam capable of responding to Western colonial rule and an emphasis on a return to the Qur’an and sunnah as revealed in the Hadith against the syncretic elements of traditionalist Islam. The establishment of Muhammadiyah followed the Padri War of Minangkabau in the previous century which was inspired by returning pilgrims (referred to by Dutch authorities as ‘padris’ or ‘padres’) who sought to assert a puritanical expression of ‘scripturalist piety over the prevailing social order’ similar to the Arabian Wahhabiyya

3 Those associated with the Wahhabi and Wahhabiyya movement rarely, if ever, refer to themselves as such, preferring muwahhidun (unitarians).


(Laffan, 2003: 399). Another development which occurred in the 1920s was that, under the leadership of Rashid Rida, the Salafiyya movement merged with the Saudi Wahhabi movement. While the latter represents revivalist Hanbali Islam in the Arabian peninsula, the former draws from all four schools of Islamic jurisprudence. Its name derives from al-Salaf al-Salih (venerable ancestors), namely the Prophet Muhammad and the four rightly-guided caliphs of seventh century Arabia.4 Particularly following Saudi Arabia’s acquisition of economic power and concerns to counter resurgent Shiism in the 1970s, some claim the broader-based Salafiyya movement has been increasingly eclipsed by the Saudi-based movement. Both have played a part in the Islamic resurgence in Southeast Asia. Before considering conceptions of global and local Islams let us ask what anthropologists appreciative of the importance of past processes might learn from above. First, the expansion of these religious developments to Southeast Asia confirms its connection to the Middle East through the Indian Ocean. Second, these developments were mediated by members of the creole Arab and Indian communities along the Indian Ocean trading routes, which also featured in Islam’s initial entry to Southeast Asia. Developments in transport and printed media strengthened Southeast Asia’s connections to the Middle East at a time when a range of modernist and reformist Islamic movements were beginning to have a wide impact on Muslim thought and practice. Although most of the ‘major streams of thinking and practice in the Middle East have made their way to Southeast Asia’, Southeast Asian Muslims have been selective in their appropriation and application. Along with preexisting Islamic and non-Islamic features of local religious practices, such selective appropriation and indigenisation led to Southeast Asian forms of Islam resembling their Middle Eastern antecedents but with some distinguishing features (Bubalo and Fealy, 2005: 16).

4 More than a movement (which adherents claim has the potential to detract devotion to Islam) the Salafiyya are defined by methodology (manhaj) emphasising: (1) The authoritative example of the seventh century al-Salaf al-Salih; (2) ijtihad (rational reasoning) over taqlid (blind imitation); (3) the eradication of bida’ah (illegitimate religious innovation); and (4) mentoring (mulazamah) with Salafiyya mentors in the Middle East.


Anthropological Conceptions

These historical perspectives provide a helpful preface to the theoretically-informed appraisal of anthropological conceptions of local and global Islams that follows. Below I briefly consider the work of Robert Redfield (1956), Clifford Geertz (1960, 1968) and Ernest Gellner (1968, 1969). Even their fiercest critics are forced to acknowledge their influence on how an entire generation of anthropologists studied Muslim societies. I am particularly concerned to highlight how critiques of Redfield, Geertz and Gellner provided the impetus for a discourse commonly referred to as the anthropology of Islam.5 Rather than a school or a movement, the anthropology of Islam is best conceived as an eclectic discourse concerned with the discussion of the theoretical and methodological issues of conducting ethnographic research in Muslim societies. While Robert Launay’s (1992: 1) claim that Geertz’s Islam Observed helped give birth to the anthropology of Islam might be an overstatement, the earliest articles referring to the anthropology of Islam responded especially to Geertz. These include the important contributions by Abdul Hamid El-Zein (1977), Talal Asad (1983, 1986), Richard Antoun (1976a, 1976b), Dale Eickelman (1981, 1982), Veena Das (1984) and Lila Abu-Lughod (1989). Thirty years after the publication of Geertz’s Islam Observed, a growing number of anthropologists had either explicitly articulated their conceptions of the anthropology of Islam or had exemplified alternative approaches to doing anthropology in Islamic contexts (see, for example, Braten, 1999; Lindholm, 1995, 2002; Lukens-Bull, 1999; Manger, 1999; Roff, 1985a, 1987, 2003; Rosen, 2002; Rutherford, 2002; Starrett, 1997; Tapper 1995; Bowen, 1984, 1989, 1992, 1993a, 1993b, 1995; Woodward, 1988, 1989, 1993; El-Aswad, 2002; van Bruinessen 1999b, 2000). Daniel Varisco and Gabriele Marranci

5 I note that this is distinct from ‘Islamic anthropology’, an element of Ismail Al-Faruqi’s (1982) epistemological Islamisation of knowledge project. One of its leading articulators, Akbar S. Ahmed (1988: 56), defines Islamic anthropology as ‘the study of Muslim groups by scholars committed to the universalistic principles of Islam – humanity, knowledge, tolerance – relating micro village tribal studies in particular to the larger historical and ideological frameworks of Islam’. Merryl Wyn Davies (1988: 8) comments on Islamic anthropology blending theory and method, thereby redefining anthropology as subordinate to Islam’s distinct conceptual and civilisational fabric. For a review of Islamic anthropology see Tapper (1995).


have recently emerged as the anthropology of Islam’s most important articulators through the publication of Varisco’s Islam Obscured: The Rhetoric of Anthropological Representation (2005) and Marranci’s The Anthropology of Islam (2008). Marranci also founded the journal Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life in 2007 (that Varisco coedits) which has increasingly served as one of its principal forums. Let us now consider how Redfield, Geertz and Gellner conceptualised local and global Islams, and how other anthropologists of Muslim societies have assessed these.

Redfield, Geertz and Gellner and theEmergence of the Anthropology of Islam

Redfield, in his influential Peasant Society and Culture (1956), proposed specifically local variants or ‘little’ traditions to occur alongside globally normative ‘great’ traditions. The employment of Redfield’s ideas in studies of local and global Islam has been extensively scrutinised. Dale Eickelman (1987: 18) regards Redfield’s proposal as superior to its predecessors, whether regarding folk traditions as vestiges or ‘survivals’ of earlier civilisations less permeable to change than ‘high culture’ or R.O. Winstedt’s (1947) philological framework in which Malay culture allegedly consisted of layers – the last of which is Islam. Indeed, John Bowen (1995: 77–78) discerns Winstedt to have informed Geertz’s conception of Javanese Islam as being a cultural complex consisting of an abangan substratum onto which Hindu, then Islamic, edifices were erected. Varisco (2005: 152) acknowledges Redfield’s proposal to have originally represented a plea for interdisciplinary collaboration between anthropologists who studied ‘little’ local traditions and textual specialists concerned with global ‘great’ traditions. Redfield (1956: 86, 98) himself cautioned against anthropologists ignoring the interactions between these ‘little’ and ‘great’ traditions. Despite such concerns for traditions being simply juxtaposed without attention to the complex interrelationships between them (Ibid.: 72, 96), those applying Redfield’s ideas to the study of local Islam to have done just that. Ron Lukens-Bull (1999: 5) notes that ‘little’ traditions are required for a ‘great’ tradition to spread. In other words, universalisation and parochialisation occur simultaneously. While the former transforms local traditions into ‘great’ ones, the latter ensures


that ‘great’ traditions are learned and shaped into ‘little’ traditions. This is a process requiring the translation of symbols that are meaningful to the local culture. Lukens-Bull adds that the utility of Redfield’s proposals is dramatically reduced in contexts such as Southeast Asia which exhibit influences from Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam (Ibid.: 8). Although Abdul Hamid El-Zein’s (1977: 252) dismissal of the little/great dichotomy relates to its ignorance of attempts by the Islamic elite to dominate the discourse, Bowen (1993b: 4) criticises anthropologists for emphasising distinctively local Muslim ritual complexes but failing to acknowledge the commonalities they share with Muslims elsewhere. Asad (1986: 6) alleges that Redfield led anthropologists to assert that neither form of Islam can claim to be more real than the other. While Redfield’s references to local and global Islams as ‘little’ and ‘great’ traditions are widely dismissed as a bit too little and not so great, what are the main observations of Geertz’s proposals in The Religion of Java and Islam Observed? In The Religion of Java (a title in which the word Islam is conspicuously absent) Geertz describes the three distinct ‘worldviews’ or traditions of village abangan, modernist santri and the prijaji who were the elites of Javanese syncretism. Islam Observed, by contrast, compares the Islamic beliefs and institutions of Morocco and Java. Geertz (1968: 20) notes that although these drew on the same general set of symbols, they were configured in these contexts in radically different ways. In both locales the interaction between Islam and the social climate resulted in both particularisation and generalisation. In both Java and Morocco Islamic mysticism was more susceptible to particularisation than what Geertz terms ‘scripturalist’ Islam. Although Asad accuses Geertz of ethnographic thinness (1983: 214) Hefner hails Geertz’s ‘brilliant’ ethnographic insights before noting his somewhat careless historical generalisations. Hefner (1997: 14) also suggests that Geertz was unknowingly influenced by the biases of his modernist informants who were ‘all too willing to misrepresent their less orthodox Javanese rivals as un-Islamic Hindus’. This led him to identify ‘an array of devotional practices as non-Islamic because they were inconsistent with the modernist Islam’. In this point Bowen (1995: 78) agrees: Geertz captured the tensions and schisms of Java in the early 1950s. Mark Woodward (1996: 31) views The Religion of Java as an elegant restatement of colonial depictions of Islam. Varisco’s (2005: 22) criticism


relates to Geertz’s ‘symbol-driven reading of Islam-as-a-cultural-system’ which he views as having been ‘reflexively disenfranchised with the arrest of meta-theorising’ (2005: 22). The most enduring criticisms of Geertz’s are his exaggeration of Hindu–Buddhist influences, oversimplified Islamic ones and his preference to speak in terms of a split – rather than pluralism – existing within Islamic traditions. These ultimately contributed to a generation of scholars going further than he had himself intended with the end result being the marginalisation of Islam in Southeast Asian studies. Such studies assert that local ancestor cults and spirit beliefs are alien to Islam without making any comparison with other local Islams. Marshall Hodgson (1974: 551) notes some abangan practices resembling those of Egyptians peasants recorded by Edward Lane a century earlier (1999b: 46). My own data on Qur’anic recitations being regarded as food for the souls of the deceased (Joll, 2011: 110) resemble those of El-Aswad (2002: 158). Van Bruinessen argues that contact with the Middle East facilitated the adoption of ‘scripturalist’ Islam, mysticism and elements of Arabian adat into Southeast Asia – before pointing out the irony of the rejection of mysticism by some returning pilgrims despite these having originated from Mecca where they had recently been. Geertz’s Islam Observed was published the same year as Gellner’s seminal article ‘Flux and reflux in the faith of men’ (1968), that was followed a year later by his study of Moroccan Islam, Saints of the Atlas (1969). The studies by Geertz and Gellner have a lot in common. Not only are they pioneering ethnographic studies of Muslim societies but Islam Observed also compares local and global Islams in Java and Morocco. Gellner’s representation and analysis of Islam also resembles those by Geertz. Gellner refers to high scripturalist or shari’a-oriented Islam and its low, or folk, equivalent. He postulates that periods of scripturalist dominance were followed by relapses into emotional, mystical and magical folk Islam. Furthermore, the urbanisation and mass literacy brought about by modernity further unsettled the balance between these. The result was an erosion of folk Islam that leads to a shift to scripturalist Islam. In other words, Gellner argues for an inevitable shift from the ‘classical styles’ of Islam – the miracle-working and mystical maraboutism – to the dry scripturalism of urban scholars.


Despite his lingering influence, Gellner’s proposals have been extensively criticised. Harry Munson (1993) argues that his depictions of Sufism as Islam’s popular, rural, ecstatic, illiterate variant are undermined by the existence of literate urban Sufis who resemble ‘high’ scripturalists. Suggestions that Sufism was synonymous with ‘popular’ Islam is complicated by Sufi sheiks who function both as experts in fiqh (jurisprudence) and leaders of ‘popular’ practices such as ecstatic rites, exoticisms and healings in which scripture is invoked (van Bruinessen, 2000). Having presented these critiques of Redfield, Geertz and Gellner, I delineate below how those involved in the anthropology of Islam have conceptualised Muslim diversity, local adat, and established the importance in ethnographic studies of Muslim societies of ‘ibadat, texts and traditions.

Muslim Diversity

Like taxidermy, William Roff cautions scholars against unleashing their passion for taxonomy on the living. While regarding many taxonomic projects as misguided, Roff acknowledges the attractiveness of attempting to ‘understand, and reduce to descriptive and analytical order, phenomena associated with the translation of a major religious system from the culture … in which it arose and … formed to the substantially different cultures of Southeast Asia’ (1985a: 8). Abdul Hamid El-Zein (1977: 227–54) has concerns with anthropologists who uncritically adopt the attitude of philologists and religious historians. Not only are syncretistic variants and accretions condemned as inadequately ordered, objective and complete, but theological positions vis-à-vis local traditions are also taken by anthropologists oblivious that assertions of a pure and well-defined essentialised Islam are problematic. El-Zein calls on anthropologists to replace the monolithic term ‘Islam’ with ‘Islams’. More recently, André Möller has criticised anthropologists who evaluate local Islams as being ‘in constant contradiction with scriptural or normative Islam’. In Figure 9.1 I reproduce Möller’s (2005b: 51, 53) depiction of Redfield’s and Gellner’s conceptions. These are juxtaposed with other more neutral terms in Figure 9.2.


Great tradition Scholarly Islam

Official IslamNormative Islam

Universalist IslamFormal Islam

Little traditionFolk Islam

Popular IslamLocal Islam

Received IslamInformal Islam

Figure 9.1 Redfield’s and Gellner’s Binaries Figure 9.2 Alternative Binaries For Möller (2005b: 53) the inadequacy of these conceptualisations of Muslim diversity is located in their failure to address the creative tensions which exist between these entities. Motivated by his concern to situate these Islams on the same level, without privileging any expression as more Islamic than another and to avoid any suggestion of there being a perpetual antagonism between them, Möller presents a horizontal reorientation of Figure 9.2 in Figure 9.3.

Official IslamNormative Islam

Universalist IslamFormal Islam

Popular IslamLocal Islam

Received IslamInformal Islam

Figure 9.3 Horizontal Reorientation of Binaries

El-Aswad’s (2002: 6) principle objection to anthropologists’ acceptance of such binaries is their implicit disregard for emic perspectives: such terms are neither recognised nor accepted by Muslims who conceive of only one Islam. Although referring to ‘normative’ and ‘lived’ Islams in his study of Ramadan, Möller (2005b: 54) emphasises that there is no Islam without living Muslims and that ‘lived’ Islam is more than what normative Islam is not. Despite the existence of elements considered by some as ‘non-Islamic’ or ‘non-normative’, some practices and beliefs not prescribed by Islam do not necessarily contradict it either. Mark Woodward’s (1988) objections to such binaries relate to these misconceiving global and local Islams as constants highly resistant to change. Instead of yet another ill-conceived binary Woodward proposes a ‘tentative schemata’ as better


able to assist anthropologists ascertain why certain forms of Islam are considered truer than others. This schemata is presented in Table 9.1.

Category DescriptionUniversalist Islam

Texts and rituals not subject to change and development are objects of interpretative programmes which give rise to the diverse modes of piety and thought in Islam.

Essentialist Islam

Modes of ritual practice that, while not mandated by universalist texts, are nonetheless widely distributed throughout the Muslim world. This is an extremely inclusive category or ritual action that extends beyond the borders of local Muslim societies. These are subject to change from interpretation of universalist texts and few Muslims would find themselves in agreement with all these.6

Received Islam Elements of universalist and essentialist Islam which are locally understood and interpreted.

Local Islam Oral, textual and ritual traditions unique to locales derived from the unique interaction of local culture and received Islam. Local Islam is both interpreted in – and shaped by – local culture.

Table 9.1 Summary of Woodward’s Tentative Schemata6

Source: Woodward (1988: 87–88)

Woodward (1988: 87) brings into focus the complexity of religious traditions and the variety of factors involved in the formulation of local Islams which involve ‘doctrine and ritual operating in a unified process of religious discovery and discipline’. With the exception of ‘universalist’ Islam, ‘essentialist’, ‘received’ and ‘local’ Islams undergo ongoing transformation as they are impacted on by new interpretations of universalist Islamic sources. El-Zein accuses assessments of local Islams as ‘syncretistic’ of being not only inattentive to politics of orthodoxy but also to the processes through which these religious systems came about, and the strength of anti-syncretistic influences. Examples of the latter include reformist initiatives to eradicate rituals such as mawlid (birth of the Prophet) celebrations, referred to by Woodward as an element of ‘essentialist’ Islam. The nature of Ahmet Karamustafa’s (2003: 108) conception of Muslim

6 Mawlid celebrations; Sufi dhikr rites; Shia muharram celebrations; saint veneration; local pilgrimages; ritual meals associated with merit and blessing.

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diversity differs from those above, centring as it does on his notion of an Islamic civilisation, defined by him as a

sprawling civilisation edifice under continuous construction and renovation in accordance with multiple blueprints … all generated from a nucleus of key ideas and practices ultimately linked to the historical legacy of the Prophet Muhammad.

Karamustafa (Ibid.: 102) argues that Islam-as-civilisation is of more heuristic value than Islam-as-a-religion or Islam-as-culture. Post-Enlightenment conceptions of religion inadequately describe the din (way of life) of Islam and Islamic cultures possessing disparate histories of Islamisation. Islam-as-civilisation brings into focus the vision of Islam as a transethnic, transnational and transracial reality in which all cultures of self-consciously Muslim peoples are accepted as being equally Islamic. Not only does Islam-as-civilisation render the typologies and binaries described above as redundant but it is cognisant of Woodward’s (2003: 110) concern that Islamic thought and practice should be acknowledged as constantly evolving. Karamustafa (2003: 104) furthermore states that while the divine message supplied the impetus, all Islamic civilisations draw from other cultural wellsprings thus ensuring the existence of numerous distinct cultural regions. Not only is there more than one single uniform Islamic civilisation but these interactions with originally non-Islamic cultures are also equally valid.

Adat, ‘Ibadat, Traditions and Texts

The presence of elements of Arab customary practices in Southeast Asian adat supports Mona Abaza’s (2007) objections to perceptions of the relationship between Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian Islam. Many conceive of a pure, orthodox and scripturalist Islam having flowed into a heterodox, syncretic and lax Southeast Asian habitus. Abaza argues that in the Middle East popular Islam was contextualised in the Mediterranean world. In terms of history, geography and worldview it shares affinities with the Judeo-Christian world of the region, as demonstrated in the similarities between Egyptian Coptic and Muslim mawlid celebrations. While the incorporation of Buddhist and Hindu influences in Javanese Islam is undeniable, neither has the orthodoxy of the cosmopolitan networks of ‘ulama who have created a scripturalist high culture, in


Indonesia, as they have in Egypt (Ibid.: 420, 22). Shamsul A.B. (2005: 164) calls for increased attention to the complex processes through which Islam was embedded in the Malay world. These are superior to Islam being either simply observed or lamented at being obscured (alluding to Geertz, 1968 and Roff, 1985a). This process began with the arrival of embedded Indian and Arab Islams. Laffan (2003a: 9) refers to those born to Indian and Arab Muslim parents from either shore of the Indian Ocean as Islam’s ‘creole’ ambassadors. These personalities played pivotal roles in the conversion of a number of rulers along the Straits of Malacca in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The creole nature of these communities subverts the utility of the ethnicised debates between not only Arab and Indian scholars but also their respective students who, as Shamsul notes, have made claims and counterclaims concerning the importance of Arab and Indian Sufis (see Syed Naguib Al-Attas, 1969; Sastri, 1949). The Indian influence in the Islamisation of Southeast Asia relates as much to what Islam came to as to where Islam came from. Island and mainland Southeast Asia had been extensively influenced by India before the arrival of Islam, even occasionally being referred to as part of ‘Greater India’.7 Islam also came to Indianised Southeast Asia from the Malabar coast of southern India, via members of the creole communities whose forebears were Hadhrami migrants. Well before the exodus in the nineteenth century noted earlier, ongoing emigration from the Hadhramut ensured the continual rejuvenation of these communities. In the thirteenth century, for example, population pressure led to increased migration to Southeast Asia (Forbes, 1981). Harry Benda (1958) was among the first to propose Islam’s palatability in Southeast Asia being enhanced by the Indianised conceptions of kingship, state and society. Kirk Endicott (1970) also argues that Indian Sufism – which had adopted Hindu, Buddhist and animistic elements prior to its arrival in Southeast Asia – was well adapted to the cultures of Southeast Asia. Indian Sufism therefore played a crucial role in Islam’s dissemination in the region.8 Johns (1995: 169) points out

7 As Shamsul (2005: 162) notes, this created a situation where Hindu kings in Java had Arabic names and a Malay raja in Champa ruled predominantly Buddhist populations.

8 Sufism functioned as a unifying force within Islam following the fall of the Baghdad caliphate in mid-thirteenth century, which some link to its expansion into the Malay–Indonesian archipelago. The total rejection of Sufism by some Islamic reform movements


that the earliest extant manuscripts from northern Sumatra were the monistic Sufi treatises of Ibn ’Arabi (d. 1240). Embedded Islams impacted upon the ruling rajas and the ruled rakyat in distinct ways. The former emphasised textual tradition and derived their legitimacy from the Brahmin-like court ‘ulama more than their personal expertise on Islam or from heading an absolutist Muslim monarchy (Shamsul, 2005: 164). By contrast, the ruled rakyat survived on the oral traditions which were ‘embedded and set into a non-Islamic mould that constitutes a mixture of indigenous belief, Hinduism and Buddhism’ (Ibid.: 177). How indigenous to Southeast Asian have the adat rituals of the rakyat been conceptualised by anthropologists of the region’s Islam? Möller (2005b: 279) suggests that Southeast Asian traditionalists intentionally blur the lines between religion (agama), culture (kebudayaan) and tradition (adat). This permits participation in rituals with questionable Islamic credentials. Abdul Ghoffir Muhaimin (2006: 116–18) proposes adat to include the following: (1) local (often non-ritualised) customs; (2) indigenous ceremonies of non-Islamic origin that have been continued in a modified and Islamised form so as to be considered either synonymous with or benign to Islam. Some are consistent with the shari’a or considered as matching Islam’s ethical spirit; (3) accretions functioning to establish or maintain local Muslim identity. James Fox (2004: 8) adds that traditionalists consider everything which is not explicitly banned (haram) as capable of being made Islamic. Some existing traditions were consecrated, sometimes through an act as simple as prefacing a performance with the utterance of the ‘Bismillāh’ (in the name of God) and a niyat (intention). Rather than passive recipients of global Islam, van Bruinessen views Southeast Asians to have incorporated Islam into existing religious and cultural traditions through the processes of negotiation or modification. Despite the origins of many elements of adat being uncertain or clearly Indic, van Bruinessen suggests that these were incorporated into a Muslim system of meaning. As such, adat represents a ‘global cultural complex that one can hardly call anything but Muslim’. Rather than a ‘fortress of resistance against Islamisation’, Islamisation has transformed

is a relatively recent development (van Bruinessen, 1994, 1998, 1999a).


adat into a ‘fluid adaptable, imperceptibly changing system of norms and regulations’ (1999b: 166–67). This fluid and adaptable adat underwent significant changes in the Dutch East Indies. Under the encouragement of the government adviser on Islamic affairs, Snouck Hurgronje, adat was codified for use in colonial courts. This had a number of unexpected outcomes. Muslim disaffection with adat laws increased as suspicions grew that its codification by the colonial authorities was driven by a Dutch agenda to weaken Islam. From a fluid, ever-changing and negotiable practice, adat was transformed into a ‘fixed and rigid system’ – which compared unfavourably with the shari’a. Although once appreciated as complementing the shari’a, adat was increasingly viewed in opposition to Islam (Laffan, 2003b: 398). While van Bruinessen’s views the slametan (communal feast) as part of the ‘Islamicate’ cultures of the archipelago, Woodward insists that this should be acknowledged as ‘Islamic’. He enquires how the Javanese were so thoroughly converted to a version of Islam that combined elements of ‘Middle Eastern and South Asian popular piety with esoteric mystical theory’ (1988: 83). Resisting the temptation to exaggerate Javanese elements and ignore Islam texts, and despite the presence of pre-Islamic ritual elements, Woodward insists that Islam is characterised by ‘diverse modes of textual exegesis and ritual practice’ which have long been interpreted in Islamic terms (Ibid.: 55). Building on the work of Cuisner, Woodward (Ibid.: 64) points out that such feasting complexes consist of distinct ritual elements. The slametan is one of many locally-defined Muslim ritual complexes linking blessing and food, whose modes of ritual action are rooted in Islam’s essentialist texts of the Qur’an and Hadith, and religious and social goals are defined in terms of Islamic mystical theory. In addition to alternative assesments of Southeast Asian adat, what is the ethnographic significance of globally normative ‘ibadat, traditions and texts? Inattention to ‘ibadat by anthropologists has long been lamented (Reinhart, 1990; Denny 1985; Graham 1983: 59). While some regard ‘ibadat as the domain of textual specialists familiar with Arabic and the Islamic sciences (Antoun 1976b; Bowen 1995), Marion Katz (2005: 107) blames the lack of analytical scrutiny by anthropologists to their obsession with locally specific practices. Varisco alleges that anthropology came to Islam via the exotic. Not only was ‘ibadat ‘too obvious, perhaps too boring, to require explanation’, it was also viewed as resistant to certain


modes of analysis such as the ‘decoding traditionally favoured by cultural anthropologists and historians of religion’. For example, following a 75-page treatment of the slametan in The Religion of Java, Geertz dedicates a mere eight pages to the normative piety of the santri. In his study of the social meaning of salat (prayers) in Indonesia, John Bowen (1989: 615) calls on anthropologists to account for particular ways in which ‘the salat ritual takes on local social meanings’. According to Bowen, local discourses on salat take on broad and deeply felt religious, social and political significance. Such normative rituals act as receptacles for meanings that are present in local contexts. The adaptability of salat is connected to its lack of semantic core. For Katz (2005: 108) the significance of salat is the regular repetition and dramatic reaffirmation of Islam’s doctrinal fundamentals. Bowen (1992: 668) also compares sacrifice in Sumatra and Morocco, suggesting that Muslims in these locales shape a particular set of ritual duties in sharply contrasting ways. More than being derived from Islamic scripture, this phenomenon is related to its adaptation and elaboration in directions that locally make sense within the specific cultural factors present.9 ‘Ibadat is an element of what Asad (1986: 14) refers to as Islam’s discursive tradition: a discourse that instructs Muslims concerning the correct form and purpose of practices, and on what is halal (lawful), haram (forbidden), wajib (obligatory) and sunnat (customary). While Lukens-Bull (1999: 5, 7–8) acknowledges Asad to have drawn attention to Islam’s ability to be constantly reshaped in an ever-changing world, he questions the criteria by which what is included in the discourse – even suggesting his proposal to be Redfield’s paradigm dressed up in contemporary jargon. Leif Manager (1999: 8–11) more positively views Islam’s discursive tradition as assisting anthropologists to focus on the social organisation of knowledge and meaning. Instead of being distracted by allegations and counter-allegations concerning what is essential in Islam anthropologists should be attentive to the manner in which Muslims engage in discourse on what should be central to Islam. Islam is the arena in which processes become Islamic by being involved in its discursive tradition. Varisco (2005: 155) expresses similar sentiments by pointing out that in the historical production and maintenance of specific discursive

9 For studies exemplifying attention to ‘ibadat, see the following on the haj (Ferme, 1994; Roff, 1984, 1985b, 1993) and fasting (Antoun 1968; Buitelaar 1993; Möller 2005a).


traditions, Islamic praxis is linked to a discursive past. My final comment concerns the need for anthropologists to pay attention to texts. Varisco (2005: 152) dismisses as nonsensical those scholars who study Islam’s discursive traditions without reference to the Qur’an, Hadith and relevant legal texts that together provide normative reference points for the range of Islamic (or Islamicate) ideas and practices that anthropologists encounter. George Starrett (1997: 287) credits Bowen with directing the study of local Islams towards understanding appreciating how specific texts are used by Muslims in specific contexts (see particularly Bowen, 1988, 1993a, 2001). In addition to Woodward’s (1988: 62–63) treatment of the slametan, which includes descriptions in Hadith collections of the distribution of blessed food, he also considers the production, reading and rereading of Indonesian translations of Hadith collections (1993). By noting that charity (sedekah) and prayer (doa) are essential elements of adat feasts, these can be understood as Islamic due to ‘their roots being found directly (or indirectly) in the Qur’an and the Hadith’ (Muhaimin, 2006: 136).

Conclusion

While located on the geographic extremities of the Muslim world, Southeast Asia has long been connected to the Middle East by the Indian Ocean. Creolised Arab and Indian traders actively involved in the lucrative maritime trade between China and the Middle East played pivotal roles in Islam’s initial spread to Southeast Asian port cities. The Indian Ocean was also the means through which all subsequent significant religious developments arrived in Southeast Asia, mediated by indigenous Muslims. The rapid advances in transport and communication, which increased the strength of this connection, coincided with a period of modernist and reformist activism. Southeast Asians sought to either copy or counter developments experienced by them in the Hijaz. The entry of Salafism – even its most austere Saudi version – should therefore be appreciated as the latest chapter in a longstanding trend of mediated religious rejuvenation and reform. Together with an awareness of the nature of the historical relationship between the Middle East and Southeast Asia, familiarity with the methodological and theoretical concerns of the anthropology of Islam are capable of facilitating more nuanced representations of Southeast Asia Muslims and their societies.


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