Old Javanese texts republished by Muslim courts in the 18th century: Bernard Arps

On the second day of the farewell seminar celebrating the coming of retirement age of Willem van der Molen at KITLV/Leiden University, Ben Arps gave a fascinating talk on Islam at the court of Surakarta in the 1780s. Several classical works of the older Javanese period (Ramayana, Bharatayudha, Arjunawiwaha, Bima's search for knowledge with Dewa Ruci) were re-written in an Islamic atmosphere. Arps calls this a renaissance of Old Javanese culture, but in a positive Islamic style. There must have been some kind of double loyalty: both to Javanese culture and its heritage and to the Islamic background, confession and faith of the authors at the courts. This reminded me of the pious Catholic priest who taught me Latin and Greek in the gymnasium, the secondary school of my youth. He gave us texts from many classical authors. We, his students of the age of 15-16, once asked him to give us a text of the Greek New Testament. He look surprised and said: 'The New Testament is in simple, but bad Greek, you better learn good Greek first!' I told this several times to my students at the IAIN, the Islamic State University in Jakarta and Yogyakarta. They were surprised: as if someone would say that the Qur'an is in bad Arabic and that you should learn the Kitab al-Aghani first before the Qur'an!  But for Western Catholics Homer, Plato and Xenophon represent a high culture, at the same level as the Jewish-Christian one.

From the same period of the later 1780s, but in this case from Yogyakarta, Arps also gave a strange theory about Aji Saka. Here Aji Saka was described as number five of the companions of the prophet Muhammad. After Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, he was sent on a long journey to India, Sri Lanka and finally to Java, where he brought the right religion. So: Islamization of Java directly by order of the Prophet Muhammad! As once also was stated by Buya Hamka, that Islam came from Arabia during the lifetime of the Prophet and the Sahabat. This only was possible for Aji Saka with the help of the great prophet of the seas and oceans, Nabi Khidr.

Willem van der Molen was not too active in these quite fantastic speculations and interpretations. I suggested that in the present quest for an interpretation of local Indonesian Islam as Islam Nusantara, the revival of Javanese texts could be very interesting. Therefore it would also be becessary not only to look to the great kakawin but also to the texts of Suluk which were once also studied at the Yogyakarta IAIn under Pak Simuh. But Van der Molen  remained quite realistic and sober about the possibility to develop a centre of Javanese studies in Europe of even Leiden, but mentioned his own website with his latest project, the diary of a Chinese-Javanese citizen of Yogyakarta in the middle of the 19th century, who followed the 'Javanese love of writing texts of great length' and composed some 700 pages about his family, his work in selling opium, lending money, talking to Dutch, some Chinese and most of all Javanese people. Look at http://willemvandermolen.nl/blog.


Just a last picture. Anbiya, or stories of the prophets, are very popular in Java: Amin Soedoro used to say that Javanese know no boundary to their fantasy and as to the prophets they have contributed an umlimited number of miracles. Images are also no exception. See below!

A farewell to Javanese studies? Willem van der Molen and more?

More than 95 million people speak Javanese as a child, at home, with friends and family, but very little receive further education in the complicated language of the largest ethnic group of Indonesia. The enormous success of Indonesian as official language since 1945 has brought a drastic decline in the use of Javanese. Therefore there is a threat that Javanese will die as a cultivated language! This was one of the themes at the farewell conference at KITLV, Leiden, 12 and 13 December this year, at the occasion of the official retirement of Willem van der Molen (postponed one year because last year he was involved in a programme of studies on Panji stories at the Hebrew University of Tel Aviv).
Tony Day opened the series with the beginning of Javanese classical writings: why was translation, prakrit, or vernacularisation so important (because so much of what has been rescued from Old Javanese writings is translation or adaptation of Sanskrit texts). He was (among various otther scholars) followed by Gregory Quinn, who commented about the end: Ronggowarsito as 'the seal, not of the prophets but of Javanese literature'! He mentioned four reasons for the decline of Javanese in general: 1) Loss of the aristocratic authority (the courts of Yogya and Solo no longer have active pujangga kraton); 2) there is a loss of ability to read Javanese script. As an example he gave the emphasis in primary schools on the mystical meaning of the letters, without training to use it as an effective alfabet; 3) loss of official status: in state documents, in the bureaucracy; 4) decline of ability to speak and write high Javanese.

 

But Quinn also had some good news. He met several groups who were writing stories and poetry , published magazines, series of books, partly as hybrid publishing (initially paid by the authors themselves, only after success the authors earned some money). There are websites. There is even a Wikipedia in Javanese with more than 57.000 articles: https://jv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tepas.

The peaceful heart of Yunan Yusuf

Two years ago I received a book by Yunan Yusuf, of the Jakarta UIN, Islamic State University. It was his commentary on Qur'an Juz 24. Last October he donated me his next volume: on Juz 23. Only know I have started reading this new volume.
First, I was surprised to see how easily he writes. While in Australia he could write a volume of 600 pages in three months! It is all very pleasant reading. Not too much technicalities and very informative about the text of the Qur'an according to his vision of its meaning.
I saw now more clearly, that he considers the Qur'an as not (only) the collection of the 114 surahs but first of all for his commentary the collection of 30 juz. He even created a new name for this section. Not only the first Arab words wa ma lîy, but a more meaningful and poetic label: Qalbun salim, The words occur twice in the Qur'an, first in this juz, in sura 37:84 about Abraham who turned to God 'with a peaceful heart'.  Only once it is mentioned again in the Qur'an, in 26:89 when it is said that people who stand for God at the last judgment with a 'peaceful heart' (Qalbun salim) will be allowed to stay in paradise.
It was quite surprising for me to see even a distinct and new title for a somewhat fortuitous section of the Qur'an: it is a help to read the text in the thirty days of Ramadan. The basic division of the Qur'an is a sura, a distinct literary entity and the basis for good interpretation.

Above: the new volume by Prof. Yunan Yusuf and below (right) Yunan donating the book to me, last October in Ciputat.
Yunan himself also realised that the true division of the Qur'an is not according to juz but to sura, because the commentary starts not with verse 22 of sura 36 (where the juz begins), but with the  story from verse 13 of the sura YASIN itself. After the beginning verses (of course the praise of the Qur'an because of the mysetirous letters), from verse 13 on there is a story about a town or even city of unbelievers, where two messengers were sent, still followed by a third person. In traditional commentaries it is the city of the pagan Seleucid kingdom of Antiocheia. Sadok and his offspring were the high priest of Israel, from the time of David and Salomon until the Makkabee period. Therefore perhaps the two messengers to the town of Antiocheia were given the names of Sadiq, Saduq and Shalom.
Als in the Christian period Antioch was an important town: the first Christians got their name of 'Christian' here.
I am curious to see whether Yunan also explains why sura 36, Ya Sin, is so often recited in favour of the dead. Muhammadiyah people like he is himself, will not do this, but still it is a common ritual!

Another book about Fethullah Gülen, with some Indonesian contacts

In my study room I have one special Gülen shelf: about 50 books by and about Fethullah Gülen. Much about Turkey, but also about the global impact of the Hizmet movement. In 2015 I was together with Gürkan Celik the editor of the book on Gülen-Inspired Hizmet in Europe. The Western Journey of a Turkish Muslim Movement. It was interesting to work on it. I never saw a review, nor was there a mention about sold copies (published by Peter Lang in Bruxelles). Anyway, it was done amidst nice contacts with remarkable and sincere members of Hizmet.
A 'post- June 2016 coup' book was recently published by the New Delhi Professor Anwar Ahmad. He was teaching in Delhi the history of Islam in West Asia, came to Turkey fort a short Gülen-visit in 2008 (Fatih University, Newspaper Zaman, high schools, Kimse Yok Mu, the charity, and the Journalists and Writers Organization). He was in 2011 for some time teaching at Fatih University in Istanbul. Between September 2013 and June 2016 he was teaching in Gaziantep (Southeast Turkey, close to the Syrian border) and left in time before the coup.

 Anwar Alam is more reflective than informative. Only in few respects he gives new information, but he is fascinating in his comparison of Gülen with the Ihkwan, the Jamaat-i-Islami of Pakistan, the Tablighi  Jamaat of India (however nothing about NU of Muhammadiyah of Indonesia).
He once attended a meeting of sponsors, fundraising, himmet, where US$ 32.000 was collected for a secondary school in Indonesia (enough for one year) and promises given for 1000 scholarships for Indonesians to stay one year in Turkey (p. 154).
The book apparently was started before 2016, when there were already problems but no straight persecution of the movement. His analysis of the hatred by Erdogan and AKP versus Gülen and Hizmet is described in pp. 227-8: "Thus, historically speaking, the political tradition in Middle Eastern countries including Turkey has been hostile to autonomous religious groups, as the state in the Midle East - whether secular or Islamist - suspects the political allegiance of various Islamic groups. The Middle Eastern states - whether secular, secular, or Islamist - to a large extent rely on Islam as the most important source of legitimacy of their rule, which makes to wish them not only to control and monopolize all 'Islamic spaces' but also leaves them deeply suspicious of autonomous visible Islamic political and social organizations or groups, as the latter are perceived as potential or social forces to challenge the legitimacy of the regimes. ...  The Ikhwan al Muslimin in Egypt has been the object of state repression in various degrees throughout the modern political history of Egypt since the Nasserite regime on the charge of being a 'parallel state' or 'state within the state'. "
This week the new minister of religion of Indonesia Fachrul Razi announced that the permit (as an organization) for Front Pembela Islam will be renewed: of you cannot ban or crush them, join or embrace them! That was also the practice of the Catholic Church if new religious orders or dubious places of pilgrimage could not be forbidden, because they were too popular. They should be formally included in the big system or crushed down. The latter has happened with Gülen in Turkey.
On the whole it is a book full with long and complicated sentences, not so easy to read. Here and there still some new facts, but interesting analysis as well.