MEREBUT TAFSIR, a struggle for understanding

On 17 Februari 2021 Lies Marcoes (b. 1958) celebrated her 63d birthday. Just one year short of the 64 years of the Prophet Muhammad and one year short too of eight times eight year or windu. She received that day a great gift. Mirisa Hasfaria, a colleague and friend in her work for better positions of women, against enforced marriage of young girls, against old fashioned and irrational understanding of shari’a rules and similar issues, had collected 112 short pieces written for facebook (between 1-3 pages), sometimes also published in Kompas, Jakarta Post, Gatra and together with a longer interview with Mirisa herself and an opening letter by Nani Zulminarni, it became a literary corpus of 114, as many as the number of sura for the Qur’an. However, the title Merebut tafsir has no direct relation to interpretation of the Qur’an, it rather means that the book will try understand the problems and enigmas of the modern world of Indonesia, especially of Muslim women. It is not only an effort for understanding, it is also an activist initiative for change. In this way also the organization of a Ceribon Pesantren and Lies since 2010, Rumah KitaB  (=House of the BooK) has no direct relation to the Holy Book (only), but is an acronym for Our Common Home (Rumah Kita Bersama), the world where we live must be understood and odd things must be repaired and improved, because Lies is not only a researcher but also an activist. Moreover, she wants first to concentrate on concrete people, not on old texts. In three time months the first edition was sold out and the second is now in the market. Lies was so kind to send me a copy and below I will give some impressions.

The interview with Mirisa Hasfaria (235-244) tells how Lies, after graduation at IAIN, the State Academy for Islamic Studies in Jakarta in 1982, worked in the last decade of the Soeharto government mostly as a critical promotor of birth control for P3M, until she received from the Ford Foundation a fellowship to study medical anthropology in Amsterdam (2000, Master’s Thesis on Javanese Surinamese in the Netherlands and their views on health care, human reproduction). She saw the programme for birth control by the Soeharto government as just an instrument for  large-scale economic progress, without a good insight in the real need of women. It was often misunderstood. The programme was called Keluarga Berencana, usually KB, but kabeh also stands for ‘many’  (children, p. 53). In general it neglected the problems of teenagers: it was restricted for married people with already one or two children. In 2018 she wrote a column for the newspaper Kompas (here pp. 282-4) where she comes to the problem that has one of her major concerns since 2010: the high number of  marriages under 20 year. Research has proven that 45% of the girls in the age of 15-19 want to use contraceptives, but it is against the law to give it to them. In this field again and again she criticizes the 97% of teenagers who receive dispensation from the Religious Courts to marry under the legal age of marriage (minimal 19 years). Nationally about 20% of the marriages are of this kind. As a qualified scholar in Islamic studies she gives her own style of interpretation to the difficult and ambiguous term wali. In the end of 2016 there was the debate about the interpretation of the word by Jakarta Governor Ahok. In her own way Lies supports him (p.11). She also argues as former leader of the fiqh an-nisā programme at P3M that the term wali as a father (or even uncle, older brother) should not be abused to enforce a young girl, dependent, without a network of her own, often poor, into a marriage that is profitable for her wali or ‘protector’s’ sake (p. 35). She also connects the abuse of  the power of the wali to one of the major causes, the overpopulation in agrarian regions, where most people no longer have (enough) land to live from. In her general disgust of patriarchy or manipulation of women by men, she includes also the headscarf and more radical clothing of women in funny descriptions of jilbabisasi and the ‘policy of kebaya’. Quite interesting is also her view on older people (in Tafsir no 38, 65, 74). She writes lovely about the mudik, visiting the parents at the end of Ramadan. But she is critical about the position of elderly as ‘guests’ in the house of one of their children: it is often not a bless, but the end of independence and authority for the older people. From little children, teenagers, women in general, to older people: she puts the individuals and their development first. In a more general formula she defines the goal of the ‘struggle for understanding’ as below: ‘To bring back tafsir to its role of defending the oppressed, we must confront the text with actual life. In this sense the direction of understanding must be clear. It must give a thirst for liberation to and by those who are harassed by social structures and ‘class’.’ (See the text below, ' p 2 in Tafsir 1,  a commentary on ideas of Ziba Mir-Hosseini)

The major isues of Muslim feminist theology are here exposed mostly in concrete cases. The six are: 1. against poligamy; 2. pro gender equality; 3. ladies can be called alima, or ulama, 4. men have no right to beat their spouses; 5. against marriage of children and teenagers; 6. against jilbab, One very special case here is about poligamy. 'Tafsir 79' about a seminar about poligamy. The entrance fee was 4 millin rupiah or € 400, which tells us about the goal of peple seeking a seond wife. They live in a marriage as in business: to keep one for manager in the household, another one for pleasure. This is the reason that in most cases men take a second wife in secret. The first wife knows nothing, children also are not involved! Quite funny too is her description of some male scholars of Islamic law, especially of  ‘the conversion or metamorphosis of Kiai Husein Muhammad’. This learned man had some strange ideas about the menstruation of women: ‘it feels as if they must piss, and they feel when it stops..’ But later he was corrected by the women themselves and considered as a ‘feminist Muslim scholar’ and he received a doctorate honoris causa from the Islamic University of Semarang in 2019 (57-61). When  read this I felt sorry for Lies that she could never fulfil the invitation to write a doctoral dissertation in Australia, due to medical problems. Perhaps we should consider  this book as her doctoral dissertation, or as a book that may stimulate a doctorate honoris cause for this researcher in the field of Islamic feminism or fiqh an-nisā? Also quite funny is her description of another famous personality in Indonesian Islam, Mama Dedeh (29-32). She followed the formal regular courses like Lies: pesantren, the State University of Islamic Studies, but developed as a specific example of traditional Javanese preaching: serious matters mixed with good humorous jokes.  She mixes her daily very early (five o’clock  in the morning) short speeches in television with Arab phrases, but also many common jokes, representing the Islam Nusantara or local Indonesian Islam, seen as the true answer to Salafi Islam. We must thank Mirisa Hasfaria who composed from the Facebook messages and scattered printed material such a lively and wide-ranging collection. It is complete and reliable as to the valuable contributions of Lies Marcoes. This is truly a very direct and concrete report of the contemporary debate on the issue of women, modern culture and Islamic law and local traditions in Indonesia.

For a review of one of the earlier books by Lies Marcoes see my former blog: http://relindonesia.blogspot.com of 3 January 2015, A journey against defeat. – Karel Steenbrink, Utrecht, 12 July 2021.