Mystic Islam or Islam light? Merle Ricklefs on his Sout Catcher, Mangkunegara I

After starting his academic career with a portrait of the first Sultan of Yogyakarta, Merle Ricklefs wrote many books, some more general ones like the classic History of Modern Indonesia since c. 1300, a serie of three books covering Islamic developments from 1830 until the modern age and a series on the courts of Surakarta. This is now again enriched with a book on the counterpart of Sultan Mangkubumi I of Yogyakarta: Prince Mangkunegara I of Surakarta.
It is a rich book covering the history of Central Java since the turbulent period beginning with the killing of some 10.000 Chinese in Batavia in 1740 by the Dutch (a 'preemptive strike!), followed by a flight of the 5.000 Chinese who fled the colonial capital to Central Java. This created a civil war in Central Java, 1743-1757.
Ricklefs gives a general picture of the period, the development of the major players in the field: the two mentioned above and the Ruler Sunan Pakubuwana II until PB IV.

Many aspects are highlighted: Dutch colonial policy and its officials, the rulers and their families. The book looks like a huge portrait of a society divided in opposing groups. The persons are described in vivid colours. The sources are from VOC archives (mostly from Indonesia) and from the various courts. It is sometimes a real entertainment to read their concise and clear poetry of the Javanese documents.
On pages 273ff Ricklefs gives a nice summary of his favourite concept of the Mystic Synthesis. It is a somewhat truncated or at least basic style of Islam (the five pillars of confession of faith, regular prayers, fast of Ramadan; paying the zakat sometimes, hajj only for few people), with a strong feeling of a Muslim identity. Besides that there is a firm belief in local spirits, attachment to the stories of Wayang performances. Only the more pious people abstained from alcoholic drinks, use of opium and gambling. Pages 295-299 describe a movement, a circle of strongly Islamic officials in the court of the Susuhunan, from 1788 until November 1790. One Santri became nominated a bupati by the young PB IV and officials who were wearing European clothes were sent away from the court. There was no more alcoholic drinks, more pious gatherings, Qur'an readings, until several thousand troops led by Mangkubumi and Mangkunegara together surrounded the palace and five leading figures were sent into exile to Sri Lanka. Ricklefs regrets that only the opponents have written this story for us and we do not have the voice of the other part. The Mystic Synthesis had his own weapons and was under strict control as well!
Was this official Islam some kind of Islam Light? I checked some sources for the now well known formula about Aceh, where the shari'a must be taken seriously, pelaksanaan syaria secara kaffah.. This is taken from Qur'an 2:208. However, most translations do not give the meaning of 'complete' as to the content, but rather 'all people together'. The verse is in the translation of Arberry: O believers, enter the peace [silm] all of you [kaffatan] and follow not the steps of Satan.
There is a story about a Jewish tribe who did not like to accept Islam/silm because they wanted to keep the quiet day of Sabbath and the taboo of eating camel meat. Anyway, there are diverse opinions also about Islam light, corrupt or truncated versus full!

A clash of cultures in Indonesian Islam? Nico Kaptein as a new professor in Leiden

Nico Kaptein is already since more than 30 years busy with Indonesian Islam after his dissertation on the origins of the celebration of maulid, birth of Muhammad. Only recently he was nominated a full professor of Southeast Asian Islam in Leiden. 19 September 2019, he gave his inaugural lecture on the Arabs and their influence on Indonesian Islam. Mecca is the liturgical centre of Islam: the focus of the drection of people praying and once a year the city of the hajj, the great pilgrimage. Since the 17th century it was also a centre for Islamic learning for Indonesians. Sultans sent delegations to the holy city to seek the official title of sulten, or answer to difficult questions. After 1925 (when the Wahhabi King again could establish his capital in Riyad) modernists went to Cairo for studies, but Arabia is still attractive.

 However, after 1980 LIPIA, the Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Islam dan Arab, an institute of study of Islam and Arab, started its spread of Wahhabism (now often called Salafism) in Indonesia. And since then Nahdlatul Ulama and in some sense also Muhammadiyah leaders feel threatened in their position. They even started a counter-attack, stressing that Indonesian Islam is different from Arab culture and even religious interpretation. Kaptein referred to Hasbi Ash-Shiddieqy (who wanted a Mazhab Indonesia) and Abdurrahman Wahid and his ideas of pribumisasi, to support indigenisation of Islam and to prevent further 'infiltration' of Arab Salafism in Indonesia. Arab words like assalam 'alaikum, salat should be avoided and Selamat pagi, sembahyang should be used.
I heard even the term of 'fragmentation of religious authority'. There was little about the longtime differences between Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, that never caused real conflicts, fighting or obstruction in Indonesia.

Among the 30 professors there were three ladies: 10%, showing that Dutch universities are not really pushing feminist ideas! It was a good opportunity to see old friends. Above Herman Beck from Tilburg.

Penistaan: the debate about the vulnerability of religion

In 2016-7 there was a malicious reli-political action against the candidate for governorship of Jakarta, Ahok. He had quoted a text from the Qur'an, given his own interpretation and then he was accused of penistaan or deprecation/vilification of religion. He was sentenced to two years in prison.
About six months ago there was another case in Tanjung Balai a majority ethnic-Chinese town close to Medan. A Chinese lady, Meiliana, living close to a mosque, complained about the very noisy loudspeaker of a mosque nearby. It was mentioned to the police, she was arrested and 19 August 2019 she was sentenced to stay for 1.5 year in prison, for penistaan/penodaan.

Soon after this strange verdict by a local judge, there came another case of accusation of vilification of religion. A preacher from Pekan Baru, the oil capital of Central Sumatra, one Ustaz Abdul Somad, had given a sermon in a mosque which was recorded and available on the internet. He had said: salib itu dalamnya ada Iblis dan ada jin kafir ('in the cross the devil is present and unbelief; evil spirits are found in the cross). Some Batak Christians went to a court to ask for a case against  this UAS (famous people with long names like to use acronyms since Hamka, SBY and others). UAS, born in 1977, studied for some time at Al-Azhar in Egypt and also took an MA degree in Rabat, Morocco. He is at this moment a lecturer at the UIN, Islamic University Syarif Kasim of Pekan Baru.

The MUI, Majelis Ulama Indonesia, Indonesian Council of Muslim Clerics, called for mitigation in this case: it should be handled outside the legal institutions, through dialogue and mutual understanding. This is understandable, but it should have been more convincing if MUI had shown or preached mitigation as well in the Ahok and Meilana cases. Recent history of Pakistan has shown that vilification processes can bring total disorder to a country. And the present Muhammadiyah leader also rightly stated that the Ahok affair only has brought public and social damage to the country. Religion is strong enough and should not be defended as if it is a weak institution.
Benny Susetyo and Gomar Gulton, from the Catholic and Protestantchurches reacted that if this preacher will not ask forgiveness for his words,  he  anyway will be forgiven by them.

Axial Age,Enlightenment and more nice terminology

Two weeks ago I wrote about the book by Bernie Adeney on encounters he had in Indonesia during the last tw decades. Most of these were not directly related to the great world religions, but to free individual interpretations. In fact, I first came across this book by the review in BKI, 2019:81-4. Gerry van Klinken showed here his surprise that so long after the axial period of 800-300 BCE and also several centuries after the Enlightenment (1700-1800), religion is still an issue,a living culture and  tradition.

Lao Tse, the Buddha, the Jewish Prophets, the first Greek Philosophers they were included in 1949 by Karl Jaspers as the founding speakers of die Achsenzeit. In the review Van Klinken formulated the question: 'Why do Indonesians appear to be still so deeply pre-axial? Why do they still seemingly live in a sacred cosmos even while they enjoy the freedoms of modernity?' He suggests that Adeney's  answer is that Indonesia has a unique open and tolerant form of religiosity (p. 80).

While reading the book myself, I discovered that Adeney gives examples of questionaires he had asked to be filled by some 2000 young people (students), but although divided between the major religious groups,the relevant conclusions and nice stories are not from the questionaires who do not give clear differences between religions. In fact he shows that the great religious and philosophical traditions are still alive, but are re-interpreted again and again with many people not adressing the old formulas, but rather seek answers they like. And it is often not the philosophical discourse, but the narrative sequence which is the power of these great traditions. Karl Jaspers may have found a striking term, the great story-teller Karen Armstrong told his story again and so Bernie Adeney applied this method to his entourage in Indonesia.
In the second paragraph of the Introduction it is stated that 'Indonesia is unique in the modern world..' (page 1).  This is not related to the legal position  of religion through the state ideology of Pancasila. In the late 1980s and during the 1990s when Pancasila had become corrupt, when it was to be included in the first lines of the statutes of all social bodies as asas tunggal, it was somewhat in decline. Is this the reason why he does not mention it as the unique invention of Indonesia?

The pious believers of Bernie Adeney

Last two weeks I have been reading the fascinating book by Bernard Adeney, Living in a Sacred Cosmos, Indonesia and the future of Islam 2018, Yale Southeast Asia Studies vol.66.

Initially it was difficult reading: I was expecting some broad and general theories and observations about Indonesian Islam, how the largest Muslim country takes a different position than the Middle East or India-Pakistan. Or rather: How it is now also developing towards a more 'conservative turn' (Bruinessen 2013, Madinier The end of innocence). But the book is not about Islam as an institution, even not about Islam as a community. In the first chapter only one page (24-5) is devoted to the the more than 50 salafi organizations that have started since 1998, the end of the Soeharto regime. It is not about organizations, it is all about individuals, and most often about personal meetings of Adeney in his Indonesian period, roughly 1993-2013. He was the leader of the postgraduate centre at the UGM, Universitas Gadjah Mada  in Yogyakarta,  where Christians (UKDW, Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana) and UIN, the Islamic State University of Yogyakarta come together as ICRS the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies.
Adeney writes about religious individual experiences not about universal or local Muslim development in leading persons or organizations (and Indonesia is better in organizations than in the great leaders). He gives wonderful interpretations of the creative sensitivity for religious ideas and emotions. He avoids the doctrines and formal organizations.This makes the book sometimes a learned annotated personal diary. It is its weakness, also its strength.
As to formal Islamic learning there is much available in Indonesia and Adeney has not the ability to equal or even to understand them easily. There is one Arab word in Arab script in the book, but unfortunately, the letters are not from right to the left, but the other way round on p.68.When reading the word tauhid or 'Unity of God' here one wonders: did nobody in his office correct him? I have seldom read more awkward Arabic!

But the weakness about 'formal'  or 'official' Islam is corrected by the nice anecdotes, personal stories in this book. Here he often writes more about Indonesians in general than about Muslims more specifically. An excellent example is pp. 237-247 about 'imagination of nature'. It first gives his imression of the dramatic eartquake in Yogyakarta, 27 May 2006, when he saw people saying their ritual prayers amidst the ruins of their house. Then he turns to the tsunami of Aceh, 26 December 2004. It begins with the story of the Protestant minister Elisa who missed his appointment, arrived late in Aceh and found 15 members of his family lost or/and dead. This minister had for some time great problems in accepting God's goodness for his creation, while a Muslim grandmother in Yogyakarta could more quickly put the disaster in her religious imagination. He ends then with a long quote from the Jesuit writer Sindhunata about God as Grandfather Merapi, the volcano north of Yogyakarta: 'With his lava and eruptions that kill, grandfather Merapi demands human victims, but Grandfather Merapi also pays us back with the overflowing richness of nature..'
What has this to do with Indonesia and the Future of Islam? Probably that title was good enough for the marketing of the book. But this is very different from the large amount of studies complaining about the salafi invasion and infiltration in Indonesia and a possible strategy to turn it: that theme is restricted to one page only!

Adolf Heuken 17 July 1929 - 25 July 2019

Only one week after his 90th anniversary, the Jesuit Priest Father Adolf Heuken died in the Carolus Hospital of Jakarta. He was buried in the Jesuit house in Girisonta  ('Mountain of the Saints), south of Semarang, lucky that he could stay until his last days in his beloved Jakarta and not in the somewhat isolated compound where older Jesuits live together.
He was born in Coesfeld, Germany and went to a secondary school in Münster, graduating in 1950, somewhat late because of the troubles of WWII in Germany. We do not know how he survived that difficult period. He was ordained a priest in 1961 and came to Indonesia in 1963 in a period when no new Dutch missionaries were given visa. He studied perhaps some Javanese but soon concentrated on Indonesian and was already in 1963 in Jakarta, in the Mangga Besar parish. In 1964 he was asked by collaegue Jesuit Joop Beek to work for the Mary Congregation, in 1967 given a new name as Christian Life Communities. He gave his publishing house later (1970) the same acronym of CLC but now as Cipta Loka Caraka, meaning a place (loka) from where a herald (caraka) spreads good ideas (cipta).
Heuken had a splendid, clear and concise style of writing and he wrote a long series of pamphlets for the students of the sodality (about one hunderd small booklets, between 50-100 pages) with themes like the practise of living in good health (especially mental), how to communicate, some doctrinal expositions of the Catholic faith.
He lived in Menteng first in Kramat, soon aftwerwards in the beautiful house Jalan Mohamad Yamin 37, together with the leader of the Mary Congregation Joop Beek, who also was the leader of Khasebul, the anti-Comunist and strongly pro-Catholic political training of students. The relation between the two Jesuits, Beek and Heuken, was not so good, because Heuken found Beek too much involved in politics and too hardline, negative about 'the enemy',  first the Communists, later also the Muslims. Heuken did not like to talk about this matter.

Heuken was not only a good writer, he was also a keen manager and had many responsible functions in Jakarta. He could become apparently very quickly anIndonesian citizen. He was a functionary at the office of civil marriage (1964-1984), lecturer in education at the Atma Jaya University, lecturer in ethics at St. Paul's major seminary, Yogyakarta. Between 1968 and 1984 he was secretary of  the Conference of Indonesian Bishops. He was lecturer in Ethics at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy for 20 years. Also very active in German-speaking parishes in Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur. He was a member of the board of the German International School in Jakarta. For this work he received a German cultural award in 2008.
He wrote a German-Indonesian dictionary, but most of all became known for his many publications on the history of Jakarta. The Indonesian government gave him in 2013 an award for this cultural work and I now from him personally that he was very glad with this honour.

He was for many years active for the Catholic weekly Hidup. He also published a nice Catholic Encyclopaedia in Indonesian first in 5 volumes, later in 9 volumes. He liked to give a precise but clear text, as well as lively and nice illustrations, photographs as well as drawings for which he hired a capable (and somewhat pricely) man.
He was a middle-of-the-road theologian, not openly liberal, not conservative, just good argumentations were important for him. In the mansion where he stayed in Menteng he also held his wonderful collection of books on Jakarta. During our meetings in my 'Catholic period'  (after I had a more 'Islamic period' in the 1970s and 1980s) he joined the work for the ecumenical book on A History of Christianity in Indonesia. He had no clear successor, even for his books he had until recently not yet found a good place. He was sometimes complaining about his health, but liked to see guests and had a wonderful sense of humour. In memoria eterna erit justus, 'This righteous man will be remembered forever' (Psalm 112:6).

The Glory of Batavia in Lelystad

Colonialism, including VOC history, nowadays often is described as something negative. It should have brought other countries in a situation of dependency and poverty. Especially the period 1945-1949 is now under scrutiny as to Indonesia. However, there is still are groups in the Netherlands who cherish sympathy for aspects of the colonial past. One is the group of 'lovers of the classical vessels of the VOC period'. In 1985 one such group started building a replica of the sailer Batavia who in 1629 went to the Indies and by chance 'discovered' islands off the Western coast of Australia. The boat was also a teaching/learning project for people how to work with ancient technology tobuild such a wooden vessel. Now it is a tourist attraction, supported by many volunteers.

In the new 12th province of the Netherlands, of the 'new land' a reclamation from the former Southern Sea, since the dyke of the 1930s a lake, Ijsselmeer, the capital is Lelystad, after engineer Lely who designed this great project for safety and more land. Inorder to make the capital of the province more interesting, two museums were built, one about the history of the place, former sea with many ship wrecks, another about the replica of the VOC ship.
We went here with Kobayashi Yasuko, colleague from Nanzan University in Nagoya. She is a specialist of Indonesian Islam, mostly about Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, knowing many details of the internal strategies, politics and quarrels of the two great organizations.

The boat has four decks, only four toilets for some 250 personnel, and was built for trade, but there was no VOC trade without guns and canons!
Next to the ship in the water, which could be visited, there was a museum where a group of some 20 volunteers are building a copy 1:10 of another vessel. The love for boats can be shown in many different ways (see last picture below).
The town of Lelystad was considered as somewhat boring and not really attractive, because it is at a distance of more than 30 minutes from Amsterdam. In order to attract more people also a mall was built in traditional style,called Bataviastad or City of Batavia. It looks a bit like a reconstruction of the town of Batavia, built 400 years ago in 1619 by Jan Pieterszoon Coen but is now filled with outlet shops, promising cheap prices, as well a numerous restaurants. For those who know a nice trip through a quiet part of the Netherlands to some colonial past.