IslamIzIng IntImacIes Islamizing Intimacies Youth, Sexuality, and Gender in Contemporary Indonesia n ancy J. smIth-hefner University of Hawai‘i Press d Honolulu © 2019 University of Hawai‘i Press This content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that it may be freely downloaded and shared in digital format for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Commercial uses and the publication of any derivative works require permission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Creative Commons license described above does not apply to any material that is separately copyrighted. The Open Access edition of this work was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships Open Book Program. Cover art: College student friends, Yogyakarta (courtesy of Watini Khairi Syilasyafi). DeDIcatIon For William Francisco Hefner contents Acknowledgments ix 1 Approaching Java in a Time of Transitions 1 2 Islam, Youth, and Social Change 20 3 Varieties of Muslim Youth 40 4 Conceptualizing Gender 71 5 Gender Shifts 95 6 Sex and Sociability 121 7 The New Muslim Romance 143 8 Conclusion: Islamizing Intimacies 172 Notes 187 Works Cited 207 Index 239 acknowleDgments This book is the product of a very long journey involving many people to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude. First and foremost are the many Indonesians— young people and their parents, friends, and teachers; administrators and reli- gious leaders; intellectuals and activists—who so generously shared their lives and stories with me. I cannot list their individual names here because I have promised them confidentiality; nonetheless I offer them my heartfelt thanks. I can, however, mention by (given) name some of the many individuals who acted as my research assistants over the years of my study and who will recog- nize their input in its pages: Ade, Agus, Astri, Dian, Farha, Fuji, Ida, and Tini. Very special thanks are owed to Iin Setiaji and her lovely extended family; to Prasetiyo Utomo (“Pak Tomo”) and family; and to Laode Arham, Wahyu Kustiningsih, Eko Prasetyo, and Iip Wijayanto for their generous help and friendship over many years. I am particularly grateful to friends and colleagues associated with the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University and Gadjah Mada University: Bernard and Farsijana Adeney-Risakotta, Najib Azca, Zainal Abidin Bagir, Jeanny Dhewayani, Leonard Chrysostomos Epafras, Nina Mariani Noor, Dicky Sofjan, Siti Syamsiyatun, Nihayatul Wafiroh, and Mark Woodward. Hindun Anisah, Fauziyah Tri Astuti, and Siti Ruhaini Dzuhayatin have been consistently gracious and welcoming. A special thanks also goes to Kathleen Adams, Andrée Feillard, Byron and Mary Jo Good, James Hoesterey, Marcia Inhorn, Carla Jones, Joel Kuipers, Michael G. Peletz, and Nelly van Doorn- Harder, with whom I spent many productive and enjoyable hours in Indonesia, France, and the United States discussing our mutual interests and projects. At Boston University I have appreciated and learned from conversations with faculty and affiliates of Boston University’s Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs. I have also benefited from stimulating discussions with my grad- uate student reading group on gender, sexuality, and romance: Feyza Burak Adli, Hafsa Arain, Paniz Edjlali, Jessica Garber, Jennifer Koester, Jessica Lambert, Dat Nguyen, and Laura Tourtellotte—and especially from conversations with Mehrdad Babadi. Finally, and most importantly, I must thank my family, especially my parents, Joan D. and William T. Smith, who have been steadfast models of hard work and accomplishment and a lifelong source of inspiration. Robert Hefner, my husband and research partner, is my constant supporter, interlocutor, and sounding board. We have shared our experience and deep appreciation of Indonesia since graduate school at the University of Michigan. He has carefully critiqued multi- ple drafts of this work over the years, offering his invaluable expertise and sup- port. The book would not have come into being without his love, encouragement, and patience. Our daughter, Claire-Marie, has been involved in my project x | Acknowledgments from the start, first as an adolescent engaged in Yogyakarta’s youth scene, and later as an accomplished scholar, ethnographer, and artist in her own right. Her input and keen observations over the years have been invaluable, and I am deeply thankful. Her brother, William Francisco, grew up during the writing of this book and likely does not recall a time when I was not working on it. A ready supplier of warm hugs and words of encouragement, this book is dedicated to him. My project was generously supported by a number of grants and fellowships over the years. Research funding came from a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Fellowship, a Spencer Foundation Grant for Research, and a National Endow- ment for the Humanities Fellowship. A truly transformational year of collegial exchange and intensive writing was supplied by a fellowship at Radcliffe’s Institute for Advanced Study, which allowed for the completion of a large portion of the manuscript. For all, I am deeply grateful. Some material in chapter 6 previously appeared in “Reproducing Respectability: Sex and Sexuality among Muslim Javanese Youth,” RIMA (Review of Indonesian and Malay Affairs) 40(1): 143–172 (2006). Portions of the argument made in chapter 7 appeared in “The New Muslim Romance: Changing Patterns of Courtship and Marriage among Educated Javanese Youth,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 36(3): 441–459 (2005). IslamIzIng IntImacIes 1 d Approaching Java in a Time of Transitions Zaman sudah berubah. Ini zaman moderèn. “The times have changed. This is the modern era.” “Kebo nyusu gudèl;” orang tua harus ikut anaknya sekarang. “ ‘The water buffalo nurses from the calf;’ nowadays, parents must follow their children’s lead.” Yogyakarta In 1999, on the cusp of the new millennium, the city of Yogyakarta in south- central Java, Indonesia, gave evidence of having undergone intriguing physical as well as social changes since my last extended visit in the 1980s.1 Approaching the metropolitan area from the newly remodeled Adisucipto Airport on the eastern outskirts of the city, I found the landscape barely recognizable. Where once there had been lush green paddy fields and lazy, winding streams, there were now busy highways, cluttered shops, and four-star hotels. New suburban developments (perumahan) and rental properties (rumah kontrakan) filled much of what, fifteen years earlier, had been agricultural land. Between the remain- ing swaths of yellow-green rice paddy, modern cement-and-tile houses with tinted louvered windows and fancy wrought-iron gates had sprouted up like so many pastel mushrooms. Upscale residential compounds were set off from their poor neighbors by thick cement walls topped with jagged glass, similar to their counterparts in the nation’s capital, Jakarta. Older homes boasted awkward additions—second stories with large silver satellite dishes perched on top of glistening red tile roofs, their shuttered balconies looking down on the more modest, yet-to-be updated houses of their neighbors. The city’s center had also been transformed from what in the 1980s had been a sleepy assortment of dusty shops, narrow roads, and open-fronted restau- rants. Taxis had replaced many, though not all, of the town’s three-wheeled pedicabs (becak) even on the main tourist drag, Jalan Malioboro (Malioboro Street). The now helmeted drivers of a sea of noisy motorbikes jostled shoulder to shoulder for space on the congested thoroughfares. Evidence of an unfore- seen economic globalization, Dunkin’ Donuts shops and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants had sprung up on many of the larger intersections in the city’s northern middle-class neighborhoods, and it seemed as if every other corner featured an ATM machine or an Internet café (warnet). Yogyakarta also 2 | chapter 1 had several new, modern supermarkets and, in 1999, three expansive, air-condi- tioned, multistory shopping malls where cash registers were computerized and one could pay for a cappuccino and a croissant with a credit card. All these changes did not mean that the city’s mass of poor and barely-getting-by had disappeared; on a per capita basis, the city lies in what remains one of Java’s poorest districts. What it does mean, however, is that the poor are now scat- tered within a landscape visibly more varied and linked, in some perceivable way, to a new global order of things. Now in the evenings and especially on weekends Yogyakarta’s streets and shopping areas fill with throngs of young people, many in small, same-sex groups. Young women stroll arm in arm, make inexpensive purchases, and take discrete sidelong glances at the crowds of passersby. Young men hang out in the coffee shops and game rooms, eat snacks, and smoke cigarettes while less discretely sizing up the female shoppers. Married couples with small children in tow make it a family outing, eat a light meal at a food stall or, if they can afford it, at McDonald’s or California Chicken, and enjoy the noisy, festive bustle Indonesians refer to as ramai. On Jalan Malioboro, the shopping district celebrated in tourist guides, the crowd becomes so dense and the sidewalks so full of hawkers with their mountains of wares—batik shifts and sarongs, leather belts and wallets, watches and jewelry, clothing and shoes, and handbags and handicrafts—that the flow of sidewalk traffic often comes to a stop. The peddlers take advantage of the crowd’s snail’s pace to call out to the passersby to stop and take a look. Western tourists in batik beachwear stand out above the crowd, becoming a special target for the street sellers, aspiring tour guides, and teenaged males eager to try out their textbook English. Yogyakarta’s social landscape gave evidence of other intriguing changes in 1999 that have only intensified in the years since.