THE INNER ISLAMIZATION of JAVA by PAUL STANGE
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-1- THE INNER ISLAMIZATION OF JAVA by PAUL STANGE Contents chapter 1 Exploring Javanism chapter 2 Experiential Origins chapter 3 Founding Followers chapter 4 Spiritual Revolution chapter 5 Emergent Organization chapter 6 Transcending Cultism chapter 7 Beyond Boundaries chapter 8 Continuous Meditation chapter 9 Microcosm and Macrocosm Sources -2- chapter 1 EXPLORING JAVANISM In Java's rural religious pattern the mosque is often no more than a gateway to the grave--Islam is integral to but not the heart of local culture. Important graveyards have a small mosque or prayer house near their entrance, but are visited essentially as ancestral shrines. This conjunction properly indicates the impact Islam has had on interactions between the living and the dead. Burial is universally an Islamic ritual and constitutes the clearest evidence that Javanese practices were substantially altered through the advent of Islam. However this perspective can be reversed to suggest that the mosque remains principally an anteroom, a space for cleansing and protection prior to dealings with spirit realms which continue to be a central preoccupation. This physical conjunction is apt metaphorically, as for most Javanese Islam has not been exclusive. Islamic terminology, like Indic discourses before it, amplified pre-existent Javanism (kejawen) through new idiom and without displacing it. The nature of the relationship is illustrated in a story about Diponegoro, hero of the Java War against the Dutch from 1825-1830. He took Islam more seriously than most members of the royal family of Yogyakarta's kraton (court), but was also involved with Ratu Kidul (also called Nyai Loro Kidul) the queen of the South Sea. She is invoked in court myth and rituals of royal. Diponegoro meditated in caves to contact her for assistance in war. Javanese understanding of such relations, rooted in Indic conceptualisation of karma, is that individuals who depend on spirit assistance in this life will enter the spirit realms upon death.1 According to Yogyanese mystics in the 1970s in Diponegoro's case the strength of his Islamic conviction (iman) was such that he did not have to pay this price. Faith in Allah 'delivered him', and Islam may thus be used as a protection for those engaged with spirits. The same perspective on spiritual realities is implied in the claims contemporary spirit healers make that their power derives from God, not from spirits.2 As these examples suggest, Islam and the kejawen world of spirits have been interdependent fields of discourse, not exclusive domains. Islamic idiom did establish grounds for reorientation, but within an established realm of 1 Primary information used in this context is based on fieldwork in Java, mainly taking place initially from January 1971 to February 1974 and then during short visits at least every alternate year since. 2 This observation is confirmed also in M. Woodward, "Healing and Morality: a Javanese Example", Social Science Medicine Vol. 21 No. 9 (1985) p 1016, as at least one of his informants put similar stress on God as the ultimate source of his spiritual authority. -3- spiritual discourses. Linguistic analogies are appropriate to suggest the nature of the closely related religious history. An underlying indigenous grammar has been continually interplaying with imported Islamic idiom. The lexicon of Javanese was enriched by Sanskrit and then Arabic loan words. While each extended it; its structure remained Malayo-Polynesian. Notwithstanding students of culture who present linguistics as queen of the human sciences, or emphasis within some religions on language (as in Islam on Arabic) language and religion are not coterminus. This is thus only an analogy, not a perfect representation of the balances of spiritual forces and discourses in Java, but it properly suggests the nature of historical interactions and the depths to which they can be considered. Many Javanists still feel Islam is essentially foreign, not part of their identity in the way Indic culture came to be. The culturalist revivalism they prioritise looks back to the spiritual synthesis of Indic Madjapahit, over five hundred years ago, rather than to the later Islamic Demak. Folk traditions which have detailed the fall of classical Majapahit include prophesies that Java was to fall under the sway of foreign culture for five hundred years before a Jaman Buda, a new golden age, would resurrect indigenous spiritual identity.3 Similarly recent advocates of Buddhist revival I knew in the early 1970s held that villagers had no need to convert as implicitly they were already Buddhists and had only to acknowledge it.4 For Javanists a deconstruction of overlying cultural influences has been intrinsic to affirmation of cultural independence and a key cultural aspect within the national revolution. The competing mythology, in other sectors of society and scholarship, is that Java is fundamentally and already overwhelmingly Islamic.5 From that 3 The extended relevance of this complex was noted already by B. Dahm, Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence (Ithaca, New York, 1969) pp 1-20; the most authoritative general discussion of Javanese millenarianism is S. Kartodirdjo, Protest Movements in Rural Java (Singapore, 1972); I have expanded on the prophecies most relevant to the Suharto period in, "Interpreting Javanist Millenial Imagery" in P. Alexander (ed.) Creating Indonesian Cultures (Sydney 1989). 4 Such statements were repeated with emphasis rather than being occasional or incidental. During early 1971 I accompanied Pak Pramono and Pak Gondo, Buddhist teachers from different groups in Salatiga, as they spoke at village ceremonies in Kopeng, Kayuwangi, and Kemiri. In 1972 and 1973 I observed Waisak celebrations at Borobudur and related ceremonies in Klaten, Wonogiri, and Manyaran. Contacts with urban Buddhists, mainly in Jakarta, Semarang and Surakarta (Solo) did not bring out the same message, but in relating to villagers in the above contexts urbanites always stressed this continuity. 5 The most forceful recent exposition of this school of thought is by M. Woodward in his book, Islam in Java: Mysticism and Normative Piety in the -4- perspective tensions between orthodoxy (santri) and Javanism (kejawen) may exist, but are best seen as "inside" a Muslim frame. These alternative gestalts provide a fundamental axis for Javanese debates about what it means to be Indonesian. Representations of recent social life refer to this as tension between syncretic Javanism (kejawen) and orthodox Islam or as divergence between santri piety, abangan animism and priyayi mysticism.6 inner Islamization In any event Islamization stands out as a primary theme in the religious history of insular Southeast Asia during the past five hundred years, everywhere implying interplay with local customs (adat). Indigenous histories provide ample evidence of tension between the court (kraton) culture of Sultans and the religion of the ulama or kyai, the teachers in Islamic schools (pesantren). Traditional Javanese literature is filled with reference to debates between related monistic and dualistic philosophers.7 Polarities pervade scholarly analysis no less than they may primitive mythologies or medieval cosmologies. Some discussions go so far as to relate contemporary tensions to prehistoric moities and division between Shivaite and Buddhist sects.8 More recently we are reminded that the interplay between forces such as Islam and custom has been subtle and dialectical, that each pole is continually redefined through their interaction.9 That new styles arrive as commentaries on earlier patterns is underlined ironically by the fact that indigenous people use Arabic terms to define the domains identified with pre-Islamic custom (adat) and spirituality (kebatinan).10 Sultanate of Yogyakarta (Tucson, Arizona, 1989), and in an essay, "The Slametan: Textual Knowledge and Ritual Performance in Central Javanese Islam", History of Religions V 28 (1988-89). 6 This is the issue, in the context of national politics, as I outline it in "'Legitimate' Mysticism in Indonesia", Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs Vol. 20 No. 2 (1986). The classical statement of the santri/abangan/priyayi thesis is in C. Geertz, The Religion of Java (Chicago 1976); the most important counterstatement is Koentjaraningrat, Javanese Culture (Singapore 1985). 7 A fine summary discussion of these issues as canvassed in the archipelago is provided in G. Bousfield, "Islamic Philosophy in Southeast Asia" in M.B. Hooker (ed.), Islam in South East Asia (Cambridge 1982). 8 W.F. Rassers. Pandji the Culture Hero, a Structural Study of Religion in Java (The Hague 1956) especially pp 65-91. 9 Particularly fruitful discussions of this interplay are embedded in T. Abdullah, "Adat and Islam in Minangkabau", Indonesia No 1 (1966) . 10 R. McKinley provides a fine perspective on the interplay between religious domains, showing how each is a commentary on its -5- Beyond polarities it is emphasised that Javanese, like most borrowers, adopted Islam in their own terms, maintaining continuity with earlier teachings. Geertz used the story of Kalijaga to suggest that change, insofar as conversion implied some, was on the surface rather than in the depths of spiritual life.11 According to legend Sunan Kalijaga was the offspring of royalty from Indic Majapahit but founded the traditional Islam of Mataram, the ethnic Javanese core surrounding Yogyakarta and Surakarta. Kalijaga's conversion is supposed to have taken place near Demak,