Indonesian
Islam is accepted as one of the most tolerant in the modern world, what have been the influencing factors on Indonesian Islam? In this essay I will examine the form of Islam
that entered Indonesia, its origins and the role, if any that indigenous
religions, as well as colonial and post colonial governments have played in the
spread and consolidation of Islam as the dominant religion in Indonesia.
Islam first entered the region
that is modern Indonesia, which due to the involvement of polities that are now
part of modern Malaysia, such as the city of Melaka, I shall refer to as the
“Archipelago”, very early in Islamic history, yet for almost five hundred years it failed to make an impact. Islam put down no religious roots and it isn’t
until the Eleventh Century CE that we have Muslim tombstones in the region.
Buddhism and Hinduism flourished in the region and Islam was the religion of
traders and the crews of ships involved in the spice trade. Spices such as cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and
mace have been traded between Europe and the Archipelago for millennia before
the advent of Islam. In fact one of the first things that an emergent Islam did
was interrupt the trade of these spices into Europe by simply occupying the
geographic access points in the form of trading ports in the Middle East.
Yet who were these Muslims? Most
likely they were from Southern India, though there is some debate concerning
this as there has always been a link between the Archipelago and the Middle
East, it is entirely and eminently possible that there was direct contact
between Peninsula Arabs and the peoples of the Archipelago from very early in
the history of Islam .
They almost certainly followed the Shafi’i form of Sunni Islam. More
specifically they were Sufi Muslims.
The first dates for the establishment of an Islamic state in the
Archipelago are from 1292 CE and was the Kingdom of Perlak in Northern Sumatra.
It is often assumed that Islam then engaged in a west to east progression
through the Archipelago, and in a general sense it did however the history is a
good deal more complicated than the initial telling. Not surprisingly the Spice
Islands of Tidore and Ternate, home of the clove, in modern Maluku province in
eastern Indonesia
found themselves with a sizeable and economically important Muslim presence at
a very early date. Melaka, traditionally viewed as a keystone state in the
spread of Islam found itself with a Tamil Muslim ruler in 1445. The
establishment of an Islamic state in Aceh in the extreme north of the island of
Sumatra is understood as having happened at this time. The involvement of the
Chinese Ming Empire in the Archipelago in the form of the fleet(s) led by the
Yunnanese Muslim Admiral Cheng Ho helped establish Islam in the Archipelago.
The change from a Hindu – Buddhist culture in the Archipelago seems to
have been a mixture of forced conversion through conquest with Aceh, Melaka and
most importantly Demak being known to have engaged in Jihad.
Demak with its Muslim ruler Raden Patah engaged in the conquest of the
Majapahit Kingdom. With the downfall and subsequent evacuation of the Majapahit
to Bali, we have the establishment of a large, wealthy Muslim state on Java.
Sufi Islam accompanied and assisted in the conquest and conversion of those
parts of the Archipelago who didn’t adopt Islam for purely commercial reasons.
Of course history tells us that this is also the period when Europeans
in the form of the Portuguese and the Spanish first became directly involved in
the Archipelago. The Portuguese were the first to arrive and attempted to
control the spice trade by the direct application of military force, which no kingdom
in the Archipelago could hope to equal. The Portuguese conquered Melaka in 1511
and the Spice Islands themselves were brought under Portuguese control at
around the same time. The Spanish ultimately proved more successful in what is
now the Philippines and are thus peripheral to our concerns.
The presence of armed, aggressive
and evangelical Roman Catholic Christians throughout the 16th
Century CE in the Archipelago seems to
have focused the minds of the new rulers of the kingdoms of the Archipelago
with Islamisation gathering depth in response. The Portuguese were, at best,
both short sighted due to greed in regards to controlling the trade in spice,
which they never achieved and in political terms in thinking that a combination
of brute force and Christianity would actually lead to their long term domination
of the Archipelago. They were replaced in a relatively short space of time by
the Protestant Christian Dutch, who were to have an enduring impact on the
Archipelago.
In Islamic terms some unusual
events happen at this time. Both Aceh itself and the Javanese kingdom of Jepara
have strong, capable female rulers in the 17th Century CE.
With the establishment of Muslim kingdoms on Java, Islam encountered
something new. We already know that the Sufi branch of Islam was present in the
Archipelago from very early, if not the beginnings of an Islamic presence
there. However Java had long been the centre of its own mystical practice known
as Kejawen or Kebatinan and Kejawen in all likelihood predates the arrival of
both Hinduism and Buddhism in the Archipelago..
Kejawen
needs some explanation for it is essential to an understanding of Indonesian
Islam. In some ways it is very similar to Sufi Islam in that it seeks to bring
the practitioner into direct contact with God. According to the best
explanation I have been able to find in English : “Kebatinan is a
metaphysical search for harmony within one's inner self, connection with the
universe, and with an Almighty God. Javanese beliefs are a combination of
occultism, metaphysics, mysticism and other esoteric doctrines, exemplifying a
Javanese tendency for synthesis. The Javanese system is so flexible that
syncresis in all manifestations is attainable, even that which is in conflict.
Javanese ideals combine human wisdom (wicaksana), psyche (waskita)
and perfection (sempurna). The follower must control his/her passions,
eschewing earthly riches and comforts, so that he/she may one day reach
enlightened harmony and union with the spirit of the universe.”
Kejawen encourages ascetic
practices such as meditating under a waterfall, fasting, meditating in
caves and mountain tops and clearly has Hindu - Buddhist elements in it. Whilst
Kejawen has influenced Sufi Islam in the Archipelago, the interaction hasn’t
necessarily been an entirely happy one, with some Islamic scholars rejecting
Kejawen outright as shirk. Others such as Sheik Siti Jenar had a large group of
disciples who used Kejawen as part of their Sufi devotions.
Kejawen remains very much a part of rural Islam in the Archipelago especially
on Java and Peninsula Malaysia, with a number of local Islamic prophets and
preachers such as Ayah Pin (born Ariffin Mohammed in Kelantan, Federated States
of Malaya in 1943. Leader of Kerajaan Langit {Sky Kingdom}. Convicted of
apostasy in 2001. Kerajaan Langit is banned by Malaysian authorities and
Ariffin Mohammed is currently a fugitive) and traditional healers openly
incorporating Kejawen in their teachings and practices. Kejawen also has a
clear influence on the indigenous martial art known as Silat.
Thus although some parts of the Islamic orthodoxy in the Archipelago may
not consider Kejawen as part of Islam, it has clearly fused with Islam into the
belief system of the vast majority of the population, especially in rural areas.
With the establishment of Islam on Java we encounter the Wali Sanga/
Wali Songo or Nine Saints of Islam. Traditionally their names are: Sunan Ampel (Raden Rachmat),Sunan Maulana Malik Ibrahim Giri (Raden Paku),Sunan Bonang (Raden Machdum
Ibrahim), Sunan Drajat (Raden Qosim),Sunan Kudus (Ja'far Shodiq), Sunan
Kalijaga (Raden Mas Said), Sunan Muria (Raden Umar Said) and Sunan Gunung Jati
(Syarif Hidayatullah) These
are a distinctively Javanese group of Islamic missionaries, who may or may not
have all be contemporary to each other and may not even have numbered the
traditional number of Nine that is ascribed to them. Some were father and son.
Others seem to have lived a century or so before or after the main grouping.
All of them are important to the spread of Islam on Java. We do know that they
all lived in or around the 15th Century CE. At least one of the Wali Sanga Maulan Malik
Ibrahim(died 1419) came from Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan. The others seem to
be Javanese in origin although there is once again the complication of that
whilst many of the Wali Songo were certainly born on Java, they were in fact from
a variety of different ethnic ancestries including both Cham and Han Chinese.
The tombs of the Wali Songo remain important pilgrimage sites for Javanese
Muslims, with the tombs being at Gapura Wetan, Gresik, Ampeldenta, Surabaya,
Giri, Gresik, Tuban, Paciran, Lamongan Kudus, Kadilangu, Demak, Colo, Mt. Muria
and Mt. Sembung, Cirebon
.
A quick examination of a map of Java
will show that the sites stretch along the northern coast of Java in a line
from Cirebon in the west to Surabaya in the east.
The Wali Songo are attributed with deepening the Islamisation of the
Archipelago and most importantly Java. They are traditionally involved in a
range of activities from simply teaching Islam to changing Wayang (traditional
Javanese puppetry) from an art that traditionally used humans and dance as part
of the performance Wayang Wong to the modern Wayang Kulit, which uses leather
puppets (Kulit: skin) and using this
popular entertainment. Most importantly to our interests, the Wali Songo were all
adherents to Sufi Islam. This then is the establishment of Islam in the
Archipelago and most importantly to this essay on Java. We can see that Sufi
Islam has deep links with the very beginnings of Islam in the Archipelago. With
the emergence of the of the Wali Songo
we have a distinctively Javanese Islamic identity for the first time. The Wali
Songo have been and remain to this day extremely popular amongst the Javanese
with the pilgrimage sites attracting large numbers of pilgrims and books about
them and their teachings remaining popular. It is a fact that peoples from the
Archipelago have enthusiastically engaged in the Hajj from the moment of
conversion to Islam, however the veneration of the Wali Songo is uniquely
Javanese. Sufism has been and still is deeply influential in the Archipelago.
Sufism however has not gone unchallenged in Indonesia. We must remember
that there has always been contact between the Archipelago and Mecca and
Muslims in the Archipelago were kept fully up to date with the latest trends in
Islam including the rise of Salafi Islam. Indeed there has been a resident
community of Muslims in Mecca from the Archipelago for at least the last two
centuries.
Sufi Islam in the Archipelago has always coexisted with an Islam that was far
more concerned with Sharia.
This has implications for modern Islam in Indonesia.
At the same time as Islam was establishing itself throughout the
Archipelago, the Dutch were active in at first establishing trading centres
though the agency of the United East India Company, a private company
established in the Netherlands in order to trade with the East Indies. We must
remember that the Dutch were and are Christians. The fact that the people
actively engaged in what ended up being empire building were not Muslim and
were not Asian enabled resistance to them to be able to be formulated in a
number of guises. Initially the guise was religious, it became political and ended
up being nationalistic. At first it was a straight up religious resistance with
the Dutch finding resistance in Aceh. Aceh, in the 16th Century CE
was as it is now, fiercely Islamic.
And this was the pattern for the
next two centuries. Local leaders were able to gain support by simply pointing
out the obvious...the people they were resisting were Europeans and Christian.
The Dutch were also engaging in missionary activities, which only gave the
Islamic resistance more reasons to resist. At least one modern Indonesian
author believes that Christianity and Islam engaged in active competition
similar to what happened in the Philippines for religious dominance in
Indonesia.
Islam and independence became inseparable. Every major military encounter
between the Christian Dutch and the Muslim inhabitants of the region strengthened Islam. The three major fights
that the Dutch found themselves in the 19th and early 20th
Centuries were all influenced by the combination of Islam and nationalism. Some
of these conflicts overlap , the Padri War of 1821 – 38 (the war took place in
the Mingangkabau Highlands of West Sumatra and involved the Padri who were
Salafi inspired religious reformers), Java or Diponegoro War of 1825 -30 (a
straight up fight for political control of Central Java) and the Aceh War of
1873 – 1912 (which suffered from mission creep in that it started out as a
fight for territory between the Acehnese and the Dutch and end up being for all
intents and purposes a resource war after the discovery of oil on Sumatra).
The Indonesian National Revolution was essentially a three way fight
between secular Indonesian nationalists, the Dutch and Islamic revolutionaries.
Which made the nationalists extremely wary of the intentions of organised Islam
post revolution. The single biggest Islamic threat to the new republic came
from Dar Ul-Islam (House of Islam) lead by the Javanese Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosuwirjo.
Dar Ul-Islam wanted to set up an Islamic theocracy based on a strict observance
of Sharia Law and was joined by a number of regional separatist movements in
Aceh, and South Sulawesi, at its peak
Dar Ul-Islam controlled about a third of Java, primarily western Java. It also
organised a failed attempt to assassinate President Sukarno at a kindergarten
in Cikni, Jakarta in 1957. Dar Ul-Islam remained dangerous until 1965 until it
was eventually defeated by the
Indonesian military. All of Dar Ul-Islams leaders died at the hands of the
Indonesian military.
Things were also a good deal more complicated than
they appear, as they often are in Indonesia, with at least one major Islamic
organisation, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)
declaring that resistance to the Dutch was comparable with Holy War.
Not surprisingly this
focused the minds of the leaders of the new republic and lead to the
formulation of the doctrine of Panca Sila. Panca Sila states:
- Belief in the one and only God, (in
Indonesian, Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa).
- Just and civilized humanity, (in
Indonesian, Kemanusiaan Yang Adil dan Beradab).
- The unity of Indonesia, (in Indonesian, Persatuan
Indonesia).
- Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in
the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives (in
Indonesian, Kerakyatan Yang Dipimpin oleh Hikmat Kebijaksanaan, Dalam
Permusyawaratan dan Perwakilan)
- Social justice for all of the people of
Indonesia (in Indonesian, Keadilan Sosial bagi seluruh Rakyat Indonesia)
There was the determination that new republic would be secular in nature.
Given that the republic enjoyed precious little political or economic stability
under Sukarno, there is evidence that it suppressed and or destroyed all perceived
threats to itself and this included militant Islam. The survival of the
republic was viewed as being of paramount importance almost to the point of
institutional paranoia and any and all means were used to ensure this, in
particular the Third Tenet of Panca Sila which is used almost as a catchall for
the Indonesian government in its pursuit of unity. In that it is the government
that determines what is and isn’t a threat to the Indonesia. Because of this the public face of
Islam under Sukarno and all subsequent regimes in Indonesia was and is to be
one of tolerance and as far as the government can ensure it, an apolitical one.
Any and all perceived threats to stability to the republic and the regime are
dealt with by the use of imprisonment, censorship and internal exile and this
includes organised Islam.
We must also understand that Indonesia has embraced secular Western
culture since independence. During a recent visit to Indonesia I observed a
deep fascination with most things Western by Indonesians.
In the period of instability between 1965 and 1970, and again in the
early 1990’s, something curious happened. There was a Hindu – Buddhist revival
in the republic and in particular Eastern Java. Even in the face of almost 300
years of a perceived dominance of Islam on Java, the older culture has been
able to reassert itself
.
Things changed with the fall of Suharto in May of 1998. A number of
radical Islamic personalities such as Abu Bakr Basir, founder of Jemah Islamiah
returned from exile in Malaysia and elsewhere. The return and establishment of
personalities such as Abu Bakr Basir and his disciple Hambali in teaching
positions with the Islamic boarding school network was to have unfortunate
consequences in the new millennium.
However they are and remain anomalies in Islam as practised in Indonesia. In the
post Suharto era there has been a general relaxing of censorship and a
general embrace of a democratic ideals. Panca Sila remains the philosophy of
government and as mentioned above, the Indonesian government is still wont to
use the Third Tenet of Panca Sila as something of a blunt weapon when it comes
to dealing with perceived threats. However with the absence of obvious threats
to stability and in the face of pressure from the West to reform human rights
within Indonesiahas
meant that a lot of activities by both individuals and organisations that in
the past would have drawn quick and harsh attention by the government have gone
on unchecked and without obvious interference.
To conclude: Let us stop and examine what we know.
We know that Sufi Islam has been and remains deeply influential in the
Archipelago. Because of the inclusive and tolerant nature of Sufi Islam it has
made a successful accommodation with and incorporation of the indigenous
Javanese religion of Kejawen into Sufi practice within the Archipelago. There
has also been the retention of much of the Hindu – Buddhist theology and
culture by the rural population of Java. The Islam of Java is a syncretisation
of Sufi, Kejawen, Hinduism-Buddhism and indigenous animistic practices that
predate the arrival of both Hinduism-Buddhism and Islam. We know that Islam on
Java has faced the return of Hinduism – Buddhism twice within the lifetime of
the republic. Islam as a religion has had to accept that if it steps over the
line from inclusion and tolerance to extremism, that there are still viable alternatives
to it within the Archipelago that can and do lay claim to a deeper presence
within the national identity.
We know that
post independence successive regimes have used Panca Sila as a way of
countering militant Islam. Islam in Indonesia was to be inclusive, and
effectively one amongst equals when it came to the other accepted religions or
it was to be treated as being hostile to the republic. All intolerant forms of
Islam were suppressed, the leadership driven into exile. Because of this Islam
in Indonesia is tolerant. In face of the dominant school of Islam within
Indonesia, the culture within which it lives which has deep and still
influential pre-Islamic roots and government policies that aggressively
promoted and still promote communal harmony, it would be very hard for Islam in
Indonesia to be anything other than tolerant. Which is no doubt the single reason
why extremist groups such as Jemah Islamiah and most recently Front Pembela
Islam: FPI (Front for the Defence of Islam) have gained not only extremely
limited public support, but in the case of FPI face outright public
condemnation. The entire cultural, religious
and political momentum within both Indonesian culture and Islam in Indonesia is
against an expression of Islam as seen in places such as Saudi Arabia,
Afghanistan under the Taliban and Pakistan.
The simple answer to my initial question is in light of our examination
of the history of Islam in the Archipelago, and government policies since
independence, is Islam in Indonesia is and will remain known for its tolerance
due to the fact that Salafi Islam is not the dominant stream of Islam practiced
by Indonesians.
to this:
