Very few studies explicitly, let alone quantitatively, examine gaps in religious intolerance among individual Muslims based on affiliation with major Muslim organizations in Indonesia. Most... Show moreVery few studies explicitly, let alone quantitatively, examine gaps in religious intolerance among individual Muslims based on affiliation with major Muslim organizations in Indonesia. Most existing studies either focus on a single organization (non-comparative), are at the organizational policy level (not examining individual attitudes), or use a limited number of samples in their analysis. Against this backdrop, this study compares Indonesian Muslims’ levels of religious intolerance based on their affiliation with Muslim organizations or traditions: Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Muhammadiyah, and other organizations. We utilize a large-scale household survey, the 2014 Indonesia Family Life Survey-5, and run an ordinal logistic regression to identify organizations’ rank on the religious intolerance scale. We find that Muslims without any affiliation with a Muslim organization (some 18 percent of Indonesian Muslims) are the most tolerant. Against this reference group, we find that NU followers are generally the most tolerant, followed by those affiliated with Muhammadiyah, and those affiliated with other Muslim organizations. This finding adds a stock of knowledge to our understanding of religion and society, especially regarding interfaith relations in Indonesia and in the Muslim world in general. Methodologically, this study also shows the benefit and feasibility of identifying the dynamic of religious intolerance using a quantitative approach at a micro level. Show less
This ethnographic book deals with the emergence of the Wali Pitu (seven saints) tradition and Muslim pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia. It touches upon the issues of translocal connectivity between... Show moreThis ethnographic book deals with the emergence of the Wali Pitu (seven saints) tradition and Muslim pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia. It touches upon the issues of translocal connectivity between Java and Bali, Islam-Hindu relationship, relations between Muslim groups, and questions of authority and authenticity of saint worship tradition. It offers a new perspective on Bali, seeing the island as a site of cultural motion straddling in between Islam and Hinduism with complexities of local figurations, and belongings of ‘Muslim Balinese’. The study also urges the intricate relationship between religion and tourism, between devotion and economy, and shows that the Wali Pitu tradition has facilitated the transgression of spatial and cultural boundaries. Show less
This dissertation is about the broadcasting of dakwah on Indonesian TV stations. It deals with the production and circulation of dakwah programmes on TV and elucidates the social and educational... Show moreThis dissertation is about the broadcasting of dakwah on Indonesian TV stations. It deals with the production and circulation of dakwah programmes on TV and elucidates the social and educational backgrounds of popular TV preachers in order to understand the rise of the programmes in post-Suharto Indonesia. Furthermore, this dissertation discusses the competition among various Muslim organisations to influence the production of dakwah programmes and the formation of religious authority through the broadcasting of dakwah programmes on TV channels. This dissertation is based on one-year ethnographic fieldwork in Jakarta, Medan, and Bali, which includes observations and interviews with the producers, preachers, and audiences of dakwah programmes, Muslim leaders, and members of Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI). This dissertation shows the important role of TV in the construction of religious authority, which becomes more fragmented in Muslim societies like in Indonesia partly because of televised dakwah. Most of the current researches on dakwah activities focus mainly on social media like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram but neglect the role of other media like TV. In fact, TV still plays an important role in daily activities of Indonesian society with its programmes. Muslims watch TV programmes such as dakwah, news, soap operas, talk and reality shows during their leisure and busy time. Muslim leaders make use of TV to disseminate their teachings and enhance their charisma among Muslim audiences. Presidential candidates and political leaders use TV stations to promote their political agendas to gain supports from the society. Show less
This dissertation explores the causation of mass conversions to Islam in Bolaang-Mongondow and to Protestant Christianity in Sangir-Talaud and Minahasa (North Sulawesi, Indonesia) in the eighteenth... Show moreThis dissertation explores the causation of mass conversions to Islam in Bolaang-Mongondow and to Protestant Christianity in Sangir-Talaud and Minahasa (North Sulawesi, Indonesia) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It demonstrates that despite deviations in particularities, the mass conversions to world religions in these regions broadly shared similar causations. It places emphasis on particular periods in the nineteenth-century when the Dutch colonial state centralized political authority and imposed census-based monetary taxation with the aim of commercializing the economy. It points to these reforms as the immediate triggers that enabled both Dutch apical rulers and especially indigenous apical rulers to weaken the authority of subaltern chiefs. It illustrates that these reforms were weaved into the religious conversion agenda of rulers as a strategy to further consolidate authority by depriving the subaltern chiefs of their functionally undifferentiated and socially embedded authority. As such, this dissertation shows that the apical rulers could expand their political and economic reach while paving the way for their claimed subjects to access prestigious religious identities, which had hitherto been exclusive to the ruling elite. Show less
Dijk, Kees van; Permata, Ahmad-Norma; Zuhri, Syaifudin; et al. 2016
After violent protests across the country had forced President Suharto to step down in 1998, Indonesia successfully made the transition from an authoritarian state to a democracy. For the first... Show moreAfter violent protests across the country had forced President Suharto to step down in 1998, Indonesia successfully made the transition from an authoritarian state to a democracy. For the first time in forty years Islamic parties and organizations – including some inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood – were free to propagate their ways of thinking. The new government also succeeded in negotiating an end to a separatist rebellion in Aceh, making the province the only region in Indonesia permitted to draft its own Islamic legislation. In this book Indonesian scholars affiliated with Islamic universities as well as Dutch researchers investigate what has happened since the transition. They explore what the consequences are of the growing influence of orthodoxy and radicalism, which – while already visible prior to 1998 – has only grown stronger. How did political and religious relations change? How were the lives of women and their legal position affected? Furthermore, what are the ramifications for religious minorities? Show less
This dissertation addresses the question of what it means to remake everyday life in the shadow of disaster. Focusing on the city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in the years after the devastating Indian... Show moreThis dissertation addresses the question of what it means to remake everyday life in the shadow of disaster. Focusing on the city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in the years after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004, it explores how tsunami survivors have been remaking the everyday ever since that moment. Based on ethnographic research in the post-disaster years, the five chapters of this dissertation discuss various dimensions of the remaking of everyday life that were important to the tsunami survivors, including the reconstruction of houses, interactions between survivors, international organizations and the state, the narrative experiences of the tsunami, the process of grieving and its entanglement with Islam, the creation of collective memory and forgetfulness in urban space, and ideas about the future that build on notions of moral and socio-economic improvement. In these chapters the concept of subjectivity is used to show how individuals creatively shape their lives in the context of tremendous social, economic, and political changes. The dissertation concludes that the anthropology of disaster, that has up to now predominantly focused on post-disaster social change and continuity and on structural historical patterns of vulnerability and resilience, can be enriched by ethnographic studies of subjectivity. Show less
