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ABSTRACT
This article brings religious conversion and religious giving under one analytic lens in examining how ‘Ridwan’, a Chinese–Indonesian convert to Islam from the Indonesian province of Aceh, describes the process through which he became a Muslim. Ridwan frames his account of conversion in terms of religious giving, with special reference to Acehnese ritual feasts known as kandoeri. He draws attention to the way kandoeri giving constitutes a mode of relationality, in which careful attention to difference is the basis for reciprocity. His approach rests on what the anthropological theorist of The Gift, Marcel Mauss, identified as ‘moral persons’, a category that contrasts with liberal ideas of the self and identity. It reflects an awareness of the dual nature of exchange partners, who are always potentially both enemy and friend. This subtly challenges prevailing Indonesian understandings of intercommunal, especially interreligious, relations as well as common perceptions of Chinese–Indonesian religiosity and belonging.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank ‘Ridwan’ for his willingness to allow his narrative of conversion to be recorded and analyzed. The participants of the “Ethics of Religious Giving in Asia” conference at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, in October 2014, provided just the right mix of encouragement and criticism to convince me that this article was worth pursuing. I also received invaluable feedback the following week from an audience at the International Centre for Indian Ocean and Acehnese Studies in Banda Aceh. Further insights were gleaned from the critical engagement of Thomas Borchert, Aileen Das, R. Michael Feener, Richard Fox, Francis Lim Khek Gee, Kevin Ko, Mikaela Rogozen-Soltar, Rebecca Wollenberg, Keping Wu, and the participants in a Vanderbilt University Overlook Seminar in March 2016. The two anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Contemporary Religion offered spirited engagement, suggested at least one key source that I had overlooked, and forced me to clarify the argument and its stakes. Their contributions were vital to the final version. Elisabeth Arweck’s editorial support was essential. Of course, all shortcomings are my own.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. ‘Ridwan’ is a pseudonym, as are all other personal names used in what follows. In this article, I use the terms ‘Chinese–Indonesian’ and ‘ethnic Chinese’ interchangeably to indicate Indonesian citizens of Chinese descent. This de-emphasizes what are often important differences among ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, including geographic and dialect groupings and distinctions based on the degree of integration into Indonesian ‘native’ (I., pribumi), creolized Chinese–Indonesian (I., peranakan) or immigrant Chinese communities (I., totok) (Blussé Citation1991; Sai and Hoon Citation2013). Such distinctions did not feature in Ridwan’s discussion of his conversion; thus I follow his lead in emphasizing the category of Chinese–Indonesian here. Chinese–Indonesians constitute just over 1.2% of Indonesia’s 255 million people (Na’im and Syaputra Citation2011, 9).
2. My research in Aceh included just under two years of field and archival work, carried out in 2006, 2007–2009, and 2015.
3. I mark Indonesian terms with ‘I.’ and Acehnese terms with ‘A.’. Ridwan, like many Chinese–Indonesians in the region, is fluent in both languages as well as in the Hakka dialect of Chinese (I., Kek). Chinese–Indonesians are generally Buddhist, Protestant or Catholic and form the majority of Aceh’s non-Muslim minority, which constitutes less than 2% of the province’s population. Members of all three religions, as well as Muslims like Ridwan, participate in the Cengbeng rituals. I discuss some aspects of the way religious status inflects this participation in what follows.
4. I do not mean to imply that it is the increasing salience and rigidity of intercommunal boundaries alone that has had these effects, nor to divorce them from broader political economies or local contexts. It is nonetheless the case that the increasing salience and rigidity of these boundaries at the national level have important effects on and within local and national political economies and Ridwan’s conversion story shows signs of being shaped by and intervening in this process.
5. Ridwan characterized all the events that he described as part of a process of ‘entering Islam’ (I., masuknya Islam); however, when he was a university student, he officially converted in front of witnesses. For the sake of clarity, I will refer to this moment as Ridwan’s ‘official conversion’, reserving the terms ‘conversion’ and ‘conversion process’ for the longer series of episodes he associates with becoming a Muslim.
6. Some Indonesian Muslims criticize transactional rituals, especially kandoeri, arguing that they depend upon and facilitate misunderstandings of proper moral agency (Bowen Citation1993, 229–250). I suspect that there are similar criticisms of Chinese transactional rituals, perhaps reflected in the Christian graves that I see covered in flowers during Cengbeng rituals (see ). Not unlike Ridwan’s description of his act of putting flowers on his father’s grave, these petals appear to refute the possibility of transactional efficacy.
7. Ridwan was not alone in referring to these rituals as ‘worship’ (sembahyang). Non-Muslim Chinese–Indonesians also sometimes use this term.
8. The Indonesian term mualaf derives from the Qur’anic expression al-mu’allafa kulubuhum, ‘those whose hearts are won over’ (Qur’an 9:60) (“Mu’allaf” Citation2012). The term has had a range of usages, including as a reference for non-Muslim allies of the Islamic community (Sabra Citation2000, 33–40); however, in contemporary Indonesia, and especially in Aceh, it usually indicates recently converted Muslims.
9. In Aceh, unmarried men sleeping in the community house is widely idealized as an institutional ground for the formation of bonds between young men (Siegel Citation2000, 48–57, 137–198).
10. On the purge, see Cribb (Citation1990) and Roosa (Citation2006); on the targeting of Chinese–Indonesians during the purge, see Melvin (Citation2012) and Tsai and Kammen (Citation2012).
11. According to most interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence, menstruating women are impure for ritual purposes and should, therefore, avoid attending prayers in the mosque.
12. On recent controversies regarding churches in South Aceh, see Birchok (Citation2016).
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Daniel Andrew Birchok
Daniel Andrew Birchok is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan-Flint. His research focuses on the continuing significance of, and possibilities engendered by, forms of ‘old’ Islam in contemporary Indonesia. He has published in e.g. Asian Studies Review, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. CORRESPONDENCE: Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, University of Michigan-Flint, 526 French Hall, UM-Flint, 303 E. Kearsley St., Flint, MI 48502, USA.