THE MUSLIM WOMAN IN INDONESIAN CINEMA AND THE FACE VEIL AS ‘OTHER'

† A version of this article was first presented at the Indonesian Cinema workshop at the Royal Asiatic Society in London organised by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in October 2013. Special thanks to Ben Murtagh for encouraging its publication. I am also grateful to IMW's anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Abstract

The aftermath of 9/11 saw the production of images in the Western media that suggested the link between Islam and the oppression of Muslim women. In response to the often vilifying Western discourse about Islam and Muslim women is the emergence of films by Indonesian filmmakers intent on representing a more peaceful and tolerant image of the faith. These films now belong to a recently identified genre of ‘Islamic cinema'. Representations of ‘strong', career-minded, highly educated, and vocal veiled Muslim women in Indonesian cinema came to counter the silent and passive veiled woman circulating in Western mass media. While these representations have been mostly unproblematic and often championed as ‘positive’, the face veil or cadar is contentious. In the 2011 film Khalifah by Indonesian filmmaker Nurman Hakim, the cadar is a visible marker of otherness, a political, cultural and national problem to be solved. This article discusses the ways in which the veiled body in Indonesian cinema has become inscribed with many meanings and argues that varieties of the veil are used to distinguish between Indonesian identity and the Other.

Keywords:

• gender
• Islam
• Islamic popular culture
• Indonesian cinema
• veiling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

† A version of this article was first presented at the Indonesian Cinema workshop at the Royal Asiatic Society in London organised by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in October 2013. Special thanks to Ben Murtagh for encouraging its publication. I am also grateful to IMW's anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

¹The Salafis in Indonesia have been quietly active since the 1980s but have rapidly developed into a conspicuous socio-political force after the fall of Suharto in 1998. A movement that began with an apolitical stance and keenly distinguished themselves through an exclusivist lifestyle and outlook, the Salafi are known for their propagation (dakwah) of ‘neo-fundamentalist’ versions of Islam (Noorhaidi 2007: 8). The origins of the movement can be traced to the founder of Wahhabism, Muhammad ibn Abdul Al-Wahab (1703–1792), in what is now modern-day Saudi Arabia. The initial influx of Salafi ideas into Indonesia was channelled mainly through the establishment and activities of Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia (Indonesian Council for Islamic Propagation) in 1967 and later via Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Islam dan Bahasa Arab (Institute for the Study of Islam and Arabic) since 1980 (Noorhaidi 2007: 87, 89).

²Even New Order films such as Al-Kautsar (Gratitude, 1977, dir. Chaerul Umam), Sembilan wali (The nine holy men, 1985, dir. Djun Saptohadi) and Nada dan dakwah (Tune and mission, 1991, dir. Chaerul Umam) about Islam (see Sasono 2010, 2013) have only received recent attention, partly due to the reception of Ayat-ayat cinta and the many similar films that followed the latter.

³Derived from the Arabic term da‘wa to mean call or invitation, dakwah in the Indonesian context is a general term to denote efforts to propagate Islam in society as in converting non-Muslims to Islam. However the term is more commonly invoked for the strengthening of the Islamic faith and guiding Muslims to live by Islamic principles (Meuleman 2011: 236).

⁴Founded in 2008, Mizan Productions is a Jakarta-based film and television production company best known for producing successful films like Laskar pelangi (The rainbow troops, 2008, dir. Riri Riza) and Emak ingin naik haji (Mother wants to go on the hajj, 2009, dir. Aditya Gumay).

⁵Interview with Putut Widjanarko in Jakarta, December 2011.

Additional information

Author biography

Alicia Izharuddin is a tutor at the Open University in Malaysia and Associate Editor of Sarjana, a journal in the arts and humanities published by University of Malaya. She has a PhD in Gender Studies from SOAS, University of London.