Revisiting Nu-Muhammadiyah in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Previous empirical studies on Indonesia have supported the claim that the reformist movement of Muhammadiyah led to a decline in local culture. The popular call of the the reformist movements is that Muslims should return to a pristine Islam. However, little has been studied about how reformist Muslims accommodated local culture. In my field research employing ethnographic methodology, I found that the reformists of Muhammadiyah in Bima support local rituals seen as complying with local wisdom (kearifan lokal). For example, the reformist Muslims actively participated in the celebration of Mawlid, the Prophet’s birthday, a ritual commonly associated with the traditionalists of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). Historical records show that the two differing religious orientations have been anchored within the Bima sultanate. Bima’s dyadic leadership, comprising the Sultan and the Raja Bicara (sultan’s spokesperson), allowed for branches of both NU and Muhammadiyah to be established in Bima. This in turn places political stability as an impetus for religious harmony in the region. As the findings show, it is important for both traditionalist and reformist strands to accommodate each other. Accordingly, the Mawlid ritual has not disappeared as it is considered fundamental to the identity marker of Bima Muslims, for both NU and Muhammadiyah followers.

KEYWORDS:

• Bima
• Indonesia
• Muhammadiyah
• Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)
• reformist Islam
• traditionalist

Acknowledgements

My first thanks are for the supervisory panel for my doctoral candidacy: Prof Kathryn Robinson (chair), Prof James Fox (adviser), Dr Andrew McWilliam, and Dr Patrick Guinness, for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. I also thank the Nikkei Asian Review for my travel grant to the 8th Euroseas conference in Vienna in 2015 to present a paper on an early version of this article. I also profited from feedback at the conference provided by Dr Martin Slama of the Austrian Academy of Science. This article is based on 12-months’ fieldwork in Bima from 2011 to 2012 for the completion of my PhD thesis at ANU’s Anthropology department. I benefitted from the help of two key informants in my field research: the late Siti Maryam who was also known as Ruma Mari, and Dae Syarifuddin. My thanks include the ANU Indonesia Project – the SMERU Research Institute for awarding a research grant in 2018–2019. Although this second fieldwork was on a different subject, it gave me an opportunity to update my findings on the rituals discussed in this article.

Note on contributor

Muhammad Adlin Sila is researcher at the agency for research, development, education and training, the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA), and lecturer at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN). He was was awarded the 2015 Ann Bates Postgraduate Prize for the most outstanding PhD thesis. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 On Persis, see Federspiel (1984).

2 Interview with Muma Gani Masykur in Bima on 14 December 2018.